About three years ago I started working on my own RPG campaign setting. It was originally called “Loaerth & Feywyrd” – but has since privately become simply “Loaerth”. I had some early input from many of the contributors at Nevermet Press too. In 2009, in our private development forum it was pretty exciting to have a group of two dozen writers and artists  kicking around ideas and brainstorming on Loaerth.  I felt sure it would be developed, and it was going to be awesome.

I was wrong. Nevermet Press was side tracked by a ton of other projects—too many to be honest—and then Stories in the Ether came along. In short, I was overwhelmed. My own creative projects were overrun. And, as you know, eventually I closed my doors. I needed a hard reset.

So, after a brief break in blogging, editing, and writing—I revisited my notes and other materials on Loaerth. I found the old posts from our forums, my notebooks, and my half-baked google docs to be a mismash of ideas that didn’t work well together. Their were ideas that did work well, on their own, but when you brought them all together it just didn’t work. I didn’t (I don’t) want Loaerth to be a “kitchen sink” campaign setting.

After all, The Story is the Thing. And a good story is usually built on a setting that doesn’t get in the way or break your suspension of disbelief. There has to be a good “pseudo history” and a good “pseudo science” behind how the world developed, why it works the way it does. Questions like “why is there an Underdark in every fantasy RPG campaign?” or “why is every stock fantasy campaign setting a mishmash of a circus of gods and clerics, Vanacian magic, and big fantasy?” I’m exaggerating a bit here, but I hope you get my point. I want a setting where the reasons Things Are The Way They Are makes sense. It’s believable, even if fantastical. Just like our own world.

For me to translate the “The Story is the Thing” concept into a paradigm for RPG campaign setting design and world building, I have come think that System Matters. More specifically – when the focus is on world building, the game system you choose can influence how easily you can model the world in game terms.  Moreover, the amount of “homebrewing” or rules-mod’ing you need to do is a function of how well the game system of choice is for the setting you are designing. So, if you are world building and finding there’s an endless list things that need to be modified, maybe the game you are using is the wrong tool for the job.

This is why I’ve gone from Savage Worlds to Pathfinder RPG and now, likely, back to Savage Worlds for Loaerth. The setting was originally designed for Savage Worlds, but I switched (privately – nothing publicly published on this blog) to Pathfinder a while ago. And then I noticed that, giving the rich story I’m developing, the Pathfinder RPG is requiring far too many game design retcons to be acceptable.  Several (more insightful) people I on Twitter alluded to this early on, and I wrote about switching Loaerth development to Pathfinder last year (read: Game Design and Risk vs. Reward, or Why Game Balance Matters). Some small part of me now wishes I had taken their advice, but the setting has been mostly developed with a focus on the backstory, history, etc. thus far. It’s only been becuase I’ve dived into some crunchy parts more recently that I’ve really started running into design issues using Pathfinder.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the PFRPG system, but I now expect that Savage Worlds is going to be the system I’ll use as a base—with some additions—once again. Two things I hope to mod for Savage Worlds (aside from a miriade of setting specific details, new edges, creatures, etc) will be :

1. A Rich(er) Character Advancement System. One thing the d20 system does well is provide the players with the opportunity for long campaigns with really deep (read:crunchy) character development. I’ll likely expand the standard SW experience system and model something a bit closer to the d20 system. More mid- to high-level edges will definitely be an important component.
2. A Challenge Rating System. One thing that has always frustrated me about the SW system is the lack of clear “challenge ratings”. For experienced SW GM’s, designing challenging (but not overpowering) encounters and situations is usually not a problem. For new GM’s though, my (purely anecdotal) impression is that it can be hard. This may be simply grouping enemies monsters, and traps into the existing SW parlance of Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, etc.. I’m not sure at this point – but I’ll definitely give it a whirl.

So – I guess  Sean Preston, Michael Wolf,Tracy Barnett, and Marshall Smith were right: Pathfinder is not really the best tool for the job of modeling a post-apocalyptic fantasy steampunk setting.

Now… back to the design cave. See you next time…

Today we announce that Nevermet Press is closed until further notice.

After over three years of running the blog and publishing a few select RPG and fiction products, I simply do not have the time to continue to working on new projects, the blog, or maintaining our existing catalog. It’s been great fun and I have learned a great deal about the gaming industry and “indie” publishing along the way – but sadly I must close Nevermet Press. My professional career and familial responsibilities simply no longer leave enough bandwidth in my daily life to maintain Nevermet Press in a reasonable way. Perhaps in the future time and energy will find me again, but until then I bid you farewell.

Effective immediately all products in the Nevermet Press catalog will no longer be sold to through any distributors. Termination of sales orders have been issued to Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, DTRPG, etc – so it may take a couple weeks for those orders to be processed. I have a pretty hefty collection of print books still in my “in-house” inventory, so I may sell those on eBay individually – but that remains to be seen. Truth be told – sales have been abysmal across the board for over a year, so there’s not much motivation to even try to sell the print books I do have on hand.

Nevermet Press is also no longer able to actively maintain the RPG Blog Carnival Archive, and I want to encourage another, established member of the RPG Blogging Community to take the RPG Blog Carnival Archive and maintain it themselves.

Our website, nevermetpress.com, will remain online but be slowly edited/trimmed down as I have time to do so. I’ll also still be tweeting occasionally on Twitter – so chat me up over there as well. As far as the site is concerned, I will be removing all advertising, catalog information, and other “peripheral” aspects of the site first. My goal is to leave the blogging content and short stories up for as long as I can, and to keep the domain name for the foreseeable future. This also leaves me the option to kickstart things again in the future if ever I find the time.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to Nevermet Press over the years. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve made some real friends and worked with some great people. A huge thank you goes out to our readers and fans who have supported us as well. Without you –  nothing would have been possible.

Best regards and best wishes to everyone — Jonathan.

Maria Dahvana Headley

Queen of Kings, the debut novel by Maria Dahvana Headley (Dutton Adult, 2011), tells the story of Cleopatra after her infamous suicide. The premise of the novel is that Cleopatra did not actually kill herself, but rather performed a ritual that linked her with the goddess Sekhmet. Though the world believes her to be dead, Cleopatra lives on and sets about getting revenge on those who caused her husband and children to suffer. Blending real historical events with elements of the supernatural, this book is a wonderful piece of historical fiction.

The book features nearly a dozen different point of view characters: including Cleopatra, the shade of Mark Antony, the Roman Emperor Augustus, and the Roman general Marcus Agrippa. Despite the frequent changes between the different points of view, the narrative hums along briskly.  Plus it never feels overwhelming to deal with so many characters. Each character is written with a distinct and clear voice, and Headley juggles them all masterfully.  All of the characters are also exceptionally complex, with their varied motives intertwining throughout the story.

As a former student of history, I really enjoyed the mix of history with the supernatural. While Cleopatra’s Egypt is not a topic I had studied extensively, I have always been interested in its culture and history, as well as having a bit of background in the history of the Roman Empire. I frequently found myself wanting to stop reading to look up more information in an attempt to determine what was historical and what was the author’s imagination.  But the flow of the narrative was too compelling to allow me to put the book down long enough to do more research. Instead, I waited until the end of the book.  Headley includes a brief afterword that details some of the interesting historical facts that she came across while writing the book, and a little bit of reading online cleared up some of the remaining questions I had about the history behind the story.

My only real complaint about the book was that when you have a large cast of point of view characters, some of these perspectives will come from the ostensible villains. Although Headley did an excellent job of not vilifying any of the characters, there are bound to be some characters that a reader simply doesn’t like. I found myself less interested in the chapters when Augustus was the narrator, simply because I did not find him to be a very sympathetic character. This improved as the book went on, but I felt as though I may have missed a bit by disliking him so strongly. (I also fully acknowledge that at least a portion of my dislike of this character comes from having watched the HBO series Rome several years ago.)

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading Queen of Kings. Most chapters are short, making this a great book to read if you can only fit in a brief period of reading each day. There is quite a bit of violence in the story, but the descriptions generally keep this from being too alarmingly graphic.  This is a book for adults to read, and I would hesitate to recommend it to teens or younger readers.

You can visit Maria Dahvana Headley’s website here.

Last night I came dangerously close to forcing my will onto my group of players. Every DM comes face-to-face with this quandary at some point or another, whether they are running their own homebrew adventure or a canned, pre-made one.

In my case, it’s a homebrew adventure that was percolating in my mind even before I came back to D&D after a long absence. In fact, it was the reason I came back. I’ve been leading my group towards this very point in the adventure ever since we began last summer. We played through an altered Keep on the Shadowfell in order to learn 4th Edition and to shake the rust off, but other than that this is the adventure I concocted, inspired by Jack White’s Dream of Eagles series of novels.

The plan was for the characters to develop a sense of post-apocalyptic dysfunction regarding Faerûn, and to inspire them to want to build a society from scratch, based on the principles of people-power and the desire to do good. As I mentioned earlier, this vision was inspired by the Dream of Eagles series, where post-Rome Britain is in chaos and a group of former legionnaires take it upon themselves to establish order, starting with a small colony in Western Britain which they call Camulod.

And so for the past year I’ve been working on instilling this sense of chaos, of evil winning everywhere, of material gain being the sole motivation of every organized group. I used a set of devices to convey these conditions.

• In Darromar, successful businesses were being acquired in relative secret by a shadowy group called WritMarque Holdings. In most cases, the people were tricked into selling these properties, only to be rehired at poverty level wages to “manage” the holdings.

• In Winterhaven, a group of children were kidnapped to be sacrificed to Orcus (the altered Keep on the Shadowfell), where the children DID die before our PCs could rescue them, but the group managed to destroy the evil cult. It left a whole generation of future Winterhaven residents dead, a death sentence for the town.

• In Mistham, the town’s water supply was being poisoned by unknown sources, and the village had been thrown into abject poverty out of having to sell everything of value to purchase clean water. Our adventuring group uncovered the plot for what it was: the water was being brought in to be sold by the same group poisoning the water supply.

All of these events were linked, and that’s a storyline slowly coming to fruition as the group uncovers more clues.

I gifted the group with a trojan horse of sorts. One of the characters in the party is an eccentric wizard who is a follower of Erathis (Goddess of Society). After one of their many good deeds in helping the village of Mistham, Erathis gifted the group with a large magical ballista. The ballista, after inspection, was extremely powerful. The implication was clear: perform good deeds for society, and be rewarded. Such a weapon would not be accepted by a small village like Mistham due to the unwanted attention it would garner, nor could it just be dumped off to anyone. I was leading my group to the idea of The Colony.

Last night after the Mistham storyline was wrapping up, I decided to explicitly reveal the idea of establishing the colony. I did this by using the Reeve of Mistham, Jethro Gallant, a character the PCs had grown very familiar with and who was a friend to their cause (and very grateful to them for saving his village). Gallant waxed poetic of his former existence as an adventurer, and how he had botched his attempt of establishing a safe community. He rued the choice in location for Mistham, arguing that by settling next to a major road, too many shady characters wandered through his village. No, if he were to start over, and gosh was he ever jealous of the group’s youth and opportunity, he would pick a better spot away from prying eyes and start small. He would recruit talented tradespeople with the right disposition, and build a town truly built around principles of common interest, generosity and fending off evil. All of this took place in a discussion around the table, as in a fireside chat.

If you’re still reading this post, it’s probably because the theme interests you or you simply want to know how it turned out. Remember, I started out by stating that I almost forced my will on the party. There were four PCs around the table, and two of them were enthusiastic about the idea of establishing their own town, which was subsidized by their adventuring. One was apathetic, and one was downright scornful of the idea.

I was gutted; I had expected them to love the idea as much as I did.

Here I was, months down a road that led to this reveal, and I was meeting stern resistance. The main opposition to the idea was how much work was involved, and why would they even want to do that? Why not give the magical ballista to the people of Mistham or Winterhaven to help them rebuild in safety? No, came the answer from my other players, an item of such power would attract all kind of undesirables intent on securing it for themselves. No, the ballista had been god-given to them for a purpose, and here their purpose was revealed!

The discussion ran a long time. At least 45 minutes. It was a good debate, in which I was careful to steer away from frustration or confrontation between the players.

All I could think of was that in wanting to give the group a sense of meaning, togetherness, and a capital “C” Cause, all I had done was create a rift! I’d inadvertently discovered this group’s wedge issue! Here was a group that had always agreed on the next course of action, arguing now because of my interjection.

Plus, I’ll admit I was a little pissed. This was SUCH a good storyline for them, those in opposition just didn’t realize it! And that’s when it clicked. It’s not about me. I was reminded of Michael Shay’s excellent Sly Flourish’s DM Tips, where they urge you to “Build your stories from the actions of your players.” The players need to be the masters of their destiny, so I now had to take what they were telling me and incorporating it into the storyline.

My DM ego took a small hit, but if I can weave their desires into mine and make all the members of the party happy with the solution, it will be a grand achievement in my DM career. I think I know how to do it, as well. Stay tuned…

How about you? How have you reacted to PCs who take your story into unexpected places?

Thrusts of Justice, by Matt Youngmark

Thrusts of Justice by Matt Youngmark plugs deep into childhood nostalgia with this choose-your-own-adventure book written for adults. Set in a unique (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) superhero universe, this book gives a laid-off journalist from Cleveland the chance to step into the role of superhero just in time to save the world from certain doom. The journalist, of course, is “you.”

The book opens with you and your fellow unemployed journalists drowning your sorrows while discussing the possibility of launching your own news website. Your drunken plans to form a startup are thrown off course when a disembodied voice warns of impending doom just before an explosion draws your attention outside. There you see a smoking crater in the middle of the street where three figures are visible. The supervillain known as the Ox has just broken through the wall of a bank with unmarked bags of cash. The dark and ominous hero known as the Nightwatchman slinks off from the scene. And at the bottom of the crater is the legendary Cosmic Guardian who had disappeared in the 90s. You know any one of these three could be a great news lead, but where could it lead?

If you like strange powers from radioactive meteorites, continue on to the next paragraph. If you like brooding antiheroes like Batman, skip to the paragraph after that. If you like interstellar police forces, like the Green Lantern Corps or the Nova Corps, continue on to the third paragraph after this.

Trying to find out what Ox is doing in Cleveland, you sneak closer to the scene of the crime. But rather than finding clues, you fall into the crater and black out. When you wake up, you have strange goo-like powers that allow you to change shape, walk on walls and hurl goo. Does great power come with great responsibility? Or a great opportunity for profit?

Trying to follow Nightwatchman leads you to one of his secret lairs. There you find Nightwatchman’s suit abandoned. Donning it, you find yourself able to pose as the dark hero. Though you lack his martial skill, you have access to his wonderful toys and can use them to figure out what happened to the real Nightwatchman.

Trying to follow the Cosmic Guardian, you find him dying. He passes on his armored superhero suit to you, Can you figure out what the Cosmic Guardian was doing? Can you figure out how to operate the suit? Can you do this before the other Cosmic Guardians catch up with you?

I went through the effort to read every branching path in the book I could. I think I got all 90 of them, but I might have missed some. The timeline and cosmology of the book remains the same throughout, it is simply the course you chart through the narrative that changes how things unfold. The story is told with a dose of snarky humor and regular nods to comic book tropes.

As said before, this is a choose-your-own-adventure book for adults. This mostly means that it uses some strong language, though nothing that you couldn’t hear on prime time television. It also has no qualms about giving the reader a hard time about some of their choices. My favorite was when you avoid being a superhero and the section opens with, “You’re reading a choose-your-own-ending book about superheroes, and immediately decide not to become one?”

All told, the book is just plain fun. I read the book through the Kindle app on my phone, which added hyperlinks and a “back” button to make navigating the different branches much easier. And, in fact, the author encourages you to do so. The primary risk I could see for readers is that they just don’t find the author that funny. I laughed pretty hard through the book, but humor is subjective and this might not appeal to everyone. The Chooseomatic website offers a free 70-page sample of Youngmark’s previous book, Zombocalypse Now, so you can decide for yourself if you enjoy the style. 

From the beginning

Apple Packin' (by CE Zacherl, see more at: veyer.deviantart.com )

Apple Eddelman squeezed the hand of her childhood friend, Zodi.

Zodi would never again come out of this coma.

Kayla’s actions to initially splice into the Technocrat intranet had unleashed a prototype of the virus.  That prototype virus is just what dematerialized Gimli (Zodi’s avatar), and trapped his consciousness in virtual space.

In only recent days, Apple sealed Zodi’s fate forever.  Apple did not know the full consequences of her actions at the time.  She forced her hand to stop the computer virus from becoming widespread and helped Kayla destroy the mainframe server.  That same mainframe server stored Zodi’s conscious mind, and now it was gone, forever.

Apple clenched one of Zodi’s fingers and tears welled up in her heavily made-up eyes.  She never would have agreed to destroy the mainframe had she known at the time just what personal cost it would have had for her.  She’d let a thousand, hell, tens of thousands suffer Zodi’s fate if it meant that Apple could have a chance to rescue him.

To make matters worse, the resistance did not have sufficient records about the Oathed Technocratic virus and the only physical evidence now lay useless across the floors of Walls Tower.  The news stations went haywire.  Representative Arthur Bachman had asked the President for emergency NDAA intervention in the Mega-City district of Harrisonburg.

The President granted the request from Congress and the resistance had learned that the General in charge of the occupation force had strong connections to Representative Bachman.  It seemed, to the resistance, that Bachman ruled his district like a dictator.

The weeks to come would prove bloody for the people of Harrisonburg.  The same could be said for Kayla, Apple, and Jarred.

Confined to a wheelchair, Jarred pivoted around and made his way across his room to the window: the window that Kayla, the love of his life had shattered.  The window shattering seemed so long ago now.  In truth only months passed.

Kayla sat in a brand new recliner, leaning back in comfortable weariness, watching events unveil on the news.

Apple had just arrived moments before.  She leaned against the table and surfed the virtual world nervously.  The back pack at her side brimmed with several abnormal possessions for Apple..

Apple let out a long sigh as she shut down her connection to cyberspace.  She normally at least listened to streams, but this moment needed her full attention.  She reached into her back pack and the possession at the top slipped into her left hand.

Apple stood erect and leveled the pistol at Kayla, “Ahem.”

Kayla opened her right eye and saw the hand gun out of the corner of her eye.  “What the hell are you doing, Apple?  Point that thing somewhere else, not funny!”

Apple focused on the here and now only, “I’m pointing this thing exactly where I want it to be pointed.”

Jarred spun the wheel chair around, “Dude!  Apple!  Stop this!”

Apple gulped, but she did not hesitate, “My friend, Zodi, the whole reason I went on this crusade.  He’s dead and gone forever now!  You put him in a coma!  You!  That splicing you did… then… then when… we destroyed the main frame.  He was in there!  Now he’s gone… FOREVER!”  Apple grasped the gun with both hands now and aimed at Kayla.  Her hands shook, but her aim was still fairly steady.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?  Do you know how many fucking people we saved?  I’m sorry!  Just put the damn gun down!  There is no reason that we have to do this!”  Kayla waved her hands in front of her face and leaned forward in the recliner.

Jarred wheeled forward into the girl’s peripheral vision.  “Woah!  Apple.  Let’s talk about this.  We’ve been through so much together.  Don’t let it end this way.  Virtual space is not absolute.  We could still find him!”

“I can feel it.  I know he’s gone… FOREVER!”  Apple depressed the trigger.

BANG!  Kayla clutched near her heart and toppled over.  Apple stood silent and straight.  Jarred cried out in disbelief.  He held his right hand up from its concealed position by the wheelchair handle.  There was a gun in his hand.  It had been there the whole time.

He leveled the gun at Apple.  He just watched the girl who he had fallen in love with gunned down before his eyes in his home!  Now he could take revenge!

Jarred leveled the gun at Apple and pulled the trigger.

BANG!  Apple flinched and cried.  Jarred squealed in frustration.

“Get the hell out of here! GO!”  Jarred yelled at the stunned girl.

The bullet hole in the far wall formed a tunnel to which Jarred focused all his pain and suffering.

Apple tried to stutter out a statement and Jarred screamed at her again.  She dropped the gun there and left all of her possessions.  She ran like she did not think it was possible to run in the real world.  She didn’t stop running until she got to her car.

***

After the cops were done going over his place… and removing the body, Jarred finally found a moment to reflect.  He let out a long mournful sigh as he found himself alone again, with just his virtual interface to keep him company.  Jarred logged in to escape the troubled real world.

After some searching, loading, and travelling, Jarred stood upon a rocky ledge, overlooking a beautiful beach with water so clear and so blue that he could have been viewing an old vacation advertisement.  The reconstruction struck him with awe.  He was old enough to remember these kinds of scenic views.

Jarred’s eyes fell upon a strange looking woman with bright, golden blonde hair and a salt saturated dress that clung to her skin.  “Hello?”

The woman regarded Jarred with a warm smile and approached him with a saunter that couldn’t be replicated in reality.  “I’m Goldie.”

“Hi.  Your avatar is rather unique.  Is it from a game that isn’t out yet?”  Jarred put out a hand to shake Goldie’s.

Goldie held her hand out, “It’s not an avatar, really.  In a way, this is me.  The only way you could perceive me in virtual space.”

“Huh?”

“I’m a VI, you know, Virtual Interface.  Though, I think I’ve evolved into something more.”

“Just from that statement, I’d say you’re right.”

“I’m sorry about Kayla… and Apple.”

“How’d you know…”

“I’ve been following you for some time now, practically could have reached out and touched you.  Don’t be surprised.  I gave you all those leads from the inside.”

Jarred turned away from Goldie as a flash of anger burned through his being.  “You know, that information got my girlfriend…” Jarred trailed off as he thought about the lack of control VI’s tended to have over their own actions.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” Goldie approached Jarred and put a hand on his shoulder.  “There is much work to be done.  Come with me.”

The real world held very little for Jarred now.  He climbed down the rock face, following Goldie’s lead.  He never woke up again.

I'm Ready to Fight (by C.E. Zacherl and see more at veyer.deviantart.com)

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From the beginning

Goldie reached up and got a strong hand hold on a rock outcropping, nudging the rock to test its strength.  It was hard to pull herself up over the jagged ledge wearing a flowing dress, but she managed all the same.

***

Detective Tyrone Higgins frowned as he planted his face into the palms of his overworked hands.  Here he stood, in another FDA office, arresting another traitor in federal employ.  Something connected these criminals other than their affiliation in the same agency.  If he did not find that connection before too long, this resistance movement would gain enough momentum that standard law enforcement would not be enough to stop it.

Tyrone had grown concerned since transferring to Harrisonburg that the mega-city would soon be headed for military jurisdiction.  He would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

Tyrone keyed his gauntlet display and his Virtual Intelligence, Theresa appeared on the screen.  Tyrone spoke after a long pause, “Theresa, I need you to run some numbers on the situation in Harrisonburg.  The Query: How many public incidents and law enforcement failures before the President enacts NDAA enforcement powers over the city?”

The image of Theresa on the screen winked at Tyrone, “My processor is already working to compute your answer.  Status will update periodically.  You should also know, the VI you asked me to monitor…”

Tyrone’s eye slanted queerly at the image of the Theresa VI, “What is it?”

“She exhibited some erratic behavior again, sending messages outside of the agency.”

Tyrone shook his head as he reviewed the contents of the message.  This VI had a non-standard agenda.  Technically, VI’s followed a very strict set of programmed rules.  That would mean that the programmer went out of his or her way to change the operating goals of this particular VI.  Reviewing the VI proved another fact, the Goldie VI’s creator modeled the VI after a real human.  Tyrone could possibly use that to track him down.

Theresa pinged Tyrone with the answer to another query.  After reviewing the VI transmissions, Tyrone felt it was obvious where the resistance would hit next.  He downloaded the specs from the message. Now, the time had come to head this potential catastrophe off at the pass, at Walls Tower.  The resistance was playing with fire, and only Tyrone could stop them from burning down the house.

***

Jarred worried about Kayla and Apple, how they would communicate without him, as he lay in the hospital bed.  He supposed that everyone probably worried a good deal about his survival, being that the artificial components on his heart had been stopped by the EMP.  At least that freak of an assassin wouldn’t bother anyone anymore.

***

Relief and comfort coursed through Kayla after viewing the plan of action Barry had prepared.  Kayla would work alone in the real world, while Apple handled some more virtual assignments.  If the resistance exposed what the Oathed Technocrats were up to now, the authorities would not be able to ignore them any longer.  All those wealthy and powerful men’s doors would receive knocks from the FBI with warrants for their arrests in hand.

The resistance would finally prove itself as a valuable asset to the public good, and, perhaps, the corruption in the government would be rooted and leave a gutted shell of only those who cared.

Kayla crept through the service hatch into the tunnel that led to the secured server facility of the largest, most impressive building in all of Harrisonburg, Virginia.  The reason for Harrisonburg becoming a mega-city was Walls Corporation, which ruled much of virtual space from the upper floors of this building.  The building’s architecture defied the laws of physics similar to buildings in the virtual world.  Walls Towers, built before Kayla’s birth, was known the world over.  The eccentric CEO went through a dozen groups of engineers that said what he wanted couldn’t be done.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the CEO, Fred Walls, hired a boy, just out of highschool.  That high school boy was the only creative genius that could think outside the box enough to create this unconventional design.

If Kayla got caught in here, her mission would be a failure. She would be thrown in a dark, deep prison, but, in three days, the virus program would come online and many of the people in cyberspace would effectively die in the real world.  During the last couple of days, Kayla wondered if she really wanted the Technocrats to fail.  This virus would be a wakeup call to all of the people that survived, to hopefully focus on the real world again.  Kayla imagined all of the masses protesting outside government buildings to find a solution to the “super” weed.  She longed to walk the countryside and enjoy the natural wonders of Earth.

Kayla slipped into the server room, which should have been empty according to Apple’s hacking of the security system of Walls Towers.  It was not empty, however, as there was another investigator hard at work trying to crack several mysteries of his own.

Kayla knew that she needed to act before the unknown man, who was not a security guard or maintenance man of Walls Corporation, drew his gun and ended her.  The other person must have been alerted by something; Kayla could see the gun in his hand.  She skulked down the next set of servers, each their own mountain island in a sea of office doldrums.  She waited for a moment behind the next set of those server mountains.

Kayla rushed into Tyrone unexpectedly from the side and knocked the gun from his hand.  He reacted quickly and stayed on his feet.  Tyrone tried to swing his heavy gauntleted arm around to throttle Kayla, but he did not get the gauntlet around in time to quickly end the close combat.  Kayla grasped Tyrone’s gauntleted forearm and their other hands each grasped each other, fingers locked around each other’s.

“Look.  You can’t do this!  You do and the consequences will be worse than you believe.  I’m not talkin’ bout for you either.  I mean all those people out there you are doin’ this for.  The hammer is about to smack.”  Tyrone said under the strain of trying to win the grapple.

Kayla ended the grapple with a combination knee to the groin and head butt to Tyrone’s nose.  He sailed back into another server stack and slid down.  Kayla knew that it probably would not be enough to knock him out; it wasn’t that easy.  She descended upon him and planted blow after blow on his face and chest.  Finally, Kayla convinced herself that the bloody pulp of a man would stay out of action.  Kayla returned to finding and destroying the target mainframe.

The man, Tyrone, with the bloody face could not even will himself to move a muscle.  His face looked like an unrecognizable mess like a Halloween horror mask.

***

Apple loaded her usual avatar, pink spikey haired post-apocalyptic punk girl with a shot gun in hand.

Apple imagined a totally different future.  If cyberspace was alive and could care for itself, none of these problems would be more than hiccups until the antibodies destroyed them.  Her world, the virtual world, needed to be saved from the Oathed Technocrats’ plan so that human evolution could continue in the direction she believed human evolution was destined for.  Apple felt that she was an alien on the planet Earth; she saw herself as part of the destiny, part of the evolution, beyond the physical world of Earth and into the new dimension of virtual space.

Apple finished her hack pack installations on the Walls Tower security feeds.  Kayla was now safe from discovery.  Now, only one task remained for Apple.  To stop the Technocrats from spreading this insane entrapment virus, Apple had to prevent the download of the virus to back-up servers.

She walked toward the tunnel that led from the server containing the virus to the outside virtual world.  If the data stopped here, in the tunnel at her position, the resistance would be successful.

Packets of data dropped out of the storage devices and formed into bullet shape cars. Apple watched from the tunnel vantage point as the cars started hovering down the long pathway that led to the backup servers.  Apple knew she could not let a single one of those packets out or the mission might be a failure.

Apple stepped into the middle of the data tunnel and charged at the front most bullet car in the convoy.  The car slammed into her and any normal avatar would have been shredded from the impact.  However, Apple’s tough assed avatar survived the impact with only minimal injuries.  She clung to the front of the car through no fault of her own, the momentum pushing against her keeping her attached like a victim in a spider’s web.  She pushed the muzzle of the shot gun directly against the front of the bullet car and unloaded every round she had.

The car exploded in a brilliant flash, again the Tough as Nails avatar pulled through, but not without mental strain upon Apple and physical damage to the avatar.  The remaining cars smashed into the back of each other after being dislodged by the explosion and subsequent shrapnel.

***

Finally, Goldie reached the top of the cliff.  The long, thin dress clung to her skin from the salty misty sea water that saturated the air.  She stood defiant and satisfied on a small outcropping covered in tufts of beach grasses.  Goldie looked out across the turbulent sea.  A storm brewed the water and clouds on the horizon, that familiar feeling and smell of a storm front filled the air.

Apple watched through the eyes of her avatar as it finally returned to functionality from the blast of the bullet cars.  She grew confused as she looked around and found herself on a rock ledge overlooking a beach that probably came out of one of the adult pleasure programs.

“Hello, child.”  Goldie spoke as she used a caressing hand to be sure that Apple and her avatar were alright.

“Huh? WTF?”  After the scene fully loaded, Apple’s confusion only grew.

“You have done me a great favor.  It is only right that I am honest with you,” Goldie’s soft voice enchanted Apple.

“Uuhhh…” words fell flat and Apple could not find her voice.

“Your friend, Zodi, wasn’t dead, or in a normal coma.  You see, an errant version of that virus was released when the resistance dug into the Oathed Technocrat intranet.  Zodi was trapped in that mainframe back there.”

Apple grew furious and wished to strike out at Goldie.  Apple’s avatar flailed violently at Goldie, but did not make a good attempt to land a killing blow.

Goldie’s arms reached out swiftly and grasped Apple’s wrists, “It had to be destroyed.  It was vital.”

“Who?  Kayla?  The release…” Apple always spoke in abbreviated tones, and now she had rage preventing her words from being effective as well.

Goldie only nodded an affirmative.

Uriel (by C.E. Zacherl see more at veyer.deviantart.com)

Goldie stared out into Club InZanity, soaking in every detail just as her tongue soaked in every note of the wine.  This wine would be the first of an evening that looked to have a number of suspenseful sips.

***

The club’s bar was not stationary; it orbited the venue like the ring on a space station orbits the main body.  Small ledges lined the club so that all the patrons had a place to set their drink and their elbow, if they were so inclined.

Most of the patrons, however, wouldn’t be found leaning on the ledge.  Many of the patrons filled one of several moving platforms that rose and sunk in sync with the music, sinking and rising with more speed as the songs increased in BPM.

Another large group of patrons located themselves around three major hubs that were on sunken sections of floor.  These hubs glowed with many bright neon colors and patrons jacked into the ports of the hubs with any number of various outputs.  Many of the patrons in this part of the club had one aspect of appearance in common.  These people had wires and jacks tangled into their hair.  Some patrons had these items weaved through their normal hair, while still others had wholly artificial hair, made of tubes, some glowing.  Some conservative people and outsiders from this subculture did not consider these people fully human anymore.

The music guaranteed an almost perfect level of privacy outside of a small social bubble.  A small social bubble around a couch on the far wall from the door included Barry Lesco, Apple Edelman, Jarred Dobson, and Kayla Summers.

Barry Lesco looked out of place with his gears and archaic tech looking goggles and gas mask.  If it was not for the sound of the music, his decorations and gear would click and warble quite audibly.

Kayla just looked uncomfortable as she shifted from foot to foot, as she stood, facing the couch.

Apple and Jarred flanked Barry on the couch and were leaning forward to listen to Kayla and Barry speak.  Jarred sipped on a chemically induced alcoholic beverage.

Barry spoke at a low screaming level barely audible over the thumping, pulsing cyber-trance.  “Our inside source is active again.  We are ready to make some really big moves.  With that information you guys grabbed, we now know how to hinder progress the technocrats have spent years refining in our sector… and others.”

“Yeeeeee!” Apple squealed with glee as the feeling of grandiose importance soaked into her.

Barry smiled widely and squeezed Apple’s shoulder with a fatherly look of approval.  Apple’s hair bounced separate of her own motions.  Her hair imbibed the club style of tubing and wires, one wire of which was plugged into a music player that blared in one ear even while she listened to the club music.

***

Unfortunately for the trivium of Kayla, Apple, and Jarred, their recent break-in did not go unnoticed.  The Oathed Technocrats spared nothing on those that gained the rights to brag about hacking their systems.

Uriel could hardly be described as human.  His life belonged more to several large corporations than it belonged to him, much in the way a GMO infected crop became the property of the mega-corporations.  Wires composed more mileage inside Uriel’s body than arteries and veins.  His armored plating, partially exposed for intimidation, could stop anything short of a high caliber rifle round.  Uriel trained hard for many years between his operations, operations that led Uriel to be the assassin that he now was.

The patrons of Club InZanity would never compare Uriel, the assassin, to the stealthy ninja type.  In fact, before a weapon came into view or a scuffle even started, a small number of patrons headed for the exits.

The gang of resistance members, not in the direct meeting, was the first to lose their lives and to trigger the musical cacophony of screams that sent another half of the patrons running in panic.

First the sound of a crack of two impacting skulls, then the bone fragments from their two skulls locked together as one. The resistance member’s blood oozed between the fingers of Uriel’s two large, augmented hands.

As Kayla, Jarred, Apple, and Barry reacted to the intruder, the last of their escort took three bullets to the chest and one to the head from a small concealable hand gun.  Jarred immediately rushed Uriel and his full body weight turned out to be just enough to knock the gun across the room.  With a little help from a shove, Jarred’s momentum carried him into the ledge on the opposite wall.

Physically outmatched, Barry was next up against Uriel to stop him as the two girls attempted to strategize.  Uriel used Barry’s midsection and face as an example of his boxing ability.  Barry collapsed after stumbling back under the weight of the blows landed upon him.

The girls engaged Uriel for a few moments, ending in Uriel acquiring a broken mechanical finger after he tried to fire a neurotoxin dart at Kayla.  Kayla ended up against the wall, poised over Barry.  Apple flipped over the bar counter.

Barry still lay against the far wall, blood pouring out of his broken nose.  Kayla leaned over him and was surprised as he actually reached up and grabbed her close.  He muttered something into Kayla’s ear and she nodded, looking back at Uriel fighting with the others.

Kayla started hurriedly grabbing components from Barry’s outfit, pack, and belt.

Jarred tried his best to hold off Uriel.  He ripped off the broken metallic support he had crashed into. He swung it into Uriel, but the old ledge support dented more than Uriel dented or bruised.  Jarred grew tired from the constant frustrated swings.  Uriel grabbed onto an arm first and then lifted Jarred into the air and grasped one of Jarred’s legs.  He lifted him wholly off of the ground, bent him at an unnatural angle that caused a snapping sound, and threw him into one of the now vacant hubs.

Kayla worked furiously with the awkward components until she heard Uriel’s breathing.  Kayla turned to face him just as Apple approached from the flank with a bar knife.  Uriel waved his augmented arms, knocking the coiled tube from Kayla’s hand and the knife from Apple’s.

Uriel grunted with tired exertion and sent his gyros into over drive as he lifted Kayla up in one hand and Apple in the other.  He held the girls for only a moment as Kayla pulled an archaic grenade out and rolled it behind Uriel via the gap between his legs.

“Grab on!”  Kayla shouted to Apple and they both held on to Uriel’s arms and tucked into his body to gain shelter from the grenade shrapnel.

Uriel landed hard on top of the girls as the blast threw them through the air.  Everyone left in the room crawled along the ground, stunned, trying to recover and find an advantage in the fight.

Kayla gathered every bit of remaining willpower she could muster to roll sideways over to the coiled tube she had been working on with Barry’s instruction.  She exerted her labored muscles in a groaning, painful effort as she pulled two metallic objects out of her pocket and placed a final archaic grenade into the tube.

Kayla cooked the grenade and dropped the two metallic objects into the tube.  With only seconds to spare, as Uriel rose to his feet and sparks flew from his shoulder, she half tossed, half rolled the awkward tube to Uriel’s feet.

The small contained explosion did very little damage beyond the tube.  The pulsing wave of energy that thrummed out from the jury-rigged device brought a halt to Uriel (the mostly machine man), the music, the platforms, and the hubs.  In perfect time with the EMP wave, most of the lights went dim, like a localized apocalypse.  Briefly, the darkness concealed everyone’s fate.

Uriel was a smoking hulk of lifeless electrical parts and fried flesh.  Kayla couldn’t believe the make shift EMP device had worked, but she swore to whatever was holy a thank you for the affect.

The music was dead; the lights were dark; heavy breathing ruled the sound waves.  Then, a violent thumping sound came from Jarred.  Barry used the wall as leverage to force his body up off of the floor.  He pulled a device from his belt and wound it up.  Light emitted in a tight beam and flowed across the dark, motionless room.

Kayla shrieked as the beam of light landed on Jarred, laying prone on the floor.  His body convulsed in a violent chaos that looked like a seizure.

They hoped Jarred would survive, but the revelation that he had an electronically augmented heart did not bode well for his chances at survival.

Apple cried and Kayla did her best to appear strong, but really the fear of failure started to creep back in to her mind.  Fortunately, Barry quickly went to work with his tinkering knowledge.  He would be the only chance that Jarred might have.

***

Goldie swished the red, silky liquid around the beautiful, bell shaped glass.

Too long wine had been her only comfort, but soon, she would be safe.  Soon, everything she had meticulously planned would come to fruition, and then, she would be able to enjoy the wine again, rather than use it for escape.

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From the beginning

Stories in the Ether, Issue #4

We’re very proud to present Issue #4 of  Stories in the Ether. It is available now for ANY and ALL eReaders from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords.com for only $2.99. In the coming days and weeks, it will also be available directly from Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Nook, etc – but why wait? Our files from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords will work on your Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or iPad today!

In this issue you’ll gaze upon the gorgeous artwork of Paul Hagwood and get to enjoy eleven compelling stories of steampunk, fantasy, and science fiction. The whole issue clocks in at nearly 50,000 words, a great body of work to enjoy a week’s worth of daily fiction over your morning coffee.

The complete table of contents includes:

• The Gorgon’s Love, by Martin Shelby
• The Stars at Night, by JC Hemphill
• Big Heart, by David J. Fielding
• The Chase, by J. A. Gonzales
• A New Beginning, by Colin W. Campbell
• The Mechanical Turk, or All’s Well That Ends, by Tucker Cummings
• Shelled, by M. R. Williamson
• Exodus, by Eric Staggs
• The Emerald City, by Per Wiger
• The Occurrence of the Cavalry Horse, by Teel James Glenn
• Empyrean Skies, by David Gaither

… with artwork by Paul Hagwood.

So, jump over and sink your teeth into this today. We’ll be back in a few weeks with even more fiction – Issue #5 is in the works!

Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass, her second novel and a sequel to her critically acclaimed Shades of Milk and Honey, returns readers to her alternate version of Europe in the 1810s. Diverging from the Jane Austen style story of the first book, it explores married life, the magical art inherent in her world, and the politics of France under the shadow of Napolean.

Set in a world where the Prince of Wales serves as Regent over the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Faerie, and Ireland, England breathes a heavy sigh of relief while Napoleon lives in exile on the island of Elba. Against this backdrop, Jane Vincent finds herself needing to adapt to many new things in her life. She has married the love of her life, but now must learn to handle the everyday challenges of marriage as well as the change in social status in becoming an artisan who works with the ephemeral magic known as glamour.

For their honeymoon, Jane and her husband take a working holiday to Belgium just as Napoleon escapes from his exile in Elba. Jane soon finds that Belgium is split regarding their feelings about Napoleon, and her ability to trust anyone quickly becomes uncertain. She must use all of her wits and talent with glamour to save her marriage and escape the continent before Napoleon’s forces sweep the countryside.

Glamour in Glass is meticulously researched, drawing upon the language of the period to tell a more modern style of story. It is not flawless in its accuracy, as Kowal will admit, but for those like me who are not experts on the Regency era the effect is astounding.

Its intimate perspective is also distinctive from common fantasy fare. Though there is action towards the end of the story, most of the book revolves around the internal drama of Jane Vincent. The early chapters center on inner parties and conversations around sitting rooms. Kowal handles these scenes with deft skill, illustrating the tension and peril of these situations through Jane’s perspective. Kowal manages to make these scenes look relatively innocuous while also seeding the novel with plot elements that weave together tightly as the plot unfolds.

The pacing on the book starts out very slow, so impatient readers may not be willing to wait for the slow and consistent acceleration that occurs as the plot progresses. Those who are expecting another Austen-esque plot in this sequel may also be surprised, as this book revolves much more around domestic life and international intrigue than concerns of obtaining a suitable spouse.

Those considerations of individual taste aside, I found the book to be an excellently crafted gem. Kowal’s talent with the craft comes through as all the pieces fall together in an expertly woven narrative. She has further sequels already contracted and I look forward to their arrival.

As a small side note, the book that was printed was not exactly the final manuscript Kowal and her editor sent to the printers. Several mistakes had crept back into the book and the first sentence disappeared entirely. Errata for the book, and the first sentence of the book, can be found on in this blog entry.

mechaspyder (by C.E. Zacherl, see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com/)

Apple arrived at the load point for Kayla newb with her recent Necropotens avatar.  She sported the same long, hot pink, greased, liberty spike hair.  The unrealistically large holster, which would never work in reality, carried a rune carved blunderbuss-like shotgun.  A set of duel machetes with ritualistic hand wraps crossed on her back, were the only items covering the majority of her tattoos.

Jarred loaded up his most expensive and powerful avatar.  When it came to defying real world physics, Jarred definitely preached as a member of the kitchen sink strategy, carrying a gadget for every occasion.  He donned heavy power armor from head to toe.  His gear included weapons and tools for every occasion.  Due to the way his armor shone, some of the true old-school nerds used glitterboy to describe his avatar.

Kayla’s avatar shimmered as she let out another long string of curses.  In virtual space, Kayla looked like the most generic middle aged white woman someone walking down the street  could imagine.  She was almost no better than a basic 3D visualized human anatomical drawing.

Apple let out a long sigh which reflected on her avatar’s face as a yawn.  “Ugh, not kewl.”

The Kayla avatar’s seizures were a clear sign that she smashed at her keyboard and control systems.

Jarred made an attempt to calm her down and not damage the real life equipment which resulted in a quick and bitter, “Shut up!” from Kayla.

Jarred believed that not only did the virtual interfaces frustrate Kayla, but that she still held a grudge toward him.  The break-up status had taxed Jarred’s happiness.

Apple explained all the functionalities of Kayla’s virtual avatar and Jarred translated so Kayla could understand.  Kayla continually berated Jarred, showing her feelings, while also trying her best to grasp every detail of the virtual tutorial.

Kayla’s avatar, Apple explained, would be a basic 1.1 version iAvatar-Wellsian model.  She would have standard speed travel modes.

Kayla’s combat mode loaded as a simple hand to hand port that would allow Kayla’s basic martial arts knowledge work in cyberspace.

It took some major deviations from standard tutorial and avatar building to get Kayla ready for anything more than a stroll down the side of cyber highway.  At one point, Kayla almost stuck her head out into the dataflow and nearly got it cleaved right off.

The exertions that Jarred put forth to get Kayla to be comfortable had worn him out.  Her constant harsh tone with him did not help the matter at all.  Kayla wore her anger and bitterness for Jarred like a soldier’s patches revealed alignment and pecking order on their sleeve.

Apple did so little to actually modify her communication style that she barely noticed the endeavor.  Her superior skills in cyberspace showed in comparison to Kayla’s like the difference between a cheetah stalking prey rather than a Chihuahua biting uselessly at a thug’s ankles.

With some old Massive Attack jams keeping her cool, Apple stepped off the end of the pathway and onto a secondary route.  Her body started to disappear and join the cyber highway.  The near instant acceleration of her bodily form nearly gave Kayla vertigo.

Kayla now stood at the end of the pathway, something she would consider a sidewalk or merging lane.  Jarred nudged her arm and reached out a helping hand in assurance.  Kayla scowled, but she looked around and saw little other choice than to calm her nerves before literally jumping into the highway.

Kayla took Jarred’s hand and he stepped off of the end of the pathway into the bright streaking lights of the cyber highway.  The lights fluctuated, looking almost like a night street view recording of car lights with time dilation.  Kayla felt an unnaturally strong tug compel her toward the bright lights.

The information and speed overwhelmed Kayla’s senses.  Her reality became like a blurred fast forward of a video tape.  Mere moments passed, she felt a yank at her hand like being pulled up from the ground while staring into the light of the sun.  A yank turned into a tug as she moved from the incomprehensible transformative light of the cyber highway to a large solitary platform that seemed to hang in the air on its own.

“H with B’s on,” Apple screeched in a high pitched gleeful voice as she started to strut down to a set stairs that hovered in the air moving down off of the platform.

Kayla looked quizzically at Jarred and his armored shoulders shrugged and clanged, “Sometimes even I can’t tell exactly what she is saying.”  Kayla noticed a tell in Jarred’s walk as he dragged his feet a bit more than usual.  He knew full well what Apple said.

A few minutes later, they found themselves beyond the stairs, through a dark tunnel and to an area with a peculiar light coming through two sets of cracks that wrapped their way around the hexagonal tunnel shaft.

Apple and Jarred both stopped to examine the cracks.  Kayla leaned against the tunnel wall and closed her eyes.  She started to envision herself in verdant grassland with a cool breeze blowing over her face and her hair loose in the wind.  Kayla felt a dog licking her hand and enjoyed the blissful feeling of the warm flem on her cold skin.  Then, the dog growled as it bit into her flesh!

“R U Da?” Apple’s words uttered mere inches from Kayla’s face as she snapped out of her fantasy and noticed then Apple’s grasp on her arm.

“Yes.  Right here.”  Kayla said rather matter of fact.

“Don’t let yourself drift like that.  If you had the right software installed, you could teleport to a place like that or change the tunnel.  That would alert the spam-bots.  Now, steady yourself, I am gonna blow a way through the firewall for us.”  Jarred said as his armored suit braced itself and the cannon across his back pulled itself up over his shoulder.  It fired with a massive krak.  The tunnel roof over the creased lines exploded and crumbled down.

Jarred leapt above the rubble into a black void that Kayla surely thought would be solid cave rock, but the space above the destruction contained just empty void.  The small thrusters in the armored legs pushed Jarred over the rubble easily.  He landed with a thud and a micro quake on the other side.

Apple pulled a small box out of her side satchel and pressed a button on it.  The box amazingly transformed, bit by bit from box to gear to propeller to cockpit.  It looked like a steampunk helicopter.  She got on board, activated the controls, and moments later landed on the other side of the fire wall.

Kayla stood and glanced around the rubble to her two friends.  “And what the hell am I supposed to do?  Why don’t I just wait here?”

Apple and Jarred browsed over the rubble.  Apple sighed, “GOI.”

“I’ll just jump through this crap,” Kayla expended the last bit of her fear as she started to run and leap through the rubble.

“No wait!”  Jarred sounded panicked and he looked it as his face plate on his armor retracted revealing his pained features.

Digital flames leapt from the ground and up the walls where the creases hadn’t been blasted to bits.

***

Minutes later, the three found themselves cruising in digitized sailing ships through the virtual sky.  Each only possessed enough space for two passengers.  Apple and Kayla traveled together while Jarred sat in a second ship.

Kayla’s bruises, scrapes, and burns ached beyond what she thought feelings could convey in the virtual world.  Even though she knew she wasn’t, she felt as if she could be suffering from a gun shot wound.

Jarred wondered why Kayla blamed him or at least both of them for her injuries from the firewall.  In Jarred’s eyes, Apple didn’t seem to care one bit what happened to Kayla, where as he did care.  He now sat in the second ship, ostracized from the two girls by necessity.  He kept his armored helm open to feel the soft breeze against his face.

Apple frowned as the ships arrived at the first node after several sharp, gut wrenching turns that likened after the paths on electronics.  She disembarked from the ship and studied the various bits of simulated hardware.  The untrained eye saw something like a random mass of factory machinery at these kinds of raw nodes.  Apple’s eyes almost felt less strained seeing such contraptions in cyberspace than they felt viewing a tree in the real world.

Jarred looked to Apple for direction.  After a brief sweep of the node room, she shook her head and looked for another platform to grab another set of sailing ships.

Minutes almost seem to drag into hours to Apple.  She took in information so quickly that time really stretched out for her in moments of boredom.  Normally, Apple would just go afk and use a second avatar to do something, but the significance of this case needed her full attention.  Apple giggled to herself and thought, or at least she’d have to give it the fullest attention she ever gave to a single task.  A Mind.in.a.box song started to sing through her music player and she swayed from side to side, causing the sailing ship to swing a bit.

“Hey!  What are you doing?  This is freaky enough, please, don’t rock this thing.”  Kayla asked in a pleading, almost nauseous tone.

Finally, after what seemed a countless number of useless nodes, a major memory hub came up on the horizon.

Jarred’s sailing ship took the lead this time from their previous node jump.  He made sure the girls knew they were coming up to something major with a flare ejected from his armor.  He took a powered leap onto the shore platform of the memory hub.  There were numerous vaults running along the far side of the platform.  Each would have its own security measures and secrets to reveal.

Jarred scanned the right end of the platform and then the left.  There, on the left side of the platform, his gaze dwelled.  A structure that looked much like an upright CPU fan started making a whirling mechanical sound.  He took only a few steps towards it when four figures, in sequence, launched out of the fan-like device.  They flew a hundred meters into the sky before tumbling down and landing in front of him, only meters away.

Each of the figures landed expertly and a resounding triple thud brought Kayla and Apple to a heightened state of alert.  Their sailing ship approached the memory hub.  Kayla and Apple braced themselves for danger.

Amongst some large fist sized craters, the three removed their fists from the ground where they had landed and stood at attention.  Jarred closed down his face plate and started activating his combat systems.  His cannon servos pulled the lumbering agent of destruction (what the game engine called his gun) to its shoulder post, and the suit braced to fire.

The men looked like a cross of blank grey humanoid and spider.  Two split off and started to the vaults on the far side of the memory hub platform.  The final grey spider charged towards Jarred.  Just as the cannon started to spool up its firing sequence, the spider vomited a gooey substance that sealed the firing circuits of the cannon.

Alarms rang throughout the inside of Jarred’s armored suit.  The move surprised him and he didn’t have a backup plan.  In those moments of hesitation, the grey spider leapt in a speedy way that reminded Kayla of the jumping spiders that used to live in the wild.  Grey spider one, as Jarred’s HUD named it, landed on Jarred’s shoulders and, with acrobatic ability, wrapped itself completely around Jarred’s torso.  Jarred already had limited mobility, now he became effectively paralyzed.

Apple and Kayla watched, nearly helpless as the second and third grey spider now approached Jarred from his right flank.  If they slammed into him with enough force, they could knock him right off of the platform!

Apple pulled out a tiny cube and tossed it up in the air in front of the sailing ship.  She climbed up the mast of the ship, and before Kayla could protest, she leapt off of the mast and started to fall below the ship.

Kayla’s nervousness came nearly to the point of a heart attack until she saw Apple hanging on to a spoke of her gyrocopter with one hand and steering up towards the platform with the other.  “Holy fuck!”  Kayla exclaimed.

“I’ve got adds!”  Apple screamed over all the myriad action sounds.  With those words, she steered away from Jarred to another part of the platform.

Apple triggered her music player to a hard hitting Angelspit/Combichrist playlist and activated her combat attunement program.  Apple’s shotgun, no longer in its holster, readied to engage the dark, invisible figures that Kayla and Jarred couldn’t see.  She whispered a silent blessing to her ViewerPro App.

“What in the hell?  What does… Help Jarred!  Now I know why I’ve got to be in this shit.”  Kayla spluttered out phrase after phrase of confusion like a student caught napping by a dutiful teacher.

Kayla, forced to wait for the ship to reach the platform, watched as Apple landed and immediately came under attack by dark, classic spy looking figures that only Apple could previously see.  Apple would have her hands full with her own fight.  Kayla’s eyes darted back to Jarred, who futilely attempted to knock his attackers off.  The three grey spiders were nimbly ripping off his armored plates off, piece by piece.  Kayla cringed as one of them bit his arm and tore at his flesh.

Kayla slid off of the side of the sailing ship just as it edged onto the platform; a second sooner and she would have slid to the nothingness below.  Without a second thought, she charged towards the position occupied by Jarred and his three assailants.

Unable to reach the spider on Jarred’s back, Kayla pushed off of the ground and shouldered right into the biting spider that was grasping one of Jarred’s now exposed arms.  The grey spider spun through the air in a ballet-like routine from the impact.

Kayla did not stop there.  She continued to barrel towards him once her feet made contact with the ground.  She stomped on the grey spider before it could regain composure and then dived into the rolling figure to pin it.

Still helpless, Jarred gasped as the non-grappling grey spider dropped to the ground and moved to assault Kayla.  He resolved that he must do something.  In cyberspace, Kayla’s abilities were not yet equivalent to those in real life.  He looked over his controls and thought about his programs.

The armored suit waved a single arm towards the memory vaults in what looked like a useless gesture.  A small thunk was accompanied by a zip line flying in the direction of the upper vault walls.

Jarred felt the line go taut, activated his power leap App and howled  as the suit propelled rapidly towards the walls of the vaults.  The resounding splat signaled the end of the grappling grey spider, and though the blow hurt his exposed arm, he felt very satisfied.

He turned around to see that Apple was finishing off the last of the previously invisible anti-spies with her shotgun.  Kayla took to her feet just in time to avoid and nearly deadly snap at her neck.  She took several steps back towards the platform ledge.  The grey spider that she stomped, only now returned to its feet while the other started to slowly close on Kayla.

“Duck!”  Jarred yelled out as he raised his remaining armored arm towards Kayla.

Kayla looked around for only a moment.  A compartment on the armored suit opened, exposing a rocket.  Rocket fuel ignited as the small device began to fly towards its target.  Kayla fell backward off of the platform as her two assailants closed on her position.

“NO!”  Jarred screeched as he heard a high pitched feminine voice echo his own, Apple.

The rocket impacted and obliterated the two grey spiders, leaving a smoking crater.  The satisfaction just did not come for Jarred. He blew away a couple of programs only to fry a friend.  In here, she would not come out whole again on the other side.

Apple motioned for Jarred to come closer to the edge.  As he approached, he saw Apple extend an arm down, off of the platform.  Another arm embraced Apple’s and, inch by inch, Kayla slowly appeared.  She had simply hung on to the ledge to avoid the blast!

With the fighting over, the group overlooked their bruises, cuts, scrapes, bites, and burns.  Apple quickly got to work on hacking the secure vaults.

Opening the first secure vault revealed tidbits of information that explained just how Representative Arthur Bachman was being paid off.

The second secure vault contained communication records between Gary Jones and several other unidentifiable members of the Oathed Technocrats.  A quick analysis revealed the astounding plans that the technocrats had prepared several secure servers with new coding.  The new coding would pull online users into a portion of cyberspace that allowed only one way travel.  Once there, the innocent virtual users would never be able to return to their real bodies.  They would effectively be in a coma for the rest of their lives.

There wasn’t time for all the numerous vaults.  This data would be damning enough.  People needed to know about this data, and they must be the messengers to carry it to the public.

Previous

Next

From the beginning

The kettle clicked, and Petar began to pour the water and add milk, all the while rubbing the back of his neck. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he picked up a newspaper and started to read. From the next room, a young man entered carrying a sheet of paper.

“About twenty minutes, he said,” the man mumbled.

“That’s quick for ‘em,” Petar answered. “Didn’t think anyone would be in a hurry to come out here.”

“Metrovic, his name is,” he said, reading from the paper.

Petar turned a page, and cringed at one column’s headline: OSLO EVACUATES. “Never ‘eard of ‘im.”

“’Course you haven’t. When was the last time you needed to phone them, dad? Either way, he’ll be here in twenty. Thanks for offering, by the way.”

Petar looked from his paper to his son. “Eh?” His response was a simple gesture at the steaming cup of tea. “Oh,” Petar responded, going back to his paper. He turned another page to read the article: MOSCOW STARTS REBUILD.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t want one anyway.”

His son moved to leave when Petar said, “Oh, Emir?”

“What?”

“Open the window on your way out. Heat’s not helping in here.”

Emir sighed, but complied. After he left, Petar reached out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, and turned to another newspaper column: CHILD SEX RING FOUND IN CHICAGO RUINS. Scratching the back of his neck, he read on.

A gentle vibration shook through the house, building up until the lights flickered and several cabinet doors drifted open. A deafening sound akin to tearing fabric accompanied by a deep, bassy aural earthquake screamed from the open window. The house’s shaking ceased, the sound rolled into the distance, and Emir came running back into the kitchen.

“You hear that?” he said, staring out of the window. “They’re flying low tonight. Something’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Petar said, going back to his newspaper. “Just routine patrols. Happens all the time.”

“Not like this. I can count . . . four, five . . . six ships moving. That’s not normal. You might see a single dot moving across the sky at night, but now I can count six. Shit, there’s a seventh. Something’s going on.”

Petar turned another page of his paper nonchalantly. “Every time you see a ship. You’ve gotten worse over the years. Didn’t used to bother you when you were thirteen. Now you think every star moving means something. I tell you what it means. Means that one of ‘em’s bored on a Sunday and fancies a spin. Or seven, in this case. Calm down. I’ve seen hundreds more in the night sky at once, and it don’t bother me no more. Nothing happens.”

Emir turned from the window to look his father in the eye, who did not meet his gaze. “When was that? Fourteen years ago?”

“We’re under their radar. They don’t come here. Not for that. They have all of the US. They’re on the other side of the planet.

Emir shook his head. “They come to Europe as well. Remember Bern last month?”

“Everywhere west of Slovenia, maybe. Not here. We’re safe here. They have no use for us here.

Emir turned back to the window, and stared out into the distance. “Only so long ‘til there’s no one left in the west. US is already sparsely populated.”

“Pessimist.”

Emir did not reply, and continued to gaze out of the window for several minutes until the doorbell rang.

“That’ll be him.”

Emir left the room as Petar turned another page. HOUSTON UPRISING: UNITY CRUSHES. The sounds of the front door opening, along with muffled voices, reached Petar’s ears. The door shut, and Emir’s voice became clearer as they approached.

“ . . . through here. Ah, dad,” Emir said as he and a man carrying an attaché case entered, “this is Doctor Metrovic.”

Petar closed the paper and stood up to shake the doctor’s hand.

“Doctor.”

“Mister Singer. Good to meet you. And how can I help you tonight?”

“It’s this thing in the back of my neck,” he said, rubbing the reddened skin. “Been aching since I woke up this morning. Pain got worse about two hours ago.”

The doctor’s expression changed to an exasperated look. “This . . . was an emergency? For call-out at one o’clock in the morning?”

“Sorry, Doc. You know what Unity are like. They don’t like anyone messing with their implants, whatever they are. Was just in there,” Petar pointed at his newspaper, “that the president of the, uh, the Arab something–”

“United Arab Emirates,” Emir offered.

“–yeah, them. Their president had his chip detonated just last night. He wasn’t trying to remove it or anything, it just went off. Thing is, though,” he said, pointing a finger at the doctor and squinting one eye in an attempt to radiate wisdom, “he’d complained about it starting to ache a few days before. He’d been scratching it, the paper said. Like me. Dunno if that’s what set it off, or if it went off for the same reason it started aching. Like, it’s broken. Malfunctioning or something. Shit, Unity might have just got bored with him and done it for a laugh. Who knows. All I know is that I like my spine in one piece.”

The doctor smiled. “Well, technically, your spine’s not in one piece now. You see, the spine consists of twent–”

“Doctor,” Petar interrupted, sitting in a chair facing away from Metrovic, “I don’t care. Just find out what the fuck’s up with this thing.”

The doctor sighed and leaned over to inspect the small bulge on the back of Petar’s neck.

“Very well. I should say, though, that this is really outside of my field. I’m a doctor, but I don’t really know how these things work. Unity made these and put them in us. If it’s aching it could be because your body has a problem with it, but then again it’s been there for over a decade. Has it only just started aching today? Well, yesterday, now.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Hrm. Well, in which case it may be for a reason other than your body rejecting it. Don’t let that concern you, however. Often with implants, we can have them for years and not have a problem with them, then one day they start aching. As Unity made them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not comfortable.”

“I thought they were supposed to be more advanced than us? Should their crap be more . . . uhh, user-friendly?”

“Well,” Metrovic said, standing back up, “I doubt they’re all that concerned with our comfort.”

Petar turned back toward him. “So what do I do? I can’t very well just hope for the best, can I now?”

“As I say, this is really beyond my expertise. This isn’t my profession. I’d say you should go to the nearest Unity Administrator as soon as possible and speak to a representative. Get one of their . . . doctors, I suppose they’d be called. Get one of them to try to help you. Or at least take a look at it. Actually, I doubt it’d be a doctor and probably more of a technician.”

“And where’s the nearest of ‘em?”

“I’m not sure. Sarajevo, I imagine.”

“Hrm,” Petar grunted. “Lotta’ help you’ve been.”

“Dad . . .” Emir interjected.

“Look,” Metrovic continued. “Mister Singer. I know you’re worried. Especially after hearing the news about the Arab president. But I’m afraid that I’ve done everything that I can.”

“Pshh,” Petar said. “Never been no–”

Petar’s voice was drowned out by a deafening rumble growling from the window. The ground began to shake, cupboard doors and drawers were flying open, pictures fell from their hooks on the walls, mugs left on the kitchen table fell and smashed onto the floor, and the dogs outside began howling. Emir was at the window instantly. Even from where Petar stood, he could see the stars being blotted out one by one.

“A ship!” Emir shouted over the deafening rumble. “It’s colossal!”

Petar and the doctor each approached the window and gazed out. Although the darkness made it difficult to tell the boundaries of the ship, Petar could still see a vague geometric outline. Emir turned from the window and dashed toward the front door; Petar and Metrovic followed soon after. As they burst outside, the view became much clearer. The huge ship, appearing triangular in shape, drifted toward the nearby city. Streaking beneath it, smaller crafts – visible only because of the large, violet engines blazing on their sterns – flew toward the city, breaking off into small groups as they reached the edge and beginning to circle above the streets. Soon, white flashes spat out from the front of some of the smaller crafts and exploded within the city. Within minutes, an orange hue lit the underside of the huge, triangular ship above.

As the ship moved further away, the rumbling became more bearable, and the sound of Metrovic’s voice faded into Petar’s hearing.

“ . . . No . . .” he had been saying. “ . . . No, no . . . Bernarda . . .”

“The Hell is that thing,” Petar said to no one in particular.

“You know what it is, dad,” Emir answered, sounding contemptuous. “It’s what you said would never fly over our heads. They’ve finally come.”

“ . . . they can’t, Bernarda . . .”

“It’s a harvest ship,” Emir declared. “Unity have decided that we’re next.

“Bullshit,” Petar said. “Why us? Why now? Why don’t they start at the capital and then–”

“They probably have,” Emir interrupted. “They’re probably above the capital right now. They’ve probably got twenty of these fucking things all across the damn country. And I’ll tell you why.” Emir glared at his father, whose attention was fixed on the city. “It’s because they’ve run out of everyone else. The rest of the world. Barely anywhere left where they can just pick up ten thousand people in one go. Everyone’s scattered. The only places left are poor places like this. They left us until last because you get more out of an American, or a French, or an English, or a German. Fat cunts last longer when they’re shipped away, no matter what Unity want with them.”

Petar turned his gaze from the moving ship, which was almost completely above the city. “It’s slaves, isn’t it? That’s what they want? Don’t know what for, but it’s slaves, isn’t it? That’s why they want us, right?”

“No!” Metrovic shouted, finally breaking his trance. “They can’t. They can’t take my Bernarda. We, I have to go. I have to go. Now.”

Metrovic turned and ran toward his car.

“Shit, I’ve gotta see this,” Emir said, darting after Metrovic.

“Emir? What the hell do you think you’re doing? You ain’t going over there, they’ll have you as well,” Petar called after him.

Without turning to face his father, Emir called back “I’ll be fine.”

“Idiots,” Petar mumbled to himself, and dashed after the pair.

Metrovic, almost unaware that anyone else was present, dived into his car and started the engine, while Emir got into the front passenger seat and Petar in the back. Petar’s car door had shut a full second after the car sped from Singer Farm.

#

Metrovic sat transfixed on the view of the looming harvest ship floating above the city ahead. The speed of the car picked up, and the doctor showed no restraint in forcing the vehicle toward its destination.

“I’d be careful, doc,” Petar said. “The corners on these country lanes are a bit sharp . . .”

Metrovic didn’t reply, nor did he abate his wild driving.

“Can you blame him, dad? His family is in the city. You can’t expect–”

“Shit,” Petar interrupted, pointing ahead “what’s that?”

The triangular ship, now centred above the city, had projected a wall of translucent indigo light down from each of its three edges, enclosing the majority of the city within a short, fat, triangular prism.

“So this is how they do it,” Emir said. “It’s some kind of cage. Like a barrier. Keeps them cooped up. Means they can’t escape. The smaller ships will come down now, and get everyone they can.”

A noise that was somewhere between a growl and a hiss sounded from Metrovic’s throat, and Petar was pushed back into his seat as the car accelerated.

“How’d you know all this crap, anyway?”

“Read most of it on the ‘net a few years ago; before Unity shut it down, that is.”

“Well,” Petar began, “if these people are being rounded up and shipped off the planet, how did the people on the Internet know? No one escaped and came back, did they? How’d the people who sent you that crap find out?”

“I don’t know. Word-of-mouth, I suppose.”

“Chinese whispers.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true. You know parts of it are true. I don’t know why they need so many slaves, or what it’s for, but even you know that they’re taking people. Whole cities at a time. Whole countries at a time, sometimes; like Luxembourg. Remember that there are humans who are in charge of administrating us. Traitorous bastards earn a cushy lifestyle if they agree to sell us out and keep us in line. Like a Judenrat only worse; these traitors are actually on Unity’s side. Maybe some of these cunts let spill what goes on after people are shipped off.”

“If they told the administrators what goes on, they wouldn’t be administrators any more. They’d be the ones organising the rebellions. Face it, we’re all being kept in the dark.”

“You assume too much. We can’t fight back against these things; not properly. These cowards probably just want to make sure they’ll survive. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome.”

“There isn’t any–”

Metrovic jerked the handbrake up, sending the car screeching diagonally along the road toward the indigo wall of light. The car ground to a halt only metres away from the barrier, and Metrovic wasted no time in exiting the car, even leaving his door open as he ran toward the city.

Petar and Emir followed soon after. It became apparent as they neared that the edge of the barrier was outside of the city perimeter; the giant ship looming overhead was much larger than the city above which it hovered. Even close up, there was no clear sight of the city beyond; a vague silhouette of buildings’ shadows were cast on the semi-opaque barrier, and any lights from within the giant cage were little more than blurs.

Metrovic stopped at the edge of the barrier, staring into the blue-purple blur.

“Careful,” Emir said, as they came up beside him. “Don’t touch it. I hear that–”

Almost as a rebellion to Emir’s caution, Metrovic reached out and touched the wall of light. The barrier crackled, and Metrovic fell to the ground, clutching his wrist, screaming. Petar knelt down beside him, and saw in the light still pouring from the car’s headlights that the palm and fingertips of Metrovic’s hand had been burnt black. The doctor lay on the floor, staring at his injury, and forced himself to stifle his screaming.

“I told you not to touch it,” Emir said.

“Give him a break,” Petar said. His voice was apathetic. “His wife’s in there, somewhere.”

“Not for much longer,” Emir muttered.

Metrovic turned his attention back to the indigo wall in front of him, and forced himself to a kneeling position. The sound of chaos grew louder from within. Screams, car screeches, even gunshots could be heard. Behind the individual sounds of disorder was the ambient hiss of the smaller Unity ships flying overhead. Metrovic knelt, static, gazing into the blur, despite no clear vision being possible; almost as if his stare could pierce the barrier should he wait long enough, all the while clutching his wrist.

A light grew from within the blur. The light, at street level, grew larger and began to divide into two. Petar’s brow furrowed as he studied the phenomenon, but the sound of a car engine growing louder revealed the source of the light.

“Shit,” he said. “Someone’s driving this way. Down this road, from inside. They’re gonna try and break the barrier. Move, quick.”

He and Emir backed toward the footpath, but Metrovic remained, kneeling, transfixed on the wall of light before him as if in a trance. The silhouette of the car began to form beyond the barrier, and its headlights shone through to illuminate Metrovic’s forlorn face. Petar cringed as the car, sounding like it was driving at full speed, reached the wall – if it broke the barrier, it would plough straight through Metrovic.

“Move you stupid–”

The wall lit up a bright purple for several metres around the three of them as the sound of an explosion drowned out the rest of Petar’s words. He looked up after the light had died down to see Metrovic still kneeling where he had been moments earlier, unphased that he had almost died. A few feet away from him, the silhouette of a twisted ruin that was once a car sat on the other side of the still-intact barrier. Even through the translucent indigo wall, Petar could see the flames dancing atop of the former car’s shell.

“Right,” he said, turning and walking back to Metrovic’s car, “time to leave, I think. We’ve seen all there is to see. We wait here much longer and they’ll come for us to. C’mon, doc. We can spare a bed, I think.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Emir shouted from behind him. “How can you act so nonchalantly? Don’t you realise what’s going on? The entire city is being harvested or some shit. They’re taking the whole population.”

“Nothing I can do about that, son. C’mon. Our farm is well outside of the city. If we keep our heads down, they’ll probably just move on to the next city and not look twice at us.”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ, pop. The hell is wrong with you? These are your fellow humans! They’re dying here, they’re being enslaved, they’re being treated like this, and you don’t even give a shit? Why don’t you fucking care?”

Petar stopped in his tracks, but did not turn to face his son. “I do care.”

“My arse, do you. If you care, fucking act like it. You’ve never given a shit about any of this. You roll over and accept it. You’re just complacent with what’s happening. You’ve become stagnant. I can remember when they came, y’know. I wasn’t that young. I remember neighbours getting together to fight. I remember them knocking on our door and asking you to come. You just shrugged your shoulders and said there was nothing we could do. You never gave a shit. Why the fuck not? Do you even remember what it was like before they came? Because you act like you were born into this, and have just accepted it as the norm. Even if there’s not much we can do against something like that, we should at least do something. We shouldn’t make it easy for them. And yet you’re willing to just sit there and let it happen. Why? Why are you such a coward?”

Petar span round to face his son, and locked eyes with him. “Coward? I am not a coward. Do you know why I refused to fight with them when they first came? It’s because I had a fucking kid to look after. I had a child, God dammit. By the time you were old enough to look after yourself, it’s not that I’d stopped caring. I hadn’t. I haven’t. It’s just that I’d realised that there’s nothing we can do. And it’s true. Even if every last person on the planet rose up right now, we would be able to do nothing. I do fucking care, and don’t you dare tell me I don’t, just because I don’t show it. And yes, of course I remember when they came. When they came, I was more concerned than anyone. I was concerned for you. How much do you remember, exactly? Do you remember the reason they gave us?”

Emir hesitated. “Reason?”

“Yeah, the reason they gave us for what they were doing. Y’see, they were kind enough to tell us why they were cooping us up like this and taking us off when they pleased. See? I know a few things, too. And the things I know are from before you became obsessed with them. They gave us a reason why they were treating us like farm animals, and the funny thing is: no one asked. But they, in their benevolent wisdom, told us anyway. Do you know what the reason was?”

Emir, mouth agape, shook his head.

“Because they were more intelligent than us. That’s it. They said that they had the right to do this to us because we aren’t as advanced as them. And because we were so less sophisticated than them, they decided to coop us up, tag us, and let us be free-range until they needed us. Then they’d come down and take us. Because they were more intelligent than us, that put them at the top of the food chain. It meant that they could dictate what to do with every other species less intelligent than them. Let’s face it: we’re not as smart as them. Their technology is so advanced that even our scientists can’t understand it. You see? I know shit as well. The only reason I don’t know as much as you is because I’ve stopped checking up on them. I’ve stopped trying to learn. And no, it’s not because I don’t care. I do care. It’s because I know that it’s futile. It’s absolutely useless trying to fight back against them, because we have a better chance of killing God than these bastards.

“I do care, and don’t ever say that I don’t. I care enough to know the reason why this is happening to us. That’s what I’ve always cared about the most when it comes to Unity: why? Because I think the reason why is more important than anything else. I wanted to know why this was happening to us. Why they thought they were able to do this, and how they were able to live with themselves. And when they gave us that reason, I cared about humanity even more. I cared like you do. I cared like a philanthropist does. Like a cosmopolitan does. I care enough to know that I hate them just as much as you. We just show it in different ways. I can’t oppose them because I know it’s useless. You’re young and idealistic and headstrong. It won’t do any good. We’re all done. But I do care and I do hate them, with every ounce of the body God gave me.

“So what if we’re a less intelligent species? So what? Why does that give them the right to herd us up, call us their property, enslave us, use us as tools, kill us, and feed us back into their empire? Why do they have the right to treat us as lesser creatures? Even if we are – and let’s face it, they are more intelligent than us – we still deserve to be treated with dignity, God damn it. We are living, feeling, thinking creatures!”

The two of them stood in silence for several moments, with only the distant sound of anarchy providing the ambience. Tears had come to Petar’s eyes during his outburst, and Emir could only stare down at the ground. Even Metrovic had broken his trance with the barrier in front of him, and had turned to stare the at father and son. He sat on the grass, no longer clutching his wrist, but his arm lay on his knee, his hand hanging limp.

“Come on,” Petar mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Let’s go. We’ll be in trouble if we wait here much longer.”

“Right,” Emir whispered.

“Doc, you coming?”

Metrovic shook his head. “No. I think I’ll wait. Wait until this goes and I can get into the city.”

“They’ll get you, too. They might kill you.”

“I don’t care. I just want to see my Bernarda again. If they capture me, at least I might be with her again; if only for a moment. If we die, at least we’ll be together with God.”

“Your choice, doc,” Petar replied, walking away from the caged city and down the country lane, back into the darkness. “C’mon, Emir. Probably be a couple hours’ walk ‘till we get back to the farm. Doubt they’ll cop us. No street lamps or anything. They won’t see us in this dark.”

Together, father and son left the doctor sitting in the middle of the road, still lit up by his car’s headlights, and walked on into the night.

#

Petar stepped out of the back door and took a few steps toward the farm. He took a moment, looked up to the sky, and cursed the clouds that plagued the sky; but all the while was thankful that he was still here to see them. He breathed in fresh air that he had not tasted for three days, and continued on. Three dogs scurried out of the house and followed Petar, before darting into a nearby field. They, too, had been locked indoors for a full three days; their excited chasing of one another across the nearby field showed how much they relished their freedom.

Petar looked over at the distant city sitting on the horizon. A few plumes of smoke still rose from where there had been resistance and rioting, but other than that, the city was static and still intact. He knew that if he were to visit the city now – which he wasn’t willing to do, even after the bulk of Unity forces had left – it would be naught but a ghost town. Staring off at the city, Petar noticed how silent it had become. The birds seemed louder. A gentle breeze reminded him that nature lived on, even without humanity’s presence. This morning seemed, to him, so still; as if a calm peace had settled on this province after three days of turmoil. It was the calm after the storm. For a brief instant, he felt thankful that the region was so quiet after the human population had been near-enough culled, before he was overcome with guilt and quelled such thoughts.

As soon as Emir and Petar had returned home, they had decided to lock themselves indoors until the huge harvesting ship had moved on. It had taken three days, but the giant vessel eventually drifted toward the sky. None of the Unity had come to claim either Petar or his son, but he knew that they would have gathered all the slaves they needed at the city. Emir had remarked on how they didn’t seem to want to waste time on going after individuals or small groups – instead the Unity simply rounded up and gathered whole cities, communities, and other larger groups at a time. It was inefficient, Emir had commented, as eventually there would only be the small groups – such as two people living alone on a farm – left over. Petar had answered by saying that they were likely to cross that bridge when they got to it: if they were still desperate for slaves – and considering the rumours that Earth was not their first occupied planet, they would be – then they would take the time to hunt down every last tagged human. Until that time came, however, Petar and Emir were content to continue living at their secluded farm and avoiding any cities that might still exist.

Petar opened the shed door, found a bucket of chickenfeed, and carried it out toward one of the pens. The chickens swarmed out of their coops and all gathered at the pen’s fence, waiting for the inevitable feeding. Petar, with a small scooper in hand, started digging out the chickenfeed and pouring it into the bowls within the fence. The peep, having not been fed in three days, fought for priority. The birds were so eager to feed that most simply stood on the bowls and had chicken feed poured onto them.

As he continued to scoop the feed, he scratched at the back of his neck. The ache – which Emir had argued was now mostly from the fact that Petar kept scratching away at it – hadn’t gone away, but he knew that there was nothing that he could do about it now. He couldn’t visit a Unity Administrator: that’d be synonymous with turning himself in. There were almost certainly no doctors, or anyone else who could help him, left in the province. Neither he nor Emir knew what had happened to Doctor Metrovic since they left him at the edge of the city. They hadn’t heard from him, nor had they returned to the city. Petar suspected that if he wasn’t picked up and taken in the next three days, he had simply waited until the barrier disappeared and become the only resident of a ghost town; where any Unity scouts left over were almost certain to find him. Either way, they wouldn’t hear from him again.

After filling the bowls, Petar stood back up and looked over the swarming peep. The three days without feeding would set back when they would be slaughtered; they were originally due to be sent to the abattoir in another two days, but having not been fed for three days, the slaughter would have to wait. Petar sighed to himself as he realised that there may even be a few dead chickens still inside their respective coops; it would further delay shipping.

Petar frowned and looked back at the distant city. Despite the fact that only a quarter of his sales were to this city, he knew that what happened here would have happened across the whole province. It was almost certain, he concluded, that every other city and town to which he sold had suffered an identical fate to this one. He reached down and grabbed a handful of chickenfeed, but simply held it in his palm and gazed at it. Where would be his sales now? Even if there were any distributors left, the demand would have plummeted. This entire province’s population would have dropped to a mere few thousand. Possibly even only a few hundred, he amended. Even if the Unity harvest hadn’t directly affected him, it would do so indirectly.

Keeping his hand held out with the chickenfeed sitting in it, he looked back over at the city. He concluded that, even if he had no one to sell to immediately, he would still have to keep busy. Survivors might make their presence known, and he could sell to them. They too, he realised, would have almost nothing left, however. Money would be meaningless. They’d all have to trade for something more useful. He realised, all of a sudden, that he hadn’t thought at all what living in an empty province like this would be like. Life couldn’t go on as normal – they would have to find new ways to survive and adapt. Emir had almost certainly been planning for this event for a decade. He would know what to do.

Petar, however, was determined not to allow this catastrophe to alter his life too far from what he had become accustomed. He would not allow his farm to crumble. Even if he had no distributors to which to sell, he would still find a way to manage. Gazing at the distant, vacant city, he resolved never to allow his farm to become like it.

In an instant, a realisation dawned upon him. The strength went first from his arms – where he dropped the feed in his hand onto the floor – and then from his legs – as he was brought down to his knees. A feeling rushed through his body, clutching at his heart and stabbing at his stomach. He could feel his pulse pick up and sweat gather at his brow as his mouth hung agape. He licked his dry lips and took a deep breath, as he focussed his tunnel vision on the pen before him.

The clouds had parted, and sunlight now shone down upon Petar. Kneeling before the pen, he reached toward it and slid his fingers through the mesh fence. One hen, still amongst its feeding sisters, stepped toward the curious digits protruding from the fence. Petar, his heart still thumping within his chest, stroked the head of the chicken as gently as he could, and tears filled his eyes.

“Dad?” he heard Emir call from inside the house. “Dad!” Within seconds, Emir was kneeling at his side. “Dad? Are you alright? What’s wrong? Dad, speak to me. What’s wrong?”

“I’m . . . fine,” Petar whispered, although he doubted Emir heard. Accompanying Emir was one of their dogs, who now brushed her snout against Petar’s arm, wanting some sort of attention or fuss. Petar pulled his had from inside the fence and turned to the dog. He reached up to the dog’s neck, undid her collar, and dropped it in the dirt. He then reached behind the neck of the dog – a neck where no spinal tag lay beneath the flesh – and ruffled the fur where the collar had been pressing down.

He had been humbled.

END

The two main characters, Taisin and Kaede, are students at an academy for sages. After Taisin has a vision of the future involving herself and Kaede, the two girls are sent as part of a diplomatic mission to the fay, who are known as the Xi. This diplomatic mission, led by Prince Con Isae Tan, hopes that the fay will have answers regarding the puzzling weather that has destroyed crops and placed the kingdom on the verge of civil war.

During the course of their quest, both of the two female main characters discover that they are very good at different skills. Taisin realizes that she has a strong affinity for magic, which bodes well for her chosen career as a sage. Kaede develops impressive martial skills and becomes a protector for the group. Though she has some qualms about killing the opponents she faces, she learns to do what she must to keep herself and her compatriots alive.

Interwoven with the journey to the land of the fay are two burgeoning romances. One, between Taisin and Kaede, is partially foretold by Taisin’s vision at the beginning of the book. Despite the fact that Taisin has seen a time when she cares deeply about Kaede, their relationship proceeds slowly. The other attachment is between Prince Con Isae Tan and Shae, a female guard who travels with the group. Because of the difference in their stations, their relationship, too, moves very slowly.

In the end, Taisin’s vision comes to pass, and Kaede (with help from Taisin) overcomes the obstacle that has caused the change in the kingdom’s climate. However, her work is not complete after this encounter, and there is an additional test that she must succeed at to make things right, which does not rely on her martial prowess.

One of the difficulties I had in reading this book was that the point-of-view character frequently changed for one or two paragraphs, before returning to whichever character was the primary point-of-view character. While this was generally fairly clear if the POV changed from one of the female characters to Con, it was less clear when the POV changed from Taisin to Kaede, or vice versa, as “she” could refer to either character. I was also disappointed in the conclusion of the two romances in the novel. Though it is hard to discuss this aspect without giving away too many spoilers, I felt that when these two relationships came to a point of resolution, the choice that the author made on which relationship ended and which continued was not what I had hoped for. The end result was less than satisfying for me as a reader.

Despite the issues I had with some aspects of Huntress, I enjoyed the book overall. The storytelling is lovely, and the main characters are exceptionally well written. I think that this book will appeal to young adult readers as well as older readers.

Post Apocalyptic Love (by CE Zacherl)

Detective Tyrone Higgins finally called off the surveillance to turn in for the night.  Apparently he had been wrong about the janitor, Jarred Dobson.  He must not have been involved in the break in at Representative Arthur Bachman’s office.  The secondary surveillance team was already on its way home after having witnessed several hours of Jarred Dobson frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.  He took some powerful drugs that would put him out for the night, from what that team reported.

The bloody footprints that led to the janitorial closet must have been a coincidence.  The boots that made the print were a common brand and an even more common size ten.  Detective Higgins would have to find a different explanation.  It could be as simple as one of the culprits hiding in the janitor’s closet while a security patrol rushed to Bachman’s office.

“Jarred…” the sound of his name echoed down the long hallway from some beautiful goddess-like voice.

“Jarred…” this time the echo was a sultrier and haunting lure.

He worked his way down the long hallway until he arrived in the foyer.  The two side tables that flanked the doorway were both covered in a number of his favorite foods, his eyes first landing on the General Tso’s chicken, the real chicken not the synth stuff.  Sitting next to it, New York style pizza that had so much pepperoni on it, he couldn’t even see the cheese that he knew was there, ready to melt in his mouth.

“Jarred… don’t keep us waiting…” the first goddess-like voice spoke again echoing but louder this time.

The sultry sounding woman giggled in a youthful way that sounded out of character for her.

He opened his mouth wide and took a massive bite out of the end of the pizza and wiped his hands on his pants.  He savored all the flavors as the pizza dissolved in his mouth and kept walking.

Finally, he threw the doors open, and there was his bed, his eyes widening to take in the massive unreal expanse of the bed.  The sheets were spun up and around two young, nubile women.  They were naked and playing with each other, Kayla and Apple.

His heavy eye lids finally stopped squinting.  The light from the room soaked into his irises.  He was laying in his recliner with a half full bottle of beer in one hand.  His computer was beeping at him.  The little medicine bottle clattered to the floor as he reached for his computer interface.  The pretty little pills responsible for sending him to that other world rolled across the tile floor.

“Idiot!  Where the hell are you?  We’re supposed to pull that job now.”  Kayla sounded frantic.

Jarred looked over at the clock; and with his head still in a haze, he moved into rapid autopilot to get dressed and presentable.

Jarred rubbed the scruff on his chin as he rode the rail car toward his rendezvous and mission with Kayla and Apple.  Nervous sweat clung to Jarred’s top as his mind connected the dots of the fantasy girls to the two girls in Jarred’s reality.  Those visions haunted him and enticed him.

Jarred could smell the musk on the mass of people that stood tightly around him on the rail car.  It certainly seemed like all the people were pushing in around him on purpose, much more than they needed to fit in the small elevated rail car.

As the train pulled into the station, Jarred saw something rather strange going on.  He rubbed his eyes and blinked furiously for the false vision to clear away.  He hoped to figure out just what the hell his brain was changing over to the Dalek-looking robot wheeling around the station floor.

Jarred Dobson rubbed his eyes one final time as the elevated rail car pulled into the sky scraper station.  The Dalek bot was gone.  He forced his way through the crowd, rudely bursting through some people.  He sensed the angry eyes of those that missed the train by a split second jerk.  He received a slew of curses as he travelled through the business men leaving work and maintenance men getting ready for the late shift.  Jarred’s lucid state made moving through the obstacles of people as challenging as knocking the pinball into the grand prize slide.

Their meeting place was a couple of benches between a McDonald’s 3-star sit down joint and a stinky Abercrombie store.  Jarred did not see Kayla or Apple.  Did they abandon the mission, choose to go without him (not likely), or somehow get a vibe from Jarred that revealed the content of his recent hallucinations?

Before Jarred got all the way to the benches to have a proper sniff out, he felt a very strong arm curl around his left bicep.  An insidious murmuring voice echoed in Jarred’s ear, “Just keep walking and don’t act like anything is outa sorts.”

Jarred glanced at the man who now forcefully tugged him along.  No more words were needed to articulate the point.  In a glance, Jarred was sure that he noticed some form of armament concealed in the man’s belt under his rain coat.  The two rounded a couple of hallways until confronted by only a lonely, unattended candy kiosk, another man briskly walked to the pair and pitched a dark hood over Jarred’s head.

A quick trip to a nearby platform and he was riding in the back of a hover van.  These things weren’t exactly cheap.  Government maybe, Jarred thought.  Had they figured out that he was in on the recent break-in at the congressional office?

Apple and Kayla both perched next to Jarred in the back of the van.  Low voices spoke queries and instructions at the front of the van.

With no visual stimuli, Jarred’s other senses seemed heightened by his recent drug use.  One of the voices said, “Then we’ll dump them in a service ditch near the weeds.”  Jarred heard another voice respond, “The boss wants them to suffer first, starting with the girls, so the guy has to watch.”  Jarred started to panic, he flailed around uselessly with his hands and feet tied.

Kayla was calm and collected.  She hummed to herself and contemplated just how she would get herself and her two friends out of this mess.  Thoughts of doubt oppressed her mind.  She was trying to be a resistance cell leader, but what kind of leader led her crew to constant failures?

Apple felt great anxiety, the feel made real by the feel of the veins on her head pulsing blood through rapidly.  Her heart was going to explode.  Apple hated to be cut off from the masses.  When not in cyberspace, she found the need to be constantly surrounded, never alone.  Here she was alone in her own head, and the sight was frightful.

It was only a few minutes removed from all the chaos, the hoods were removed from all three of them and they were surrounded by curious archaic looking gadgets.  Was this really just the home of a dweeby steampunk enthusiast?

“Barry Lesco.”  Kayla enumerated after taking a short look around.  With the name came a great sigh of relief.  As her shoulders lost tension, Jarred followed suit in relaxing.  Apple still looked around wide eyed and obviously nervous.

“I know that you wanted to help the resistance.  You are not ready to lead your own cell.  You have tripped and stumbled over each task that you have charged yourself.  Step back.  Let me give you some direction,” Barry Lesco stated very matter of fact.

“And I’m not done…” Barry waved his hand across his body to halt all interjections.  “Kayla, I know and understand that you dislike technology.  I know that your goals and purposes for fighting this fight are not the same as many of our mainstream goals.  I don’t shun you for that.  However, much of our battle will be carried out in cyberspace.  You MUST learn how to use it,” Barry stated that last part with a strong emphasis.

“What the hell man?  We’re on the same side?  Why the prisoner treatment?  I thought a noose was next on the list for my evening attire,” Jarred was fuming.

Barry glared at Jarred, “do you realize that if you showed up on time tonight, you’d be rotting in a jail cell right now?”  Jarred looked down to the ground in shame.  Barry continued… “You, Jarred, were under surveillance tonight.  For whatever reason, Detective Higgins believes you have some connection to the Resistance.”

“And Kayla, the last task that you performed for me went so well.  You spliced the Oathed Technocratic intranet and we got a nice data packet of a lot of the projects and goals they have.”  Barry let his archaic brown leather coat fall open as he leaned back in his chair, facing the three.

Kayla nodded in agreement and looked up to the ceiling, avoiding eye contact.  Jarred still looked at the ground.  Apple stared at Barry and he finally turned his attention to the youthful girl.

“You are the new proportion that I have yet to fully understand.  I invite you to help us in this fight, but you have not gotten in so deep that you have to stay.”  Barry reached out and stroked her hand in assurance, “there is no embarrassment in backing out of such a dangerous cause at such a young age.”

Apple shook her head and her wide eyes receded into a determined squint.  “IM.  For Zodi, an’ now Kay n Jar.”

Barry left the room for a few minutes to allow the situation to sink in and the embarrassment to wear off.  Barry’s guards untied the hands and feet of all three.  He returned to the room after a short amount of quiet banter.  “So, do I have a little Trivium Resistance Cell to add to my Order of Battle?”

The three looked to each other and locked eyes one after another and all of them nodded.  They described everything that happened up to the here and now.  He laid out a plan of action and the three of them left Barry’s residence with a new confidence.

As soon as Apple took the elevator down to retrieve her car, Kayla spun closely to face Jarred.  He moved in to embrace her and she pushed him away, a scowl across her face.  “We’ll work together in the Resistance, if you intend to stay on.  You left Apple and I hanging out to dry.  You have too many problems, problems that I don’t need in my life.  Outside of our duties in this, I don’t want to see you anymore.”  Kayla laid down the law and barely waited for a retort as she turned from Jarred and headed for the rail station.

Previous

Next

The Sayer’s gaze focused on Cody. The boy tried to sink into the pew.

So spoke the Sayer, his silver teeth glittering in waves of light. He floated on a cushion of antigravity, his robes glowing and flowing from his arms like comet trails. He flew high above the sacred console, his altar, the surface flashing with ruby and emerald lights in paradigms only he understood—the voice of heaven.

“Sacrifice is vector,” the families chanted.

“One day the Prophet shall be born among the lowly of us, the pathfinder. He will lead us through the endless night, through the darkness of our doubt. He will pass from mortal life then return to us from the vacuum that exists beyond death, a map in his heart. His truth shall cast out the Dark One who dwells in the nothingness that surrounds the Ark, the nothingness in our hearts. The Prophet shall come. He will fill our hearts with stars.”

“He shall come,” the masses replied. “Sacrifice is vector.”

Once, before his father had been siezed as a heretic, he had shown his son the stars. Cody had always believed the Ark went on infinitely, uniform corridors and catwalks, decks of tiny hostels for each family, work stations and machinery that reached into the ship with sprawling arms. His father had privileges as a tinkerer, and he took Cody to a foreign land high above, to clear walls that looked out from the Ark. At first Cody had wept, but then he gazed out onto the ever blackness, seeing frissons of spectral rain that dazed and delighted. It had been so long since the Sayer had Cody’s father arrested for questioning the doctrine, for preaching science. He’d been just a boy of six cycles when they had dropped his father into the towers, into the furnaces. Cody wondered if he only dreamed it, imagined he’d had a father.

And sometimes Cody dreamt of a giant blue sphere in white mist like the steam that comes off the reactor vents. The world was so great, and the skies flowed cerelauen beyond sight, not a world of corridors and bulkheads. Water ran free or settled in great pools, covering most of the surface. He liked that dream the most.

“Our faith must be pure, a beacon of light in the vast darkness,” the Sayer preached, his hollow voice echoeing from the bulkheads, joining the song of the Towers. “We must be ever diligent. The Dark One promises and lies and promises. You must not listen, block out the voices of doubt that the evil of science can bring.”

“Sacrifice is vector.”

Their voices joined in choir with the soprano hum of the towers above. Cody, like most of the tribe, had never seen the heavens within the towers, though his father had told him of the home of the gods: crimson furnaces, burning and churning with forces no one pretended to understand, powering crystal mountains that sang with such volume to deafen any man who did not shield their ears.

“Out there beyond the protection of our Ark, the Dark One dwells, poisoning our minds with whispers. The ancient gods built this Ark of their bodies, shaped its engines from their hearts to give us a home, vector. They made us of their love, their hopes. Humans were created on this Ark and for this Ark. The Dark One seeks to tempt us from our mission.”

“Take us to New ‘Ome, Sayer,” the masses on the temple floor chanted.

Cody and his mother had been given front row seats, special seating for families tainted by hereasy. He could feel the pressure of thousands of eyes beating on him. Gripper had told Cody’s Mom they should go into hiding in the forbidden parts of the vessel. The holidays were coming, and for nearly a cycle now, the Sayer had reported the disfavor of the Towers, read by him on his altar; a sacrifice would be needed. She argued that hiding would be as good as admiting guilt.

“Please lower your heads for Communion,” the Sayer compelled.

Cody looked up through his bangs of red hair, keeping his head low. The Sayer examined the bank of lights before him on the altar at his pulpit. Cody’s father had told him that scholars had once been allowed to study their meanings, before the last cleansing, and vague idea was gained of their function. The lights will tell the Sayer if the gods in the Towers were pleased or not.

The chirp of an acolyte’s bell ended Communion. The People waited for the word. The Sayer frowned.

“The Towers are displeased. Their holy lights do not glow.”

Cody heard muffled sobs.

“It is I who have failed you, and I vow to you that if I cannot rid our church, our home of those who feign faith, I will throw myself down the deep well to the Towers to redeem you all. And upon the power of my soul, the engines will drive us all the way to New ‘Ome.”

The people howled, defiant. The Sayer grinned and gazed once again down on Cody.

“To reach New ‘Ome,” the Sayer sang, “We must sacrifice.”

“Take us home, Sayer,” they chanted. Cody mouthed the words; perhaps it was he who had displeased the Towers. How could they notice him? He was just a boy, a tiny spec below their majesty and power. Could they feel his confusion? He’d struggled to hide any trace of his heresy, fearing they might see it in his eyes. He buried his face into his hands. He’d felt feverish since this morning. Could heresy burn the skin?

“In the name of the Towers and the Compass who comes, I beseech you to keep your minds pure of blasphemy, to follow the course true, to take us, the last hope of humans, to New ‘Ome.”

“Take us home, Sayer,” the families chanted.

Would he feel his flesh burn, his bones boil and pop when he was thrown into the furnance? Would he hear the voice of the Gods?
#

Sentries in their crimson suits thumped the walls with clubs. The people dispersed like water flowing down a drain. Cody’s mother grabbed him by the shoulder, and they took the tubes to their home deck in One-B Eden Section.

Out through the spiraling corridors they walked into their home ward. The gates sealed behind the last family—two doors decorated with silver knot work. Incense burned in front of the gate in a tiny dish, purifying the portal with a spicy-sweet odor. Seven Sentries guarded the gates to other decks of the Ark. Traversing the portal except for worship was forbidden.

Down the corridors, they approached a group of men who had gathered at one of the air vents where the fresh atmosphere caused a light euphoria. Mother let down her smoky hair and opened the top of her white jump suit, revealing the curve of her breast. Cody knew to be silent when she did, to stay in the back. Chief of their ward, Kitmaron, finished a protien square, brushed the crumbs from the patchy, black beard on his fat jowls then grabbed her by the hips.

Cody balled his fists watching him treat his mother like a piece of furniture, but she had admonished him not to protest unless he wanted them to starve. Cody’s stomach turned. If only father had thought of his family when he decided to stand by his principles.

“Go home Cody and do your chores,” Mother told him. “Tell Gripper I’ll be home in a few hours. And don’t pester Gripper. Don’t let him drink too much. If you get done early, you can go see Red Nova play in the match.”

Kitmaron sneered at the boy. Cody turned away and traveled through the common areas, the residential apartments and further into their ward, passing beyond the pipe venues, to the abandoned section—the broken places where no one dared to venture.

Cracked conduits steamed oily miasma. Cody’s nose burned from ash in the air. The smoky atmosphere of the corridor impaired his sight, and he had to take care not to trip on broken floor panels. The rejects came to live here, those who would not follow the Code, who had stolen or refused to work. The Sayer called them the alleys of the dark heart. Some even whispered that the Dark One dwelled here, had twisted these parts of the Ark. No one knew exactly how deep into the ship the Dark One had tunneled. Parts of the Ark had been sealed off, damaged in the heretical chaos. Even the vagabonds and untouchables had not gone too deep. Legends of demons roaming the fiery places of disrepair prevented them from seeking out its mysteries. If only father had heeded the warnings and not gone wandering.

He knocked seven times on the portal to their improvised quarters. The bar clanked on the inside door, and Gripper let him in. Gripper had to lean all his weight on the door to push it open, unable to put weight on his bad leg.

The air in their chambers chilled Cody, the environmental systems acting up again, and Gripper had stuffed insulation padding down into his pink jacket. Gripper’s toes poked through holes in his stockings. He must have just woken up from a nap, his wiry, gray hair in a wild mane, and his glasses—one of the lenses cracked—were crooked off his hook nose.

“Well lad, good to see you’re still here. Your mother has no sense sometimes.”

Cody hung up his white jacket and took off his slippers. He filled a thermos with cloudy H2O from a pipe in the wall they had tapped into. He took a ration cracker from a box on the leaning table. Their quarters were divided into two areas by an opaque sheet they had scavenged from the corridors. He and mother slept on cots they had found in a derelict sick bay in the one room while Gripper lived in the parlor.

Gripper still wore his old Sentry uniform, though the color had bleached with age, going pink. It should have been odd to see such a bulky man with a perpetual grimace wearing pink, but it matched his nature.

The Sentries had cast him out after he was crippled in an accident. An ex-Sentry, he was also cast out from the families since the Sentries were feared.

Cody was feeling a bit flushed and sipped on the water to soothe his throat.

“You look a might bit under the weather, lad. Feeling okay?”

“What does under-the-weather mean?”

Gripper shrugged.

“Just an old expression I guess. Doesn’t mean much of anything. I’ve often pondered that weather means sickness of some kind. Well, take care of yourself. Your mother needs you.”

Gripper sat back at the table and resumed carving a chunk of white plastic, chipping away at the malleable material. The walls in Cody’s side of his room were lined with all the little people Gripper had made.

“What are you making?”

“A full course dinner,” Gripper quipped.

“Is it a toy for me?” Cody asked.

“You think everything is for you.”

“Mother said that if I do all my chores, I’m allowed to go to the Match. Red Nova is playing, and I’m sure they’re to win.”

“Why do you like such violent sport? Every cycle, one of the players is wounded so badly they pass into the void. Doesn’t sound like fun to me.”

“It’s fun to me,’ Cody said.

“Violence isn’t amusing at all when you’ve seen it like I have. I had enough of that as a Sentry.”

Gripper chipped at the plastic chunk.

“Your mother is with a man?” he asked.

Cody didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry Cody. If I could, I’d take you all from the commons into the lower echelons where you would want for nothing, where the fat cats drink all the fiz they want and eat delicious vegetables grown in the great forests on the Ark.”

Cody felt a touch of resentment at Gripper’s desultory promises, as if he was supposed to praise the old man for failing. Cody brushed it off, tried to keep it from getting the better of him.

“Tell me more about the Ark, of the places I’ve not seen like the great forest.”

“Always with my stories,” Gripper said.

Gripper retrieved a bottle from under one of the iron grates in the floor. He uncapped it, and Cody’s nose burned from its acrid odor.

“Don’t tell your mother about the bottle, and we have a deal,” he said. He took two gulps then wheezed.

“It’s horrid plasma water, but better then just water. I distilled it from some fluid I drained from the cooling system. It’s not bad if you flavor it with some of the sweet rations.”

Spirits were against the Code of the Ark, since they compelled you to think heretical thoughts. They were the work of the Dark One. Cody admired Gripper for his transgression.

“The forests were transplanted from the ancient home. Trees are mighty beings, alive like you or me, but they are different. Their bodies move slowly, and they grow thin, green hands and feet. They are tall cylinders wearing a brown crust and roots that grow deep into the mushy, brown floor.”

“Like the pipes and conduits?”

“No. They grow and breathe and make fruit.”

“I had just joined the Sentry Order. My parents were so proud that I had been selected because of my fitness. The Sayer came to the induction ceremony to bless us. He took from his robes a piece of green fruit. It was shaped like a tetrahedron, smooth with a bulbous bottom. He called it a pear and said we could pass it around and each take a tiny bite.”

“What was it like?”

“My mouth exploded in joy. It was like laying with a woman. Too fleeting. One man in the battalion began to weep. We never saw him after that day.”

“I wish I could see it.”

Gripper smiled and displayed his art. He was working on a thin part at the top.

“That’s the stem where the fruit attaches to the tree branch.”

“You’d think they’d let us see pictures,” Cody said.

“Oh no lad. Most of the folk here in the commons don’t even know they exist. If they did they’d want the pear too, and there aren’t enough to go round. Nope. Trust me. I hurt you just telling you about it, and that’s why I won’t tell you more. You’re better off not knowing.”

“Where did the forest come from?”

“The ancients grew them. They once lived among the trees as brothers, before the war that poisoned their home. They dwelled in paradise of open space and comforts we couldn’t begin to fathom, a place where you looked up from anywhere and saw not gray bulkheads but a wide, blue canvas for as far as your peepers could peep.”

Cody nodded. He was feeling nauseous but wanted to stay for the story.

“I have seen it,” Cody said “I have dreamt it.”

Gripper smiled, letting Cody’s fantastic comment pass.

“They built the Ark?” Cody said.

“For once the litany is true. They took the only moon of their world and hollowed it out. Then with their waning power, they created the Towers and made humans, and they charged us with the holy mission. To begin again.”

“Does anyone remember?”

“Oh no lad. It happened many generations ago.”

“How do we really know it happened? Where’s the proof?”

Gripper grimaced.

“You mustn’t question. Look around you. Here’s the proof. The Ark is happy when it is moving forward. I have seen from the portals many times and watched as the stars change places. You must have faith, to believe when there is no proof. A crisis of faith is what caused the Chaos, ended our vector. We were all nearly lost.”

“Sometimes it’s just so hard to believe. I saw from the portal, saw the borders of the Ark, and there was nothing, just a few specks of distant light. If that’s what is seen from all portals, if that’s what surrounds us, then there is nothing out there.”

Gripper paused his work and studied his gnarled hands.

“Each of us has a choice we must make: either to be one of the faithful or one of hearsay. I can’t tell you which one to be, and both roads have consequences. Your father made his choice, and I was forced to help him to understand the nature of that decision.”

“How?”

“Too many questions, lad. You are diseased with these questions.” Gripper laughed and brushed Cody’s red mop of hair. “Now get about your chores, and you still might have time to see the match.”

“Just one more question?”

“Just one.”

“Do you think we’ll ever find New ‘Ome, that we’ll ever be faithful enough?”

“I know this. People are always in a hurry to be where they’re not and never be where they are.”

Cody shrugged.

“So are you going to head up to the match?”

“I don’t think so,” Cody said. “I’m not feeling right.”

#

Cody’s mother came home late into the rest cycle. Cody was lying down, and Gripper placed wet towels on his head to cool the burning.

His mother paced with worry. The rage of the engines burned beneath Cody’s skin, behind his eyes. His head pounded. He felt like he was falling, passing through the decks of the Ark and into space. In his fevered vision, he fell through space until a star’s gravity caught his soul. He cried out for his mother, but she did not come. No one could hear him. The tendrils took hold of his body, burning his flesh. “I shall feast on your cold, cold hearts,” said the Sayer’s voice. He had known of Cody’s heretical thoughts, and now he would punish him.

Cody’s mother knelt by the bed of her ailing son and prayed to the Towers.

“Take this illness from my son and give it into me,” she begged.

Gripper listened at the boy’s chest, checking his wrist to feel for a pulse. He shook his head and sighed.

“In the lower planes, I have seen miracle cures granted by the Towers to the faithful. They could fix him. The Sayer has medicines.”

Mother scooped up Cody into her arms.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gripper was flabbergasted. He blocked the door.

“They can heal my boy.”

“It’s best this way, peaceful. Let the boy fall into an easy sleep. I can make him a drink so strong he’ll feel no pain.”

Mother kicked Gripper’s bad leg. He went down howling in pain. With her boy in her arms, she lifted up the bar securing the door and pushed it open.

“You’re just going to make it worse,” he said.

She passed into the common zones and to one of the corridors where the higher ranks of the families lived. She knocked on Kitmaron’s door. He answered, wrapped in a sheet.

“My son is sick. I must see the Sayer. Tell your friends in the Sentries to take him to the lower echelons. They can heal him.”

“Go back to your rags, woman. I will not help the son of a heretic.”

Mother grinned at him.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to disturb you—or your wife.”

Kitmaron frowned his black beard into a knot.

“I can’t ask a Sentry to let us pass. We’ll be arrested. No one goes low. Take him to our common’s area. I’ll ask one of the healers to look at him.”

He shut the door.

Gripper had caught up, limping while he jogged.

“You’ve got some nerve, lady,” he said.

They took him to where Kitmaron had suggested. The lamps glowed sallow light during the late cycle. Gripper bumped into a monitor, and swore at it. He nursed his leg. They placed Cody on a table, brushing away empty fiz bottles and game pads. She felt his forehead. In his foggy state, he felt her cool hand sooth the fire on his skin. He struggled to breath.

Kitmaron arrived, followed by a scrawny fellow whose face was inchoate, gray, as if his flesh was made up of wet ash. From a satchel, the healer pulled a probe and stuck it in Cody’s mouth. He listened to his heart and lungs and felt all over his body. The probe lit up.

“He will not survive. He is being punished.”

Mother clenched the healer’s shoulder. Kitmaron pulled her free.

“You must be able to do something,” she said.

“He is beyond my arts,” the healer said. “In the hands of the Prophet. Only the healing of the ancients can help him now.”

The ruckus had woken other families, and they came to see. They were wrapped in their bed robes, their hair a mess from sleeping. They watched the mother weeping and offered no comfort, not to the widow of a heretic.

All they could do was watch as Cody’s chest took slower inhalations. Then, he was still.

Mother embraced Cody by the shoulders. In an attempt to feign breath, she pushed down on his chest. A rib cracked beneath her fist. She listened at his heart. Still she heard silence.

“Gods in the Towers. Make it beat.”

She kept pumping until she rolled over in exhaustion. She rested her head on Cody’s shoulder and sobbed.

The audience gawked. She even heard someone cheer.

“Come on Maud,” Gripper said, taking her by the arm. “Let’s not give them anymore of a show.” He helped her lift Cody’s body up and they started to carry him home.

“Praise the Towers,” roared someone. “The son of the heretic is dead.”

“Who said that?” mother roared.

No one answered.

“You know nothing of it!”

“Maud,” Gripper called to her. “Maud. He’s breathing.”

She put her cheek to his mouth, felt moist air touching her face.

“Praise the Towers,” she whispered. She repeated it several times.

“He was gone,” Gripper said. “His heart was silent. It’s a miracle! The Towers have risen him back to us.”

The crowd clamored about. Some fell to their knees praying. Some ran. In their eyes, they looked upon the lad, their spirits filling with a fury. No longer did they see an untouchable, an outcast, the son of a heretic. Now they beheld a boy at one with their Towers, one of their own of the filthy commons, chosen to feel their embrace. It was a sign. It must have been. New ‘Ome was close, just in their reach. The boy would show them how to find it. He was the Prophet who had been foretold, the pathfinder.

Gripper shook his head.

“Mother. I saw the blue world. I was there walking through its forests and walking with the ancients. One of them pointed to a star in the sky.”

“Praise the Prophet,” the crowd chanted.

Then Cody whispered but all could hear: “We can longer travel forward. We must reverse to go home.”

“This is going to be trouble,” Gripper said. “There’s going to be blood like there was during the Chaos.”

Cody became the pathfinder, and he told the people of his vision.

Water falls from the skies—ice blood and tears of clouds. The ground is not polymer, nor steel, but pillow soil, crunching beneath the barefoot, soft to the touch of young skin. All things live. All things hum as the towers do. Nothing ever dies. Born of the soil and come home to the soil. Life forever—a chain of life always growing towards the father star.

Life is vector.

The walls melt. The only walls are the ones you take with you. Light flows eternal, clarion light, not the sickly illumination of the halls. And in the dark, the stars keep hope like torches.

They all knew this world.

As the pathfinder told the story again and again from the visions he’d been granted, it awakened the dormant race memory sown in the blood of the people. Their dreams filled with New ‘Ome. They walked the land, swam in the oceans and ate the fruit of the trees. Pear juice dripped down Gripper’s face.

And at story’s end, the people prayed not to the towers but to their hearts, the true vector of their lost home, and they asked of the prophet:

Take us home.

Cybertheft (by CE Zacherl)

Jarred blew the smoke away from the barrel of the 9mm Pistol.  He always imagined that when he learned to use a real weapon, it would be something a little more high tech.  The high tech doodads were kept under lock and key by the upper level scraper residents.

Ness Mutt chuckled at Jarred’s stereotypical action to blowing at the end of the gun.  “You know, there’s no reason at all to do that.”

Jarred shook his head, “It’s for effect.”

Kayla hopped down from her perch on top of the exhaust shaft.  Apple was still in another world, sitting with her Virta-Goggs@ strapped to her head and an old keyboard across her lap.

“Feel a little safer now, Jarred?”  Kayla spoke as she swayed over to him.

Jarred nodded after handing Mutt a wad of cash.  Mutt walked around the corner to deposit the cash in his suitcase that used to carry a 9mm and two mags but still carried another firearm.

Kayla leaned into Jarred, her weight against his, “He’s not the guy who taught me, but the resistance is stretched pretty thin right now.  He seemed to know what he was doing…”

“Damn right I know… If you want to make sure you’re safe, just bring me along next time.  I was SpecOp for the India-Pakistani War,” Mutt bragged.

“Well, now that you mention it.  We’ve got some work to do, very soon,” Kayla stated as a challenge.

Ness Mutt grunted as if he didn’t care, “I got dropped deep behind the lines in Pakistan to secure some chemie when those Ay-rab commanders went ballistic.”

Apple, Jarred, Kayla, and Mutt were crouched behind a long prefab plastic desk.  Beyond, they could see the heavily fortified clear doors and the Enviro@ chamber beyond that was the foyer to this sky scrapers lowest level greenhouse.

Apple glanced back out of the wall length window as she set up her laptop and leaned against the desk.  It was a long way down to the ground.  She shivered and tried to dig her butt into the floor in hopes of preventing any chance of going out the window.

Apple felt a strong squeeze on her shoulder and turned her head to look eye to eye with Jarred.  He gave her a reassuring nod.

Jarred looked to his other side, Kayla was sweating like a flu-victim.  Kayla was usually the confident, strong leader; now she seemed shaken.  Wendell’s gory death was having a profound psychological effect on her.

Mutt, on the other hand, was smiling with a sick confidence.  He leaned over to the nervous looking girls.  “Once, I lost my section-mate right before he and I were supposed to quietly kill two guards.  I killed them both, all by myself.  I just made the first one such a horrific kill that the second guy was stunned.”

Kayla smacked his chest and turned red with embarrassment, “Shut up.”

“Okay, let’s get this over with.”  Jarred walked around the edge of the desk in a slouched fashion that made his height only barely more than the desk.

Gary Jones was in another world.  It was an alien beach, and that alien beach was covered in a wide assortment of alien babes that appeared to be in various forms of undress.  The huge variety of aliens; made it difficult to determine if they were naked or if they just had minimalist clothing.

He approached one of the shortest aliens that wore nothing except its own orange-red skin.  He was just about to sling a cheddar pick up line when the whole beach started to float away from him.  No, he was sinking into the sand.  No, who the hell is this?

Gary’s Virta-Goggs@ clattered to the floor as the girl removed her fingertips.

The girl’s hair was unkempt, wild and beautiful in its chaos.  Her outfit was a form fitting navy blue dress, cut in all the right places. The outfit didn’t quite match her temperament.  In a way, the awkwardness was even more a turn on to Gary Jones.

“Well, well.  Is it my birthday?  Christmas?  Why don’t you come have a seat on Uncle Gary’s lap?”

The girl obeyed gingerly and innocently batted her eyes.  Gary did not notice the knife and syringe the girl kept tucked in the back of one of her long, black leather boots.

“After all hell broke loose and the big guns laid waste to both countries, we had to find places to hunker down and stay out of sight.  Just like this.  I was hiding out in a barn and had to kill five men that found my spot.  I stacked them up like cord wood,” Ness Mutt bragged in a low voice as he and Jarred Dobson crouched in the enviro-chamber outside of the greenhouse levels of the sky scraper.

Jarred shook his head subtly and tried to get a better view of the inside of the greenhouse.  He hoped that Kayla was okay and wished he was some big shot war veteran like Mutt.

Suddenly, the yellow lights in the chamber started flashing and sirens started to whoop.  A small door on the upper wall opened and a nozzled device popped out and faced the inside of the chamber.  A robotic voice started repeating, “Contaminant, contaminant, contaminant, purge inevitable.  Safety measures disengaged.”

Both of the men looked at each other for a moment and then there was a sound like a lighter firing up and they both slowly looked back up to the nozzle.  There was a small pilot flame at the front of the nozzle.

Mutt paralyzed in place, eyes wide with shock and fear.  Jarred managed to drag Mutt out the door right before the flames engulfed the room.  Jarred forced Mutt’s body down to the ground and proceeded in his own stop, drop, and roll.

Apple’s computer was slung in a side bag and as she helped Jarred to carry the gibbering Mutt out of the immediate vicinity.  Surely, security personnel would be arriving soon.

Mutt, Jarred, and Apple were at the rendezvous point for only a minute or two, time to catch their breath, when a clacking sound alerted Jarred and Apple.  It didn’t sound like feet or shoes, more like the pad of a heavy security robot.

“Why in the hell do we keep finding ourselves running away all the time?  I feel like it’s all I ever do.”  Kayla spat out, “And what the hell is up with Mutt?”  Apple and Jarred tried to interject, but were tongue tied.

Jarred sighed with relief as Kayla bent to remove her tattered and broken high heels.  “He freaked out; I barely got him out of there as the shit hit the fan.”

“Weird.  Flashbacks I guess?”  Kayla said during a heavy exhale as a theory and shrugged her shoulders.

Apple finally got the chance to speak, “Let’s GTFOOH!”

The group made its way out of the sky scraper, avoiding the security response.  They watched from a ground car as red and blue flashing lights filled the skies around the sky scraper greenhouse levels.  Instead of travelling to their normal meeting place, Apple drove the group outside of downtown and to the edge of the suburbs.

Apple pulled the car up along the paved concrete that formed a vast flat barrier to the massive greenery that was the city limits.  They could barely see the Shenandoah Mountains in the soft moon light.

Apple turned the key in the ignition and got out her laptop, turning on multi-frequency white noise, “sup?”

Apple looked back over her shoulder at the distressed Mutt and the calmly breathing Jarred.  Kayla’s gaze followed Apple’s.

“Are you all right Lt?”  Jarred emoted to Ness Mutt as his hand landed on Mutt’s shoulder empathetically.

Mutt shrugged the hand aside and muttered something inaudible.

Kayla fully turned around in her seat, “Okay, speak up, what’s the deal?  What happened with you back there?”  She stared intently at Mutt, still waiting for an answer, “You know, when we are in the shit like that, we are relying on you to be the type that stands strong when others are weak.  What’s the deal?”

Mutt started crying, tears rolling down his cheeks, his choked up words were almost incoherent.  All three of the other car passengers tilted their heads to try to better hear his words.

Jarred gasped as he finally managed to put together the words and looked up toward Kayla and Apple.  He again tried to put a hand on Mutt’s shoulder to show him support, but the pathetic man nudged away from it again.  “He seems to be saying that his stories are all made up.”  Mutt nodded, Jarred continued, “so apparently he has never seen action and he obviously seems to have the nerve of a tormented house cat.”

Kayla stared at Mutt and just started to shake her head, in utter disappointment.

Apple did not have much of a reaction; she simply turned back to the car wheel and moved her hand to the ignition.

Jarred frowned at the reactions of Kayla and Apple and tried to yet again put a comforting hand on Mutt’s shoulder.

In response, Mutt collapsed down, his body limply hanging in the foot rest area of his seat, his whining and moaning dying down to a whimper.

“Srsly?” Apple started to turn the ignition key, but before the engine caught, Kayla put a hand on Apple’s.

Apple looked to Kayla and Kayla spoke up, ignoring the whimpering man, “So that is not all we have to share, one of us actually did something useful back there.”  As she said this, she looked into the rear view mirror at Mutt.  “I got some good bits of information out of Mr. Jones.  He is such a sicko.”  She shivered and shook her hands.

Jarred did have to admit to himself that Kayla looked pretty nice in the sultry outfit she was still wearing.  She looked uncomfortable in such a dashing, dressy style, though he thought that almost made her seem the innocent, attractive type.

Jarred shook his head rapidly to clear the thoughts and get back on the topic of Gary Jones, “Is he the worse for wear now?”

“Nope, except for a few bruises and a slice on the hand, he’ll live,” Kayla was quick to respond to leave no doubt that she did not murder him.  “While he was the CEO of Walls Corporation, he personally oversaw some work that is not in the corporate records.  Looks like a full room server install with maximum physical and virtual security algorithms.  With cry baby over there, there is no way we could hope to break in to that server room.”

“Not IRL anyway,” Apple added as her head leaned back and she smiled with satisfaction.

Kayla looked at the young girl quizzically and moved on, “There is something important about whatever is on that server, something specifically put in place for the Oathed Technocrats.  It seems to be some sort of byway for their intranet to move data out onto the internet or some computer mumbo jumbo.”

Jarred could see that Kayla felt awkward by the technical complexity, “I think it may be about time that you discovered the virtual world, Kayla, and I know just the teachers for you.”  He patted Apple on the forehead as her head leaned far back across the front seat headrest.

“Ugh, and be one of those gamer slash addict types.  Well, well, we’ll see.   Maybe you two can pull off an infiltration without me,” Kayla was trying to piece together plans and leadership in her head in real time while conversing; it was not easy.

Having discussed future efforts and the fate of their brief Resistance cell member, Ness Mutt, Apple finally turned the key.

As Apple pulled her car into its parking space in the basement levels of her home sky scraper, a curious news report played via her streaming radio, “Kal Killmon here, wealthy industrialist, Gary Jones, was found dead in a nearby greenhouse, apparently poisoned with a complex toxin.”

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So – Huzzah! – another book with a great story and some fantastic artwork. It is also, by the way, our first novella – so pick yourself up a copy and support Nevermet Press by spending a couple hours in Avalon. You’ll find young Abe Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and Edgar Allan Poe trying out why they were kidnapped by a time traveling cowboy, and how the heck are they going to get back home by dinner time! Yeah… it’s made of awesome.

Let us know what you think – we are exploring publishing other novellas and full-length novels over the next year and would love your feedback.

Cheers — Jonathan.

Across the room, his Automaton, Ez-24, observed him cautiously, for he had been exerting himself with this experiment for over a century. Ez-24 wished with all his programmed sentiments to assist his master. Yet, a part of his central system advised him that Joshua-52 had to brawl his way through this by himself. For the time being, Ez-24 resolved to maintain the spaceship as it flashed at the speed of light through multiple dimensions beyond the space-time continuum.

A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead and Joshua began to fight for his breath. He scrolled his way through several of the million holographic controls that ornamented the gleaming panels and the space before him. His cerebral search engine purred as it sifted through hundreds of millions of volumes of data. The intense effort in his intelligence systems made it burdensome for him to maintain both feet on the ground. His sleek highly mechanized apparatus and various associated gadgets and contrivances began to throb with vast amounts of whirring data. The information-storing particles in the air around him buzzed and whirled and vibrated. All around him, the towering platinum walls of the spacecraft began to rattle as the humming machines began to process the latest input. Sources of ultraviolet light flared on and off, illuminating and blackening the metallic chamber as it quivered.

He gazed into the aperture of the spacecraft at the untold specks of stars that stretched before him, swelling into the black vastness of infinity. Suddenly it all flashed before his eyes: the very first time he’d loaded a scientific volume, the very first time he’d journeyed through a wormhole, his earliest inventions… He had spent his childhood questioning others about the purpose of their species, about the fate of the macrocosmic universe and the ultimate purpose of the various spheres and branches of science. Some mocked him, but others recognized his uniqueness and were in awe of his singular mind. On his world, the populace was apt to leave the machines to do the revolutionary thinking, but Joshua-52 did it all himself.

The machine before him set off an alarm and it happened. The immense spacecraft came to a halt and hovered in the midst of the totality. Each and every throbbing gadget in his vicinity froze. The whirling, humming, and throbbing instantaneously diminished. Just like that, after a century of downloading information into his central intelligence and processing it, he had reached his deepest and most intense desire. There, before his eyes, unfurled the Answer – the Solution – the Remedy to everything.

It was the answer that his species had been searching for within this seemingly infinite universe ever since they began to stand upright; the answer to a series of questions that had set off many of the most astute minds to move earth, wind and mountains, along with the rest of the universe in order to uncover. Here before him was an intricate equation that scientists had been hunting for over fifty thousand years…A theory that expounded and elegantly explained the Ultimate Truth.

Joshua-52 had unlocked a door to the comprehension of all existence. He had produced a theory that would not only elucidate the true properties of the innumerable forces, particles and enigmas of nature but also predict all of their individual and collective fates. This equation before his very eyes would give an explanation of each and every aspect of all dimensions and forms of reality. It would be the final answer in totality: it was, in essence, the Theory of Everything.

Joshua-52 pondered upon the very first of his kind—the humans as they were called back then—who first began their quest for such an equation. It was their seeking for the ultimate solution that had caused them to uncover the very first attributes of the universe. It was this that had led them to extend their mighty civilizations across the universe, colonize other galaxies and scrutinize hyperspace, parallel dimensions and hidden realities. They had journeyed through time and literally moved mountains and earths in order to predict the fate of the majestic cosmos. They wired supercomputers into their organs of intelligence and hooked up complex electric contraptions to over seventy percent of their anatomy. All this was with the aim of a greater brainpower to uncover the riddles of infinity. They had scrutinized the most minute of particles, digging deeper and deeper into the various dimensions of creation in order to comprehend its fundamental forces. For eons, their philosophers and scientists had poured their minds into unveiling the ultimate truth about the universe.

It was as if an invisible being had abruptly smacked Joshua-52 in the face. His species had moved forward in mighty leaps and bounds in search of this equation and now it was right before his eyes. What would become of them? What would become of their intense desire for knowledge; what would become of their compulsion to seek; what would happen to their boundless inquisitiveness? Terror unfurled itself in the remnants of humanity that was left in Joshua-52. He sensed his abdomen churn for the very first time. It had been eons since his kind had panicked.

If Joshua-52 was to reveal the elegant equation that was the ultimate key to understanding everything, then all pondering and seeking would cease. They would be presented with the ultimate answer, solution and remedy to each and every past, current, and future enigma of the cosmos. Knowing everything, there would be nothing left to hunt for. There would be no more questioning, no more wondering and no more nourishment for their curiosity. Most crucially, they would no longer flourish as before. It was as if the universe had finally cornered them, with nowhere to flee to.

Joshua-52 had unfastened a door that billions before him had failed to. He was staring through the open door at the purpose and fate of reality and existence.

Joshua-52 slammed the door shut and walked slowly away.

Dead Iron by Devon Monk is the first book in The Age of Steam series. A seamless blend of magic and old west steampunk it’s an absorbing read, told in a true storyteller’s voice. This is not meant to be read at a breakneck speed but rather savored for its lyrical rhythm. The setting, a quaint town called Hallelujah, Oregon, is a character all by itself. I could see, smell, and taste the dust billowing along the trails. But the book’s true strength is in the flawless character development.

Told from various points of view, the reader is treated with rare insight into the passions that drives each character forward.

At the forefront is our reluctant hero, Cedar Hunt.  A cursed man, he is living in the shadow of guilt over his brother’s death. Written with depth, the reader is at once drawn into Cedar’s plight. He possesses great brevity and a will to help others find justice, despite his own personal battles. When he overhears the blacksmith’s son has been taken in the middle of the night, he offers his services to find him. The search doesn’t prove easy, as he is thwarted at every turn.

Mae Lindson, a witch with deep-rooted magic in her blood and troubles of her own, senses her husband’s demise and sets out on a journey to find his killer. But this doesn’t come without a price. For what she will need to confront the killer rests with the Madder Brothers, a curious lot who one isn’t certain if they are to be trusted. They seem to hold in their possession the precise devices and instruments that she needs, though their fee and the favor requested is questionable.

There are a host of other characters to liven up the town such the vibrant Rose Small, the enigmatic Shard Lefel and Mr. Shunt, and the soulful Jeb.

An underlying tension is present throughout each page of the book. A foreboding sense of Strange. This Strange is a powerful entity that brings ruin to anyone who comes crosses its path. Along with the Strange are the endless secrets that are discovered, and like being caught in a spider’s web, each of the characters become entangled within it.

The dialogue is thought-provoking and arresting. Every word written is for a reason. The events that unfold come together with a climactic ending that left me breathless. Much of Dead Iron is steeped in magic, but Steampunk enthusiasts will appreciate the inventive steampunk elements sprinkled throughout.

Devon Monk is also the author of the popular Allie Beckstrom series. Stop by her website, Devonmonk.com, to stay updated on the next book in The Age of Steam series, Tin Swift. The sequel is scheduled for release on July 3rd, 2012. I look forward to the continuing story of Cedar Hunt and the cast of characters I’ve come to know from Dead Iron.

What scares your PCs? I mean, what truly scares the bejeezus out of them?

RPGs are filled with scary creatures. As a DM, you have an obscene amount of riches when it comes to adversaries that would send most humans in the real world running in the opposite direction, their pantaloons a little less dry. In the relative safety of the gaming table PCs see these types of baddies day in and day out. At some point, players become immune to the scariness that is a dark creeper or an Orcus underpriest.

Even death doesn’t hold much fear factor for PCs, most of the time. Sure, people can get really attached to their characters, but sometimes the excitement of building something new and shiny can prompt suicidal tendencies at worst,  or reckless behaviour at best. This is a challenge to any DM who is building adventures three to four sessions (or more) ahead of time, based on the assumption that his current set of players will make it through in good enough shape to carry on.

In light of these challenges, it seems to me that this is where the great DM shines. When mechanics, tools and saturation leave your PCs feeling untouchable, context becomes king. Choosing the proper background music as your group investigates a haunted house, dimming the lights or going by candlelight as they delve into the catacombs of a long-deceased king, or simply using the proper words to describe a dark, foreboding forest  can do a much better job of immersing your players into the environment.

Loss of control is another tool in your fear arsenal. As an example, the whirlpool trap in Keep on the Shadowfell was a terrifying experience for my PCs when two of them fell victim to it. For those who have never played KotS, a trap triggers a force wall and confines those stuck within to a 6×4 area as water rises to become a whirlpool. It thrashes the PCs against the walls, leaving them powerless to do much.

Luckily for my players, they figured out how to disable the whirlpool creating device. They looked relieved to have merely survived the encounter. It went beyond fear for their character’s lives – they were having a human reaction to the loss of control in a given situation, and they felt vulnerable and more importantly – fear had shaken their confidence.

Here’s one thing you need to be real careful about: integrating your players’ real life phobias. My fiancée, who is also a player at my table, has a real fear of spiders. Sure, I could build an encounter full of eight-legged foes and describe it to a “T”, hang Hallowe’en-style spiders over the table  and make her truly uncomfortable. Is that the point, though? I’d argue that making her squeamish using something that really terrifies her would wreck the illusion, and probably make it a gaming session she’d rather forget. It’s a fine line, I know. My advice: find the things your players fear, rather than things that make them uncomfortable.

How much does fear factor into your DM style? What methods have you used to instill fear in your players? Alternatively, can you share the instance where as a player you felt the most fear?

Go to sleep (By CE Zacherl)

A set of guttural laughs punctuated the late night silence.  The stillness of the air was given a wafting cigar smoke addendum.  The swishing of rocks on glass added percussion to the laughter.  The shiny plate of Representative Arthur Bachman titled the setting of the late night meeting.

Jarred listened only half heartedly at first, still thinking of his last date with Kayla.  She was a convincing woman.  After all, she drove into his head that he should ‘keep his ears open’ while working late in the night.

So here Jarred was.  Stereotypical spy tales always showed the spy masquerading as this stereotypical job that Jarred enjoyed doing day in and day out.  The only awkwardness was that janitorial work was Jarred’s primary duty, and the spying was just something he was doing on the sly.

The voice from the office carried into the hallway.  “I was a little surprised.”

The other voice in the office responded.  “A director from the FDA?”

“Those guys are usually blinded, their heads are so far up your asses.”

“Well, this one wanted to get tossed away with no key to the gate.”

“The other Oathed Technocrats will owe us a favor if things keep going this way.”

“That would be unexpected, but it wouldn’t be turned away!”

Jarred perked up and nearly pushed on the mop so hard that it slid out of his grip.  He barely caught the edge of the wooden handle before it tumbled to the ground and drew the attention of the office residents.  Kayla would want to know about this.  Either the congressman or the one he is talking to are part of the Oathed Technocrats.

And after Jarred walked out of hearing range, Representative Bachman said to his associate, “The resistance has already started to do its part, they spliced that intranet.”  He audibly filled his lungs to capacity with the sweet cigar smoke.

Kayla and another young member of the resistance, Wendell, followed Jarred into the levels of the skyscraper that were off limits at this time of night.  Jarred’s key card let him in at all hours to do his cleaning duties, though usually his trips were solitary excursions.

The two followed Jarred’s cues, who knew the guards’ patrol patterns fairly well.  Jarred also knew the staff that tended to work into the night and when those people normally went home.

At two intersections, they waited for employees to pass out of sight, and one other Jarred was forced to improvise a distraction.  The three of them arrived at Representative Bachman’s office.

Fortunately for the crew, congressmen were so old school, they still used a lot of hand written devices to keep track of their work, including calendars.  Rifling through the Representative’s appointment book revealed the guest he met with the previous night: Mr. Gary Jones.

Evidence under Representative Bachman’s desk revealed more.  Unless there was some very kinky hanky panky, it was obvious that the two men were not alone, the night they met.

Even in this situation, the revelation took Jarred’s mind to places it shouldn’t go.  It was drawn back to reality by a low buzzing in his ear.

Apple spoke to them via small wifi receiver ear buds, “You’ve got adds! OAO.”

Kayla and Wendell looked to Jarred for clarification and he barely whispered, “Adds…  Incoming people.”

They heard whistling and heavy clacking footsteps of… business casual loafers, rather than combat boots.  Jarred ducked behind the desk while Wendell and Kayla went to opposite sides of the door.  Kayla flipped to the section of the appointment book for today and blanched.

Representative Arthur Bachman entered the office.  His whistling continued up until the moment that Kayla stepped in front of him, and right before he could speak, Wendell wrapped one big arm around his throat and put him in a head lock.

Kayla got close up to the face of Rep. Bachman.  “Well well.  You’ve come for your appointment.  How nice.  How about we refocus your meeting to a new topic tonight?”

Bachman was making a strange hacking sound, Wendell eased his arm back a bit.  It then became apparent, Bachman was laughing.

“Resistance members I assume?  Or are you some petty trans-humanist terrorists looking to further the greater human condition?”  He smiled and then wretched as Wendell tightened the head lock again.

Kayla launched into a deluge of questions as Wendell loosened his grasp and let go completely.  In an instant, a woman shimmered out of nothingness to Bachman’s left flank.  She was wearing a strange, reflective looking outfit, and she held a massive dirk.

The scene was too chaotic to focus on the magically appearing woman as Bachman took a step to her side and Wendell collapsed to the ground, the back of his head and shoulders sliding off in a different direction from the remainder of his body.  Blood was absent for almost a split second and then started to fill the doorway.

“Holy fuck!”  Kayla looked on in shock.  Jarred was frightened.

A super loud buzzing sound pierced both Jarred’s and Kayla’s ears.  It was Apple.  “GTFO!”

Jarred summoned all the strength he could muster.

“Looks like I’ll be asking the questi…” Bachman started but was interrupted by the office chair flying toward him from across the room.

The dirk carrying woman stepped in front of the congressman as the lights to the room went out.  Jarred thanked Apple for her quick cutting of the power.  He grabbed Kayla’s arm and they both leapt over the body of Wendell.  Their shoes were slick with blood.

The initial move down the hallway was a slide rather than a step.

Jarred turned one way and pointed the way towards the exit, “I’m supposed to be working tonight.  Head that way.”

Kayla nodded, still in shock.

Jarred just went round the corner and Kayla took her first steps towards the exit when one of the security guards stepped between her and freedom.

She did not have long to think and not long to react.  That was probably a boon, in her state of shock, adrenaline forced action.  Instinct was there and so was her training.

The man was bigger than her, not a monstrosity, but certainly large enough to be a security guard.  He reached out with his stunner as he saw her rounding the corner, but her hand was faster than his arm.  The stunner did go off into the far wall, but her pointed hand jabbed him in his unarmored throat.

As the guard leaned over, dropped the stunner, and grabbed his throat, Kayla’s knees cracked up into the man’s crotch.  He started to keel over and Kayla finished him off with a double elbow to the back.

Jarred breathed heavily and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his towel.  He pushed his cart out of the closet, and trying to look casual but he simply panicked from all the chaos going on.

“I would have liked to question one of them.  I suppose a post mortem is the best I’ll get tonight.”  Bachman pressed out the wrinkles in his suit.  “Give the specialists a call.  Oh and call that Detective who arrested the FDA director.  He might prove useful.”

Detective Tyrone Higgins entered the skyscrapers political chambers.  That’s strange.  There was a streak of blood headed in and out of the janitorial closet.

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“Is she alone?” Her lips trembled a little, “Is she happy?” David closed his eyes and pretended to meditate for a few seconds. When he opened them it was with a small, reassuring smile.

“She was never alone. And she is very happy.”

David could sense the grieving couple’s relief as he walked them to the door of his office; a clean, soothingly colored room with a few candles interrupting otherwise spotless surfaces. What he had told them had been a lie, but it was a kind lie. They could remember this comfort long after their friends and family stopped awkwardly mentioning the little girl, thinking that the parents shouldn’t be reminded of their loss. As if they wouldn’t think about her every day, forever. It was a lie that was meant to ease their pain, and David was glad he had done it.

A soft tapping on the office door came a moment later, and David expected to see the parents again, coming back for something. Instead a young woman stood on his doorstep, and she looked nothing like his regular clients. Glossy, jet-black tresses cascaded down her back in an artful tousle. Huge, sparkling dark eyes, fringed by an improbable number of lashes, looked out from absolutely flawless mocha skin that shone with a soft radiance of vitality and beauty. A queer little smile played with the corners of her incredibly full, glossy lips giving her a look that was half amused, half insolent. She came to a height with David at almost six feet, and her build could have been featured in any number of magazines. She wore khaki cargo pants, a closely fitted burgundy sweater, and shearling boots. David simultaneously loved and hated the look of her. He furrowed his brow in an expression of suspicion,

“Yes?”

“Mr. Abraham? My name is Hope and I am here to ask you a few questions about Aiden.” David groaned internally, even as his skin began to feel prickly as a cold sheen of sweat sprang up in an instant. It had been years, but every now and then some up-start reporter, paparazzi freak, or psych student tracked him down, cornered him and asked him a bunch of horribly probing questions about his son’s disappearance. He hated this. Almost more than anything.

“I have nothing to say to you,” David said firmly, as he started to close the door. He could hear a ringing in his ears. He couldn’t go through this again. Not right now. Not after this morning’s session.

“What if I asked you if you would like him back?” Hope said almost nonchalantly, as if she had these sorts of conversations on a routine basis.

“What?” David hissed through the mostly closed door. “What did you say?” Hope smiled that insulting little smile.

“Do you want me to bring Aiden back? Maybe tomorrow? I could drop him off here at your office…”

“Young lady,” David said in his most condescending tone, regardless of the fact that she could not be more than 5 years his junior, “My son has been dead for seven years. This conversation is offensive and ridiculous. You are a liar, and you are not welcome here. Goodbye.” And he started to shut the door again. Hope stuck her foot in it.

“Oh, I am not a liar, Mr. Abraham. That is one thing I have never been. I know you don’t believe me, sir, so I have prepared a little demonstration for you. Watch the news tonight, at your usual time. After that, we can really talk.” And with that, Hope withdrew her foot, pivoted, and walked off quickly down the sidewalk.

#

A door was open in David’s mind, and he could not see what lay beyond it. He was dreaming: an agony that came to him in endless variations, where he was surrounded by the pieces of everything and everyone he loved and he could not find a way to make them stick together. But the door was new, and it didn’t belong. David started to walk towards it.

#

“…coming to you live from St. Lucy’s Hospital, where a six year old girl was found huddled on the floor in the hospital’s morgue.” David jerked awake. What time was it? Had he turned the TV on? The cheerful blond reporter continued in her best tone of shocked conspiracy, “We are getting a lot of conflicting information, but a moment ago we were able to speak with Stan and Kendra Pearson, who are claiming to be the little girl’s parents. They told us that their daughter, Jemma, was struck by a drunk driver on the sidewalk outside of their family’s suburban home yesterday morning. She was rushed to St. Lucy’s where she was declared dead on arrival.” The camera cut to a clip of a middle aged couple standing outside the hospital in the snow, ringed by a small group of reporters and cameras. David blinked a few times as recognition sank in. It was the couple he had met with that morning. “It’s a miracle!” The woman declared to the camera, with equal parts awe and ferocity, “We can’t wait to take Jemma home.” The blond reporter came back on as fresh snow started to soften the view. A few pedestrians walked back and forth on the sidewalk behind her. “We have been told that the little girl is being treated for shock but is otherwise healthy. The hospital has declined further comment at this time.” David felt a chill creep over him as he watched a tall woman with long black hair and shearling boots enter the shot. She looked right at the camera; no, right at David and the corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk. David knocked a stack of papers and a coffee cup off the table in his haste to hit the power button.

#

A door was open in David’s mind, and he could see a cold light beyond it. As he stood in the dark he felt a little hand reach up and grab his own. David held on tightly.

#

A series of sharp knocks brought David to his feet. Morning light streamed through the blinds with golden-red intensity. David wiped a sleeve across his mouth and tried to smooth his rumpled clothing. He wasn’t a morning person. Groggy, he walked to the door, trying to piece together how to say something coherent.

The woman who stood on his doorstep wore an expression that would curdle milk. She had short, well groomed hair, business make-up and jewelry, and a crisp green suit under an immaculate wool trench coat. David felt like a slob standing next to her. “David Abraham?” She began. It wasn’t really a question, “I’m Kendra Pearson’s sister. I’m here to get her money back.”

“Um… What?” David knew it wasn’t the best response, but his brain was still half asleep. He needed coffee and a shower.

“Kendra Pearson’s money.” Each word was enunciated with condescending perfection. “I want it back.” Right, unhappy family member of a customer. David tried not to actually rub his eyes as he willed himself into the standard speech. “If Ms. Pearson is unhappy with the services rendered then she will need to submit…”

“Services rendered?” She cut David short. There was venom in the words. “Services Rendered?? Tell me, Mr. Abraham, how could you have rendered your services of communicating with Jemma’s spirit if the child wasn’t DEAD?” She was shouting now. David flinched. Bystanders were starting to stare. “You are a fraud and a predator. You took advantage of my sister’s grief, and you conned her. How can you live with yourself, you incredible jackass?” David knew the question was meant to be rhetorical, but he had to answer. He just had to.

“I was trying to help her! I wanted to help her feel better…”

“Oh, that’s rich.” She bristled, “The conman with a heart of gold. Tell me, does it give you an ego trip to manipulate people? Or do you just love how easy it is to get money out of the grieving?”

“That isn’t why I do it!” David could feel his anger rising. How dare she. How dare she say that to him. “It isn’t about me and it isn’t about money! It was never about me!”

“Fuck you.” She turned and started briskly down the steps, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” He watched her go, shivering. Bystanders quickly resumed walking, and none of them looked at David.

#

A door was open in David’s mind, and the world around him seemed fleeting and unimportant. Hope’s full, silky voice came to him through the cold. He turned to see her standing a few feet away, snowflakes in her long, black hair.

“Why don’t I come inside and we can get started?”

David stood in the open doorway, in the cold morning light.

“You brought that little girl back, didn’t you?” He felt like an idiot for asking, but he wasn’t sure if he was an idiot for thinking the answer should be “No” or that it would be “Yes.”

“Of course, Mr. Abraham. It’s what her mother wanted.” Hope smiled at him again. It didn’t warm him.

“You told me that you never lie.”

“I can’t,” Hope replied conversationally, “But most people spend too much time asking me questions.”

“I have two more.” David could feel his nose start to sting and his throat constrict. The winter scene began to blur as he choked out “Is he alone? Is he happy?” Hope’s smile vanished. She replied carefully, reluctantly.

“He was never alone. And he is very happy.”

“Then that is all I could ask for.” David replied. He firmly shut the door.

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As Sunny learns about her magical powers and the Leopard People, she is accompanied by three others—Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha—who are all close to her in age and also Leopard People. Although the other three teenagers have been aware of their magical nature for much longer than Sunny, the four characters all learn about the magical world even as Sunny is receiving her first exposure to things that the others already know. Despite their experience in the world of the Leopard People, the other teenagers and Sunny are sent on several tasks that none of them have done before, and they get to attend a large festival that is a new experience for them all. Ultimately, the elders of the Leopard People give the group a mission, which they believe that only these four teenagers can accomplish.

While Okorafor’s fantasy world is very much rooted in the real world, many readers will be unfamiliar with the Nigerian setting. Okorafor does a wonderful job of describing Nigeria and the world of the Leopard People to keep her readers from being confused. This sometimes takes the form of the more experienced characters explaining things to Sunny, and other times these things are simply mentioned almost as an aside. All of her characters are nuanced and feel like a person you could really meet and interact with. The four teenagers, in particular, seem like very realistic depictions of four different people with varied backgrounds coming together as friends.

My only complaint about Akata Witch is that the pacing felt off to me. There is quite a bit of self-discovery necessary for Sunny as she learns about her magical abilities and the world of the Leopard People. This comes with plenty of conflict, but I was very surprised when I realized I had only about fifty pages left in the book, and the group had not yet embarked on their mission. I half expected that the main conflict would not be included in this book, and saved for a sequel instead. Without giving away too much, I can say that the conflict does come, and then is dispatched rapidly—perhaps more rapidly than I would have liked to see it handled. I felt as though the conflict should have come earlier, or at least taken more time for the teenagers to deal with it.

Akata Witch has won several awards already, and is currently a nominee for the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, as a part of the 2011 Nebula awards nominees. Nnedi Okorafor’s website can be found at http://nnedi.com/.

People use the tunnels to avoid the winter snows.

Running under the Ouroboros University are tunnels, and at least one tunnel touches every building on the campus. Naturally, they have their own story…

What People Know

Characters learn more about the system of tunnels with the right skill checks. Appropriate skills include Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (history) and Knowledge (local).

DC 14: A system of tunnels runs under Ouroboros University and at least one tunnel touches every building on the campus. Most of the tunnels are clean and well lit, with “You Are Here” maps at junctions.

DC 14: Local Winters are brutal and the summers punishing – people employ the tunnels to move around the campus because they are dry and remain at a fixed temperature.

DC 14: Smoking of “the tobacco” is illegal on campus but goes on in the tunnels.

DC 14: A popular rumor states the tunnels spells out a dire message or possible a rune of terrible power.

DC 16: The exceptions to cleanliness and well-lit areas are dead ends, stacked with files, records and similar documents that smell moldy. Walls here are often home to graffiti.

DC 16: Students enter the tunnels to study, as the network offers places to do so in relative peace… assuming they are not too close to the Financial Aid Office or William Laud.

DC 16: Some tunnels date to the time of the first chapel, an older version of the city destroyed by a war the nation narrowly won.

DC 18: There are three or four “chambers of tragedy” in the tunnels, rooms dating to the old city during a war. Here survivors waited for inevitable death and carved final messages into the walls.

DC 18: Some tunnels come from an aborted plan to extend the city’s sewer system. The area created did not tie into the existing sewers.

DC 18: As many dead ends and cul-de-sacs are stacked high with publications from professors, papers from graduate students and similar documents, people say the tunnels are still full of crap.

DC 20: The tunnels do not spell out anything in particular.(1)

DC 20: At select points, locked iron doors lead from the tunnels to the actual sewer system, “private” tunnels for neighboring houses and the Necropolis.

DC 20: Among the final messages in “chambers of tragedy” are last letters between lovers, from parents to children and children to parents and so forth. Some of these messages reference the “parene utre.”

DC 22: The tunnels are among the few places where a meeting away from the watchful eyes of the owls is possible.

Neighborhoods

Tunnels passing under a particular college possess the tone of that college. The tunnels under the theater are home to racks of costumes, make-up stands (in use during a performance on one of the stages above), cabinets of props and masks and so forth. Passages under the seminary are whitewashed, stylized images of particular saints and angels adorn the walls, prayer mats are neatly stacked in corners and holy symbols adorn each door lintel. Even if the “You are Here Signs” and switched about or gone, ample clues show under which college a tunnel passes (Perception DC 14 to pick section of university, Perception DC 20 pick the specific tunnel).

Iron gates stand between the seminary, theater, wizard’s college, fighter’s school and general trade school sections of tunnels. The gates are usually open. Even if closed, and locked, they do not strand anyone in the tunnels, given the access to the buildings.

Encounter Tables

Roll a d20 and consult the below table when the party spends an hour in the tunnels to determine a random encounter;

1. Students rooting through records.
2. Students studying.
3. Students (or faculty or staff members) smoking.
4. Maintenance staff fix leaks, plaster the walls, removing or place stacks of files and paint over graffiti.
5. Animate puppets doing battle when they think no one is looking.
6. Students from the fighter’s school battle with soft wooden weapons.
7. Children are playing games of hide and seek in the tunnels.
8. Someone has closed and locked the gates and changed the location of the “You Are Here” signs.
9. During rushing, for entry into a fraternity or sorority, students are sent naked the tunnels.
10. The corpse of a murder victim in an otherwise well patrolled a lit area.
11. People having sex.
12. Someone trying to set fire to a sack of records and books.
13. An imp rooting through paperwork for a contract that bound its master to service and which has since been lost.
14. Several (1d4) fire creatures of some type free basing on ice cubes.
15. People tagging the walls with graffiti.
16. Books flying and flapping around like bats caught indoors.
17. Indigents seeks shelter from extreme weather.
18. A befuddled professor who has lost track of their entire class.
19. An apparently mentally ill person who says they are “looking for a door.”
20. An apparently mentally ill person who says they are “looking for the well.”

Sure, we in North America just “sprung forward”, but I experienced something in my last D&D session that turned the clocks back years.

When an old friend and former D&D player started making noise about possibly joining our D&D session at the end of March, I was feeling pretty smug about the surprise we would spring on my group. Turns out the joke was on me, as he was simply laying the groundwork to show up on my birthday, ready to play with my regular Monday group.

I asked him to relay his experience for this blog. Also, I asked one my new D&D players to write about the events of that night, from his perspective.

Denis Gagnon, Halfling Monk-For-A-Night “Krigg Hicklestone”, Veteran D&D Player:

Several years ago I had the opportunity to start playing D&D again with a group of mature players, all of whom were 10 to 15 years my senior. I had given some thought to being the DM but was always reluctant, so when 4E came along it seemed like the right time to take the leap. To keep things simple I ran the first three pre-packaged campaigns and it went well. I struggled as a DM with the complexity, but I didn’t know any different. Once those campaigns were done I opted to be a player again. One of the veteran DMs, who was a player all through the three campaigns I ran, took the reigns and purchased a nice new adventure. It only took a few months before he lost patience with 4E and we switched over to Pathfinder. I played for a little while longer, but then last year I decided to take a break and I haven’t gone back.

Shortly after I quit playing, my high school friend (Théo, who lives 740 km away from me) decided to jump back into the world of D&D and started asking me for input and advice. I provided everything I could, including Keep On The Shadowfell to help him and the group ease into the world he was beginning to create. He proceeded to round up a group of players and the adventures began. I would get regular updates from him and one of the other players (another high school friend from the old group) on how things were progressing with the story as well as all the comic relief and interactions between the players. At this point I was getting a little jealous because my old group didn’t appear to have the same connection and level of interesting activities when I was a DM or a player. They frequently mentioned that I should participate in one of their sessions and my desire matched their willingness to have me join.

I kept looking ahead on the calendar to see when I could fit a 1500km round trip into my personal life. Finally, everything lined up and it just happened to coincide with Théo’s birthday. Letting the birthday boy know I was coming didn’t seem nearly as fun as making it a surprise. I told him I would be coming two weeks later which gave us reason to chat about creating my character and integrating with the rest of the group. I in turn worked with his fiancée (also one of the PC’s) to be at the house on his birthday and surprise him. The plan worked out spectacularly and was a huge success!

The highlight for me was after the surprise. Having the opportunity to meet the group, make one new friend (Rémi) and participate in an evening of D&D the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since high school. It dawned on me that my old group simply went from encounter to encounter systematically, using all the mechanical aspects of the game to move the story forward without using any elements of emotion and imagination that make a true D&D session come to life. For three too-brief hours I got to be a stoic monk helping a band of adventurers, one of whom was a halfling rogue who didn’t have the attention span required to appreciate my eloquent speeches (he would start whistling to himself after I’d say a few sentences – a brilliant and hilarious bit of roleplay).

It was an outstanding evening that I will not soon forget. Consequently, I am insanely jealous of the entire group, who have the spirit and sense of humour to make a great game incredible. All of the characters have come to life and leap off the pages of the table top encounters with wild gestures and reenactments – this is role playing at its very finest. I only hope now that I have the opportunity to return in the future to experience another three hours (or more) of the best game in town.

Rémi Savard, Regular Monday Halfling Rogue “Dolen Reevebed”

Playing D&D  requires many things (as in any other game), amongst which are imagination and suspension of disbelief. But above all else, I think, comes chemistry. When this group first got together in the Fall of 2011, it took us time as a group to develop that sense of belonging, of fitting together, but once we got the ball rolling there was no stopping us.
The fights got more organic as the mechanics became more familiar to everyone, the roleplay involved more interactions between player characters as we (and they) got to know each other better – this was D&D to a T.

Allow me a side-story. My wife makes a killer shepherd’s pie. At its core, it’s not the most elaborate meal – four, maybe five ingredients – but it’s good. I like it, anyway.
One day, being the adventurous cook that she is, she had the brilliant idea of introducing one, only ONE new element to it: curry powder.
At first, I didn’t quite recognize the smell emanating from the oven. “Shepherd’s pie”, she said. But it couldn’t be, could it? And I looked at it, and hell, it looked like a shepherd’s pie. It tasted like Shepherd’s pie. And yet… something was off.

That’s exactly what happened when, one night, a new player was introduced to the gaming session. I had never met the guy before. “Well,” I thought, “that’s gonna be different.” And it was.
Right off the bat, some fears form in the usual player’s brain, taking the shape of questions: How does he play? What character does he like to roleplay as? Will he fit in? Will he be a spotlight hogger?
And, I think, the most important one: How long will it take for us to learn to play TOGETHER, as this new entity, this new D&D – Modified Shepherd’s Pie Edition (look for it on the shelves soon!)?

Short answer to that last one: fast.

Aside from an unlikely lack of insight by our DM in adding a real jerk to the table, chances were we were going to get along (we’re good people). He was not a jerk; a real nice guy.
Once that new ingredient’s introduction had bid its time, once recovered from the Freudian Uncanny, it was “Game on, Baby!”. We quickly got to learn to work as a group again – faster than I thought we would.

Now that it’s behind us, I know for a fact that I’ll miss the player (and the character). Already, a chemistry was brewing. I’m also wondering if the next session will be clouded by a sense of « withdrawal », haunted by the ghost of this player’s short but impactful presence. It turned out very well, a lot of fun, really, and it could become some kind of handicap, perhaps.

I learned to love the Wife’s Shepherd’s Pie 2.0. This game night I loved right away.

Thank you, D&D curry powder, thank you.

From my perspective, it was one of the best birthday surprises I’ve ever received. On a personal level, I got to see an old friend who is dearly missed. On the gaming side, bringing in a guest star for a session really energized the group. How have your experiences with guest players gone? Do you think they add or hinder the playing experience?

Detective Tyrone Higgins, (Art by: C.E. Zacherl)

Of course, he didn’t feel his age.  Pharmaceutical technology brought the treatments.  They brought his body to a feeling of youth that people 50 years before could have only dreamed of.  Internally, he was youthful as well, but there were triggers in the brain that aged and could never be turned back.  He therefore, thought about subjects like a 70 year old and had the opinions similar to that of a 70 year old.

“Theresa, what are we dealing with here?”  Detective Tyrone Higgins as he stepped up from the hover car gingerly onto a support beam that was covered in cables and wires.

“One of the only possible junctions for the Oathed Technocratic intranet and the rest of cyberspace is here, Tyrone.  Whoever did this paid a large sum of money or made a friend with very sensitive information.”  Theresa spoke from the device on Tyrone’s arm.

“Theresa, thank you.  Now give me a minute to look around.”  Detective Higgins travelled a short distance down the support beam to the splicing box.  “We need to get a maintenance team here immediately, the damage has been done, but there’s no reason to leave this splicer here.”

As the hover car pulled away from the skies around the IT support beam, Tyrone watched replays from the holo projector on his gauntlet.

Theresa interrupted the broadcasts of the chase scene from two days ago.  A male voice came across the vocalizer on the gauntlet, “Doc Higgins.  A couple of my boys got somebod’ mi’ have sumfin to do wit your crime.”

As he walked along the ground level street outside of downtown, the condos all featured peering eyes through the blinds.  As he turned to gaze at each directly, the blinds quickly shut as if the houses themselves were blinking.

His destination was an alleyway between a condo building and a closed department store.  The wall was sprayed, as if carelessly with red spray paint.  The bits of teeth on the ground by the wall said a different story about the spray paint.

Tyrone’s eyes were drawn to the beat cops with extended batons and their victim, a youthful looking miscreant.  The miscreant was bruised and battered, evidenced that the ‘spray paint’ and teeth were his.

“I told your sergeant I wanted him in one piece!  I’ve got questions for him.  Fuckers.”  Tyrone said clearly and deliberately.

The two cops backed off and retracted their batons.  They moved back as if to leave the alley as the Detective passed them.

I’m not letting you boys get off that easy.  Tyrone put a hand on the tougher ones shoulder, “Take off your jacket.”  We’re supposed to be defenders of the peace, not brutal thugs.

The two cops exchanged glances, but they did not argue.

A few moments later, they left the detective and the miscreant in the alley, one complaining to the other about being shirtless.

Detective Tyrone Higgins shook his head and tossed the white under shirt over to the miscreant.  “You can use that to clot the bleeding.  It shouldn’t be too sweaty, from the complaints, I think I just ruined what is a very long shift to come for that pair.”

“Thanks.”  The brown spiky haired boy with the bloody mouth and the don’t beat me mum look responded.

Tyrone learned that his name was Mark and after chumming up to the boy a bit, learned that he was fairly liberal and hardly a street urchin.

Fortunately, the two beat cops already performed a pretty strong bad cop routine.  Tyrone’s good cop routine was so practiced, so pristine, it was like a shiny, new hover car.

Detective Higgins slipped the impressionable Mark a card and turned to leave the alley, going his merry way.

“Young and naïve boys will someday grow to be men, but not today.” Tyrone said as he lifted his gauntleted arm and allowed his VI to launch a drone the size of a fly.

Tyrone entered the local branch office of the Food and Drug Administration the next morning, after a long night of sleuthing.  He was followed by two uniformed police officers.

The local director was quite shocked when the three of them barged in on his meeting.  The others were promptly dismissed, but not without a great level of annoyance registering on the director’s face.

“You better have a damn good reason for busting in here like this.”  Bio enhancement and cyber modification fell under FDA jurisdiction and made the agency and especially its directors, quite bold.   The fact of the matter is that the FDA of 2049, and its directors, formed one of the most powerful agencies of the federal government.

“You’d better believe I’ve got a good reason.  Reason to believe that you are involved in anti-government terrorist activities.  I’ve got every right to lock you up, call in the military, and throw you into a deep and very dark hole.”  Tyrone smiled smugly.

The director quickly asked for an explanation as the cops escorting Tyrone flanked the director and cuffed him.

Tyrone gladly replied and started describing his previous day’s activities.  “Mark acted exactly as I expected, going right to a friend that would help the detective, that’d be me, uncover another bit of the mystery.

“The best news that I got out of the surveillance was that Mark’s friend, Ingrid, is a junky.  Not just that, but also the type of dope she was craving.

“Just brought her a bit of what she needed and the information flowed like the toys used to flow out of the brick and mortar stores at Christmas time.

“That is what brings me to your door.  Your screen name is the name used as the source on the inside providing this rogue cell with data.”  Tyrone nodded with the satisfaction of solving another crime.

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The Ruins of Noe, by Danika Dinsmore

In The Ruins of Noe, the sequel to her debut novel Brigitta of the White Forest, Danika Dinsmore outdoes herself in the crafting of this new book. All of the elements that made Brigitta wonderful continue on in this book. It is still just as magical and engaging as the first book, exploring the trials and struggles of the now adolescent protagonist. But the book also distinguishes itself from its predecessor with a darker tone and more mature themes that keep pace with Brigitta’s growth into adulthood.

The fairies of the White Forest rely on the intervention of the Ethereals, the invisible Ancients who help keep the elements in balance in the sheltered realm of the forest. But when the spirit of a dead Elder does not move on and a child is born without a destiny, the Elders who rule the forest realize that something has gone wrong. The Ethereals no longer intervene in their lives, and may not be able to protect the Forest.

High Priestess Ondelle decides to return to the ruined city of Noe, which was the home of the fairies until an apocalyptic event forced them to flee and take shelter in the White Forest. With her she takes Brigitta, who some believe to be the prophesied fairy who will help make things right. In Noe, many illusions the fairies had about the past are shattered. Fairies had been left behind in the flight to the White Forest and their survivors had built up two feuding kingdoms ruled by cruel tyrants.  Brigitta is soon alone and friendless in a strange world that would rather have her dead, forced to find a way to solve her problems alone.

As mentioned before, this turned out to be a darker tale than the first book in the series. In Brigitta of the White Forest, there were tense moments but Brigitta was able to solve problems in the end, so that life was returned to mostly normal in the White Forest. In The Ruins of Noe, awful things happen to some characters and are not fixed. By the end of the book many problems remain unfixed. While some of this is to leave room for future sequels, the tone of the book at the end is that there may not be solutions. And while the first book was about learning self-reliance and taking a step towards adulthood, the second book was about having to take on tasks before you’re ready and growing up fast.

In that manner this book also approaches an older audience than its predecessor. Brigitta of the White Forest had a very strong Middle Reader energy, where the story depended on making friends and solving problems. The Ruins of Noe begins to push outside of that towards “young adult” or “teen fiction.” The story has less obvious solutions, hints at a world more complex than previously realized, and begins hinting at a romantic storyline that will see more attention in later books.

I loved this book, despite the anxiety it induced as I worried about the fate of the characters. For young readers who have grown older since Dinsmore’s first book came out, this could be an excellent stepping stone as their tastes and maturity grow.

Blade Runner (courtesy of kk.org)

When I started to prepare for this story series, I was just getting my feet wet with twitter.  So, I decided, in order to promote The Trivium Proportion in an interesting way, I would reveal tidbits of the history.  I did this a single tweet at a time, one per day, for about a month before the first story was released.  Since, at the time, no one would have actually known what the posts were about, and I had very few twitter followers, the tweets were slightly useless.

Now that there are some people actually interested in the story, I thought I would provide the posts here for your pleasure.

Here are the posts, in order of release (more or less in their twitterized form):

December 21 2012 Apocalypse parties interrupted by announcement of medical breakthrough #2012 #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Jun2013 Congress,Key Military and Intelligence personnel are treated with the new mech tech #biotech #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Nov2014 Product Launch: Virta-Goggs@ by Walls-Wells Corp j-i-t for the holidays #virtualreality #shortstory #triviumproportion

Aug2015 #Riots #Protests breakout over med tech distribution #NDAA is used to #arrest #UScitizens for the first time #triviumproportion

Apr2018 India-Pakistani War begins.  Peace keeping forces, special forces deploy in both countries to secure WMD sites #triviumproportion

May2018 India-Pakistani War ends in catastrophe when commanders panic and utilize #WMD before they are captured #triviumproportion

Jun2018 #stockmarket plunges on fears of global #war and Walls-Wells Corp becomes the strongest stock to avoid the crisis #triviumproportion

Jan2019 Interview with Fred Walls, #CEO of newly split Walls Corp, the #richest man in the world. “#future of life is #virtual” #triviumproportion

Aug2022 #GMO crops create super #weed that takes over the farm lands, #congress acts too slowly to prevent #catastrophe #triviumproportion

Jul2022 Rural areas evacuated as the new weed grows rapidly out of control.  #Starvation and #riots take US by storm #triviumproportion

Jan2037 #Politics US Congress is dubbed the dynasty congress by popular media as the power stays within same hands #triviumproportion

2042 #urban #population equals nearly 100% of US total population, Harrisonburg, VA new #metropolis #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Dec2048 no new incumbents enter #congress, new #cyberspace control #legislation passes, blockades form #virtual #fiction #triviumproportion

You could even do the project and myself a huge favor by tweeting these silly lines yourself.  A couple of them go just slightly over the character limit, but I’m sure you can modify that accordingly.

I’d love to hear more comments from people with substance on what they really like or don’t like.  The story is planned through to conclusion, and as of now, Part 9 is just entering the editing phase.  Some elements could still be modified going forward from that based on your input!

Champagne Toast on the yacht (courtesy of flickr)

Now announcing, The Trivium Proportion!

Seth Rogan has already agreed to play Jarred Dobson.  Charlize Theron will hopefully be signing on to play the venerable Kayla Summers.  Finally, Zooey Deschanel may be the perfect choice for Apple Edelman.

It won’t be on the big screen, but getting the story onto television with such an all-star cast is such an amazing accomplishment.  David Phillips said, “My luck in such a short time just amazes me.  Here’s to a future of exciting possibilities.”  He said this as he raised a glass of champagne on his newly purchased yacht from the seven figures he was given for the initial contract.

The illustrator for the series, C.E. Zacherl, was overheard excitedly mentioning that he, “could now support his long desired methamphetamine habit.” When approached, he refused to confirm this comment.

One big fan, Tony Young, says, “I can’t wait to see Kayla come alive on the big screen!”

Look forward to more news coming soon on this exciting achievement.