That’s Not Supposed to Bend That Way . . .
1209 words | By Me

Jessica Hamdon was sitting at the restocked bar looking at the magically restored penthouse suite, a tall glass of orange juice in her hand as a chaser for the earlier champagne.

“Comfy?” Senator Jonathan Q. Tash VII asked, hugging her shoulders from behind.

“Mm, much. Thanks for the added gravity.”

“Sure. You ready to go?” he whispered in her ear.

“When?” she sighed.

He faced the tiny sensor over the corridor doorway. “What’s our present position, Hype?”

“Now departing Pad L 1 of Sky-One.”

“Excellent. Destination will be Titan.”

“Via?”

Surprised, Jessie spun around on the stool to face him.

He smiled at her bewilderment. “I think inertial—for the moment.”

“Compliance. Engaging main drives at this time.”

He kissed her brow. “How ’bout now?”

“I didn’t even feel it,” she whispered.

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Who’s fl … You mean, this thing flies itself?” she managed to squeak out.

In a mocked stance of dramatic horror, Jon stepped back from his love. “Hype! …And after I’d warned her.”

She looked nervously around the expansive lounge. “What?”

“Jessie,” the ship’s speaker replied. “It has been requested that you refrain from referring to me as a thing. I am a 1560 Starjammer of Exploration Class IX, with JQT Custom modifications that far exceed any in current existence. Further, this ship is controlled by the only free-thinking computer in current operation. Jessie. I think, therefore I am.”

She quickly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hyperion, it won’t happen again.”

“Thank you, Jessie.”

Jon reached across the bar for a bottle of amazingly aged scotch. “You were saying?”

She spun on him, her eyes viciously narrowing. “You lied to me!” she accused, aiming her deadliest finger at him, while he calmly sat and poured himself a drink. “Why?”

“During the inspection, the less you knew about Hype, the better.” He looked over to her. “I didn’t want you letting slip something that would be better left unsaid.”

“Like what?”

“Well, STCP for one thing.” He held up a hand, stopping her questioning. “I’m gonna give you a crash course in Hyperionism. First of all, lemme set the picture straight. Hyperion is a computer and an entity in his own right. Hyperion’s entire memory and function system is located in a crystal sphere of pure carbon. Diamond, if you will. His brain, weighing in at an excess of 500 kilograms.” Again he held up his hand, restraining her obvious need for answers. “I know, half a ton,” he nodded, watching the look on her face dissolve to pure disbelief. “Far and above anything you’ve ever heard of. Jessie, everything about Hype is far and above anything anyone’s ever heard of. He hasn’t even been built yet.” He waved an arm around the living room. “This, the ship itself, was constructed 173 years ago and purchased, used, by my father, but the Hyperion component that just chewed you out won’t be built for another 300 years.” He smiled. “Did I lose you anywhere?”

With her eyebrows arched in incredulity, she nodded her head. “How ’bout the beginning…?”

“Okay…”

“Wrong answer, Mister Superhero. He hasn’t been built yet? What kinda idiot do you think I am? Look, I came with you because—”

“That’s what the STCP does,” he cut in.

Her eyes dimmed. “Go on.”

“I need you to understand his origins.” He whetted his mouth with the scotch. “Space/time continual projection. That was my father’s greatest achievement. A projection of the space/time continuum held in stasis about the Hyperion Way. With controlled overrides, it freezes the ship in a field of non-existence, making the vessel irrelative to the surrounding fabric of space. All of it.”

She gave him a disinterested nod. “Fabric of space,” she repeated.

“Uh-huh. And when… You do know about space and fabric, don’t you?”

“A little from college, but I didn’t really get an understanding of it.”

“Well, not many do.” He waved his hand, excusing her lack of conceptual knowledge. “Trust me, it’s there. Now, when the requested spaceline/timeline falls into conjunction with the ship’s overrides, the STC projection is terminated, resulting in instantaneous space/time travel.”

Now, she was frowning.

“My father’s maiden test of the STCP was to a future space of Earth—the year 2593. As such, he returned from the future with Hyperion wired to the ship. He also returned with ideas for negative repulsion, antimatter projection, energy/matter conversion, fusion/fission interfacing, a total concept of atomic and molecular circuitry, matter/antimatter—”

“Wait! Wait!” Jessie stood, orange juice in hand, and walked to the middle of the room. “You’re sayin’ we could, in effect, travel to anywhere in the whole frickin’ universe?”

“Well, we’d have to know where we’re going… The coordinates are a kind of X Y Z grid of the fourth dimension. Sort of a T X Y Z, if you know what I mean. And it would have to be an area that could be evacuated. Wouldn’t wanna, say, materialize in a heavy liquid or solid—a region of excessive heat, like a star…”

“…And we could do this instantly?” She strolled back to the bar, contemplating the endless possibilities.

“Huh? Yeah,” he smiled, nodding his agreement. “Yes, we can.”

“You’re kiddin’! To any time?”

“Yep.”

“Crappies! Holy—crappies!”

“Hype? I do believe the lady’s impressed. Engage STCP for Titan, in continuity with now.”

“Yes, sir. Now holding in Titan passive geosynchronous orbit. Current DTG: 30 November 1845U, 2294, synchronized to ship’s-time.”

“Okay,” Jon said. “We’ll park and make planetfall in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Feeling somewhat stunned by Hyperion’s simplistic declaration, Jessie raised her gaze to the lounge sensor and sat back down. “What’s a—a DTG?” she asked in a grating whisper, her whitened face already registering that she knew the answer.

“It refers to a date/time group, Jessie,” Hyperion calmly explained. “To better associate us with current events, we have transported through space in continuity with now, meaning we have moved to a future location, one coinciding with a future location for the moon Titan. The period of 520 days was chosen as it is the average run time from Sky-One to Titan, in the current set of the planets, and for a vessel utilizing the 50,000-kilometer-per-hour repulsor system currently recorded for the Hyperion Way. We departed Sky-One at precisely 1845:18 Universal Time on 29 June 2293, Thursday evening. We arrived in Titan orbit 1 year, 5 months, and 2 days later, at precisely 1845:18 Universal Time on 30 November 2294, Friday evening.”

“…30 Novem …?” The glass of juice hit the floor, and a little table shot out from under the bar, attacking the mess with a fury. “…I missed a—a birthday…?” she mumbled.

Eight seconds later, Jessie was sitting, quietly watching the pocket-sized mechanical janitor. The device finished mopping up her minor spill, then shot out of sight under the bar. She brought her hand hp to rest it on Jon’s hand on her shoulder.

“I’m gonna need some classes for this flight,” she murmured.

“Oh?” Jon kissed her cheek. “I think that can be arranged. Hype?”

“The ship’s ready-room should suffice as a classroom,” the ship’s pilot suggested.

“Oh.” Thinking of her school days, she licked her lips in anxious thought. “Yeah, that’d be—just great….”

–

Clarification:
It is now June 11 of 2293, and after approximately 340 years of research and development, the Cydroid project reaches fruition. The end product is a new Jonathan Quinard Tash VII, retired senator from the great state of New Mexico, Namericorp (the political conglomeration of North and Central Americas). While finishing the main product (at his mansion in Manhattan, New York), the 156-year-old senator is stripped of his entire neural system, to be housed within a thoroughly autonomous computer, built as an exact replica of his former body.

Twist 1:
The book being worked on is somewhat Frankensteinian, but not as one might expect. Jon recovers from surgery with a bit of a problem. No, he is not a madman. He is an amnesiac and needs to learn who and what he is. An AI aid is linked with his new body, so gaining the necessary information requires simply asking the right questions.

Twist 2:
Jon learns he is now being tracked for the assassination of retired Senator Tash, son of the late President Jonathan Q. Tash VI. Naturally, he falls for the first pretty girl he meets, Jessica Hamdon, a security police officer working at the LaGuardia Intercorporate Air Authority. With the police closing in, he takes Patrol Officer Hamdon hostage, the only defense he could come up with in a second’s notice, and flees the state.

Twist 3:
Now hunting for Jon Tash is Law Enforcement Officer Larry Andersen, Jessica Hamdon’s rent-mate (no, not her “significant other,” just a rent-mate).

Twist 4:
The tables are unexpectedly turned when Jessie, amiably released by a recovering Jon Tash, is kidnapped again, now by Larry Andersen, who has designs of capturing the senator’s fleeing assassin, Jon, using his infatuation with Jessica as his bait.

The next page:
We now join Jon searching for his newfound love at Trinity Site. Jon has learned that Larry has taken Jessie to his old hideout (much more on this in the actual manuscript). Larry is under the impression he is now being pursued by the police for the latest kidnapping of Patrol Officer Hamdon. The place where Larry has taken her holds the somewhat ominous name of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), home for nearly 1,000 nuclear tests. Trinity Site, New Mexico, has been forever linked to the Nevada Test Site as the national historic testing landmark (ground zero) where the first nuclear bomb was detonated, thundering the dawn of humanity’s atomic age.

D. R. Spires

Happy Rebirth Day . . .
3013 words | By Me

           DATE TIME GROUP/LOCUS DATALINE
                     UNIVERSAL DTG:
                  . 11 19:21 Z JUN 2293
                  MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT DTG:
                  . 11 12:21 T JUN 2293
                  LOCUS:
                  . NAMERICORP
                  . NEW MEXICO 87102-855MMGCF+94
                   .. TRINITY SITE
                   .. TRINITY SITE QUADRANGLE
                    … NEW MEXICO-SOCORRO COUNTY
                   .. DISPOSAL ANNEX B
                   .. LAT +33.6726 X LON 286.4748
                  . WHITE SANDS PRIVATE ROUTE 13

Stepping back out into the daylight, Jon strode purposely toward his car. Rounding the corner of the lone, empty building, he slowed his pace, seeing another person approaching his Mercedes. It was a tall, thin man, moving as though curious of another’s unexpected presence. At the sight of his employer, Dr. Joyer Troose paused in mid-step. It took a moment for Jon’s own recognition to register.

“Joy?” he called out.

“Doctor Tash? Jon. Heaven’s name, what’re you doing way out here?”

“Well, I might ask you the same thing. You’re now with the Travers Anomalies Institute, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course, I am. VP of Oversight.”

The two met with firm, honest handshakes.

“It has been a long time, my friend,” Jon stated.

“Well, a few weeks,” Troose agreed.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“I was just following up on an old pet project.”

“Obscura Cogitationes Shelley?”

“Oh, you know that one, eh?”

“Secrets? Joy, what’s been going on?”

“Oh, nothing intentional. My project just happens to be a fundamental offshoot of—Shelley,” Dr. Troose hesitantly advised. “By the way, Jon, we did hear of your grandfather’s passing. Very tragic. I trust you received the package from Doris and me.”

Jon smiled, nodding to his old research physicist. “Ol’ Number Seven? Yes indeed. Thank you for your kind thoughts. Last I heard, his killer was somewhere in Pittsburgh.”

“Well, they’ve widened that scope out to as far west as Ohio,” the long-time acquaintance commented. “As I recall, the senator was a rather insightful fellow.”

“Thank you. So, Joy, what takes you so far from White Sands, and why do we finally meet in so desolate a place as this, in an empty desert parking lot?”

“Oh, it was a slow day, and I was perusing the network. I noticed a flurry of activity online regarding one Lawrence Andersen—an old acquaintance of mine.”

“Really. That flurry would have been me.”

“Ah-ha. And that would be the offshoot of Obscura Cogitationes Shelley I had mentioned—which is Doctor Larry Andersen.”

“And not dead.”

“Oh, no, sir, not dead at all. Well, to all outside eyes, he’s been dead for more than a decade, but no.”

“Outside eyes?”

“Yes. You see, at the time, it was all highly confidential, need-to-know, and all that. You see, our young Anderson was not so much a pet project of mine as he was for the late Doctor Travers.”

Jon nodded his understanding, casting an eye toward the heating sun directly overhead. “Let’s get in my car where we can sit and chat.” He winked the passenger door open for his old friend.”

“Obscura Cogitationes Shelley,” Joy murmured as he and Tash settled into the plush seats. “Thirteen years ago, Doctor Travers had a young associate, Doctor Larry Andersen—I thought he might have been a nephew or sumthin’, but not so. Well, not really positive about that…. It’s safe to say they were close. Now, jointly, the two of them had introduced a rather radical idea to The House of Representatives, something regarding the revival of a corpse.”

“Raising—the dead?”

“To put it as simply as possible, yes. The spark had been entirely Larry’s, but the text of his proposal piqued Isaac’s imagination to his very core.” Troose just had to chuckle at the memory. “He was so excited. The old boy even became an absolute pleasure to work with. They were using lab specimens, and it was working—to a degree, reviving certain animals. Those that had not succumbed due to catastrophic injury could often be taken care of during the initial 50 hours following expiration, umm—death. Beyond that, there seemed to be no hope at all. But they had isolated that 50-hour window. Can you imagine what that would mean for all the emergency rooms throughout the solar system?”

“That would be one hell of a patent.”

“Oh, indeed, sir.”

“So, it was successful,” Jon concluded.

“In the laboratory, yes. We got as far as lower primates in our research.”

“And you were a part of this research?”

“Yes, sir, I was. It was all on an intermittent basis, with me coming in on occasion and acting as a sounding board, a device from which both Isaac and Larry could bounce their ideas. Admittedly, some corporate resources had been utilized—honestly, misappropriated, I should clarify—but only because they existed nowhere else in the known universe, and this research was so vital, utterly ground-breaking.”

“Mm-hm.”

“It was all off-the-clock work, mostly at Isaac’s home.” He looked out the windshield at the building before them. “Later, we started coming out here.”

“I see.” Not really caring all that much about corporate transgressions, Jon was staring off into space, slowly nodding his head. “What of Doctor Andersen?”

“Mm, yes, that was—rather fortuitous, I suppose. The board of trustees had turned down funding for the extension of OCS—that’s Obscura Cogitationes Shelley—stating the research to be far too controversial.”

“I supposed as much.”

“Yes, well—you know Isaac. The man refused to give it up, deciding to fund the research on his own.”

“Expensive.”

Troose smiled at the comment. “Well, Doctor Isaac Travers was not a man without means by any stretch of the imagination. Remember, he had been a leading executive for the Tash holdings conglomerate for nearly a century and a half.”

“Yes, revered and respected at every turn. And that Blue Haven of his.”

“Oh, the yacht at the marina in Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. Yes, he was quite pleased with that boat, his personal ‘get away from it all’ vacation spot. Held onto it for maybe 50 years.” Troose raised his eyes to his employer. “Do you remember the explosion?”

“Explosion—in ’82?”

“Yes, ’82. We had to raze Building Three because of it. Blew out the back wall and cracked the foundation.”

“Yes, of course. Andersen was in that?”

“In it? It’s believed he may have caused it.” He quickly dismissed this accusation with the wave of a hand. “Erred judgments…. Nothing he could remember at all today.”

“My investigation seems to be taking a turn, Joy. Refresh me on that, would you? What all did the damage entail?”

“Well, the south side of Building Three and about half the quad out back.”

“People?”

“Sir? Oh, you really don’t remember?”

“Traumatic events tend to cloud old memories.”

“Yes, sir, they often do.” He allowed a bit of a smile. “An acute form of obscura cogitationes, I suppose?”

Jon chuckled. “Yes, I would have to agree.”

“As I recall, we lost 16 employees that day—including your nephew, Charles.”

“I see. What—exactly—caused the explosion?”

“We had been setting up an in-house virtual collider. Doctor Andersen was down in The Tombs at the control hub advancing the triggers, stepping them through one-by-one, all by hand. We’ve rerun the program a few hundred times since, trying to align the events. It appears the streams touched, creating a nodal point at event twelve, but young Andersen stepped through the error before it could be reported to the system frame for correction. The result was a mini-nuke—about a 250-pound yield.”

“Whoof.” Jon was again nodding his head. “That would indeed take down a wall,” he agreed. “And—Larry’s body?”

“Doctor Andersen?” He looked Jon in the eye. “Reported as never being found.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I recall even old Isaac getting into the hunt. You know he really did love that man—such a phenomenal mind. I don’t think any of us looked very hard, though. After all, he had been standing at ground zero.”

“Presumed, or perhaps a few meters from. If so, you probably coulda picked him up with a box of tissues.” Deciding it was time for a change of topic Jon, brightened his appearance. “So is the Nucleic Assembly Group still functioning?”

“Oh, yes. Doctor Travers had taken it over after the explosion.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“Huh.” JQT VII’s habitual use of the Martian vernacular was missed by the good doctor. “And?”

“Well, the Nucleic Assembly Group was primed…. Oh.” He gave Jon a wink of recognition. “Your grandfather was that way, changing uncomfortable topics without hesitation. However, to get back, it turned out that reports of young Andersen’s death were a bit premature. He was actually a few walls from blast-center, buried alive by debris. Hours later, the lad died of asphyxiation, his body collected for disposal—but, well….”

“But what? It’s recorded with JarWix that Larry was never found. I had to go through the Foster Well Net to get me to Trinity.”

“Oh. Did some digging, did you? Your grandfather was that way as well. Dead was what the outside reports stated, and Isaac saw no reason to correct them,” he clarified. “Of course, Doctor Andersen’s body was recalled from disposal and secreted away to a hidden laboratory….” He nodded toward the windshield. “That edifice before us. A week later, The House voted to deny further funding.”

“Ominous.”

“Thinking back on it all, yes, I suppose it was. The project was regarded as being too controversial for corporate sponsorship.”

“And keeping board members interested in such a ground-breaking achievement, one which would require a few decades of dedication to reach fruition, is far from easy. They shut it down—but it did continue?”

“Yes, sir. As one of Isaac’s few confidants, I became an integral cog in the project. He simply refused to give it up because to do so would cause another death. You see, it was only after funding was cut that I became aware that Doctor Andersen was still with us—very much alive—hidden away here, at Trinity, but in a somewhat comatose state. Not fully revived from death.”

“Mm-hm. But he did revive Larry.”

“Yes, sir. The body had been recovered, badly battered, broken, internal injuries. Becoming an associate for Isaac, I had to meticulously go over his notes from the beginning, almost line-by-line. He had used synthetic nucleic acids in an attempt to—to try to regrow him.”

“What?”

“Well, he was simply going to use Andersen’s body as a model to construct a synthetic human being.”

“An android?”

“No, no. A fully functioning human being. Not an android, not a clone. A new—human.”

“And you say he did this?”

“Well, no, of course not. The emulsion used—the synthetic nucleic acids infused with a solution of the test subject’s own stem cells—did, however, manage to revive the internal organs of the test subject, Doctor Larry Andersen, and then started an overall healing process.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Looking to his long-time employee, Jon folded his arms across his chest. “Any genetic modifications?”

“Certainly. As long as Andersen was, so to speak, Isaac’s personal property, why not improve on the model?”

“So o—a new human.”

“Well, more or less.”

“Not a different species or—”

“Oh, no, sir, no. As far as I could ascertain, he was completely human, quite definitely homo sapiens—but….”

“Go on.”

“Some of it was very frightening. I was a part of the regeneration team. Things were going so slowly, some of it devastatingly slow, killing off tissues we had been working to recover. I—bumped the process up a bit.”

“How so?”

“Well, it all took a left turn, I suppose, at the introduction of nanotech to the reassembly process. A serious left turn.” He regarded his much younger employer. “Picture, if you can, tiny micro-AI-’bots tagging along each and every strand of DNA in the human body. Trillions of them moving about, analyzing this, testing that, restructuring, learning, and then relearning—repairing a patient’s genetic matrix 24 7, regenerating lost and damaged tissue, reenergizing whole systems—and all so fast, quickly reinforcing anticipated damage zones. Anticipated damage zones, sir,” he verbally reinforced. “Preparing to fix the man seconds before he could even be harmed. Jon. It is my considered opinion that Larry’s potential lifespan may well be—forever…”

“Mmm.” He nodded his head. “Forever’s a long time,” he murmured.

“Well, he was basically dead on the table, so—”

“—So you did your best for him. And successfully?”

“Well—once he was revived, he was completely new. That was a bit of a drawback.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, he had no mind at all, sir. Some minor engrams had been successfully imprinted to him, and within a few weeks we had him in school, at the Heightened Learning and Discovery Facility at White Sands.”

“Fast learner?”

“Amazingly fast. Within three days, Larry had learned to read and was tearing through the school’s libraries.”

He looked at Troose. “Where is he today?”

“His exact location is—unknown. With the death of Isaac, I’m afraid everything just fell apart. Isaac, basically Larry’s father, was dead, and Larry just—disappeared from the institute. A week or so later, I managed to trace him to East 20th Street in Manhattan. You see, he was an innocent, still using his true name. There he had enrolled himself at the New York City Police Academy.” He shook his head in wonder. “Of all things.” He smiled at Jon. “A bit of covert operations here, sir. I cleaned out his background and assisted in getting him clearance for the job. I thought it was the least I could do for him.”

“And nothing further?”

“No, sir. He was by then 37-years of age, with schooling at least equal to a secondary graduate. No, he was completely on his own, left to strive for his own success in life. I considered him more than capable. I had supposed an academic career, but as a police officer, I expect he should become quite exemplary.”

“Mm-hm. Well, he’s not there anymore.”

“No?”

“No. Larry’s on the run and scared—and he has a hostage.”

“Oh, no. What happened?”

“Basically? He bumped into another Tash experiment.” He looked at Troose’s eyes, finding in them genuine concern. “One day, I may find the time to tell you all about that one, Joy. I really hope I do.”

“Mm. Have you any idea where he could be?”

“Well, he was here.”

“I was thinking there might have been an off-chance, hence my being here. And that’s really why I came. I had lost track of him, and then there were your online searches in the area. I just thought….”

“Yes, I know,” Jon replied, nodding his understanding. “Well, I have to be going, Joy. His last known location was Nevada, and that’s where I’m headin’.”

“Would you like some assistance, sir, perhaps a small caravan of—”

He chuckled at the very notion. “I’m on a chase, Joy, and I don’t have time to wait any longer. You head back home. Larry’s gonna be fine. He’s in good hands.”

“Yes, sir.” He opened the car door. “He’s a good kid. A good man.”

Watching Troose walk around the front of the Mercedes, Jon strapped into his seat and set the controls to cruise-pilot, with velocity programmed for a straight-line shot at 200 km/h, off-road, altitude 10 meters, azimuth of 293.2°. He lowered the window.

“Joy.”

“Sir?”

“It’s gonna be okay. You kept Larry alive. Now it’s my turn.”

“Yes, sir. Good luck to you both.”

He closed the window. “Launch.”

The car was off the ground and darting to the northwest. He glanced at the rearview mirror catching the dwindling view of Dr. Joyer Troose walking back to his car.

Five hours and five minutes, he thought.

AFFIRMATIVE. AS WE PASS LAS VEGAS, THERE MAY BE A CHALLENGE FROM LOCAL SAFETY AND ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION AUTHORITIES.

Yeah. Maintain relative radio silence. Any commo is to be at VLF or lower for outgoing navigation and timing requests—a few quick data chops, nuthin’ more. He leaned to the glove box and withdrew the operator’s manual. Emergency brakes, fore and aft. VTOL with spiral capabilities, 12,000-meter ceiling. Car’s top-o-the-line. Hmm. This is a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz AMG G300-Class sports vehicle and…. Oh, how ’bout that? Body has a glazed Ticowarbon coating just like us. Well, more of a finish, while ours is quite a bit more than mere coating. All windows are protected against all known lead projectiles—up to and including 7.62mm titanium core. Chassis can take multiple hits from government-issue ZZ37 fragmentary and concussion grenades. Fireproof to 2000 degrees Celsius…. 100 percent IR/UV blocking…. Radiation resistant to 100 mSv per minute…. Good choice. The perfect schizo-paranoiac-hypochondriac car. He rocked the yolk a bit for satisfaction. Yeah, sucker’s maneuverable as hell. He looked out the windscreen at the terrain flying by. After Las Vegas, we’ll take ’er down five meters. He glanced back to the pages. Says here, ‘the Mercedes G Wagon is an excellent choice for government embassy and/or corporate use.’

CITING SAFETY PRECAUTIONS FOR SUCH LOW-ALTITUDE VELOCITIES… *

Go ahead.

THERE ARE NO PRECAUTIONS — ONLY HAZARDS.

Yeah, well—that’s what happens when you trust me.

200 KM/H; OFF-ROAD; ALTITUDE, FIVE METERS.

After Vegas, he mentally reminded.

IT IS UNCERTAIN WHETHER THIS VEHICLE WILL EVEN OPERATE IN SUCH A PRECARIOUS TRAJECTORY.

Mm-hm. If physically challenged, I may need to ditch. That last five minutes of flight might become a running hour on foot. He drew the Yucca Flat data up from the Way Wide Web. A lotta craters—lotta radiation. Not a very healthy place to be.

. . .
0000000135: %CYDR01-COMMENT-00058: ► A DECIDEDLY HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT ▼
A HUMAN ABSORBED RADIATION DOSE OF 8 GRAY (Gy) OR MORE — 8 Sv OR 800 rem — WOULD LIKELY RESULT IN:

    . SEVERE WEAKNESS
    . SEVERE HEADACHE
    . HIGH FEVER
    . NOTED PURPURA
    . ACUTE HEMORRHAGE
    . VARIOUS INFECTIONS
    . DIARRHEA
    . LEUKOPENIA
    . DEATH

…WITHIN THE FIRST WEEK OF EXPOSURE.

Mmm. Fun times.

. . .
0000000136: %CYDR01-RHETORIC: ► DIALECTAL-COLLOQUIALISM ◄
. . .

Yeah.

–

Emergency . . .
1,266 words | By Me

Walter had just had a somewhat rough day, the most accurate way to describe it. Rough. Not an overall bad day, just a rough one. Of course, some would not have thought much of it, but he was beginning to considered it to have been a horrible day.

Getting out of the car, he slammed the door — and the lord of horrible days decided that this was the destined moment in which to cause his driver’s side window to shatter, sending glittering squares of glass across the seat and all over the driveway.

“Could it get any worse?” he shouted to no one.

Angry, he punched the door, leaving a tiny dimple in the shined panel.

“Yeah, sure — why the hell not?” he fumed.

A weighted sack of ammunition in hand, the young rebel proceeded to the front door of the house. Just a matter of time, he was thinking. Before this week’s out, I’ll have changed it all — fixed it all. “They’ll learn,” he angrily muttered out loud, settling his house key in his hand. “They’ll all learn.”

Surprised that he had seemingly left his front door unlocked and ajar, he pushed it open. Once inside the house, he stopped, looking about the visible rooms as though they were not his. He was more than sure somebody had broken into his home and cleaned it — or worse. Gazing about the living room, he realized it was now utterly devoid of dirt, any dirt at all. Even the air in the room held none of the expected lingering specks of dust.

The newspaper he had tossed to the recliner that morning had been neatly folded and placed on the coffee table. The breakfast he had so hurriedly almost finished was now gone from the kitchen table and the two-day’s worth of dishes in the sink were all scrubbed clean and put away. Someone had even taken out the kitchen garbage.

He turned slowly from the polished sink, his eyes taking in the new gleam of his home, and there she stood, placidly awaiting comment.

“What’re you doin’ here?”

“So, this is how you say hello to the woman who bore you, who raised you and taught you right from wrong, who just spent the day picking up after you?”

“Yeah, hi, Mom,” came his meek greeting. “What’re you…?” he nearly repeated.

“All the way from Manchester, and it’s ‘Yeah, hi, Mom, what’re you’?” She brushed past him, returning the damp washcloth to the sink counter. “We came by bus, you know.”

His voice caught in his throat. “We?”

“Long ride, me and your sister.”

He faced toward the living room. “Sammy’s here?”

It wasn’t as terrible as one might think, or perhaps it was. Samantha was his sister, younger by almost a year. Then again — and he regarded his mother.

“…Is Peter with her?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course, Peter’s here. Can’t leave a six-year-old child home alone.”

Why not? he did not ask out loud.

“They’re upstairs, straightening up. You’ve really let this place go,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Hell in a handbasket”

He looked toward the stairs. “Yeah, I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to sweep, to mop, to take out a single bag of garbage?” She gestured to the scrubbed waste basket. “We came inside, and the garbage was already spilling over.”

“Yeah, Mom. Too busy.”

“What were you having for dinner?”

“Dinner? Why, and what do you mean ‘were?’ Rammon — some beans and carrots — maybe a beer or two…”

“…Really…? Why not a bacon cheeseburger?”

“Oh, stop.”

“There’s a roast in your oven. It works, ya know.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone, Mom.”

“Mm-hm.” She smiled and patted his cheek. “We’ll just call it a surprise dinner.”

“Uh-huh.” By now, Walter was over the initial shock. Setting the bag on the kitchen table, he stepped to the refrigerator. “You want a beer?”

“No, that’s disgusting. And put that back. Today, we’re having wine.”

Still holding the long-neck bottle, he faced his mother. “You know I don’t like wine.”

“Everybody likes wine,” she argued.

“Mogen David, right?”

“Is there another kind?”

“Manischewitz,” he quipped.

“True, but your father always preferred Mogen David.”

“So, you’ve pretty much taken over my dinner arrangements, huh?”

“I’m here to help.”

“Why? Mom, everything’s fine. There’s no need for you…”

“I heard you out on the driveway just now. I think the whole neighborhood heard you out on the driveway.”

“I was having a bad day, okay?”

She raised to her toes, kissing her son’s cheek. “And then you saw me.”

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”

“Walter?” Samantha called down from the upper landing. “You’re home?”

He watched his sister trot down the stairs. “Yeah, it’s my home, remember?”

“Oh, stop it. You know what I meant.”

“Where did you leave Peter?”

“Upstairs. He’s helping his Mommy clean out his uncle’s nasty closet,” she chuckled. “Really just dragging all of your…”

“What?”

“W’ll, yeah, it’s a real disaster up there.”

“’Scuse me.” Stepping around his sister, he hurried up the stairs. “Peter?” he called. “Come out of the room.”

“What’s wrong?” Sammy asked after him, glancing to their mother.

The boy stepped out into the hallway, dragging Walter’s holster with him. In his hand was the heavy .45 caliber M1911 pistol Walter had purchased three days earlier.

“Peter, stop. Stop, don’t move. Just hand me the gun, okay?”

“Peter?” Hearing the words, Sammy ran back up the stairs, stopping just behind her brother. “Peter, put down that gun!” she nearly screeched in Walter’s ear.

Condescendingly, he looked at his sister. “Shut up,” he hissed. He looked back to his nephew and smiled as pleasantly as he could. “Peter? Let me have the gun. Come on.”

Knowing from his mother’s reaction that something was apparently very wrong, Peter slowly approached his uncle. He raised the gun to the extended hand and Walter closed his fingers around the barrel, lifting the weapon away.

“Thank you, Peter.” He reached for his holster. “Take him downstairs, please,” he told Sammy.

He saw her lift her son into her protective arms as he stepped into the bedroom. He checked the handgrip but there was no magazine. Dropping down to sit on the edge of his bed, Walter opened the drawer to the nightstand. The loaded magazine was still where he had placed it. He drew back on the upper receiver and saw there was no round chambered and sighed his relief. Sitting there, he then looked across to stare out into the hallway.

Am I really that messed up? he wondered, thinking now of his broken car window. I was getting’ ready to — go out and shoot people. Really just — shoot ’em. Hell, I don’t even know who they are — any of ’em. He stood and stepped to the closet. Holstering the pistol, he set it on the upper shelf. Closing the closet door, he locked it. Jesus, that was close. Gotta — talk to Mom an’ Sammy about all this. He started back down the stairs. Think I’ll talk to my doctor too — maybe get a prescription for tranquilizers or something. Maybe that’s all I need, huh? Maybe a different job — different supervisor? Hell, I dunno — maybe that’s really all…

“Walter. You have a gun in this house?” came his mother’s accusing tone from the bottom step. She held out the bag he had brought home. “These — are bullets.”

“Yeah, they are. Mom? Sammy? Could we sit down?” he asked, laying his hand on the back of a dining chair. “Talk about stuff? You know, my stuff, your stuff, Peter’s stuff?”

–

Today, I give you the year 1974, where all the nations of the planet Earth have allied themselves with the genial alien race of Mit-Ro-Don against the aggressions of the totalitarian alien race of Chit-Chit-Kunak. This particular day was a quiet day aboard the battleship Mit-Ro-Miglon, just before the end of the world as we knew it. It’s okay. I had six more chapters in which to set repairs.

Are You Ready . . . ?
998 words | By Me

“How ’bout a game of chess?”

I smiled at the challenge. “You got it, bro. Loser cooks dinner?”

“Deal.” Ronny Henderson reached under the coffee table for the gameboard. “Uh, you better call Maria. Let her know?”

“Yeah, right.” I activated my brother-in-law’s phone, and the pretty, ever bright face of my Maria Lorenzini appeared on the screen. “Hello, lovely.”

“Mi amore,” she cooed her happy reply with a sparkling smile.

I returned her smile with ease. “Dinner’s in 40 minutes. We’re eating next door.”

“Hey, hey,” Ronny playfully groused. “Don’t be countin’ ’em just yet.”

“Oh-ho!” Hearing Ronny’s rebuke, Maria gave me a severe nod and a slight wink. She knew what was up. “I don’t think he wants to cook,” she chuckled. “Will you talk with me while I get ready?”

“Mm, I may be distracted. I have a game of chess to win.”

Her grin shined. “Well, I have to shower anyway. I’ll be over in just a couple…”

The white lights of the room suddenly dimmed and were quickly accompanied with the dull, steady flash of crimson. I could hear the ship-wide klaxon sounding through the outer door. I looked at Ronny.

“Hell,” he muttered, taking up his equipment belt from an otherwise vacant corner of the room. I had my reserve belt aboard the Falcon II. My sister Terry ran in from the hallway and flew firmly into her husband’s embrace.

I stood where I was. “Goldstream,” I commanded, tapping the access override pad. Maria’s picture was reduced to a small square at the top right of the screen, and a very busy Chief Liaison Officer Jerry Goldstream appeared in the main field of view.

“Not now, Jim!” he shouted. “Full alert! Report for launch, now!”

“I’m gone!” I shouted back. “Maria!” I barked, closing the call to Jerry.

“Yes, Giacomo!”

“I love you.”

“You know I love you!” She held back the tears, but she was crying nonetheless, her fears shadowing her bright eyes.

“Don’t, please. Nothing will happen.”

She sat a bit straighter and smiled very bravely at me. “God go with you, my love,” she whispered.

“And stay here with you,” I replied. Giving a mirror to her smile, I canceled the call.

Dashing for the apartment’s elevator, I pushed Ronny in ahead of me. As the door closed, I could see Terry pulling on her own equipment belt. She and Maria would be at their posts in a matter of seconds.

The doors parted, and I ran down the red flashing corridor toward the flight deck. Coming from our last elevator, I charged into the launch bay, with Ronny hot on my heels. I reached into the cockpit, activating my navcom and grabbing my belt. A large force appeared at the limits of my dashboard scan, moving in fast. We were the first to arrive, but all were present within 30 seconds. Buckling my belt, I jerked the umbilical from the nose of the Falcon II and let it clatter to the deck.

“Mount up!” I shouted, grabbing for my helmet. “Karen!” I called into the radio.

“All present, Jim!” Staff Sergeant Karen Saunders was quick to respond from the lower deck. “Preparing now for launch!”

Noticing a movement, I glanced over at my navcom screen, and my blood ran cold. I watched the shadowy approach of the giant enemy vessel just beyond the bay doors. I activated my squadron net.

“Secure yourselves!” I ordered, gripping firmly to the Falcon’s forward canard. “Shields, now!”

There was a blinding flash of an explosion, and the bay doors to launch decks Alpha and Bravo, along with a large chunk of the separating floor, were gone. Standing within the gravity field of the bay floor, I looked around the sudden vacuum of the big room. My squad was okay, each secure within their own personal, impenetrable bubbles. They were confused, surprised, but unharmed.

“Don’t panic,” I called. “We’re okay. Karen, are you accounted for?”

“Affirm!” she replied, slightly breathless. “We’re all here, Chief!”

I looked out to space and could see the huge warcraft crossing Saturn’s crescent. It was the same Dreadnaught that had just blown the launch bay doors from the Mit-Ro-Miglon, now swinging around and bearing down for another pass.

“All right! Mount up!” I called. I caught Ronny’s glance. “It’s time for business,” I growled to him.

I sealed my canopy. Once my atmosphere had cycled, I released my bodyshield and activated the onboard radio for instructions.

“Comm-Aux three,” I directed, hearing the click of my radio’s compliance as it switched over to the command net. “Bravo-Niner-Five,” I identified. “Patch me through to Jerry Goldstream.”

“I’m here, Jim! Earth!” The man sounded exhausted. “Get there now! It’s another attack!”

“All fliers, slave to primary command!” I told my people.

I entered the proffered course to my navcom, and in double-wedge formation, my squadron belted its way from the launch bays and toward the inner system. I took a high arc over Mars and the Asteroid Belt, with widcos-10² marking us an Earth orbit in 48 seconds. There, I released my squadron and we met them, 288 of the 100-mile-long Dreadnoughts crowding dear Mother Earth. It was apparent none of them had yet fired on the planet.

“Okay, spread wide,” I instructed, checking my navcom for target selection. “This one’s mine.”

I ripped the Falcon II from the fanning formation and dove headlong into one of the nearest Dreadnoughts. Launching one of my few smart bombs, I watched as the tiny dart sped away, vanishing into the prow of the huge destroyer. The ship expanded and was no more, reduced to a blazing splatter of atomized alloys and a churning expanse of quickly burning gasses.

The enemy’s retaliation was immediate, with literally tens of thousands of Chit-Chit-Kunaket’é fighters being ejected from each of the mighty Dreadnoughts. It was like walking through Saigon Market Street at high noon and trying to count the flies — a losing battle from the start.

–

Will He or — Won’t He . . . ?
1014 words | By Me

Dr. David Nichols was on the run. Graduating MIT’s Nanotechnology Laboratories eight years earlier, and now at the ripe old age of 31, this was the last way he thought he would be ending a career he had indeed come to love. Murder, grand theft, followed by a rather long list of serious traffic violations. The authorities were some distance away but still following and gaining. Through his personally deployed fog of four trillion nanite investigator drones, trailing in a long, thinly wisping stream a full mile along his wake, his mechanically enhanced senses could perceive the many police cruisers closing in.

With his Jaguar XKR tearing around the corner at Wilshire and 5th, he was sure Vancouver, Washington, had to be completely engulfed in flames. There was smoke everywhere, people shouting, screaming, accompanied by the startling bursts of not-so-distant gunfire on all sides from the terrified populace. The car’s satellite radio carried sporadic news reports of whole cities throughout Europe and Asia also ablaze, with sweeping revolutions rocking across all of Africa and South America. The entire planet’s citizenry was in a furor, with much of that population looking for him in particular, though without the knowledge that he had become their primary target. Be that as it may, they all wanted him and his kind dead, buried, and forgotten. The truth was, Dr. Nichols, and all nanotech/biotech engineers in general, were the living, breathing precursors for the end of the world, and killing them would have saved billions of lives — once upon a time.

He pulled into the tower parking facility of a downtown mall, nearly striking a small group of running children in the process.

Swerving around the kids, it occurred to the good doctor that running them down might have been a blessing, saving them all from the very real agony of molecular disassemblage, but that favor was now gone from them.

With all the surrounding turmoil, and gunshots sounding, now less than a block away, he had to crash the flimsy stick of a gate to get quickly in, cracking the passenger side of his windshield in the process.

Up in the relative security of the fifth level of the tower parking facility, he stopped, positioning the car to face down the exit ramp, engine idling. There, he was finally able to breathe, settling back in the driver’s seat, collecting his thoughts. He could feel the changes coursing through his veins. He stared down the ramp before him, thinking of the days that had so violently altered his life, as well as the future of all life on the planet. He glanced a double-take at the refrigeration pack on the passenger seat, now lightly splattered with Marcia’s blood. He grimaced, recalling the stunned look on Dr. Marcia Brewer’s face not even an hour ago while he was stealing the case. That was when he stabbed her with his extended hand.

What he had seized was essentially a vast assortment of tiny machines, a nanoscopic treasure-trove of synthetic molecules that just happened to be stored around, on, and within the living cellular matter of the purloined specimen. By now, the man was quite certain the nanotech-enhanced product he had taken from the lab no longer required refrigeration. Also confirmed was that he did not need the orangutan hand in the pack to keep the machines functioning. It was quite the other way around, but the hand served as a suitable container for the lot. Dr. Nichols was confident, beyond all doubt, that, without the cooling system, the nano-devices working within the ape’s hand would keep the severed primate tissue not only fresh but very much alive.

He raised his own bloodied hand before him, recalling how easily that reinforced appendage had become a weapon. It had so easily penetrated the woman’s frail form, crushing through her sternum. And there had been the surprised expression on her face as she crumpled to the newly waxed floor, the look of stunned bewilderment frozen upon her lifeless face. He and Dr. Brewer had worked side by side as friends and colleagues for years, and now there could be no doubt in his mind that he had killed her, though it really could not have been helped. It was the fastest way to get past her with the small refrigeration pack.

He knew he could have carefully fought with her, wrestled a bit, shoved her aside, and possibly have gotten away, but this would have delayed him, and a possibility of success was no guarantee of success. Security had already called for the police, and he needed to be out of that facility immediately. The fate of all humanity, of all life, depended entirely upon him, as much at that moment as at the moment he now faced. For this reason, and this reason alone, his friend had to be killed.

A blessing? he still silently wondered, recalling the children he had not run over.

She had been coming in for the start of her day, having no idea what had occurred overnight up in the lab. He had killed her, and so she was going to miss the monster they had together created and just unleashed upon the world. His closest colleague and friend had been spared the worldwide agony to come.

He thought of his nanite cloud and instantly linked in, able to again see the pursuing squad cars. They were driving slower, now, searching for him, with spotlights, trying to pierce the thickening clouds of smoke. The murderer, Dr. David Nichols, was still on their collective minds, for the moment, but that, too, would pass.

He revved the engine. He had to get home, set up his defenses. The police were likely already there, but the end was coming, the disassemblers now accelerating exponentially. He was indistinguishable to the nanites and had been working on an unquantifiable nano-bunker, which was far from complete, and here it was, already time for him to save the world.

The last surviving human being was quickly finding himself to be so woefully unprepared.

–

The following remains a work in progress.

I Didn’t Know That . . .
2772 words | By Me

More than 40 years ago, back in the dark days of CE 2302, a surprisingly conventional war of the worlds had abruptly ended. The United Nations General Assembly had been called into session regarding the discovery of flora — little more than interstellar seed pods — migrating into the Solar System from the Gliese 876 System and eventually settling in the subtropic and temperate zones of Earth’s rural regions. The resultant growth took on the form of a red or orange plant life capable of mobility with a penchant for blood. Bugs and water were adequate for the plants, but what they truly craved was basic H₂O mixed with a sprinkling of CO₂, O₂, and C₆H₁₂O₆, or water with free oxygen, carbon dioxide, and glucose, the four main ingredients for mammalian blood. Dr. Jacobi Vargus of the World Health Organization had gained global popularity with his statement:

“Coming from a relatively dark planet and with hardly any chlorophyll in their bodies, it is likely Earth’s energy-boosting supplies of natural sugar they find most attractive.”

This new global enemy was simply an un-potted plant, even earning the colloquial term “Wandering Jew.” As with old science-fiction films, these invading plants had the power of locomotion, and they were ravenous hunters for their apparent favorite food.

The UN had declared an internationally agreed-upon global war against these creatures, which seemed easy to destroy, but the pods continued to drop from the sky. It was globally expensive, rapidly outfitting the interstellar assault for an attack on the incoming pod-stream and even as far distant as to the vegetation’s homeworld, estimated to be at least 15 lightyears distant.

Committees were quick to approve the deployed use of a controversial toxin — dioxin — in Operation Herbicide. The overall mission-targets were two gas-giant planets orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 876, a dim, nondescript red dwarf star located in the constellation of Aquarius and virtually invisible to the naked eye of any casual Earth viewer. The assault had been a simple, straightforward strategy to deploy, attack and observe results. In final retaliation, the United Nations Exoplanetary Task Force launched its all-out attack upon the satellites of two planets, one twice Jupiter’s mass and the other about Uranus’s mass. The spaceborne attack on the invader’s cold homeworlds — the six atmosphere moons of gas-giant TAR Alpha Aqar Gliese 876 03 — and later upon the single moon of the smaller sister planet, TAR Bravo Aqar Gliese 876 02.

Witnessing the complete extermination of Earth’s first alien contact were 43,000 battle-hardened rangers, serving nearly 16 lightyears from home. In this confrontation, there could be no alien survivors. Earth leaders had deemed just a single spore from those garden worlds to be an eventual no-win solution. Any supposedly mindless creature capable of interplanetary migration and mortal combat had therefore been deemed unacceptable and needed to be eliminated.

What followed was the destruction of all satellite vegetation and further strikes upon the gas-giants themselves. Still, their arrival upon the Earth had left an eerie sensation with the Earth’s populations. Being capable of interstellar migration laid open the possibility that Gliese 876 might not be the invader’s original home, but rather a way-station from some other, more distant star. There also arose the terrifying prospect that the Milky Way galaxy and even the entire known Universe may be swarming with the seed pods of these blood-lusting monsters.

It had been an odd war, battling oddly-shaped craft of various sizes, all constructed entirely of a living celluloid tissue. Yet, these spacecraft had been well-armed with both fusion and particle weapons systems, with each facility a living entity of the host ship itself, vessels capable of singly holding off and eventually defeating any small Earth task force. One of these ships had eventually been captured, amazing the world with its revolutionary mechanics, becoming an eventual boon for Earth’s future interstellar-craft designs.

For the few hundred creeping vines that had made their way to the ground, they had found the planet Earth to be an overflowing smorgasbord. Able to easily outrun the invading vegetation, there had been few recorded human deaths, but the Black Suites from Langley had been quick to respond. Wearing knee-boots and armed with advanced weaponry no alien ground force could withstand — a garden rake and a match — the wriggling enemy had been hunted down, piled up, and torched to ash.

Be that as it may, this war of the worlds had ended in total victory for the people of Earth, but knowing this had been a warning for enduring vigilance, to be ever watchful of the skies. The following decades led to a detailed investigation of the Solar System and beyond, with robot probes and manned warcraft sweeping interstellar space, searching for any sign of others like these creatures from Gliese 876.

— <><> —

Now 800 lightyears from the sun and at the far side of the zodiacal heavens, just awakening from hypersleep, Hugh Forrest drew in a deep breath of cool air, again thinking of the misdirecting use of the term sleep. The time spent had not been a period of relaxation, and he was now quite exhausted from the ordeal. Hypersleep involved a loose form of suspended animation, during which the human body’s metabolism is not merely slowed but completely halted, and restarting a human heart that had been inactive for nearly a year was a very laborious task.

“Good morning, sir,” Olivia, the ship’s AI interface, cheerfully greeted again, as though he had not heard her the first dozen times.

“Mm-m… Can I just get a minute here…?” he grumbled in reply, awkwardly raising his hands and rubbing his eyes.

“Sir, your presence is requi—”

“I am the ship’s captain, damn it!” he broke in, looking to the computer terminal. “Who the hell requires?”

“Sir, I believe that grumpy old men should not travel so far from home,” she lightly remarked, forcing her captain’s smile.

“Uh-huh, so I’ve been told. Okay, okay…” Forrest folded his hands across his stomach. “Olivia — what’s the problem?”

The terminal clicked. “The apparent motion of anomaly 6AGL PSR J0554+1632 has exceeded expected parameters. Reports from Earthbase Houston suggests FTL travel.”

“Oh. Faster than light? It’s a star, isn’t it? Stars don’t accelerate.”

“Correct, unless anomalized. Overall mass is 1.9 ±0.6 solar masses with a hot x-ray emission. The danger will be the coming proximity.”

“Mm-hm.” Looking thoughtfully to the console audio grid, he raised to sit on the hypersleep bench, swinging his legs around to hang off the side. “Oh… Not good.” The man laid back down, now on his stomach, and gestured toward the computer’s optical array. “Ah… Lumbar, Olivia. Deep.”

“Yes, sir.”

The arm lowered from the hypersleep cover, pressing four padded rollers to his lower spine and slightly rocking into his back.

“Mm-m, yeah… Left a bit — oh, right there… Right there… You said a message from Earth?”

“Yes, sir, transmitted and caught in the wake of our relativity drives.”

“Mm, okay.”

“Sir, the proximity of anomaly 6AGL J0554+1632…”

“Yeah, yeah. Olivia, your anomaly J0554-and-so-forth is by now a physically verified neutron star. Call it that, would ya? It just happens to be a very polite, very quiet neutron star with a softly flickering pulse.”

“Negative.”

“What? Oh, wait. Geminga is J0628 — right?”

“Correct, sir, 2AGL PSR J0628+1737, with an ionizing equatorial gamma-ray pulse emanating in the exahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum.”

“Yeah, right, very gamma but very off-Earth. Thank you for the class,” the captain muttered, feeling the rollers rise away and into storage. With a slight grunt, he sat back up. “Oh — much better, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

He reached for his hanging flight suit. “Rest of the crew? How’re they doing?”

“All are remaining in hypersleep and stable.”

“Okay, what’s this about? Another pulsar in our vicinity? Odd. What’s the motion? …And what’s it doing here?”

“Moving quite rapidly, sir, refracting against heavy graviton fields in the region and losing velocity at a precipitous rate.”

“Okay. And?”

“A thermal X-ray component of anomaly — the hard pulsar — is expected to cross the port hemisphere of the USS Standard.”

“Port hemisphere — of the bow? When?”

“In approximately…”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly 2 hours, 56 minutes, 13.5 seconds. 12, 11, 10…”

He pulled up the zipper, working now to step into his flight boots. “Mm-hm. Radiation danger?”

“The pulse will be extremely rapid and the radiation minimal due to the ship’s shielding, but the neutron star itself will pass very near to the USS Standard.”

“Well, that’s not right. How near is very near?”

“On the verge of collision, sir. Near enough to draw the vessel into a quickly accelerating, high elliptical orbit, forcing us to cross very near to its north and south electromagnetic jets.”

“Huh.” He stood from the hypersleep bench. “North jet almost doesn’t exist,” he said, reading the terminal’s report.

“That is Geminga.”

The displayed report he had been looking over was quickly replaced with statistics for 6AGL PSR J0554+1632.

“Yes, I see. Not a good place to be.”

“Agreed.”

Fists on his hips, he stretched out his back. “And you couldn’t maneuver around this little glitch without waking me up?”

“Requirements necessitate a command review before…”

He was already nodding his head. “…before actuating helm maneuvers away from recorded anomalous targets,” he balanced. “Have you stated all there is?”

“All that I know of the situation.”

“And how far are we from Geminga?” Opening the companionway access hatch, the captain dove headlong from the centripetal command wheel, out into the weightless neck of the 60-year-old battleship, the practiced maneuver speeding him along toward the bridge.

“Geminga: pulsar, 2AGL PSR J0628+1737.” Olivia’s calm voice followed along on his 30-meter trajectory. “2AGL J0628+1737 is—”

“Hey, hey, hey. Geminga, okay?”

“Yes, sir. Geminga is now directly ahead of the USS Standard at approximately 950 million kilometers. We are above the quiet northern hemisphere and measuring its surprisingly weak jet flow. Local standard of rest vectors as follows: U equals 11.1 kilometers per second, V equals 12.24 kilometers per second, and W equals 7.25 kilometers per second.”

Catching the hatchway to the bridge, he sighed his acceptance of the data. “All of which matches our target’s galactic velocity,” he noted, opening the compartment. “So, we have arrived at destination and are in orbit.”

“Holding. Orbit will be tomorrow. Overall velocity has been set to 286 kilometers per second. I was in the process of awakening you for your end-of-flight briefing when the Houston communique alerted of 6AGL PSR J0554+1632’s already perceived approach, so…”

“Yeah, guess I was gettin’ up anyway.” He gripped the back of the command chair and pushed himself toward the ship’s helm, looking toward the filtered portal just ahead. “Ya know, Geminga’s supposed to be all alone out here.”

“That is correct. However, 6AGL J0554+1632 was not alone in its region, experiencing — anomalous — gravitational influences from its proximity to other recently discovered SNRs, those being…”

“SNRs?”

“Supernova remnants.”

“Right”

“The other recently discovered SNRs include 6AGL PSR J0617+6439, and the rapidly orbiting — anomalies — of 6AGL PSR J0617+6503 and 6AGL PSR J0617+6504.”

“Recently? Four new neutron stars just like that — almost side-by-side?”

“Affirmative. Recent due to electromagnetic — anomalies — of the Medusa Nebula.”

“Yeah, I get it, okay? Anomalies do occur — but the Medusa? She’s so quiet — and another 700 lightyears out.”

“Affirmative. It is Apparent that 6AGL J0554+1632 was launched in a highly accelerated trajectory 800 years ago, local to our current position, due to its close flyby of anomalies 6AGL J0617+6439, 6AGL J0617+6503, and 6AGL J0617+6504. With a shift in stellar axes due to the increased velocities, the newer neutron stars’ pulse emanations became perceptible to Earth. More markedly so once all four became more clearly visible after breaking through the nebula’s electron shroud, all of which occurred three weeks after we departed the Solar System, at c-plus, radio-dark, and en route to Geminga.”

“Yeah, c-plus. That’s quite a marksman shot — 700 lightyears to here, and just as we arrived. And Earth’s report of this minor fact only just caught up to us when we stopped.”

“As stated.”

“Okay, new ground. We’ll need to back off, see what happens.” He regarded the filtered pulsar in the forward viewport. “Need someone out there to get to work on a subspace radio of some kind,” he mumbled.

“Stanford University was researching FTL communications…”

“Olivia, stay on-topic. What are the odds that Geminga picks up our visitor as an orbiting partner — which would no doubt throw this whole mess into some new trajectory?”

“Yes, an excellent possibility.”

“Yeah. How close will J0554-and-so-forth get to Geminga?”

“6AGL PSR J0554+1632. Not yet calculated, sir. Hold.”

“Yeah, w’ll — hurry up.”

“Yes, sir. Close estimation shows that 6AGL J0554+1632 will impact Geminga.”

“Impact?”

“Affirm—”

“You’re talkin’ about another supernova event!”

“Yes, sir. 6AGL J0554+1632 will come into tight, rapid orbit of Geminga. Estimations should be expressed as an orbit every few seconds and accelerating. It is further estimated…”

“Olivia… This ship can’t survive any of that. Hell, we’re almost at ground zero!”

“Working…”

“Yeah, working! I need all thrusters, and I need ’em like last week!”

“Engines coming online, sir. The star’s eventual impact threat is now calculated and verified. Expect orbit to commence in — 18 minutes.”

“Right. Get me Mr. Owens and Mr. Geer. I need ’em up, awake, briefed, and with me, ASAP!”

“Yes, sir. Awakening First Officer Derrek Owens and Science Office Rodney Geer at this time.”

“Spin the relativity drives back up.” He watched the indicating RPMs roll to a blur of motion. “Rodney,” he quietly mused aloud, strapping himself into his command chair and going over the received data charts. “When awakened, that man should be yellow-tagged ‘approach with caution.’ ”

“Agreed, sir.”

“Okay, get ’em up, then alert the rest of my crew. This is not a drill. I need all one-fifty of ’em up, alert, and at battle stations in 15 mikes.”

“Yes, sir. The crew is awakening.”

“Shift us around a bit. Get us a clear vector for open space.”

“Repositioning USS Standard for departure.”

“How many engines have I got?”

“The three mains are up and ready. Auxiliaries are still spinning up.”

“Radio Earth with our sit-rep. Warn the crew of imminent launch and go autonomous in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Autonomous departure.”

“Take us out at full throttle. We may all lose consciousness, but we gotta git.”

“Understood.”

The captain panned the dark skies ahead to the strobing flash of the rapidly approaching pulsar as it passed under the bow, already caught in a tightening parabolic curve. As the approaching star dropped from view, he panned around toward the far distant, imperceivable Solar System and shook his head.

“Just a complete mess…”

“Departure in 30 seconds, Captain.”

“Right.” He looked at the console. “Olivia. How long have I been awake?”

“Sir, I awakened you 23 minutes, 44 seconds…”

“Shoulda got me up sooner, kid.”

“Yes, sir. Departure in 10 seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, now departing.”

The man was immediately pressed into his chair, feeling the acceleration in every part of his body. It was an eight-G thrust, threatening to black him out. There was a flash as the military craft passed through the star’s weak, rapidly rotating pulse.

“The hell’s that?” he shouted.

“Analysis is…”

“What is it, Olivia?” he repeated, feeling the ship maneuver away from an impossibly brilliant shine at the pulsar’s southern hemisphere.

“It would appear — the southern region of Geminga, the side facing away from the Solar System, has been ruptured and is largely … absent. A large percentage of surface material is missing, and the star is dumping high gamma radiation to open space. Alert, sir. We are rapidly approaching 6AGL PSR J0554+1632. Applying delta, approximating stellar balance between the stars.”

“Damnation!” he growled, the sensation of the following maneuver pressing him heavily to the opposite arm of his chair.

Olivia took the USS Standard hard about, driving below the careening, newly arrived neutron star and veering hard from its threatening gravitational tug, heading now back toward the hot gamma ejecta from Geminga’s missing lower region. It was at this point that Olivia lost control of the USS Standard, as the vessel was immediately caught in that star’s immense gravitational field and pulled through the very edge of the colossal jet. Now locked into the polar orbit at a bare 225 million kilometers distance, there was nothing anyone could do. In the minutes that followed, the newer, smaller pulsar was taken into the magnetic embrace of ancient, mighty Geminga, irreversibly gripped in its gravitational pull as well. Within barely 10,000 rapidly accelerating orbits to near the speed of light, the two stars spun around each other in a dance that soon erupted, expelling massive volumes of radiation and debris in all directions. A brilliantly colored, swiftly expanding, glittering nebula spread through the heavens, a cloud containing nanoparticles of actinium, aluminum, americium, barium, berkelium, beryllium, bismuth, bohrium, cadmium, calcium, californium, cerium, cesium, and all the metals the Universe had ever known, and even many never heard of before. In a blistering explosion of unparalleled brilliance, the two surfaces found eventual, grating contact, creating a second massive explosion of compressed stellar matter, with the birth of a week-long supernova illuminating far-off Earth in a shine brighter than that of a full moon.

Now thoroughly irradiated and relatively dead, the heavily armored USS Standard, blown from her tight orbit to tumble outward with the expansion of stellar debris, was locked in a new circular orbit at near to its original distance of one billion kilometers, far from the sudden darkness of the newly combined stars but still well within that mini-black hole’s lethal death-zone. Keeping the engines firing, Olivia tried valiantly to pull the USS Standard to comparative safety until, one-by-one, the rumbling engines quieted and died.

–

The prompt was “Where Did This Come From?,” and my reply was a very short excerpt of my chosen chore.

Where Did This Come From . . . ?
480 words | By Me

Gravitational wave patterns for the neutron star merger of GW170817 were visible from Earth nearly three hundred years ago, back in August of 2017. Today, August 23, 2310, the research vessel “Seeker” was cruising within the lenticular galaxy NGC 4993, about 140 million lightyears from their homebase, Earth, and in orbit with the GW170817 mini-blackhole. Science officer Ensign Stuart McLean was early, standing at his station on the bridge when the captain entered for the day.

“How’re we lookin’?” Captain Gregory Fischer greeted the command crew.

“All steady, sir,” helmsman Ensign Jack Pritchard replied, eyes remaining on his three screens of data.

“Running through pass-10 now, sir,” McLean informed him. “One through nine were all clean.” He glanced to his captain, just placing his hand on the back of the command chair. “Been focused on a cloud of point nine-nine-nine gold surrounded by a gossamer sheet of platinum, all about a sparkling 100 thousand kilometers across. How’d you like to have that in the bank, sir?”

Captain Fischer nodded his understanding to his geologist. “Oh, I think we’ll be able to pick up a few minor samples, Ensign, but hardly enough to line a single pocket. This entire field is federally staked as classified, do not touch. How’s the rest of it look?”

“A few anomalies here and there, sir. Nothing too over the top. Patches of pure mercury, americium, lead, uranium, astatine, gold—it goes right down the list, sir. A treasure trove of all known minerals—all utterly pure. Even sprinklings of lithium and potassium. …And there’s an interesting blip out toward the Milky Way quad. A very-possible solid chunk.”

“Solid what?”

“Gold-platinum alloy.”

“A nugget of white gold?”

“That’s what it reads. This nugget, though, comes up as about 21,000 metric tons.”

“Ho! That’d look good hangin’ around your neck, wouldn’t it?”

“Well—I could sure give it a try, sir.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Sir? Tracking the trajectory of that monolith of gold and it’s due to cross our path in approximately 10 mikes.”

“Copy that. Do you have a visual?”

“On screen, sir.”

“Thank you…” Staring at the forward display, Captain Fischer stepped absently backwards and sat in his command chair. “What in—blazes…?”

“I see it, sir. This is incredible…”

“Ensign, take us in.”

“Yes sir. We’ll be alongside in two mikes.”

Fischer stood from his chair and approached the display. “Pilot. That is a warship.”

“Yes, sir, destroyer-class,” Pritchard identified.

“All I’m receiving is background noise,” McLean assured. “Nothing emanating from the vessel.”

“…And that’s the bow. Look, here. The USS ‘Standard’.”

“Reported as missing in this vicinity—50 years ago.”

“Look at that.”

“Sir. It’s solid white-gold. It must have cruised directly through the superheated nano-particle debris cloud.”

“Yes. The minerals transposed the carbon composite structure of the ship’s hull—creating this…”

“EVA, sir?”

“Well—s’pose we could see if the doors still work.”

–

In his dark, department-issued trench coat, Detective Sergeant Oliver Jennings tapped the grit-dusted toe of his dark, department-issued boot against a charred—something or other. Little more than the gutted frame of the small laboratory building remained, with fully three walls blown out from an explosion that had been heard for several miles around. He stooped and picked up a crisply cindered corner from a page of a book, the only marking being the burned edge.

“Not a lot to go on,” he murmured across to his associate.

In her equally dark, department-issued trench coat, Detective Sergeant Marcia Hollins looked to the bit of singed paper her partner was holding and had to agree. “Not even a table left standing,” she commented. “No gas leak.”

“No. Quite a blast. Most of it out that way.”

Hollins turned to the missing walls and nodded her agreement. “Shattered windows for blocks.”

“Uh-huh. Who’s that over there?”

“John Taylor, head of security for Sky-High Dynamics. He called it into us. Saw him outside when we arrived.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

She started toward the man, with Jennings stepping forward at her side. “Not yet. Mr. Taylor?” she called out to him.

“Sort of a bad deal all ’round,” Taylor greeted the team, his shoes crunching through the cinders. “I don’t suppose you’ve found anyone.”

“No,” Jennings replied. “In all this, I wouldn’t expect to find much of—anyone.”

“We’ll seal and bag the facility. Forensics’ll be giving the place a thorough sifting,” Hollins assured. “Mr. Taylor, when you called in you mentioned there was someone in this explosion. Are you sure of that?”

“Well…” Taylor looked at the clipboard he was holding. “Looks like Dr. Winchell had signed in last evening at 8:23, and he later signed Victoria in at 11:40. That’s his daughter. Explosion was about an hour later.”

Jennings reached into his coat and withdrew his dark, department-issued notebook, scribbling down the names and times.

“His daughter was here?” Hollins pursued.

“Yeah, early twenties. The Doc mentioned yesterday she was home visiting from her studies at Sheffield University over in the UK.”

“Mm-hm. Night visitations are a common practice here?” she asked, watching her partner write.

“Well, no, but Dr. Winchell is our own Nobel laureate, so…”

“He had leeway, then?”

He nodded his head. “For the Doc, oh yeah. Even in matters of corporate security. We have that in writing from Dr. Thorndyke himself if you need it. They worked like partners in the corporation.”

“We probably won’t need the verification. We’ll be speaking directly with Dr. Thorndyke in the morning. Any idea of what—the ‘Doc’—might’ve been working on here?”

“Um, no-o—well, that is to say, he told me it was a—a time machine.”

Jennings cleared his throat. “Time machine?”

“That’s what he said.” Taylor smiled and shook his head. “Look, I’m no egghead, just a tiny bachelor’s degree who happens to work here.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I’m working toward my master’s, though, in security management.”

“I understand.” Hollins looked to her partner. “We can verify the project with Dr. Thorndyke tomorrow. As CEO he should have some inkling.” She again regarded the smoldering devastation. “I suppose time travel requires a lot of energy?” she ventured, watching the firefighters foam a complex power distribution frame in a corner of what remained of the small laboratory.

Taylor followed her attention. “I really wouldn’t know.”

“Well, it’s obvious he chose to go back in time,” Jennings commented with a light chuckle.

“Why’s that?” Hollins asked.

“Well, if he went forward, he’d be stuck in stasis and standing right in front of us.”

“Possibly—unless it was trans-dimensional,” she idly reasoned in reply.

“You mean a direction that would be considered at a right-angle to anything we could perceive? Up or down to a 2D-worlder? Yes, I suppose that’s an awkward theory. Also, an interesting way to get rid of someone…”

“Get rid of…” Taylor looked at Jennings. “You mean murder by explosion—or are you saying it really might have been a time machine? A real, working time machine…”

“Looks like forensics’ll have to decide that one,” he said. “If there’s no DNA found in the ash and debris, and the Doc and his daughter remain missing, then perhaps only time can tell what really happened here. …New investigative techniques, methods, tools…”

“Cold case?”

“That would be up to a review board, but we’re quite a-ways from there. Tell me, Mr. Taylor, was there any way a person could leave this lab without signing out?”

“Unlocking the door requires a log entry so—no way that security is aware of.”

“No windows, back door…?”

“No.”

“Ventilation system?”

“Closed-circuit.”

“Trapdoor to the rooftop? Maybe a basement?”

“No.”

“Whoof,” Hollins shook her head. “Doubt if it’ll catch on,” she commented, lightly kicking at a charred chunk of something or other. “Time travel sure makes a mess.”

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1946 CE . . .

The French prosecuting attorney faced the tribunal. “With the authorization of the court, I would like to proceed with this part of the presentation of the French case by bringing forth a witness who, for more than three years, had lived within the confines of German prison camps.”

For much of the world, Monday, January 28, 1946, started pretty much the same as the Monday before. In a certain war-recovering community in southern Germany, it was another day under a world’s closest scrutiny. The many wooden chairs and tables creaked under the many observers, and a cough echoed faintly around the large, crowded room. Softly clearing his own throat, the prosecuting attorney watched his witness walk slowly past the defendants’ dock. She felt that she had paused there a moment, though she merely slowed her pace, looking to them, and knowing that, in this moment, the hundreds of thousands who had been so needlessly, so horrifically killed, were gazing now upon them, their murderers, through her eyes. Drawing a deep breath of determination, she walked up the three steps and into the witness box. Settling into the chair, she lifted the translation headphones from the hook, fitting them over her ears.

The United Kingdom’s president of the Military War-Crimes International Military Tribunal regarded the woman over the gold rims of his glasses. “Would you, please, stand up?” he requested in English. “Do you wish to take the French oath?”

“Yes,” she murmured in French, rising to her feet and nodding to the tribunal.

“And will you tell me your name?”

“Marie Vincent LaRoche,” came her quick, uneasy reply.

“Repeat after me: I swear that I will speak without hate, or fear, that I will tell the truth, all the truth, nothing but the truth.”

Mme. LaRoche nodded again to him, repeating the oath in French.

“Raise your right hand and say, ‘I swear.’”

She raised her hand. “I swear.”

“Please, sit down, and speak slowly,” the president stipulated. “Your name is…?”

“LaRoche, Marie Vincent.”

The prosecutor leaned to the lectern, glancing to his notes. “Is your name Mademoisellé LaRoche?” he asked.

She regarded the man she had been working with over the past few weeks, now standing before her, some distance away. “Yes.”

“Are you the widow of Monsieur LaRoche?”

She focused her attention upon him, not the muttering crowd in the background. “Yes.”

“You were born in Paris, on 8 October, 1911?”

Mme. LaRoche again nodded in the affirmative. “Yes.”

“And you are of French nationality?” the man asked. “French born, and of parents, who were of French nationality?”

“Yes.”

“You are a deputy in the Constituent Assembly?”

“Yes.”

The prosecutor nodded to her. “You are a Knight of the Legion of Honor?”

“Yes.”

He looked to his notes. “You have been decorated by General Legentilhommé at the Invalidés?”

“Yes.”

“Were you arrested and then deported?”

She nodded her head that she had been. “Yes,” she whispered.

Glancing to the Tribunal, he then said, “Will you please give your testimony?”

Sitting straight in her chair, Mme. LaRoche cleared her throat. Many papers rustled across the great room, and a reporter coughed another distant echo.

“I was arrested on 9 February, 1942, by Petain’s French police, who handed me over to the German authorities six weeks later. I arrived on 20 March at La Sante prison, in the German quarter. I was questioned on 9 June, 1942. At the end of my interrogation, the Germans wanted me to sign a statement, which was inconsistent with what I had told them. I refused to sign. The officer who had questioned me threatened me, and when I told him I was unafraid of death … rather, of being shot … he said, ‘But we have at our disposal means for killing that are far worse than merely shooting.’ …And the interpreter said to me, ‘You do not know what you have just done. You are going to leave for a concentration camp in Germany. No one ever returns from there.’”

“So, you were then taken to prison?” the prosecutor asked.

“I was taken back to La Sante prison, where I was placed in solitary confinement. However, I was able to communicate with my neighbors, through the pipes and windows. I was in a cell near to Georgés Politzer, the philosopher, and Jacqués Solomon, who was a physicist. Monsieur Solomon was son-in-law to Professor Langévin, a pupil of Curie, one of the first to study atomic disintegration.”

To her right, and to the left of the prosecutor, were gathered the collected leaders of Hitler’s Third Reich, sitting on long benches at the wall in two neat rows, and surrounded by the white helmets of the Special Military Police detail. The one called Rudolf Hess, a former SS general and deputy führer to Hitler, watched her, with his wild eyes, his hand cupped to the translator earphone, intent upon her every word. At his side, Hermann Göring, reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe, met her searching gaze with an unmoving look of apathy, possibly ignoring the woman’s testimony by leaving his translation headphones resting in his lap, though she thought it more likely he merely hated her words, and was quite capable of understanding her French. She was sure he must be listening, hating her voice, wishing she was dead and buried somewhere, with all those countless others.

In the prisoner dock, the Third Reich defendants appeared subdued, but angered, all within a neat little fence, and all surrounded by frail, human guards. The impression was one of snarling wolfhounds held at bay with flimsy leashes, guarded by sheep. Watching her assailants gathered there before her—these so-called defendants in the International Major War Figures Trial—a frightful chill ran up the woman’s spine. She wondered why there were no iron bars to cage the viscous beasts she again faced. Still, and as forsworn, the young woman did continue.

“Through the piping, Georgés Politzer was able to inform me that, when he was interrogated and tortured, he was asked whether he would write theoretical pamphlets for National Socialism,” she said. “When he refused, he was told that he would be in the first train of prisoners to be shot. As for Jacqués Solomon, he was also horribly tortured, then thrown into a dark cell. He was later released for a few minutes, on the day of his execution—so he could say goodbye to his wife… She, too, was under arrest at La Sante. Hèléne Langévin-Solomon told me, in Romainvillé, where I found her after I left La Sante, that, when she went to her husband, he cried, saying, ‘I cannot take you into my arms—because I can—no longer—move them.’ ” She turned her tearing eyes to the tribunal. “Every time the internees returned from questioning, one could hear moaning through the windows, and they all said they felt paralyzed.”

Her own eyes moist with her emotion, she gave her lips a nervous lick, looking out again to the devil’s box, where the monsters of Hitler idly sat. Her eyes faltered over these villains, and she returned them to the relaxing, yet determined image of the French prosecutor.

“Several times during the five months I spent at La Sante, prisoners were taken to be shot,” she continued, her voice becoming as passive as she could muster, while remaining strong and clear. “When I left La Sante, on 20 August, 1942, I was taken to the fortress of Romainvillé, which was a camp for prisoners. There, I was present on two occasions that prisoners were taken. 21 August, and 22 September. Among the prisoners taken away were the husbands of the women who were with me, and who left for Auschwitz. Most of them died there.” She looked again to the arrested Nazi officers. “Usually, these women had been arrested only because of the activity of their husbands. They, themselves—had done nothing.”

The Prosecutor patiently turned a page in his lengthy notes. “When did you depart for Auschwitz?”

“I left for Auschwitz on 23 January, 1943, arriving on the 27th…”

Fräulein Wilma Höhn stood at the tall double doors, gazing back into the large, crowded courtroom, with all its paper rustling, pen and pencil tapping, and whispering, wondering if any truly heard the words of Mme. LaRoche. There was relief, though, when she looked to the bench, where the judges were, of course, quite intent upon her every utterance. She turned and stepped through the doors, reaching into her handbag for a cigarette and box of matches, and then standing beside a military policeman in the corridor, while she struck up the fire.

A suited man hurried past her, clutching a sheaf of papers, scuttling his way into the courtroom, his obvious determination winning a smile from Wilma. She looked at the soldier, who granted her a glimmer of a smile as well.

“Busy day,” she commented.

“Always something new to submit, ma’am…” he thoughtfully replied. “…Always someone arriving late—always someone with a marvelous, new idea, be it for the prosecution, the defense—or the news reels.”

“Yes, I—suppose…”

“Pity they didn’t get him, though.”

“‘Him?’”

He nodded to her, looking a bit puzzled he should need to identify the missing defendant. “Hitler, ma’am. Dragging in his henchmen is one thing, but—boy, that would have been something…”

“Yes, it would have.” She dropped the match to the wood floor. “I’m afraid Adolph Hitler is already dead,” she said, chasing the smoking match down with the toe of her boot.

“What?” The look he gave her was now one of definite surprise. “I thought he escaped—to South America.”

She shook her head, no. “Suicide, with his wife, Eva Braun, in his Berlin bunker, April 30, last year.”

“You’re sure—um, ma’am?” He shook his head. “I mean, I hadn’t…”

“I—have to go.” She smiled a glance to the sentry. “Excuse me.”

Wilma walked toward the wide stairway, and proceeded down to the main doors of the Justizgebäude. She knew he would be there again, her conscience. He was always there, whenever she needed him, day or night. She stepped out on the front steps of Nürnberg’s Palace of Justice, to the whipping wind and biting January cold. A new year, a new nation, and a new world, all at once. And there he stood, just across the road, just as she expected.

On any other street, in any other city, the dark figure, hat drawn low across his brow, his cloak fluttering loose in the winter winds, would have seemed somewhat natural. Here and now, looking so sharp and dapper, he was bound to have been noticed as an oddity, had such notice been permitted. She stood where she was, the closed door to the building at her back, looking at him, with the bombed and fire-gutted remnants of a great city looming as his sprawling, devastated backdrop.

Wilma stepped cautiously down the snowy steps, and along the short walkway to the road, where she paused, awaiting the passage of a small convoy of military trucks. She was then able to cross over to him.

“My Lady,” he cordially greeted.

“I do not—like—this place,” she informed him, yet again.

“This is Your strength,” he reminded her. “It is here, in this place, that Justice shall overcome. This is why You chose to come here, to ensure that…”

“Prometheus…!” she nearly wept.

He regarded her, his black eyes glinting, like cut onyx caught in moonlight. “My Lady?”

She turned back to the Justizgebäude, dropping her cigarette to the snow. “The reason I am here is to determine what it is these lords of justice see as just.”

“And what have You learned?”

“They try,” was her soft reply. She faced again to him. “Oh, they do try. I recall the hateful trials at Athenæ, at Troia, and Spárte—Argo and Knossos… Here, though, is a war that has encompassed the globe—and the crimes found are—beyond barbarous, beyond cruel, beyond heartless…”

He rested his hand to her divine face. “My Lady Themis, what We learn here will shape Our future, as well as the future of Mortal-Man. Decisions formed here will echo through eons to come, for it is here, in this Palace of Justice, that We shall see the birth of a growing, spreading, global morality. It will require a space for contemplation—sometimes violent contemplation—but the following millennium may, at last, see an end to all warring conflict.” He looked across the road to the doors of the palace. “We look to the ancient democracies of Athenæ, thousands of years ago, and then to the testimony of Mme. LaRoche. Her words come softly to Us, sometimes timidly, but always with caution, and We realize she is but a single, frail voice, heroically speaking against a nation’s immorality. Still, while she is but one, she is also one of so very, very many—each so passionately, often unknowingly, fashioning a new path, across a new future, setting all mankind truly free of the bonds of tyranny.”

The goddess followed the god’s gaze across to the sprawling facility. “…I—must now return…”

“As I must now leave, My Lady.”

Facing the building, she held her hand out to him, feeling his warm hand grip hers. “Thank you.”

“Always Your Servant, My Lady.”

She started back across the street, even as the other deity vanished at her back, in a brief flair of sparkles, and a twisting flight of wind-blown snowflakes. Fräulein Wilma Höhn climbed the few steps to the main doors of the vast Justizgebäude complex. She stopped in the large foyer, kicking the snow from her boots, then preceded back up the wide stairway and into the large courtroom.

Nothing more need be known of this little tale.

I’ve Got—Chills . . .
948 words
By Me

Pretty, 16-year-old—give or take a discombobulated respooling of the space/time continuum—Christine Ballatori was firmly Hungarian, second-generation American and lived now in Franklin County, Ohio, on the eastern outskirts of Columbus. The thought of being second-generation always made her smile. She had been born in the growing town of Salem, Massachusetts, where her mother had eventually settled before moving west with her daughter. It was not a necessarily bad neighborhood, but it was quite a-ways from being good. It was okay for her, though.

One Friday evening, on her nightly walk home from her job at a small pizzeria, she stepped out onto what she called No Name Road, really just an unmarked stretch of housing pavement that started at the end of Lillian Lane and ran alongside East Livingston Avenue. She stopped in her walk when a brand new long, black 1999 Jaguar pulled to a stop in front of her. The darkly-tinted window buzzed down to reveal the most handsome young man she had ever seen in the neighborhood.

“Well, ’scuse me, darlin’,” he pointedly called out to her, rustling a small notepad into view. “I’m lookin’ for—Shady Lane Road?”

“I am not darling,” she murmured, barely audible.

“Hm? Oh, yes, sorry ’bout that. See, I’m sorta new in these sticks—just been goin’ round and round.” He smiled his perfect white teeth to her. “But you must admit, you are a darlin’ sight.”

Christine hid her smile of appreciation, looking away at the dark, empty streets. “Look—it’s late and I gotta…”

“Well, I was just tryin’ to find Shady Lane Road and I was wonderin’ if you might know where it is.”

“Next street up,” she quickly replied. “At the light. Sign was knocked down a few weeks ago.”

“Uh-huh.” He leaned forward, looking to his right. “At the light.”

“Yes.”

The bearded, reassuring smile came back around to her. “I’m supposed to pick up a friend there, we’re headed out to the clubs. Say, you wanna come along?”

She smiled with some recognition. “I think I’ve seen you…”

He smiled at the late recognition. “Yeah, sports on TV,” he revealed. “Name’s Nick Lox—number 10? I’m with East Coast Hockey’s—The Chill.”

“Oh, hockey! Yeah.” Christine giggled. “I wouldn’t have thought. You have very nice teeth for a hockey player.”

He chuckled. “Just gotta duck now and then.”

“Yeah. I heard about your concussion with the Admirals last week. Should you be driving?”

“I’m fine,” he assured. “Gotta pick up Jordon Sobriquet. He’s rentin’ a place out here somewhere. Says it’s a quiet place.”

“Sorta. Shootings now and then.”

“Really? Well, c’mon, hop in.”

She thought it over for about 10 seconds, knowing her mother had dinner warm for her and was going to be furious. “Okay!”

Christine hurried around to the passenger door and they were off to Sobriquet’s house, where Jordon’s wife had just flown in from checking on a new home for the family in Adamstown, so his little clubbing venture had been halted. Alone, Lox headed back to the car.

“Looks like it’s just us, kid,” he said, starting the engine.

“Oh.” Christine nodded her approval. “Okay.”

He looked at her. “How old are you?” he now needed to know.

“Old enough.”

“Yeah, okay, okay.” He set the car in park. “Can I see yer ID?”

“Oh. W’ll, yeah, sure.”

It was a genuine picture driver’s license for Ohio showing a date of birth of 1976, putting her at 23-years-old. He looked at the youthful face again, then shook his head, returning her license.

“All the girls I know must be on the wrong diet,” he muttered, putting the Jag in gear and heading back out to Livingston. “Where to?” he asked.

“You’re driving.”

“Yeah, w’ll… Ya got a club ya like? I was just plannin’ on getting’ drunk with Les Schtroumpf, but he’s got the wife and kid with ’im.”

“Schtroumpf? Jordon “Les Schtroumpf” Sobriquet! I love him!”

“Yeah, a real troublemaker on the ice—for the other guys.”

“Well, okay.”

“Okay—what?”

“Let’s go out and get drunk,”

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

Nick had definitely been truthful with Christine. Getting home from the club she had to do the driving. She got him home, with the Jag safely tucked away in the garage. Nick fumbled for his house keys and invited his lovely little date inside.

“I—I got cab fare—I mean, if ya jus’ wanna go home.”

“No, no,” she assured, guiding him to the sofa. “We’re fine. Just a nightcap.” She stepped over to Nick’s liquor cabinet. “Your friends were really fun.”

“Oh, yeah. Between games, it’s a lotta fun.”

Pouring the scotch, Christine regarded her date’s reflection in the bar mirror. “So, you’re from Kalamazoo.”

“Yep, up Michigan-way. You always a Columbusite?”

“No.” The man was definitely a lot more handsome when he was sober. She sat beside him and handed him his drink. “I was born in Salem, Mass.”

“Ooh, a witchy-woman.”

“That’s not nice.” She nuzzled at the side of his neck. “Some Salem residents take that kinda talk personally.”

“W’ll, I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“I know.” She nipped at his skin.

“Hey, hey. No hickeys.”

“No, ’course not. Locker room gossip and stuff.”

“Yeah.”

As the fangs slid into him, his glass dropped to the carpet. Christine climbed on top of her latest victim, drawing out his life essence, savoring this energizing elixir of life. Releasing him, she rose up over him, licking her lips, and gazed down into his glazed eyes.

“Mm, healthy men,” she sighed. “I’ve gotta go back out to that club, maybe start a little collection of Chillers.”

–