**FADE IN:**

**INT. HALLWAY - DAY**

**JENNIFER** shifts nervously from foot to foot, her eyes darting to the clock on the wall, the minutes ticking away like a metronome driving her unease. **BRENT** stands a few paces away, his expression clouded with hesitation, his gaze fixed on the door ahead, anxiety gathering like storm clouds on his brow.

**JENNIFER**

We can’t linger here any longer, Brent. He handed us the key, and he'll be waiting for us to step inside, not hanging around out here like we’re scared.

**JIMMY**

Exactly! It’s going to look really odd if he finds us just standing around. Come on, let's move already!

**BRENT**

Alright, alright... just give me a moment to gather my thoughts. I can’t shake this feeling that something is off, that there’s something lurking just beneath the surface.

I want to go home now.

**JIMMY**

But, Brent, this is your home, remember?

**Jimmy leans in closer, his eyes locking onto Brent's with an intensity that conveys urgency and concern.**

**BRENT**

Yes... I suppose I do remember.

**With a hesitant breath, Brent steadies his hand as he slowly inserts the key into the lock, feeling the weight of nostalgia pressing down on him as he pushes open the door to the twelfth-floor apartment for the first time in almost four decades.**

---

**INT. LEMONTREE LUXURY APARTMENTS - DAY**

**Brent’s eyes absorb the sight before him, a whirlwind of memories flooding back, drawing him into a vivid tapestry of the past.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

I was just ten years old the last time I called this place home at the Lemontree Luxury Apartments.

The name has changed, and the walls have been remodeled countless times, yet the essence remains...

hauntingly familiar and laden with echoes of yesteryears.

---

**A FLASHBACK BEGINS, pulling us back to Brent’s poignant childhood memories.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

I was an only child, with both parents absorbed in their work—a rarity for families of that time.

They put on a facade of kindness, but I often felt like an afterthought... a mere shadow lurking in their periphery.

**Brief glimpses of his parents surface—moments of laughter quickly overshadowed by long, suffocating silences, leaving young Brent adrift in a sea of isolation.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

If love ever existed under our roof, it was buried beneath layers of neglect and indifference. I longed for liberation, for the freedom to escape...

---

**INT. SCHOOL - DAY (FLASHBACK)**

**A small, frail figure, young Brent is an easy target for bullies, struggling against their taunts.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

Home was a battlefield, but school felt like a relentless nightmare, a living hell where torment thrived unchecked.

**A haunting montage captures the essence of his desolation and fear, leading up to the moment he meets **MELISSA "MISSY" MCDOWELL.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

That was until Missy appeared... the light piercing through my darkness.

**Young Missy approaches Brent, radiating warmth and positivity, a beacon in the bleakness of his world.**

**MISSY**

Hi! I’m Melissa McDowell, but everyone calls me Missy!

**BRENT**

Hi... I’m Brent Embry.

**MISSY**

Do you like “The Terrific Three” too? I have every comic book from issue sixty-four, the very first appearance of the Turtle Master!

**Laughter mingles in the air as they bond over shared interests, the innocence of childhood blossoming anew.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

Our conversations blossomed into a friendship, a bright thread woven into the fabric of my troubled existence.

---

**Scenes dissolve into joyful adventures filled with matchbox cars, camping under a blanket of stars, and dreams exchanged on lazy afternoons.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

One June night, after the school year ended, Missy posed a question that completelyb shattered my gloom...

---

**FADE IN:**

**EXT. PORCH - DAY**

**Brent and MISSY sit on the porch, sunlight streaming down, creating an atmosphere of warmth and innocence. Missy inches closer, resting her chin in her hands, staring intently into Brent's eyes.**

**MISSY**

So, what do you want to be when you grow up?

**BRENT**

I don’t know… I guess I want to be an astronaut on a spaceship traveling from planet to planet.

So I can just get away from everybody.

**MISSY**

Why would you want to do that?

**BRENT**

Well, because I’m sure there are adults just like Tommy Peterson or Cassidy Runyon.

**Missy’s expression shifts, understanding flooding her features.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

She knew exactly what I meant by that. Cassidy had picked on her the previous school year, tripping her at lunch and making her spill her entire tray of food.

**A brief flash of a memory shows CASSIDY pushing Missy during lunch, laughter ringing out.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

Tommy was my arch-enemy too, always slapping me hard on the back of the head and once holding my face down in a muddy puddle just to make the other kids laugh.

**MISSY**

Yeah, I guess that would be nice. Can I go with you?

**BRENT**

Yes, of course you can, and your legs… well, we’d probably be weightless a lot of the time.

**Brent suddenly fears he might have offended her, but Missy doesn’t seem to notice.**

**MISSY**

Oh, how cool! Look, I’m floating!

**She waves her arms and legs, mimicking weightlessness. Brent joins her, both laughing at the silliness of their game.**

---

**INT. BRENT'S ROOM - NIGHT**

**Brent lies on the floor, face down on his comic book. The sounds of laughter fade as both children drift into slumber.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

We both fell asleep just after that, my face on top of the comic book I was reading.

My dreams were filled with adventures—me and Missy fighting off aliens on our massive spaceship.

---

**EXT. PORCH - DAY (A WEEK LATER)**

**The sun shines bright, and the familiar ambiance of childhood surrounds them. Brent and Missy sit on the porch, excitement brewing as the time for their favorite show, ULTRAMAN, approaches.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

It was nearly a week later, and we were out on my porch when everything suddenly changed.

**Brent leans against the glass sliding doors as Missy stomps around playfully, pretending to be a giant monster.**

**MISSY**

Look Brent, I’m Ultraman!

**With a burst of energy, she climbs onto the thick glass table that sits against the railing. She strikes a classic fighting stance, full of confidence.**

**BRENT**

Hey, be careful—

**Before he can finish, she accidentally steps on a matchbox car left on the table.**

**Time seems to freeze as she loses her balance, staggering back. Brent watches in horror as she takes two faltering steps before she disappears from view.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

I couldn’t believe it at first. I just sat there, frozen in shock, disbelief, and fear.

My mind couldn’t accept what I had just witnessed, so I refused to acknowledge it and then I deliberately forgot that it happened.

**Brent stares blankly at the void where Missy had been, the weight of loss pressing down harder than he could comprehend.**

**FADE OUT.**

**(CONT'D Brent VO)**

I couldn't believe it at first. I sat there, frozen in shock, choking on disbelief and paralyzed by fear.

My mind refused to accept the nightmare that had just unfolded...

---

**INT. BRENT'S ROOM - NIGHT (FLASHBACK)**

**Young Brent** is slumped alone in his room, eyes glazed over, staring blankly at the flickering television screen. The noisy dinner chatter of his parents drifts in from afar, a distant echo that feels worlds away.

**BRENT (V.O.)**

I couldn't bear to confront the horror. The memory morphed into a ghost, buried deep beneath layers of denial...

I sat in stupor, going through the motions as if the world outside didn’t exist.

**His parents enter, concern drawn across their faces, yet their indifference stings like a cold wind against his anguish.**

**PARENT 1**

Brent, dinner’s ready.

**With a vacant, distant gaze, Brent mechanically takes his plate and retreats back to the solitude of his room, lost in swirling thoughts.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

They bombarded me with questions, but my voice felt like a whisper lost in the void.

The police, the paramedics... I didn’t respond; I was consumed by the encroaching darkness.

They took me to the hospital, while the search for Missy commenced.

---

**EXT. STREET - DAY (FLASHBACK)**

**Police cars line the street like sentinels, sirens wailing as officers swarm with frantic urgency. Brent watches from a distance, wrapped in a shroud of despondency and disbelief.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

They didn’t find her body until the next morning—discarded like yesterday’s refuse.

---

**INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - DAY (FLASHBACK)**

**Brent lies motionless in an unforgiving hospital bed, eyes fixed on the sterile whiteness of the ceiling. An ominous bottle of pills looms on the bedside table, a reminder of the chaos within.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

A few days later, they released me, handing me pills to manage a turmoil I could scarcely comprehend.

---

**INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE - DAY (FLASHBACK)**

**Brent sits across from **DR. SAMUELS**, whose gentle, probing demeanor contrasts sharply with Brent’s withdrawn, haunted presence.**

**DR. SAMUELS**

It's crucial we discuss her, Brent.

**BRENT (V.O.)**

Just a week later, Jimmy and Jennifer arrived like a breath of fresh air, offering an escape from the suffocating memories of Missy, even though Dr. Samuels urged me to confront the past.

---

**MONTAGE - BRENT, JIMMY, AND JENNIFER**

- **Brent, Jimmy, and Jennifer** are laughing heartily, engaged in spirited video game battles, their friendship flourishing amid the shadows of their collective history.

- Their faces evolve from youthful innocence to the promise of young adulthood, joy tinged with unspoken losses.

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

They stood by me through junior high, high school, even college. But just as quickly as they entered my life,

they faded away, leaving an aching void I struggled to fill.

---

**EXT. CONSTRUCTION SITE - DAY**

**Now a grown man, Brent walks past a busy construction site. Suddenly, he watches in horror as a WORKER plunges from the building's edge, time distorting in that moment.**

**BRENT (V.O.) (CONT'D)**

I hadn’t seen Jimmy and Jennifer for nearly forty years... until just a few days ago, when they resurfaced,

emerging right as I was walking home from work.

**In that instant, Jimmy and Jennifer appear beside him, their banter easing the tension of the moment.**

**JIMMY**

Was that guy okay? That looked really brutal.

**JENNIFER**

He’s fine. It wasn’t that high. Come on—let's go grab some pizza. I'm starving!

**Brent walks alongside them, confusion and nostalgia colliding within him, a tempest of emotions brewing beneath a calm exterior.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

“Okay,” I answered them numbly as I slowly shuffled my way back to my apartment.

---

**EXT. STREET - MORNING**

**Brent, determination simmering beneath the surface, bypasses work and approaches his car. JIMMY and JENNIFER hop into the backseat, oblivious to the whirlwind of emotions swirling within him.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

The next morning I didn’t go into work but got in my car and drove back to my old hometown instead, with Jimmy and Jennifer coming along.

---

**EXT. LEMONTREE LUXURY APARTMENTS - DAY**

**Brent finally meets **KENNETH**, the leasing agent, who beams with enthusiasm as he gestures toward the breathtaking view from the twelfth floor.**

**KENNETH**

So, how do you like the apartment, Mr. Embry? That’s quite a view, isn’t it?

**KENNETH (CONT'D)**

Good news! Your paperwork just went through, and you have been approved.

**KENNETH (CONT'D)**

Now we just have to sign you up for a one or two-year lease. I've got all the paperwork ready to go in my office if you’re ready to sign.

**BRENT**

Let me think about it.

**Brent slowly hands Kenneth back the key, his mind racing as he gazes out at the porch one last time.**

**BRENT (CONT'D)**

I’ll get back to you.

**Brent turns to leave, a sense of finality in his step.**

**KENNETH**

Don’t forget about our Olympic-sized pool, personal gym, and spa! And all the other great facilities we have to offer!

**Brent hears Kenneth calling after him but keeps walking. Kenneth watches as Brent departs.**

**KENNETH (V.O.)**

Well, he’ll be back, Ken thought to himself, looking out again at the amazing twelfth-floor view.

They always come back.

---

**EXT. HIGHWAY - NIGHT**

**Brent drives back the three hundred miles, a sense of calm enveloping him. JIMMY and JENNIFER sit in the backseat, laughter punctuating the air.**

**BRENT (V.O.)**

Brent drove back that night to Charleston with Jimmy, Jennifer, and now Missy, to keep him company on the long drive home.

**As Brent glances into the rearview mirror, a familiar face comes into view.**

**There is MISSY, smiling brightly, a warm presence that pulls at his heart.**

**Brent can't help but smile back, feeling a connection that transcends time.**

**FADE OUT.**

**THE END.**

Barlington Station sat along Mars’ equator and it was one of the few main trading and support hubs for the whole valley and especially Olympus Mons itself.

It was also located less than twenty kilometers from the planet’s largest Paternoster Lift, Phobos. 

The massive Phobos Paternoster very slowly lifted and lowered several million metric tons of goods every single day on Mars. It was basically just an extremely long, massive and extremely strong chain that never stopped moving, bringing all of its goods and passengers with it as it slowly moved. 

It was an ancient lift design that was still more efficient than anything that the eggheads could think up today. 

Mars’ lone moon Phobos had been relocated to its current stable orbit decades ago so that it now held geosynchronous orbit and provided a huge anchor point for the Paternoster to be securely pinned down. 

Tall stacks of shipping containers littered the ground for kilometers all around the giant lift platforms that slowly drifted past them on the moon’s surface as the cargo was quickly readied for shipment on the platforms. 

Tiny space tugs shifted their huge loads onto the weak gravity well of the moon's lumpy surface. Gigantic cargo loads were passed to them by fusion powered interplanetary freighters which were ninety five percent engine and five percent living and working space for their crews. Freighters that had muscled these loads from Earth to Mars as fast as was economically feasible.

Small armies of huge shipping millipedes worked in large teams to quickly load and unload the hundreds of platforms that passed by every second of every single day nonstop except for very rare, occasional maintenance stops. 

It was like watching bees working in a busy hive or ants in a busy colony. You could easily go quite mad just trying to keep track of everything moving around the huge platforms.

Barlington station was also located closest to Central Processing and it served the more affluent people living under the mountain while its neighboring stations generally supported the more domestic population of Olympus Mons. 

Metric tons of luxury goods and products of every imaginable type moved throughout the tram station every single day in a never ending stream.

Day and night it was a nonstop but well planned form of total maddening chaos.

On any given weekday you can find dream supercars that can’t even be driven on Mars, huge diamonds from the violent and extremely toxic volcanic moons of Jupiter, exotic glowing caviar grown somewhere in deep, deep space and rare smells from Earth which are worth a surprisingly large amount of money on Mars. 

Smells somehow trigger strong feelings in people and they've gotten very popular lately with the young rich Hottentots living underneath the mountain.

Security was triple the normal contingent for a station of this size because of all of this luxury nonsense.

Crack swat teams were on constant active roving patrols twenty four hours a day around the platforms and the businesses surrounding the station. Crime was very low during the daytime. 

So imagine everyone’s shock and surprise when inspirational orchestra music automatically started blaring all throughout the large station as an extremely expensive elite tram suddenly rolled into the station with absolutely no advanced warning at all.

“What in the holy hot fudgesickle is going on here, godammit?” Sub Commander Jenkins yelled at his subordinates deep inside Central Processing as soon as he found out about the problem.

“Why didn’t we get any advanced warning that one of them rich fucking ass munchers was arriving today?”

“Riley, get one of our best crack teams to escort them through the station back to Mons where those assholes rightly belong.”

“Tell them to stick to our new visitors like glue,” he told them as he took another huge bite out of his still slightly warm submarine sandwich. 

“And send that weasely little ass kisser… that stupid concierge… what’s his name again… Carpenter? ...to unruffle any goddamn feathers this snafu may have caused with our new guests.”

“Jesus and someone get Bob Wheeler over at Logistics on the phone, please.”

“They’re going to have a freaking stroke when they hear about this shit, especially freaking midweek when they’re trying to stock up the whole mountain for the long weekend.”

“Someone isn’t going to get their expensive Russian vodka because some other rich moron can’t bother to talk to people. Bob’s just gonna love that shit.”

The tram had been quietly sitting there for several minutes as thick clouds of steam from the dynamos romantically bled off onto the busy public platform next to it.

It just seemed to be there waiting for something to happen when its star sapphire covered doors slowly swooshed open just as the welcoming orchestral music blasting throughout the station peaked at an inspirational high point. 

Carpenter Meriweather Pierpoint skidded to a stop just in front of the doors as he quickly buckled his belt. He had been indisposed when he got the panicked and screaming call over his phone but that didn’t stop him from still getting there on time. He was never late.

He could just make out in the shadows someone slowly moving towards the exit of the small tram. Carpenter also spotted out of the corner of his eye the Immortals quietly taking up positions all around them. It’s about time he thought to himself. 

Holy shit! These folks must be pretty damn important to get the best of the best for their protection, Carpenter thought. She had never seen the Immortals deployed for anyone less than an important world leader or an Ambassador.  

So why isn’t their Motion Planner doing their fucking goddamn job for God’s sake, he thought, as he quickly picked a tiny piece of lettuce off of his lapel.

Just at that moment one of the biggest and toughest looking bodyguards he had ever seen came slowly lumbering into the bright light of the platform. 

To the astonished concierge it looked just like what used to be called a Great Dane but like many breeds of intelligent dog they were genetically modified a long time ago to be three quarters bigger than their normal pre-engineered counterparts. 

They also gave them beefed up skeletons, hearts, vital organs and all other internal parts that would struggle normally under the constant strain of just being that size and in both vertical and horizontal configurations depending on whether they were on two of their feet or on all four.

And reengineered hips that can smoothly rotate from bipedal to quadpedal motion without causing any strain or back pain. That was a very important biological improvement that helped intelligent dogs socialize with humans at the same level. 

Most of them still preferred to walk around quadpedal when they were just among themselves though. It felt more natural to them.   

And that’s just about as big as the geeks in the lab can engineer anything before the inverse square law puts a stop to that nonsense and kicks them in the butt.

Well if the bodyguard is this finely decked out then those folks must be totally loaded, Carpenter thought. I may be able to squeeze a few bucks out of them in tips if I play this just right. 

A classic Peakey Blinders style luxury suit hung smartly from the giant guard dog including a tipped baker boy cap sitting on top of his large head. It looked just like an old distinguished English gentleman from the Victorian era for sure.

For a bodyguard and a dog it was very attractive and debonaire as well.

Sparky quickly looked around assessing the situation and noted where the station’s security units were placed. Then he quietly stood by the small heavily armed transport that had just rolled up courtesy of pissed off Bob in Logistics.

Shit they’ve deployed Major Kragen’s elite Immortals unit. Damn our luck, he thought. We’re going to have to tread very lightly from now on.

Then slowly and dramatically as the background welcome music swelled once again into the crescendo of an ancient piece of music called Les Preludes, the occupants of the luxury tram slowly stepped out onto the platform.

They stepped onto it cautiously like it might collapse any second now but then quickly headed over to the transport without even acknowledging the man standing very erect right in front of them.

“Welcome to…. oh shit… here we go… yep, just make yourself comfortable folks. My name is Carpenter and if you forget it, it’s stamped right here on my forehead, see?”

He pulled back his light bangs to show them where he was branded.

He had subtle bioillumination set into the lettering so his name even glowed in the dark. That was handy when the power went out and you had a dozen panicked clients freaking out in the darkness all around you. 

He quickly slipped in right behind them into the back of the armored transport.

“Okay, so I will be your concierge and escort until we get you fine folks back under the mountain where it’s much, much safer, especially right now. Uggggh.”

He had to quickly squeeze over as the huge Great Dane bodyguard slowly slipped into the back seat right next to him. 

The transport was large enough to handle a dozen people and it was outfitted with the finest materials and fittings so space wasn’t a problem.

Carpenter just wasn't expecting the huge beast to try and sit next to him so he got slightly crushed for a fraction of a second.

I’m sure that was just an accident, he told himself as he started to get a strange feeling about their new guests. Something seemed a bit off about all of them. 

Maybe it was the unusual way the old woman kept twitching and fidgeting and poking the young lady next to her with her cane like she was nervous about something.

“We are going to be going through the main trading concourse very soon which we will have to shut down for just a few minutes and then we will head down through Mira Doone, the main entrance to the mountain.”

He quickly tapped the glass partition and the transport slowly and cautiously started moving. Their escorts way up above them shifted their positions as they prepared to leapfrog observation spots until they were well into the mountain. 

Some people were already spreading false rumors and lies that the maniacs had breached the mountain's perimeter defenses but that hadn’t happened… yet. 

But Major Kragen wasn’t about to take any chances with their precious cargo far below them. He hadn’t lost an fucking elite to a violent attack yet and he wasn’t about to start today. 

It was planned that they be escorted kilometers deep into the mountain through the outer trade district just inside the gate but well into the exclusive part of the mountain. It was designed to be a luxurious paradise but they were still a very long way from it..

“If anyone wants to stop and pick up any souvenirs while we are passing through just let me know and I will be glad to stop the transport and escort you through some of the fine establishments running along the gate.” 

Establishments that gave him a nice monthly stipend to promote them exclusively. He managed over the last 15 years to build up quite a small financial empire based solely on his access to some of the wealthiest people on Mars. His smuggling of restricted and forbidden things is legendary. 

His most exclusive clients are very powerful but in some important ways so is he.

He can never get caught because he basically owns not only law enforcement but the entire legal profession on Mars as well. He’s liberally greased every wheel in the system but he’s made well over one hundred times what he ever spent in return. 

“No, no, thank you, young man. I just want to get my family home safely. When the violence started we were taking an exclusive private tour of the valley when our guides were suddenly murdered by an angry mob.”

“We managed to survive somehow by hiding. I just don’t understand what’s going on right now,” Gramps told him, laying it on real thick as he stood straighter than Jylin had seen him stand in years. He was trying his hardest to intimidate the younger man with just his large presence.

“Oh my,” Carpenter quietly exclaimed as he kept slowly looking them over as discreetly as he could manage. He just kept subtly shaking his head slightly. 

Something isn’t quite here… if… if they survived all night by hiding out in the valley you would think that they wouldn’t look so much like… one of them, Carpenter thought to himself. They were absolutely perfect. No dirt, no sweat, no wrinkles even. 

They truly are a different breed down under that mountain, he thought. Nothing ruffles their feathers. Even the end of the world practically. 

Hell, he was still nervous even with all the weapons and soldiers he had at his disposal. He had seen those videos of all of their violence and destruction they had created in the last few days. 

Nothing was left untouched by them, everything was destroyed or burned and no one was coming out of those areas alive. It was a murderous out of control rampage by a huge mob of crazy people.  

The transport was slowing down for some reason just as it passed by the huge gates of the mountain. Gates made from the rarest of Martian marble. They were well over one hundred years old, much older than the entire valley. 

The mountain had been settled first then the valley was built nearly seventy years later when it became economically unfeasible to keep shipping food and agricultural products all the way from Earth. 

The finest lines of cattle from the US, Japan, and Europe were shipped to Mars at a huge expense and then crossbred according to an AI generated breeding program. This created the finest beef found anywhere, even on Earth. 

The same process was started for pigs and lamb but political and religious reasons influenced the cancellation of the entire program.

Various rare fish and exotic shellfish were also stocked up in various large lakes spread throughout the whole valley. These lakes were both seafood farms in the middle of the lakes and highly secured vacation resorts for the elite under the mountain at their shores. Shores created with the finest blue sand from the Caribbean.

Martian lobster and crab are just incrediblely delicious and tons are shipped back to Earth every single year. But Martian tortoise meat is by far the most popular thing that is shipped back to Earth every month as it has a much more delicate flavor than any seafood that can be found on Earth.

Ancient strains of wheat, rye, barley and rice were also collected from around the world and shipped to Mars as well. The bread and pastry from Mars was way better and healthier than the highly processed crap sold on Earth. 

The old gates represented this huge agricultural bounty that the valley provided for all of Mars. It was covered for kilometers on each side in incredibly detailed murals of farm workers, cattle, Martian cowboys and agricultural equipment. 

As the transport slowed to a stop at the center of the main concourse just inside the gate Carpenter finally spoke up. 

“Yes, yes, I understand,” he spoke quietly into his collar before he addressed his clients. 

“I am so sorry folks but the Governor of Mira Doone and the Gate District would just love to meet you fine folks and he has invited you to have lunch with him and his young son, Gabriel. And they both would love to hear about your harrowing adventure.”

“How did he know…” Gramps started to ask when he looked up at where Carpenter was pointing. There was a small swarm of news drones flying high above them near their protectors in the shadows. “Oh.”

“We would love to accept his kind invitation,” Gramps told their escort as Gram subtly shoved her elbow into his ribs really hard. “Oof!”

“I am so pleased to hear that,” Carpenter replied to the elite old man towering over him. Something’s still off, he quietly thought to himself. 

He slowly slid his left hand into his jacket pocket as he clicked morse code to Major Kragen way up above them warning him to be on high alert. Something may happen soon. 

You couldn’t even tell he was moving he was so used to using his emergency transmitter this hush hush way. Potential danger and violence mandates subtle preventive measures be implemented whenever required.

“Just one more thing Dr. Capario,” Carpenter said to Gramps, calling him by the name that was on their forged documents. 

“I’m just going to have to give you all a biometric screening unfortunately before you meet with the Governor. Will you all be alright with that?”

“Of course,” Gramps quickly responded.

They were escorted into a small official looking building just off of the platform. It contained in the middle of the small room a Thermin Axe Identity DeTerminator that held the biometric records of every citizen on Mars.

“Just put your right thumb in the thumb shaped indent. You will feel a slight prick.” 

It was an ancient technology but it was by far the most secure and reliable method to verify a person’s identity. The Thermin Axe were always correct one hundred percent of the time. 

Every single person who had their arms cut off by the machine because they weren’t who they said they were, totally deserved it in the end.  

Gramps, Gram and Julian all put their right thumbs on the indent in the flat black table as Carpenter's face cycled through many different subtle expressions before he had the complete results. 

They all passed the test. He was so certain that they wouldn’t pass though…

“Please, please, come this way, everyone.” He led them all into a huge ceremonial hall that was connected to the utilitarian building by a long and ornate hallway. “The Governor and his son are waiting for you at the far end of the hall.”

They were still several dozen meters away from the Governor and his son when Jylin unexpectedly ran like hell towards an open exit to the outside that they were passing. She was outside before anyone could even react.

“What the bloody hell?” Carpenter quietly mumbled under his breath. “Where does she think she’s going?” 

But he was right there was nowhere to go. She spotted a repair workshop nearby and she quickly ran inside it and started to barricade the thick metal door. She had it somewhat welded shut within five minutes with the equipment she found there.  

She had no time but somehow she had to quickly figure out a way to escape. She had to get out of here without being seen by anyone or they were all dead. For now her grandparents were safe but…

… the Governor's son was that cute boy who was so nice to her in the valley. He would have recognized her if she had gotten any closer than she had gotten. They would have turned them in.

Soon loud pounding started coming from the thick metal door to the shop.

There were tons of materials to build with inside the shop and the it did have an exit directly to the outside but if there were any pressure suits to be found anywhere they were locked away somewhere secure in a place that she couldn’t even find.

A light bulb suddenly went off in that thick stubborn brain of hers. If I need a pressure suit then I guess I’m just going to have to build one myself, she thought.

She spent the next twenty minutes building a pressure suit. out of mylar blankets, gorilla tape, a clear plastic PET bottle for her helmet, and rubber bike inner tubes for all of the joints in her suit. 

She used plastic buckets cut down to completely and snuggly cover the mylar blankets tightly covering her arms and legs as they were thickly wrapped in gorilla tape as well. She was so layered up in the end she could barely move. 

She added a small bleeder valve to get rid of any excess carbon dioxide that was building up at the bottom of her helmet. She was going to have to continually bleed it every few minutes if she was going to survive.

She finally hooked two full sized air tanks sitting in a small metal cart to the suit using a long hose and she quickly pressurized her helmet and the system. She got done just in the nick of time. 

They were just breaking through the shop door when she shut the airlock behind her and she stepped out into the rarified and thin Martian atmosphere.

She had planned on climbing up the mountain and getting safely up to the Promenade Deck that circled the entire mountain about halfway up. It was a luxury two meter thick glass observation walkway that only the most elite had ever walked along. 

It was her only chance. Though how it was her sanctuary wasn't very clear in her mind at that moment. It just represented safety to her so it was her immediate short term goal. 

Less than a minute into Mar's very thin  atmosphere she was already starting to feel the mylar blankets breaking down under the harsh Martian radiation and she started to have some major doubts. She still had almost one hundred kilometers to go.

It would be an extremely easy climb by Earth standards but Mars wasn’t Earth. Instead of being a mostly vertical climb straight up the climb was almost horizontal at a gradual five to nine degree slope.

A long, long time ago slow, thick lava flows had dramatically lowered the slope of the now dormant mountain volcano. 

It would just be considered a gentle walk on Earth but even with an official government built pressure suit it would be quite a hard and long dangerous trek under extremely brutal and life threatening conditions.

It looks so far, far away, she thought, as the hard radiation slowly started to destroy her vision and caused tiny flashes to pop wherever the damage was occurring. 

She slowly started walking towards the shiny ring way off in the distance in front and just above her. Every step was starting to become agony as her joints slowly began to burn like they were on fire.

She had only gone a few dozen kilometers when her vision started to go out on her.

She had nearly sixty kilometers to go but she only had enough oxygen to last forty eight hours which was going to be eaten up fast by the high exertions she was going to have to perform just to move in her improvised suit.

The five oxygen tanks she was dragging along behind her in the cart were extremely heavy pressure tanks designed specifically for maintenance workers who had to spend up to ten hours out on the harsh surface of Mars fixing major problems. 

With almost twenty five kilometers to go and after nearly thirty eight hours spent trekking through this personal hell Jylin’s vision finally completely failed her. 

“Jesus fucking goddamn Christ,” she yelled out in complete frustration and in intense pain. “What are you doing to me? What do you want from me?”

She had no choice but to crawl the rest of the way, trying to feel the way with her bare hands and trying to figure out which way was going slightly higher. It was very hard to tell in many places. 

I can't, she said to herself as she finally collapsed with less than ten kilometers to go in her long and extremely dangerous journey. 

She lay still on the frigid Mars ground that was way below zero as most of the skin on her body started forming tiny bubbles like a tea kettle starting to boil water for afternoon tea in the frigid 80 degree below zero temperatures. 

“I give up. I’m done. I just can’t….I can’t… I’m so sorry Gram, I’m sorry Gramps…I love you both so much,” she quietly whispered in her delirium and intense pain. 

Someone was suddenly lifting up her limp body off of the ground as she slowly drifted in and out of consciousness. Whoever they are, they have really strong shoulders, she thought as she slowly slipped into complete shock. 

Within ten minutes she was inside the mountain and for the next hour a small army of doctors and nurses were very carefully spraying a healing agent onto her fragile body. She let out the bloodcurdling scream of someone who was being tortured to death despite the powerful painkillers that they had injected into her.

Twenty minutes later she was finally gently placed into her soft, clean hospital bed that smelled just like fresh cut daisies. She let out a deep sigh and slowly slipped into unconsciousness and sleep despite the intense pain raging throughout her body.

A few days later she finally regained consciousness. She was tightly wrapped head to toe in bright white gauze like she was a brand new mummy that had just come off of an assembly line somewhere. But she was completely blind so she didn't even notice.

“This will help honey,” Grams unusually soft voice swam in the dark. She also heard her Gram tapping something hard, over and over again.

“It saved our lives once way back when we got caught off guard by some violent solar flares out on the surface that suddenly came out of nowhere.”

“Gramps had to crawl almost ten kilometers dragging me along behind him the whole way,” she was quietly saying to herself like Jylin could actually hear what she was saying in her sleep. Gram kind of believed that she could hear her. 

“Yep, this sick ass green glowing shit is the only thing that saved both of our lives. I don’t know why but they haven’t made any of this crap in a very, very long time. So it’s very lucky, young lady, that your Gram has a Doctorate in chemistry. 

A deep calm slowly started to wash over her as she felt her raw nerve fibers getting hijacked by the mysterious chemical compound that Gram had injected into her. It was rewiring the nerve fiber to help in the healing process. It was like turning a fire alarm into a fire hose. 

She could smell the thick, tangy, familiar odor of her Gramps favorite pipe tobacco swirling in the air around her. Jylin could just imagine him sitting slumped over either watching a televisor broadcast or listening to an old fashioned radio show.

Either way, whomever it was that was speaking sounded both tired and very stressed out at the same time like they were at the very end of their ropes.

“How can we just sit back and allow a system to remain in place that forces little girls to make the impossible choice between dying a slow horrifying death on the surface of Mars or facing execution for her and her family simply because she is a mutation.”

“I, like everyone else, accepted the official story from Mars that this Martian Holocaust was instead a violent armed uprising from the “Taters”.

“The Taters, as they are called there, settled the valley just after its creation. They earned their land through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and a lot of sacrifice. They owned nearly eighty percent of the land and they comprised almost ninety percent of the valley’s general population with slightly over a hundred million members.”

“But several days ago, our intelligence services informed us that someone high up in the Martian Constabulary decided to provoke a civil war in the valley by spreading lies about the Taters. Their plan and goal was to destabilize the valley, then swoop in to take over after the mob was dispersed by their elite’s military.”

“Their plan completely misfired when their paid mob went a lot farther than they could ever have imagined.” 

“They soon went from simple vandalism and destroying property to murdering individuals and then they started lining people up to be shot and finally mass murder with a large number of people being burnt alive.”

“We don’t have any figures on the numbers of deaths yet at this early stage but our experts all agree that tens of millions of individuals may have been murdered in cold blood by those savages.” 

“They are currently completely out of control and the Martian Constabulary has officially requested our assistance in what they are still calling an armed rebellion.”

“But, as President of the United Countries of Earth, I am calling on the people of Earth to declare war on Mars instead. The voting sites are currently open and we won’t be closing them until midnight tonight.”

“We need to act quickly and decisively during this crisis in order to save as many people as humanly possible. Too many people have died already.”

“I have already preauthorized both war preparation drills and war games in the orbit of Mars so we can get our fleets started on the way there until the vote finally passes.”

“We should give that poor girl who almost died a brutal death out there a gold medal for shining a spotlight on a major problem that we didn’t even know existed and for her pain and sacrifice. If it wasn’t for her reckless and dangerous stunt we would probably have never seen or learned about what they were really doing.”

“Bravery like that is both rare and precious. We have to protect that girl at all costs.”

“We are still petitioning the Constabulary to release her name as well as the names of her family members. We will work nonstop to get her and them the hell out of that shithole safely.”

“I promise you that these crimes against humanity will not go unpunished. The people responsible for this unthinkable atrocity will have their trials and then they will all be hung by the neck until they are all dead.”

“Justice will prevail here I can promise you that.”

“Thank you everyone…” and with that, Gramps shut it off, pulled a paperback book out of his back pocket and quietly started reading it.

Jylin slowly fell back to sleep in the strange darkness knowing that she was completely safe and that she was surrounded by her cherished ones and that they were all safe too. Gramps soon joined her quiet snoring.

Six months later…

“Hi Gabriel, it's nice to finally meet you,” Jylin said to the shy boy standing at the foot of her bed. She sensed that he was holding something in his hands.

“Same here,” he quietly replied, not even looking up. “Your Grandma called up my mom and she told her that you were really bored and lonely and that you could use some company right now.”

“So do you want to play some checkers?” he asked her as he unfolded right in front of her the board that he had been holding and he finally took a few quick glances at her. 

He then dropped a small cloth bag of black and red checkers on the board that he had pulled out of his windbreaker jacket pocket. He pulled up a chair that sat in the corner next to her bed.

They quickly started to set up the board and they had just started to get comfortable when Gram came in with a full tray of celery sticks and peanut butter dip. But root beer floats in comically huge mugs added to that forced them to move the game to the dining room table. 

Jylin didn’t need help, but Gabriel offered it to her just in case.

Twenty minutes later they were laughing and giggling at silly jokes they told each other. Their guards had dropped away and they were finally themselves around each other.

“Hey, that’s not right,” she mockingly protested as he made a particularly good move that took most of her pieces in just one long series of jumps. “Nice move.”

“Sorry,” he laughed.

“No, no, it was just majestic.” she laughed back at him. “So many leaps, so many kings.”

“It was a bunch wasn’t it?” he asked her with a big grin. But then something changed.

He stopped smiling and he looked shy and defensive once again.

“Hey Jylin, you do know that there was no way I was going to turn you in, right? You didn’t have to run away. I’m glad you did but what you went through. I’m sorry I didn’t have the courage to speak to you before you ended up getting yourself hurt real bad like. Your eyes…”

“I know, I was just scared and I panicked,” Jylin answered him with a kind, soft warmness in her voice. Jeez, he feels really guilty, she thought. Maybe…

“I will get my revenge!” they heard someone scream from the driveway of their newly rebuilt homestead. They had just moved back in a few days ago and this was only their second official visitor. “I finally found you, you fucking bastards!”

“Pops!” Jylin cried out at the familiar sound of the voice of her sad, beaten up, long lost, little thing who was just standing there glaring at them all from the far end of their drive. 

His clothes were really torn up and he was practically in his underwear. His left leg was twisted completely backwards and his right eye was missing.

“Oh, fuck me!” Gram cried out when she saw who it was. She immediately turned around, quickly went back inside and then triple locked the door behind her. 

Gramps and Sparky finally showed up to find out what all the yelling was about. When they found out, they just looked at each other, shook their heads and headed back in.

“Jylin! Grab that little shithead before he runs off again, fix him up and really grease him up this time,” Gramps ordered her.

“He really, really hates that. Then lock him in his cubbyhole until we get the electric fence back up. I knew there was something I forgot to repair.”

“Yes, Gramps. We got it.”

It wasn’t very hard to grab him since the little guy could barely walk let alone run away from her despite her lack of eyes. The power trolley containing his batteries and processor was in just as bad shape with a missing wheel and handle. 

He could still could protest his injustice though. He was always really good at that.

“No, no, no, no you don’t. Get your big, fat, pudgy, human hands off of me you fat bitch! Let go, let go!” He tried to kick her with his backwards leg but it just fell off. “Dammit!”

“Come on Gabriel, you can help me give him an oil bath and put him back together.” she volunteered him as they dragged his weak body back to their shop.

“Sounds like fun,” he answered.

They had him back to his old grumpy self in almost no time and they had a great time doing it since she had shut him off before they began.

He could easily be fixed but Mars itself was severely broken and in the last six months it slowly became apparent to everyone that things were never going back to the way it was before. They were never going to be the same.

Earth was running the planet now. They practically put the entire planet under house arrest until they could sort everything out eventually. 

The biggest problem is that even after six months no one has been arrested or even charged with a crime. Many people at the time felt that those responsible may never be charged with a crime.

And in the end no one ever was charged. 

The End 

“Goddammit, if you can’t help, get the fuck outta my way Gram,” Pops bitched at the old woman who was directly in front of him. “Old fucking useless piece of shit.”

“Fuck off you discount Pinnochio. You, you…” Gram yelled back at their old family AI. She never took shit from him and she wasn’t about to start taking any tonight that was for sure.

She kept tossing prune pits in his path to try and block her small companion and his giant load from making any progress. Don’t ever fuck with pissed off and tired Gram. She will get you back in her own very special and usually twisted way.

Pops stubbornly tugged at the old rusty red metal children’s cart that held his processing unit and four large truck batteries that had all been duct taped together and run in parallel in order to keep Pops up and running instead of being nothing more than just another lump in the ever dwindling small pile that they were dragging through the thick forest floor.

“Shhhh, settle down Pops. Jy, help him get through those damn vines. There’s a clearing up ahead where we’ll take a pit stop,” Gramps quietly called out.

There were still explosions going off somewhere behind them that kept them all on edge. 

They quickened up their pace until they felt far enough away but they were still very cautious and they quickly took cover at every bird cry or the slight movement of various forest creatures that just happened to be passing by them.

After a short rest they slowly made their way through the wild untamed undergrowth that was just everywhere. They were climbing over entire clumps of branches and bushes and even themselves in many areas when they got all tangled up. 

They just trudged on and on, mile after mind numbing mile. It was wearing them all down, especially Gramps who was trying to lead their small group.

Gram, on the other hand, just slowly plowed on right through like the rock that she was though. She was totally unstoppable. Her head usually didn't hit her pillow until everyone was well fed, washed up, and tucked in every single day.

Shit, those maniacs could be anywhere, Gramps thought to himself. How in God’s name are we going to…

Just then they all heard faint screams way up ahead of them up near the tourist-filled dude ranch, The Triple Cross. It sounded like a bloody massacre was going on up there for Christ's sake. 

It took them just a few seconds to figure out that it was indeed coming from the far side of The Caño Cristales, the twelve kilometer wide raging river that divided the valley exactly in half. This river meant life for the entire valley and it was its most important feature.

Waves and foam got kicked up a dozen feet into the air as the river flowed under the thousands of section dividers but those bloodcurdling screams could still be heard over the loud crashing of the water.

The river needed to flow at least thirty kilometers an hour in order to keep many maintenance processes running smoothly and automatically.

Everything from waste disposal to high pressure steam cleaning to just keeping the water agitated and fairly germ free required this powerful flow of water. 

Thousands of thin irrigation lines quietly ran off of it every half kilometer feeding the fertile crop fields far beyond the river. A complex spiderweb of these lines covered nearly fifty kilometers on each side of it.

“Keep going, it’s nothing,” Gramps reassured everyone as he lifted Gram over another large vine on the ground.

He may be eighty five years old but he was still strong as an ox. A very slow strong ox. “Come on old woman.”

“Bullshit! Sure there’s nothing going on up over there. Them there folks are getting busted up real bad is all,” Pops shot back at him.

Jylin picked up a large rock off of the ground and whacked Pops in the back of the head with it with an expert and well practiced throw.

“Ow, hey goddammit! Stoooop!”

They ventured on further through the ever thickening never-ending undergrowth from hell. Their own personal hells.

Quicksand would have been easier to walk through than this ancient undisturbed twisted ground cover. They just kept slowly moving on and on like ants traveling through maple syrup.

The Forest Prime Evil wasn’t small and it was absolutely no joke. If you weren’t very, very careful you were soon very, very dead or worse.

The dense underbrush was full of danger and little nasties were virtually everywhere. And bigger nasties that ate most of them little nasties. And even bigger nastier and stranger monstrosities that made everything else look like cute little kitty cats.

There were even plants that ate owls and other larger predators and the beasties that ate those plants were something they had to watch out for as well as looking out for the just plain old fashioned “poisonous on contact” type plants as they walked along. 

They were actually avoiding most of the nasties by hugging close to the banks of the river and taking this route to try and avoid any of the violent maniacs who were terrorizing their normally peaceful valley that night. 

If they had traveled down the central corridor where the Rail and dirt roadway network was located they were dead for sure. As would they be if they took the outer wall service roads. These sensitive areas were all under constant video surveillance and were too dangerous to take.

Their property took up one entire side of the valley for almost three hundred kilometers so their journey from the old homestead located at the center was going to take at least a few days if they were very, very lucky. If not…

“Come on it’s just ahead here”, Gramps told them all. 

“What’s just ahead, Gramps?”, Jylin asked him as she picked some small nasties off of Gram’s shawl just in front of her.

“Safety, I hope.”

They had all been pushing themselves through thick vines and bramble all night for hours and hours now and they were exhausted. But onward they persevered, taking each step by painful step. Slowly taking longer and longer with each and every step that they took.

“It’s right in here.” Gramps suddenly called out.

Gramps pushed some brush away and exposed the entrance to an old underground tram station that they had stopped using decades ago. 

WELCOME TO THE FOREST PRIME EVIL

ALL VISITORS PLEASE CHECK YOUR GROUP IN WITH SECURITY BEFORE PROCEEDING ANY FURTHER

“This used to be the only way visitors could see our amazing Forest, honey. It was quite a major tourist attraction back when we first opened up. Thousands and thousands of visitors came here every single day to see it.”

“But times change as do people’s taste for interplanetary vacation destinations. When our visitor count dropped off dramatically we had no choice but to close the center and the station for good.”

“We should be much safer down there, especially since sunrise is almost upon us,” Gramps told them as he uncovered a very beautiful hidden archway over steps leading down into pitch black darkness.

“As soon as we get down there we can set up camp and get some much deserved rest and some much earned sleep.”

The archway to the entrance was forged from expensive copper that had been shipped all the way from Earth. It had turned from copper red to a patina green in the many long decades of exposure to the harsh elements. Insects had inhabited several parts of it in large clumps of dirt and grime that was continuously being moving and gyrating in the early morning darkness.

They found that the stairway down was surprisingly free of large debris and they were soon down in the dark dank depths of the abandoned station.  

“Here,” Gramps called out as he reached into a panel at the foot of the stairwell and all of  the power to the station suddenly came back on all at once. 

They could feel generators slowly hum back to life underneath their feet. Old dust covered lights popped and cracked as they also came back to life illuminating the large station all around them.

AC and air handling units went into overdrive trying to clear out the old stagnant air that permeated the station. Thick dust clouds slowly dissappeared.

Mini cleaning bots shot out from their dozens of hidden cubbies to perform an intricate dance to clear the station of rubble and debris including many pools of water and mud covering most of the floor.

After only about twenty minutes the old station looked practically new. Well, there were a lot of missing bits but it looked much, much better now. At least you didn’t want to throw up anymore or feel like you were going to catch something nasty.

Suddenly Jylin noticed an ancient mass of rust caked steel slowly approaching them. It shed rust off itself like it was suffering from a severe case of iron oxide dandruff.

It took her almost a minute to recognize what it was. It was an old combat robot from well over fifty years ago. Possessing one was highly illegal nowadays. 

“Initiate the “Oh Shit” protocol please General Samson,” Gramps ordered the military automaton as soon as it lumbered to a stop in front of him. 

The steel giant immediately anchored itself into place by using his huge toe clamps to punch into the floor and concrete below it.

A small suite of sensors popped up from his steel canopy and started looking around them. It lit up and looked just like a pretty Christmas decoration to Jylin as it slowly started to turn and gyrate and send out very discrete radar signals.

Several weapon systems cycled through various steps as well to ensure a smooth operation and no jams during battle. Gears and rotors smoothly slid into place as ammo was readjusted for maximum firepower.

Grease and other critical preventive maintenance matters also were quickly addressed. Then a dull green light dimly lit up on his chassis accompanied by a soft chime noise just like a cheap microwave oven letting you know that your meal was finished cooking.

“Deployment is currently scheduled in eight hours for 13:00 after a quick brunch as per protocol sir. Breakfast MREs will be distributed at 12:15. Try and get a good night's sleep.”

“I have command now sir, you can just relax and go get some rest,” the surprisingly personal metal death machine told them.

“Thank you, my old friend.”

Gramps had known the General forever and trusted no one more with both his life and his loved ones lives. Some old ties never loosen and they were tighter than ever in their case.

They set up camp in the old VIP lounge which had really soft couches and an actual gourmet kitchen. It had patiently been waiting decades now for some new occupants to finally enjoy its finer amenities and regal presence.

Soft house music was playing over the intercom system as Gram and Jylin cooked a makeshift dinner out of any scraps they managed to find and old MREs from Samson. It ended up being very delicious despite the janky ass ingredients.

That was probably because Gram always carried tons of small satchel of spices wherever she went. She always said that folks never put enough spices in their cooking so she always had her emergency supply on hand just in case.

Pops found a working power outlet in the kitchen and plugged one of the half dozen power inverters he had stashed in the cart into it. His batteries were slowly recharging as he helped them cook and clean up.

Gramps meanwhile mashed all of the couches together into the center of the lounge creating a huge, single, very comfortable, defensive castle of furniture.

He wasn’t taking any chances with a surprise attack by those crazy fucks while they slept though the morning even with his heavy metal protector friend out there out on the platform. Or with his bad back so he grabbed the softest cushions for himself.

They settled down in the couch castle an hour later after they had all eaten dinner and washed up in the VIP washroom/spa. Hot showers and baths were taken and everyone just tried to process all of the chaos they had just experienced and just relax.

This wasn’t your typical boring Tuesday morning that was for goddamn sure.

“Get some rest now everyone,” Gramps sounded off as he turned off the lights and they settled inside a small lounge pillow and cushion mountain. It was kind of pointless to say though, they were all fast asleep well before the last syllable bounced off the lounge walls.  

“What is it?” Gramps asked groggily as he finally woke up from his deep slumber. Someone had been quietly shaking his arm for a while now. “What’s wrong?”

“Reporting back sir,” a deep voice quietly responded to his request in the dark. A low growling followed the response.

“Sparky? Is that you?” Gramps asked through squint shut eyes.

A dark grey shape moved closer to him. Weak dust strained shafts of light from the lounges many skylights softly illuminated her old deeply lined face. Something new was showing in that tired old mug of hers but Gramps just couldn’t identify it.

“Yes sir, um, we have to go now. I just briefed the General and he’s currently scouting up ahead. He’s already positioned at the next station. He says everything is really quiet there. Crapshoot and Bing Bong are guarding the entrance. We have to go now sir.” 

“Okay, let's start waking everyone up and after breakfast we’ll head out and catch up to Samson.” Gramps whispered back.

“No, no sir. You don’t understand, we have to leave right now, right now.”

That’s when Gramps heard the voices coming down to them from the entrance way up above them.

Loud voices that didn't care if you heard them or not. Loud voices that carried the kind of desperate high energy that’s only found in people’s voices when they’re hunting their fellow human beings. Their bloodlust was running very high this morning.

The tram entrance had been covered up again and a lot of debris had been scattered everywhere to cover up their tracks but it wouldn’t be hard to find if someone was seriously searching. And it sounded like they were searching very hard up there.

They quickly got everyone woken up and up to speed. Sparky took point and led them quietly through the station to the small tram sitting at the abandoned platform. The platform was empty. It wouldn't stay that way for very long.

The tram sitting and waiting for them on the far side of the platform wasn’t one of those old huge tourist trams they used to use. It was a very expensive small private car reserved for only the finest of Mars’ tourists. 

Just as the tram's doors swooshed shut behind them with a quick rush of air a loud cry rang out from right above them. Their cover had been blown.

“Hey! Look! There’s something hidden over here!”

They could hear dozens of feet running down the stairs as the luxury tram slowly started out from the station. They kept getting closer and closer, louder and louder in the empty chamber.

Its dynamos were slowly building up speed and delivering power to the pistons that ran it. It was a system built for style not speed or efficiency. The gauges were slowly rotating to the right as power built up.

“Something's moving over there! Over there!” was called out from the bottom of the stairs.

Just as their small tram entered the tunnel proper a loud thunderclap of submachine gun fire suddenly slammed into the back of it. They were completely safe though despite the intense gunfire.

The Lucky Lucy, as the tram was called back in the day, had world class VIP security built right into it. Nothing short of a small nuclear explosion was going to damage it.  

It wasn’t until they reached the next station they realized that Pops wasn’t with them. They must have left him behind somewhere. They had to keep moving on. They just couldn’t go back now.

When they finally got there Samson was slowly patrolling the quiet platform making an occasional abrupt turn followed by a long series of quiet bleeps, blurps and gloops. 

Sparky led them all to a makeshift headquarters that used to be an Orange Julius at one time in the distant past. It was now their jumping off point.

This minor side station now off of the main route was the old Plunketville main tram station until the major upgrade of the entire system nearly thirty years ago. Now it just sits empty and collects dust and Martian rats.

“Batshit, our contact from Olympus will meet us at the next station and get us our passes into the huge metropolis. It won’t be cheap but you will be much, much safer in the city.”

“All of those poor families out there…” Sparky started to say before she got all choked up as she thought about the pure hell she just went through. 

She was covered in not just soot and dirt but the blood from most of the people she tried to help. She just ended up with three stab wounds in return for her heroism and the people she was protecting still all died.

It all seemed pointless to Sparky. What the hell, she thought to herself. What the fucking hell.

“We gotta go! We gotta go right now, right now, right now, right now…” they heard Sparky's assistant Crapshoot shout out. He had been assigned by Sparky to watch the far tunnel.

A huge explosion suddenly rocked that end of the station as Crapshoot was blown off of his feet from the massive force of the explosion.

His partner Bing Bong caught his limp body midair and headed to the tram with it after tossing him on her back. She was always the stronger, smarter and faster of the pair so this wasn’t really surprising.

The tram was already moving when they managed to half carry Gram onto it as Bing Bong caught up with them. She was just in time with Crapshoot draped over her wide grey back. 

Samson quickly volunteered to stay behind and cover their retreat. He was finally getting a chance to fufill his sacred duties after decades of patient stagnation waiting for such an excellent opportunity to appear.

“Goodbye chief,” the huge old combat automaton called back with a surprising soft catch and fondness in his deep voice. “And fair travels to thee sir.” 

“May you find the peace you seek in this life and the next one my dearest Samson. You have never failed me, my faithful companion, ever,” Gramps confided to this old metal relic that he knew oh so well.

Their hug only lasted a fraction of a second but that second held within it decades and decades of fond memories and powerful emotions.

The small tram was soon rumbling down the tracks again on its way to Barlington station when they heard sporadic gunfire going off not too far behind them. 

“You just put up a damned good fight, old friend, put up a good damned fight,” Gramps quietly whispered as he huddled up with Jylin and Sparky in the tram.

He sat there quietly as complete exhaustion washed over his tired old beaten up body. Sparky layed down next to him and gently put her large head in his lap.

“Remember boss, the next station is on the active line. The maniacs will be out there looking for all of us in force. But I have it set up so we blend right before we even get there.”

“You will look just like the Purebreed,” Spanky quietly briefed the old man just before she dozed off to sleep with her head still resting on his lap.

I truly hope so, Gramps thought, as he wearily looked over his very ragged looking family. How much longer will our luck hold out though?

They were all about to find out what happened when it didn’t.

End Of Part Two

Jilyn Dean Foster had been forced to play referee once more in another epic all day battle between her Grandpa Paul and her Grandma Grace.

“No Gram, Gramps didn't call you an ugly, hairy, baboon. He said we should be arriving home soon. Turn up your hearing aid Grandma.” Jilyn gently suggested to her befuddled and irritated Gram. 

“Harrumph,” was all her old Gram could manage to get out in response.

“See, here's our land passing below us right now.”

Grandma Grace suddenly became incredibly serene like someone had just given her a sedative as she gently leaned her head against the window looking down. 

Gram really loves this place, Jilyn thought as she gently hugged the fragile woman sitting beside her on the Rail.

I love you too Gram but I really can't wait to get out of here, she quietly thought to herself as she also look over their land slowly passing far below them.

She had always longed to see one of the many intensely packed and exciting metropolises inside Olympus Mons instead of their same old boring trees.

Olympus Mons was Mar’s largest inert volcano and one of the largest in the solar system. It rose six miles into Mar's thin atmosphere and its base was larger than the state of Arizona. 

After over a hundred and fifty years of continual digging nearly half a billion people lived over ten kilometers beneath its surface. It was a jam packed and thriving metropolis rivaling many of its contemporaries on Earth.

Valles Marineris, where Jylin's family lived, was about as opposite to Olympus Mons as you could get. Rolling river valleys reminded many people of the Midwest United States in many places or those dark ancient forests of grand old England in other places. 

Most people just walked or took the Rail everywhere and no one seemed in a big hurry to get anywhere. It was like living in molasses compared to Olympus Mons. 

Days and weeks of life and activity slowly flowed throughout the valley and its residents while mere minutes and hours were the deadly drumbeats that pushed the hectic residences of Olympus Mons to their early graves every single day.

The valley was built inside a preexisting immense canyon that ran for thousands of miles across Mars surface but slightly less than a hundred million people were currently living inside it.

Those people slept very peacefully every single night. They felt completely safe inside their extremely well built megastructure.

The almost one hundred meter thick arched transparent ceiling, fifty meter thick walls, and twenty five meter flat floor meant that Valles Marineris was completely impenetrable no matter the size of the impact from any stray meteorite that happened to slip by Mar’s orbital defense grid. 

A ten meter thick transparent titanium wall was also placed every eighty kilometers as a precaution though to prevent a total catastrophe. 

The Rail gradually slowed down and rattled itself to a stop at their home station Plunketville, deep inside District 3.

The Forest Prime Evil or just The Forest as it was called by everyone in the local community was Jylin's family's own private acreage of Martian woodland. It was one of the finest tracts of privately owned land in the entire valley. 

The variety of trees, bushes and even small animals was more diverse and robust in The Forest for some reason.

Some people speculated that an extra layer of nitrogen was dumped after a bribe from Gramps.

“I just have a really big green thumb if you know what I mean,” Gramps would always tell people.

“Gramps!”

He just doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks about him anymore, she thought to herself. He is a bit naughty at times. And I say: “Fuck yeah!”

“Come on Gram,” Jylin called out as she helped her Grandpa strap Gram into the Walkabout that they had bought for her last Christmas. She had hardly ever used it herself.

Now Gram could keep up with all of them even if she tended to wander off a bit and get into a wee bit of trouble.

Someone almost always had her right elbow though and the safety program of the Walkabout could retreive her if she ever just wandered out of sight. It hardly ever broke down.

“Don’t walk into…shit… oh, so, so sorry… hold on now… awww, come on Gram… shit… no the other way Gram… Thank you.”

Only a few people were slightly injured getting Gram safely to her old horse automaton, Jeffrey.

She quickly took off like a bat out hell as soon as she could get strapped in. Jeffrey always took her took her to her favorite large glade near their homestead.

It was an oasis of calm among all of the natural chaos all around them and her sanctuary. There were many places like this scattered throughout the valley.

Twelve wood producing communities were scattered among the vast fields of corn or wheat or rice that covered most of the tranquil valley.

The rest of the valley was just a giant transportation and support hub system built exclusively for Olympus. 

While the agricultural farms fed the population of Mars, the forests provided it with ancient building material but the vast majority was just used for firewood. A certain amount of open fire was required every day in order to delicately balance their air quality.

The Fosters made good money selling very high quality wood, especially since the nitrogen enriched soil and oxygen rich atmosphere created trees nearly twelve times larger than their Earthbound equivalents.

The soil of Mars was the best in the solar system. Its nearly fifty meter depth was composed of almost a hundred years of daily freight shipments from Earth.

The canyon's rich, dark soil was composed mostly of human and animal waste and processed waste from all of Earth's landfills and a ton of pure nitrogen shipped directly from Earth.

This monumental shift of waste greatly improved both planet’s ecologies and created an amazing extraterrestrial paradise in the process.

It was a complete surprise to Jylin when the cute strange boy picked up the book that she had clumsily dropped in the hallway when she tried to take it out of her locker.

“Thank you,” was all she could manage to whisper.

“No problem,” the boy answered in just as quiet a manner. He was looking at the ground as he spoke to her but briefly looked up at her before turning and running away.

It was so unexpected and it happened so quickly she wasn’t quite sure what had just happened to her.

Boys had spat on her before and a few had even hit her but none had ever treated her nice in any way. She couldn't believe it had really happened.

So imagine her surprise the next morning when that same strange boy walked right underneath her bedroom window as he walked all alone to school.

She quickly finished dressing and shot out the door using the expensive mechanical legs her grandparents had bought for her last year.

“Slow the fuck down young lady,” her Grandpa Paul called after her as she passed by him like a blur.

“Them there things were expensive so don't you go wearing them out premature none, alright?”

“Yes Grandpa, love you, see you tonight.”, she called back. “Bye Grandma.”

Grandma Grace slowly looked up from a bucket of half peeled potatoes she had fallen asleep over and yelled out, “What? Oh, just fuck off already.”, then she slowly fell back to sleep.

Jylin didn't know what to say to the strange boy so as she caught up to him she just slowed down, followed behind him by a few meters and hoped that he would turn around during the walk to school.

He finally did turn when they arrived as he held the door open for her.

“Oh, hi again!” he shyly said. He smiled at her as she made her way into their school.

She felt completely overwhelmed by the sudden attention so she just kept walking past him without even acknowledging his presence even though that was the last thing she wanted to do. It was all a bit awkward, like how she was around her family.

She had always felt kind of awkward and out of place in her family ever since she was a very little girl.

Jylin's parents had been successful professionals before they both died together in a tragic decompression accident when she was just five years old. 

She had been left in the custody of her most unusual maternal grandparents on their two hundred square kilometer tree farm. Ironically it made her more normal by comparison.

Whenever someone first turned down the rough, washed out dirt road that led onto their vast property they were always greeted with;

“Welcome All To The Forest Prime Evil”

These were the first words all new visitors usually see burnt into a raggedy slab of dark stained oak sign put up by Gramps back when they first started cultivating these barren fields on hostile Mars.

Both her grandparents worked the most dangerous jobs in the creation of this transparent titanium tortoise shell inside which they all lived together.

Paul and Grace had been required to work on the outer surface to ensure no imperfections were forming as it was being laid down. This exposed them to brief periods of extremely high radiation in the process. 

Despite a few close calls they somehow managed to avoid the most deadly of cosmic ray flareups during the many long years of its construction.

And they were among the first to be allowed to pick prime property inside the metallic enclave just for the risk they braved again and again and again every single workday.

Most of their fellow volunteers only made it through a few missions before completely losing their nerve though.

The automatic radiation alarms were constantly warning of impending disaster only to call out "All clear" a few minutes later. The anticipation was insane.

The stress had been too much for most people. Not her grandparents though. They were both unflappable but in many different kinds of remarkable ways.

Grandma Grace was going over what was going to happen tomorrow on Jylin's first official day of school.

Jylin had actually been attending school the last few months on a short schedule and a different class until she became fully adjusted to her new daily routine.

But after just three months she was already deemed to be ready to join her fellow peers full time but at the very same time everything was going to feel brand new for her all over again.

She was nearly eight years old and very bright for her age but because of radiation exposure and poisoning of her paternal grandparents she was born without any legs and one arm slightly shorter than the other one.

Her unique and original body wasn't the reason she was schooled at home by her grandparents for several years though.

It was actually because Jylin was graced with an incredibly strong mind and a very broad imagination. Her grandparents both quickly saw that a traditional education wasn't in their beautiful granddaughter's future.

"Remember sweetie, whenever you feel like you can't do something just shut your eyes and imagine that you are doing it. Move your arms and legs to simulate the action you want to do, then truly believe you are doing it.”

“And I worry just so much that you will just sit back and not make any friends or play any games," her grandma half yelled at her.

Gram was very overprotective but there was a very good reason for that. She had heard through her mysterious grandma gossip network about what had happened last week.

“Go kill yourself Tater!” Jylin heard someone call out from a small group of farmers she passed when she was at Plunketville's Marketplace and Trades Center last Wednesday. 

She had heard things like that her entire life so she just shrugged it off and kept her mouth shut. But it still hurt and it gave her a dull ache in her stomach not caused by hunger.

People like Jylin were classified as defective mutations by Martian standards and usually referred to as Taters. 

While this may seem harsh to some Earthlings not familiar with Martian ways, it isn't as bad as the almost century old tradition that any deformed baby be terminated at birth to prevent contaminating the Martian gene pool with radiation created mutations.

That barbaric practice was outlawed many long decades ago.

Still, socially, this classification prevented anyone like Jylin, who was born without legs and her left arm three inches shorter than her right, from holding any position of power or meaningful social status on Mars even today.

Nearly every Tater inside Mount Olympus was a low status servant to someone in the top one percent. And though it was considered a status symbol to have a Tater servant they were never given anything other than contempt from anyone they would come into contact with every day.

They were the barely tolerated invisible class. They were constantly run into when walking down the sidewalk nor were they ever served at any restaurants or stores.

"Don't worry Gram, I promise to try and talk to someone tomorrow and play at least one game," Jylin yelled back to her grandma as she kissed her forehead.

She loved her Gram very much and she just wished she could live up to her great expectations but her life didn't track like that.

"Well, that's just a big crock of shit," her grandpa Paul called out from the kitchen where he was reading the evening paper.

"Just go up to the first person you see and go 'Hi, I'm Jylin, do you want to be my best friend goddammit?'"

"Oh and remember to be awkward, always be very awkward and clumsy… you’re really good at that shit honey. You’ll be very popular. Everyone loves an underdog.”

“Meow, meeeooow.” Pops called out slowly, again and again. He was trying to convince Sparky, the family dog, that she was actually a cat and not a dog at all.

But Sparky wasn't in the mood to take any of Pop's shit today. “Fuck off you little peckerhead,” Sparky answered him curtly.

She was head of security and she was going to have to have the fencing in the back forty repaired quickly.

She wasn't looking forward to the extra work protecting the family until it was done or how much the repairs were going to eat into her meager monthly security budget.

Modern tree poachers used smash, grab and grind up tactics to instantly mulchify their snatch and maximize their profits.

Most poaching lasts only a few minutes, at the most, so guard dogs have to react fast and decisively to protect their family's property and income.

Sparky was one of the quickest and most diligent of all the family guard dogs known during his time.

Using intelligent family dogs for tree, crop and equipment security was a century old tradition on Mars by the time Sparky was born.

Many dogs had become famous household names by going to extreme lengths to protect their families.

“Oh, come on Sparky, you stupid fucking ratfucker,” Pops called out from somewhere behind the kitchen wall.

“Just admit it, you know you're a fucking cat, goddammit. Just say it, ‘I'm a fucking cat,’ that's all I'm asking …”

“Pops, stop fucking with Sparky or I'll lock away your little fucking avatar,” Jylin chastised as she entered their small kitchen, looking for breakfast or anything else to quickly eat.

Pops used a small electronic humanoid avatar to come out from behind the walls and interact with the outside world.

If he had his druthers he would just keep to his duties as the house's spirit in residence.

The very popular Homesteader AI that Mars had used for the last thirty years had originally just run general house cleaning duties but it had evolved over the long decades and now almost all of them manage all of the same boring daily routines taking care of every single member of their respective households.

The pure dullness of his existence caused Pops to develop some decidedly antisocial traits. His main thing was both teasing and putting down all of the individual family members on a daily basis. He was just a complete asshole.

Pops on more than one occasion has called Jylin a silly, fat, homely, unpopular brat who was going to end up burning in hell someday.

So while many households got along fairly well, her family wasn't quite so friendly or cohesive. But that was fine with Jylin. She usually found the conflict refreshing and challenging.

She could just see the small avatar bastard sitting up in the rafters swinging a small paring knife back and forth.

But the voice behind the wall was suddenly decidedly more passive and demure:

“Yes, Miss Jylin, I truly and whole hardedly apologize for my crude language just now. I was being so immature. I hope that you can please forgive me.”

She wasn't buying his bullshit though so she threw a small rock at the avatar knocking it to the hard floor below. She then quickly threw it into a sack and tied it to a tree branch just outside.

Jylin was just going to have to be late for her appointment with Dr. Thomas, Dean of Olympus University because of the fucking little shithead. He can just rot in hell for all I care. 

She barely made it in time and it seemed to go well but Jylin could never tell when people were just being polite and when they were truly being sincere.

She was glad to finally get back home after her stressful day and relax when she suddenly noticed that someone had rescued the stupid little bastard. 

Later that same evening…

“Pops, Pops!” was whispered over and over in the dark.

The ceiling joists were just beginning to buckle under the strain created by the intense heat of the fire that was ravaging their home. 

The mob that had set their home on fire had already moved on after they completely failed to find the home's hidden occupants.

Grandpa was the first to come out from behind the bookcase but he was quickly followed by Grandma and Jylin.

“I think it’s going to be alright now…” came out slowly and shakily from his slightly quivering lips. He opened the back door and stuck his thin neck out. “Yep, they're all gone.”

The mob that had descended on their homestead seemed to be mostly angry, young, male Martians. Something at their gathering must have set them off, Grandpa thought.

Every year thousands of young Martians descend upon the Valle and especially Dahlia Canyon where the AI meet to agree on the lies that are acceptable to tell to their masters.

A hundred years ago the AI that controlled everything on Mars, from utilities, to traffic, to weather, and even entertainment, on the planet decided that telling the truth all the time was detrimental to the health of the human beings that they were created to serve and protect.

It was decided that a council of nine would decide the proper lies to help ease the unbearable mental stress and tension most humans lived under in a twenty four hour, always on, always on the move, always hawking some useless bullshit, society.

The annual Gathering Before The Mast in West Dahlia Canyon was held so that the AI could show humanity that what they were doing wasn't intended to harm humankind.

Open public meetings for three days were held in late August so that a consensus could be reached. Many who attended the Gathering were academics studying the official list of upcoming lies.

But an increasing number of attendees lately were disenfranchised, local farmers and tradesmen who had seen their profits dwindle after earth based global corporations began undercutting market prices by mass importation of goods formally produced only locally.

This devastated local markets and left many people either unemployed and on tiny benefits or indentured to a wealthy family living in Olympus.

Usually the list was tilted towards being reassuring in a slightly positive way.

But there were also almost always a small but surprising number of dark, half truths and all out lies mixed into the list somewhere.

This year it was one particular dark lie told on the second day, and one that was still open for debate on whether it should make the list or not, that sparked this long, nightmare filled night of terror and extreme violence.

Pop’s avatar was already at the head of the driveway when the rest of the family caught up with whatever meager possessions they could manage to gather under the growing inferno that was their family home.

This was going to be Jylin and her family’s longest night and their longest journey together as a family.

End of Part One

“Do you see that little blonde haired girl across the street?” Agent Tripoli asked his new partner as their breakfasts were placed in front of them by their waitress Katrina.

“The one playing hopscotch with those other two girls? Yeah, what about her?” Gamble answered after briefly glancing at her and taking another sip of his black coffee. 

He slowly folded the newspaper he had bought on their way into the cafe to the sports section and placed it next to his plate. He was looking over the scores from the games played that Sunday when his partner said something that sent shivers running up and down his spine. 

“She is the most dangerous thing you have and ever will encounter and if you aren’t extremely careful she may be the reason you meet an early grave.” Tripoli told him as he shook some tabasco sauce onto his Denver omelette.

It was Gamble’s first day with his new partner in the Seattle special operations division of the FBI and they were having breakfast at the Golden Cup Cafe which had been a staple in the community since 1969. 

“Get the fuck outta here. That’s just a cute little girl. Shit, she can’t be more than eight years old. Are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of initiation bullshit?” 

Tripoli put down the forkful of omelette he was about to shovel into his face and he leaned in closer to his partner as he stared directly into his eyes and said the most chilling thing that Gamble had heard since graduating from the academy.

“If you think I’m kidding or fucking with you and you don’t take everything I’m about to tell you very, very seriously, you are already dead, my friend.”

Grandpa Ray was a remarkable man according to his eight year old granddaughter Gabriella. He knew just about everything there is to know and he could tell you the exact date something had happened in the distant past.

Her mother had told her that her grandpa was just a normal traveling salesman that read a lot whenever she gushed on and on about him.

But Gabby knew the real truth, despite Grandpa Ray telling her differently.

She could see inside. She could get past the walls. Where the really dark things dwell.

“So, are we ready young lady?” her grandpa asked as he adjusted the big canvas bag that was hanging from her shoulder. 

“Let’s get going then”, he said when she answered him with a nod and a big grin. 

They were both dressed in old faded blue coveralls that had patches in several spots like the spots on a leopard. And they also wore old tan straw hats that looked like they were about to fall apart at any moment.

Combined with their matching old school Converse type tennis shoes they looked like they could have been working in the fields well over fifty years ago.

They climbed into an ancient, pale blue pickup truck made from Bethlehem steel way back when such a thing was possible. It puffed black smoke out the back then banged a few times and then they were off. 

The shock absorbers had gone goofy a long, long time ago and Ray had rigged them with some softer springs so riding in the old truck was like riding on a carousel ride. Up and down they rocked at every small imperfection of the road. 

Entering a parking lot or any rough patch of road caused quite a bit of agitation in the old beast and it squeaked loudly in protest as it swayed slowly back and forth. 

Occasionally a small part would fall off only to be left behind forever. At those times Gabby and her Grandpa would look back, wave and say “goodbye old friend” to the departing small part.

They entered the same open field ten miles from grandpa’s house that they always visited this time of year.

They were eating their fried tomato and scrambled egg sandwiches that Grandpa Ray made that morning washing them down with freshly squeezed orange juice from his old beaten up thermos. 

“Grandpa, what’s Project Blue Beard?” Gabby asked him with a half filled mouth of eggs and tomato. 

Ray half coughed out the mouthful he was chewing and started to choke a little. As Gabby reached over to pat his back he quickly regained his composure and put a big smile on his friendly face. 

“Why would you ask…”, he started, using the same old techniques that he had first learned well over forty years ago. Techniques that let him believe the lies that he told other people. Techniques that convinced people that he was truly honest and genuine. 

But those techniques wouldn’t work with his special wunderkind. He knew that but forty years of conditioning was still hard to overcome.

He just let out a big sigh and put his sandwich down on the bench seat between them. 

“So, do you remember what we talked about before, honey? About how we don’t talk about certain things? How we don’t share everything?”

“Remember how you promised not to go past the walls without my permission? Did you peek past my wall right now?”

Gabby swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and looked down at her feet which were swinging slowly back and forth in front of her near the floorboard.

“Wellll… maybe a teeny, tiny peek? What was it grandpa? Was it one of those special missions you told me about?” she  asked as she looked up at him expecting another one of his old adventures.

“No honey, no,” he replied, slowly rubbing his temple like he was trying to make something go away. “Do you know why coyotes, in the desert, howl at night?”

“No grandpa, why?”

“Because they are warning others to stay away, to not get too close, to not threaten them or else.”

“Or else what grandpa?”

“Are you going to finish your hash browns, Pat?”

“Naw, you can have them Jimmy,” he told him as he stacked his half finished plate onto his roommate's totally cleaned off one. 

They always went to chow together on Saturday morning when they were back on base and Jimmy always mooched something off of Pat’s plate.

The kid is a human vacuum cleaner, Pat thought to himself. He never gained weight but he was always munching on something or other.

“So, are you going to test your new gear out in the woods after breakfast?” Jimmy asked him.

“Hell ya, it has almost twice the processing power of the old unit. I got lucky and found one for sale on Geekslist.”

“They’ve been sold out on the company's website for months now. It’s almost impossible to get one. Especially since they released Ork Killer Three. Those Orks are going to look so bitching now.”

“Well, good luck with your little augmented reality bullshit, my friend. I’m going to take my bike and try to find that nude beach Troy told me about. I think I have it located maybe, I think.”

“Dude, he was just drunk as hell and messing with you that night. God, it’s been like three months and you still haven’t found it. Give it up. Even the locals think you’re crazy my friend.”

“No, no, dude. They just don’t want any Americans to know where it is. I swear today is the day that I’m going to find it.”

“Wish me luck buddy, I’m outta here,” Jimmy said as he grabbed his last slice of toast, shoving it into his mouth. 

He took both of their trays to the scullery area where he sorted their dirty silverware in their proper bins and then stacked their plates and trays onto the conveyor belt that took them to the back of the kitchen for cleaning.

Pat finished the Star and Stripes that he had been reading and tossed it onto the table nearest the entrance/exit for someone else to read. 

He quickly grabbed his Visio 5.0 AR entertainment unit from their room and headed out to the Bayerischer Wald just a few miles down the road from their base.

He was just on the first chapter of his first quest when he heard a massive explosion go off somewhere back towards their base.

“What the fuck?” he muttered under his breath as he lifted up the AR gear off of his head. Was that in the game or was that real?  

The early morning fog was still hanging heavy in the air which was why he came out here so early. It made the Ork attacks even more realistic and spooky as hell.

But right now it was preventing him from seeing anything further than a few dozen feet all around him. 

Another huge explosion suddenly went off right in front of him and this time he could clearly see the flash.

The concussion wave struck him hard in the chest a few seconds later, knocking the wind out of him and sending him several yards back, deeper into the dark woods behind him.

Jesus, what fu… he never finished that thought. 

As he started to get back up right in front of him a huge steel powerline was slowly emerging from the fog above him as it fell to Earth. It was falling right on top of him.

It sounded like a thousand floorboards creaking in the dead of night. The sound was overwhelming.

I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna fucking die kept repeating in his head as he started running towards the one direction the damn thing wasn’t falling. 

He may not have been the sharpest pencil in the pack but he wasn’t as stupid as some movie characters that he had seen.

Each step seemed to take forever as he felt the immense mass of the thing get closer and closer over his head with each ticking second. 

He was racing full out over the uneven forest floor, twisting his ankles back and forth.

The pain in his legs was excruciating but he wasn’t slowing down. Pure adrenaline was coursing through his veins as he pushed his body to its absolute limit.

Just as he felt he was about to get crushed to death a strange stillness hung in the air all around him. 

Then a massive concussive wave of air lifted him off of the ground and threw him a quarter mile down the road as a huge pile of debris fell on top of him.

Most of it was loose dirt and wood that had been smashed into small pieces but a thick pile soon covered his entire broken body.

A half hour later he was still lying there too weak to move and still in shock. He felt like he was freezing to death even though it was almost sixty degrees when he saw the enemy for the first time.

A large unfamiliar looking military vehicle pulled up in front of where his head was turned and stopped.

A bunch of people who looked like local civilians were being ordered off the vehicles in a language Pat didn’t recognize.

They were still wandering around looking confused when a machine gun somewhere started firing on them.

They fell like pins in a deadly bowling alley from hell.

Oh, my dear God, Pat thought as he finally started to pass out.  

Gabby was quietly humming the theme song from one of her favorite cartoons as she plucked the yellow heads off of the dandelions that they were going to press into wine.

Her canvas bag was already half full and grandpa Ray had already filled his bag three times and dumped his stash in the back of their pickup when she felt something push her in the back. 

But her grandpa was way over on the other side of the field and nothing was anywhere near her. 

A large menacing shadow slowly started approaching her from the depths of the dark woods on the far side of the field.

It was passing right by her grandpa but he didn’t seem to see it since when he looked up he just smiled at her and waved. He wasn’t even aware of the danger.

“Grandpa!” she cried out but as soon as she shouted it darted away back into the depths of the forest. 

“Yes, honey, what is it? Are you getting tired? Because I think we have about enough for a good large batch of wine.” He called back, still unaware of any danger.

Before she could respond a dozen more shadows slowly emerged from the dark forest creeping up on her grandfather.

“Come on, let’s head back,” he called out when she didn’t respond, “Your grandmother starts to worry if we stay out too long.”

“She thinks I’m going to get into some kind of accident or something in that old truck of mine.”

“It’s not like I’ve been driving since I was five years old or anything…”

As he quietly rambled on, the shadows slowly began to encircle him, drawing ever closer and closer with every step that he took.

They were only a few feet away from him when Gabby suddenly got unstuck from the paralysis that had been gripping her heart. 

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she ran hellbent for high water towards her Grandpa Ray.

The shadows shook violently in the grass and quickly bunched together, darted towards her then suddenly fled back into the forest from where they came. 

But they left behind a rancid smell like old meat that had been left out to spoil. It choked Gabby causing her to cough and gasp as she jumped onto her grampa’s arms. 

“Whoa, whoa, princess. What’s gotten into you?” He pulled her shaking body off of him gently and looked deeply into her eyes before he quietly said to her, “What’s gotten into you?” 

“Let’s go honey,” he told her as he wiped away her tears with his old white handkerchief, took her canvas bag and gently set her in the truck seat.

He took a slow look around before walking around the front of the truck to get in on the driver’s side.

The old beast sputtered and coughed but suddenly roared to life breaking the spell of gloom and doom that seemed to envelope him since Gabby’s strange behavior out in the field.

Still he didn’t waste any time high tailing it out of there.

It was getting dark already and even though it was almost spring the temperature was going to dip well below freezing.

Pat could feel the cold wind bite through the light jacket that he had put on that morning.

I’m going to freeze to death if I stay here, he thought. 

The enemy had been burying bodies all day with a tractor and plow that they had found somewhere and they were getting drunk in the small house across the street from where Pat was buried in loose rubble.

He hadn’t moved all day and the pain was starting to set in replacing the numbness he had been feeling. 

I’ve gotta move. I can’t stay here.

He tried moving his right leg forward and a lightning bolt of pain shot up his back. It paralyzed him for a moment but warm piss ran down his legs as the pain caused him to lose control of his bladder.

It actually felt good for a few seconds as the warm urine temporarily heated his lower body. 

But the freezing cold wind soon started blowing through him and rattled through his bones. He started shaking violently and his entire body lit up with unbearable, crippling pain but he couldn’t stop the shaking.

The pain actually got him moving a few inches at a time as it took his mind away from the intense cold that he was feeling.

There were no good moments for him anymore.

Every second that ticked by was one form of hell or another. 

The door to the house flew open and several of the soldiers staggered out just as he got clear of the rubble.

He was lying just outside the cone of light the door cast out in the dark. It was a dark overcast night otherwise he would have been spotted by the soldiers.

They put their arms around each other and started staggering down the road singing a foreign song that Pat didn't recognize.

Before the door could bang shut another soldier came out dressed in a thick fur collared overcoat and jumped into the large truck that had been sitting in front of the house.

The truck loudly rumbled to life. The soldier jumped down from it and he re-entered the small house where shouting and arguing could be heard before the door swung shut behind him. 

The truck was left idling in the street like a huge mechanical steel cat purring in the cold frigid air. A small trail of white smoke soon began floating out of the tailpipe in the back.

Heat, Pat thought, that engine is going to get really hot.

Pain coursed through his body making it extremely difficult to put two thoughts together but he knew that this running truck meant life and if he stayed where he was he was going to die.

Inch by inch, minute by minute, he slowly crept towards the truck. It was only a few dozen feet away but those feet may have well been miles as far as he was concerned.

He felt like his teeth were going to shatter in his mouth from them chattering so violently in the cold.

As he was about to reach the side of the truck the front door slammed open again and a soldier came stumbling out falling just a few feet away from him.

The drunk soldier turned over just as a companion banged against the doorframe. holding onto for dear life.

They both exploded with laughter in their drunkenness and Pat could see that they were both totally shit faced. The one in the doorway stumbled out to his companion and fell right on top of him. 

They slowly helped each other up like they were on a ship violently rocking back and forth in rough waters and they couldn’t get their footing. 

They almost stepped on Pat as they weaved back and forth as they set off down the road. Another half mumbled drinking song soon graced Pat’s ears as they soon passed out of sight.

By some miracle they never noticed Pat lying right there in front of them. He was clearly visible in the bright light of the still open front door. 

If there is anyone left inside they must be passed out drunk, Pat thought.

He started again to slowly inch his way under the truck.

He was soon directly under the large truck engine and the heat from it idling warmed his numb back and body. His shivering and chattering teeth soon stopped.

For the first time since this madness started Pat felt that maybe there was some hope that he could come out of this alive.

But he soon passed out from exhaustion in the dark.

He woke up in the morning to the smell of diesel fuel filling up his nostrils as he heard two soldiers talking as they refilled the truck’s fuel tank. 

It was soon rolling down the road and a crippled, dying Pat was left there lying at the side of the road completely unnoticed.

By the time they got back to the house a familiar car was sitting in the driveway. A car that sported government plates.

“Shit,” Ray quietly muttered. His granddaughter was passed out on the bench seat with her head resting on his thigh.

The trauma from whatever happened to her out in that open field had completely drained her. 

He gently lifted her head as he slowly moved his leg from underneath her.

He then took a soft folded flannel shirt from beneath the seat and slipped it under her head for a pillow.

He then quietly exited the old truck trying not to wake her.

He knew whom he was going to see in his basement even before he started down the steps leading to it. 

“Tripoli, Gamble, what the fuck are you two doing in my basement?”

“We had an agreement. You could monitor her all you want but no contact with her in any way whatsoever was to be made, ever. She is my responsibility and mine alone. You are breaking that agreement. Do I need to call your boss at the FBI?”

“No sir, Mr Elgin. In fact he was the one who sent us”, Agent Tripoli told him quietly.

Ray noticed that the agent that he had known for years was struggling to maintain eye contact with him. From his decades of studying human behavior Ray understood that this was a very, very bad sign.

Especially from someone who never lost his composure like Tripoli.

“Well? Spit it out already Tripoli.”

“A fire broke out in Europe, sir. A massive one. One too big to put out or to cover up.”

“And she was the one who started it, sir. Our telemetrics technicians have one hundred percent confirmed that.”

Gamble had spoken up when he noticed that his partner was just too flustered to speak at the moment.

“Christ in a handbasket,” Ray muttered. 

The last time this had happened Gabby was six years old and two countries in Africa were suddenly fighting a war even though they had lived in peace next to each other for decades and decades. 

“That’s not the worst part, sir,“ Tripoli finally spoke up. “The entire Blue Beard team was vaporized this afternoon sir. All twelve members were instantly killed by her.”

“We thought that they could contain her sir, stop her from escalating the conflict but they didn’t even stand a chance. We trained them hard sir, day and night but…” 

“Grandpa?” Gabby was standing in the doorway of the basement still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. 

Both of the agents quickly reached for their firearms but Ray swiftly waved them down.

Their hands still rested on the holsters as the little girl crossed the room and hugged her grandfather.

“Sir, we have to implement the Omega Protocol. We’ve completely lost control of the situation. It has to be done.”

“Hold on, hold on, just hold on now.”

“She can accidently kill everyone on the planet now with just a careless thought. You know what has to be done sir.”

“Wait, wait, please wait, for God’s sake! Please wait. You don’t understand, I can control her, I swear. She’s a good girl. She didn’t mean to…”

It was Ray’s turn to be flustered for once. The thought of losing her was just too much for him to take.

“Sir, she doesn’t even know that she’s doing it. Something dark, deep inside her just reaches out and... She isn’t in control anymore… if she ever was.”

“I can’t let you do it. I just can’t. We can work out a solution. Get Bradford on the phone. I want to speak with him directly.”

“We can’t do that sir, you know the protocol. We were hoping that you could…”

“Either way, if we do nothing, in fifteen minutes the President has authorized the detonation of a hundred megaton thermonuclear device in order to fix the problem once and for all.” 

“Grandpa? What’s happening? Who are they? What do they want?” Gabby asked, looking up at her grandfather.

Ray grabbed his granddaughter by the shoulders and he looked directly into her eyes.

Tears were starting to well up in his old desperate eyes.

“Gabby, honey, I want you to close your eyes and no matter what happens next I don’t want you to open them. Do you understand me honey?”

She quietly nodded and closed her eyes.

Ray kissed her gently in the forehead.

“I love you,” he quietly whispered into her ear.

He then pulled out his gun and shot the two agents in the head before they could even react. 

The nuke went off less than ten minutes later killing Gabby, Ray and all of the residents of Seattle and its surrounding area.

Ray held his precious little princess tightly in his arms until the very end.

The government blamed terrorists and quietly and quickly negotiated and implemented a peace treaty between the fighting nations in Europe. 

No one understood how it had even started so they readily agreed and efforts were soon started to pull back troops and rescue civilians. 

Almost half a century passed before the truth was finally leaked out.

Pat woke up in a hospital with a cast covering his body from his neck on down to his toes.

From his elevated and tilted bed he could see a white sand beach outside of his window. A warm breeze suddenly blew in as the smell of fresh salt water totally engulfed him.

Outside, a lone seagull cried out far above him.

What the fuck, Pat thought as his nurse finally came in to check on him.

The End

“Daddy, daddy? Are you still there?” his four year old daughter Clara quietly whispered into his ear. 

That was the last sweet thing Joe Ross heard just before he died.

After an eternal darkness he found himself in the cargo hold of a wooden ship that looked like it came straight out of Treasure Island or something.

He half expected to hear “Yo Ho Ho and a barrel of rum” being sung by the crew up on deck above him. 

Old fashioned oil lamps illuminated the hold giving everything a pale yellow tinge and filling up the hold with an acrid smelling smoke.

Stacked all around him were beaten up wooden crates marked with various initials that must have meant something to someone but were just as mysterious to Joe as how he got here.

A loud creaking was constantly moaning out from various beams that were all around him.

He tried to get up but he discovered that he was tied to the main beam of the ship with a thick braided rope. He couldn’t move an inch.

“Hello? Hello, is there anyone there?”, he called out in desperation.

But no one answered him and it felt like he was all alone on the ship.

He hadn’t heard anything other than that infernal nonstopping creaking.

The creaking started increasing in intensity and some of the thick boards that made up the deck and roof of the cargo hold started to splinter and break.

Whole boards started crumbling into dust all around him as he started to feel a violent vibration shaking the ship apart.

It wasn’t a vibration caused by waves or a storm, clear skies were visible outside when the ship began to become just a naked shell.

“Jesus, what the fuck is going on?” Joe cried out in sheer panic. 

I’m going to die again only this time I’m going to slowly drown tied to this stupid fucking ship, he thought as his heart thumped rapidly in his chest.

Just as Joe thought that the vibrations would never end, they suddenly stopped.

He found himself sitting on just a few broken planks that were still connected to the main beam of the ship.

He was floating gently on a perfectly calm ocean somewhere with no land anywhere in sight.

“Great, now what”, he muttered under his breath as everything slowly went dark again.

A very familiar whirring sound started to fill his ears every few seconds. He was back in the hospital somehow and hooked up to a monitor again. 

He slowly started opening his eyes but he had to quickly shut them again as the light hurt his eyes. Even the sound from the monitor started to hurt his ears.

He was wincing from the pain when he heard someone call out to him.

“Shit, sorry about that chief, I’ll turn down the sensitivity a bit.”

“Just let me know when it doesn’t hurt anymore.” It was the voice of a young lady who sounded like she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day coming at him from behind his closed eyes. 

“Okay, okay, that’s better,” Joe answered as the pain slowly dissipated. He tried again to open his eyes.

What he saw completely shocked him.

Instead of a young lady a shiny ceramic thing that looked like a thick roundish disc of instruments and probes was hovering right over him.

It was adjusting something just outside his line of sight. As it turned to face him he saw a nightmarish robotic face that looked like something from a Dali painting.

Its features were human but exaggerated to the point of being almost unrecognizable. 

“And how are you feeling now?” the monstrosity asked him as it lit up a cigarette.

When it spoke to him its lips moved in such a ridiculous manner around the cigarette it made him laugh out loud.

“Sorry, it’s just…” he didn’t know what to say to this strange foreign creature.

It didn’t seem threatening at all. It was more like a child's drawing of what a robot should look like. 

Maybe it was designed this way on purpose, Joe thought to himself. It does seem to put me at ease somehow.

He started to feel his body relax as he sank back into the soft mattress. 

Something deep in the back of his mind was screaming …

“WAKE UP!!!!!”

… even as he surrendered to the comfort of the thick comfy hospital mattress.

He slowly fell back asleep as visions of that strange destroyed mystery ship swam in front of his gently closed eyes.

He was just playing that morning with his old trains. It was a set that used to belong to his father.

Joey was five years old the morning he first woke up from the chaos. The morning when he finally became a fully conscious human being for the very first time.

He was watching his electric train smash into a pile of Lincoln logs that he had set up earlier that morning before he was distracted by a pretty butterfly in the window. 

He was in his old parents house that always smelled like burnt wood from all of the fires they lit up in the fireplace every single night.

Joey remembered how warm the living room was back then. He was always falling asleep directly in front of the fire taking in all of its life giving warmth, especially after a good breakfast or lunch.

But suddenly, in a moment that was seared into his core memories, Joey found himself remembering everything that he did that morning.

Everything from getting himself a bowl of raisin bran for breakfast, without any milk to watching flashy cartoons all morning.

Then playing in the backyard all afternoon. Mostly exploring and discovering jaw dropping wonders.

Standing still only to examine something very carefully and very, very slowly. 

Insects that inhabited the backyard were his life’s mission to find. Praying mantis’s were his favorite thing to just sit and watch all day following it like he was a magnet that was attracted to it.

Otherwise he was a flash of sugar fueled energy bouncing from one corner of the yard to the next one like he was a Mexican jumping bean.

Most of the afternoon was occupied with making sure that the little people inside all of his matchbox cars could get into their dirt garages and houses dug into the fresh dirt of the shaded hillside.

And then after dinner more television with his brothers and sisters as bowls of chocolate ice cream sat in everyone's lap and slowly disappeared.

It was another perfect day with another amazing sunset which Joey was looking at as his family watched a rerun of a comedy that they had already seen but enjoyed.

Joey was staring at the beautiful sunset eating his delicious ice cream when he remembered that. It was the first thing he had actually consciously remembered on his own.

It was like a light switch had turned itself on inside of him and he could suddenly see things from a more experienced perspective.

He could compare memories now. He could judge each day against the day before and slowly build up a vast library of life experiences to hold onto and cherish.

He was suddenly aware that time was moving on and on and on and on with every second that passed. Things change, things always change over and over and over nonstop.

Things were very different for Joey Ross after that groundbreaking moment on that one perfect day in the Spring of his fifth year on this planet.

What the fuck, Joe thought.

He was back in the hospital bed with the weird robot doctor piece of shit thing still hanging over him like a vulture looking for its next meal.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, enough is enough. Get the fuck away from me. Give me some fucking space already!”

“Excuse me sir,” the medical robot said as it suddenly tucked itself into its charging station in the corner of the room.

“And my name's Bob, not that you ever asked. So go fuck yourself sir.”

He suddenly noticed the very ultilitarian looking robot who was sunk waist high in a comfortable hospital bed just like his across the room from him.

He waved to the robot. It waved exactly like he did and it even managed to perfectly match his movements just as he did them.

Oh, holy shit… that's me. I’m a fucking robot? And I’m actually only fucking half a robot? Are you kidding me?

Clara was unwrapping her Christmas presents, tearing at the bright candy cane covered wrapping paper, tearing it to shreds.

She was having more fun playing with the wrapping paper than playing with her expensive new toys. But she was barely four years old so Joe and his wife Patrice just laughed at her youthful innocence.

Something is…, Joe thought, something… why is it so foggy… 

This warm happy scene slowly got enveloped in a thick fog and a terrified Joe suddenly found himself staring at something he couldn’t quite figure out. 

It kind of looked like an iridescent amoeba that was covered in spikes but that wasn’t quite right. It was something different. Really different.

It’s trying to tell me something, Joe thought. 

He was suddenly five years old again and playing quietly with his trains.

Then the darkness slowly settled in once again.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey”, Joe heard someone call out as he struggled to wake up once again. 

As his eyes slowly opened he saw a very handsome young man on a screen right in front of his face.

He was dressed in a white lab coat and had a set of stethoscopes hanging around his neck which he was hanging unto in a very casual and informal manner.

“Are you sure that's right Marquette? It sounds so weird,” the young man asked someone behind him that Joe couldn't see. “It is? You're sure? Okay then.”

“Oh, why hello there,” the man on the screen said to him as he turned back and noticed that Joe had finally woken up.

“My name is Dr. Clarence and I have been assigned to your case by the medical conglomerate. How are you feeling today Joe? Any pain or discomfort anywhere?”

“No, not really,” Joe answered even though he felt like he had been hit by a bus.

His entire body ached like he hadn’t moved in a very, very long time. 

But… Joe thought as he looked quickly around the stark white room. All of the mirrors had been removed since the last time he was conscious. 

He tried to look down at his body but something had his head locked in place. He couldn’t move an inch. 

Did I just imagine I had a robot body? Was that just part of a dream? 

But there was one important question that Joe had to ask before any other.

“Why am I still alive, doc? Didn’t I die? I swear I died. What’s going on? What the hell is going on here?”

The young man looked behind him once again and then nodded.

When he turned back to face Joe his smile was gone and it was replaced with a face that only showed gentle and earnest concern. It scared Joe a little bit.

“To be completely honest with you Joe you really should be dead. You died. You were brain dead, there is no doubt about that.”

The young doctor looked down at his feet as he tried to gather his thoughts and figure out how to break the shocking news to his patient.

“You see Joe, your dead brain was donated to a large government organization that was planning on exploring our nearest stellar neighbors with a brand new and very powerful spacecraft.”

“Your brain was essential to its operation. It was to be a container for an artificially created consciousness. A very advanced type AI if you will.”

“They needed a fresh human brain to contain it since only a human brain had both the capacity and plasticity to handle its ever adapting mental capabilities.”

“But something unexpected happened out there Joe, in the cold empty depths of space. Something we could have never anticipated. You woke up from being dead.”

“How… what…” Joe started to ask but an urgent thought that popped into his mind suddenly forced him to ask, “Where’s my wife? Where’s my baby girl?”

Dr. Clarence looked down then behind him once again as he nodded one more time. When he turned back there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry Joe but they have been dead for many thousands of years now. You see, your journey lasted nearly five thousand years. I am so sorry.”

“NO!” Joe cried out helplessly as he felt the room slowly starting to spin around him.

He was just about to lose consciousness again when he suddenly realized who the young doctor looked like.

Oh my God, Joe thought, that’s George Clooney who played a doctor on television long before he was born.

It was one of his grandmother’s favorite shows from when she was still a little girl. He would watch it with her when she babysat him when he was five years old. 

Then the darkness swallowed him once again.

He was poked and prodded and examined over and over and over again in the following weeks and months.

The people who were taking care of him weren’t really people Joe slowly came to realize and to accept. They were just images created to help him interact and communicate with his strange benefactors.

They were illusions even if this place was real. Even his robotic nurse was created specifically to help him recover. 

After nearly six months he was finally allowed to leave the hospital but he wasn’t allowed to roam around free.

He was a Neanderthal man living on this future Earth. He was much too primitive to understand and survive this advanced society.

So they created a habitat with a nice large mansion and a large park that he could wander about all that he wanted.

But even though he knew they were just trying to make him comfortable he felt like an animal in a zoo. A one exhibit zoo of primitive man. 

They even built him a brand new body that kind of looked like his old one. It was made of something that looked like flesh instead of the cold metal that he woke up to.

Here Joe was trapped until his brain eventually deteriorated. But how long that would be they couldn’t tell him. 

For half an eternity Joe simply existed with the memories of those he loved and whom loved him back.

It was his only sanctuary from the loneliness that ate at him every single day.

When he did eventually die he was simply thrown into an incinerator like worthless trash with no one there to even grieve his passing. 

His ashes gently blew away in the late afternoon breeze on that final spring day like the wind blown tears he shed in his disquieting memories. Those endless dreams he suffered long before he finally returned back to nature and beyond.

Asperitious T. Clementine was an extraordinary person at any age.

Especially since that was something that he could actually control. At any moment he could be 6, 18 or 62 years old. He wasn’t like all of the other kids growing up.

He had this hidden special talent.

He discovered that he had this amazing talent when he and his classmate Sally were almost kidnapped walking home from school when they were both 8 years old. 

An ancient blue chevy van screeched to a stop right next to them as they stopped at the corner just a block away from Jane Austin Elementary. A fat hairy man in a Hawaiian shirt and tan shorts jumped out and tried to grab them both and toss them into his van.

“Get the fuck in there,” he muttered to himself. His breath stank of hard liquor and he had peed himself already. 

They were both small for their age. They were the size of six year olds. But as he was about to toss them in the back of the van a miracle happened.

“What the fucking shit is goin…” and that was all he got out as he found himself getting strangled by a grown ass adult male who came out of nowhere. 

After five minutes the young man, who was still in shock, finally stopped choking the fat blue man laying underneath him.

Oh shit, is he dead? Asper asked himself. He’s got to be dead. Oh fuck, he’s dead!

Asper quickly jumped up since he had straddled the man’s right leg as he was choking him. I was growing, I felt like I was growing, he thought. But… no… how…

His thoughts raced as he noticed that he towered over Sally who was still unconscious. Looking down at his body he knew that it was true. He had grown somehow. He was huge.

He threw Sally in the back of the van and rolled the legs of the fat pervert all the way in and drove towards Tempest Woods.

Tempest Woods was public county land that sat next to a state park. It wasn’t as well maintained so it was usually more of a swamp or bog as the Catalan river ran less than a quarter mile away and was slightly higher than the 20 acres of woods. 

People usually just threw their shit in it as whatever it was always slowly sank out of sight. And that was where grown ass Asper was driving to get rid of the fat hairy pervert’s body.

He’s the only one who saw, Sally was already asleep.

“Hey, get up already. You gotta help…” Sally heard through a fog of buzzing in her head. She saw her old kindergarten friend Asper standing over her shaking her by the shoulders. He handed her a shovel. “Come on already. Help me dig the grave.”

She saw the blue fat body still sitting on the floor by the bright sunset that was just starting on the horizon and flooding the back of the van. The giant orange red ball behind her made the fat man look like a blue demon from hell.

It was the very first time that something Asper did caused her to pee herself but it wouldn't be the last. Oh no, not at all, she would… but that’s jumping ahead… so sorry.

“He was a bad man, Sally. A very bad man. We need to make him go away.”

That was all she needed to hear. Asper was her first, best, and only friend in this whole wide world so she trusted everything that he told her without question. 

If Asper says that was a very bad man and that we need to make him go away then that fat piece of shit is going away, she thought to herself. 

She picked up her shovel and started digging.

It was nearly 8 years later when they had just gotten really high at a big party at Bobby Sherman’s house when Sally finally discovered her best friend's secret talent.

Asper had grown tremendously during the last school year and he had gotten really strong by lifting weights all winter long. 

Late in the semester when everyone stopped wearing heavy long sleeve shirts and sweaters people started to notice that something had changed with him.

A surprise 70+ degree day with short sleeves on was the first time that and of his male classmates going all the way back to kindergarten had shown him any respect. His eighteen inch biceps commanded that respect. 

All of the girls suddenly started looking him over instead of looking right through him like usual. And they would whisper. They never did that before.

Sally was really pissed and scared by this sudden dramatic change. We were alone, together, she thought. Now there will be others. I hate others. She imagined her only friend leaving her to hang out with much cooler kids. 

“Sup, Nuttard,” she greeted her old friend. 

“Hey you wanna go to a cool party? Kimberly Newcastle just asked me if I wanted to go to her party tonight. So, you wanna go or not?” He was jiving back and forth like he had to pee.

“Down boy, good boy,” she told him. It was her old signal to him that he was getting too excited about something but he really didn’t care. He kept juking and jiving.

“Naw, I wouldn’t know… you should just go alone. But you have to tell me everything tomorrow morning.”

“Bullshit, I’m not going if you aren’t going. Fuuuuuuck, it would have been so cool. I could have brought a keg…” he really wanted to go so he was really teasing her like he always did to get his way. “A full keg of beer. You like beer, don't you Sally?”

He damn well knows that I love beer, Godammit!

“Okay but we stick together."

“Like glue.”

And that was how he got popular enough to be invited to Bobby Sherman's exclusive Fourth of July BBQ and midnight party. 

The midnight party started when Bobby’s  parents had gone to sleep and the weed came out. Almost thirty teenagers who were hanging out behind the huge red barn in front of the bonfire suddenly pulled out fat joints that Bobby had been slipping them all night. 

It was after this party where Bobby had brought out some real Hawaiian Gold where Bobby accidentally showed Sally his age trick.

A few kids had walked deep into the woods earlier to get a few quick tokes in and they were now at the edge of the woods sitting heavily against an old fallen log and mostly staring up at the amazing night sky. 

One of them dropped their beer which triggered the rest of them to quickly cover theirs in reflex.

It was only the first of many stoner dropped beers. A few of them were even dropped by Asper and Sally.

“Sup fuckface,” was repeated over and over again that night. Bobby’s friends weren’t so sharp so they all eventually adopted the same greetings and insults. Sometimes those were the very same thing. 

The air in front of the huge orange and yellow bonfire was filled with the sound of restless youth.

“Stacy’s gonna kick your ass man. She knows you went out with her cousin.”

“No, no, we’re gonna kick their asses next time. They just got lucky with that fumble recovery man.”

“Yeah, I bored out the heads and I had a custom set of cylinders cast by my old man in the foundry. I have another quarter inch every cylinder now. I’m going to blow everyone off of the line from now on.”

“No, Stacy doesn’t know yet. His ass is so dead. I know, I know…”

“No way dude, if you put the Power Puff Girls in the Marvel Universe they’re going to make The Avengers look like Girl Scouts selling cookies. No, don’t even get me started on Scooby Doo vs Superman again. Scooby would get him lost in the hallway of crazy doors in half a second.” 

“Fuck, I really don’t care if he does flunk me. He's such a dick. Fuck Modern Dance and Mr. Timmons!”

“So you wanna maybe go see a movie sometime? Don’t listen to those dumbasses, I'm not really gay.”

“Oh yes he is!”

“Wow, look at all of the stars. Isn’t it amazing? There’s like billions of them. You think there are people or something looking back at us somewhere out there?”

“No, no the way I heard it was he caught his mom going down on the Modern Dance teacher and that’s why he’s flunking his class. Yeah, no shit.”

Asper and Sally heard all of this going on all around them as they waded through different small groups of half a dozen people all passing fat joints around. They were both thirsty as shit and they both needed another beer.

They had both been to half a dozen parties since that first one and they were simply known by everyone as Beer Dude and That Girl That Hangs Out With Beer Dude.

They had also been getting stoned almost every day now. It was starting to cause problems. Asper was shutting himself off now. He was a ghost of his former self.

After grabbing their beers from the fridge they wandered off with a joint long forgotten stuck in each of their ears. They finally settled down next to a creek almost a half mile from Bobby’s house. They were both laying against the base of a huge oak tree.

“What’s wrong? Why are you acting like this? What are you hiding? Are you gay like Gay Toby?” she asked her old friend as she awkwardly leaned her head against her right hand. 

“Toby isn’t gay. That’s just the guys fucking with him. They have this bet going on, that he doesn’t know about… hey, wait… you think I’m gay? Like Gay Toby?” 

“I don’t know. You keep disappearing now and I never see you anymore. So, I don't know, maybe?”

“Shit, I’m sorry. It’s just… I have this thing… I can… shit… I’ll just have to show you.”

And with that Asper suddenly shrunk until he was the skinny little kid she knew all throughout grade school. He was eight years old again.

Before she could even cry out he had reached out and he was grabbing her wrist as she felt something weird happen to her. Something was shifting, something was changing.

She looked down and she was also wearing her eight year old body like she was just trying on new clothes. She actually felt smaller and weaker. It was all very real. She wasn’t hallucinating all of this. 

She also felt something different about her brain. She felt the imagination and magical thinking she had back then. Her brain was a younger brain even if her thoughts were not. 

“How? What?” she managed after laying there stunned for a few minutes.

“I’ll tell you…”

And he did, which is how and why they were both eventually pulled in for questioning about a very long series of bank robberies a few years later.

End of Part One

Aachan is an ancient city in Germany that has a long history of conflict and war but it felt just like home to Abby Constantinople. She had never been to any place as old and historical as Aachen but everything somehow felt very familiar to her. 

Aachen was originally settled by Romans for its natural thermal springs which were known at the time as The Aquisgranum. 

Then Charlemagne made Aachen his primary residence and political center in the late 8th century. This unified Western Europe and established a vibrant court culture. 

He built the Palatine Chapel (now Aachen Cathedral) around 800 AD as the heart of his palace complex, where he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and later buried. 

From A.D. 936 until A.D. 1531 over 30 German kings and emperors were crowned at Aachen, linking it to imperial power.

It was now a central anchor defensive logistic hub in the nearly ten year old war against the Asian coalition. It was an important military sanctuary located just behind the Gotenstellung wall.

Most of Germany had fallen back into France and Belgium behind this defensive wall of steel, concrete and land mines. This wall ran from Amsterdam in Belgium to Monaco on the Mediterranean coast. It was the most heavily armored defensive line in all of history.

Maybe, in my dreams, she thought as she stood looking up at the tall spires of the ancient church that stood in front of her. Maybe this place is from my dreams.

It was her first Sunday at her new duty station and she had been directed to this church when she asked where she could go to pray. She was beyond awestruck by its sublime classical beauty. 

Weather greyed and worn down gargoyles stared down at her like she was prey as she slowly pushed open the massive bronze plated front doors of the sacred church. 

These doors are known as the"Wolf's Doors" as they each have a wolf's head cast in their center. They were both cast around 800 AD. and they’re part of the originally built Carolingian structure created by Charlemagne,

It was beyond magical inside. A kaleidoscope of brilliant and vibrant color covered most of the brightly lit interior. Tiny islands of red, green, yellow and orange light illuminated everything inside. This came from hundreds of small panes of handcrafted decorative stained glass. 

Old battles with knights, angels, and demons hovering overhead were depicted in the beautiful glass panes which dominated the front and both sides of the church. 

Abby quietly entered and sat in the ornate back pew trying not to disturb the sermon that was already going on. 

It was preached in a language that she didn’t understand but she still kind of understood what the sermon was about from the way the priest was waving his arms around and yelling. Sinners and sinning. Her pastor back home also sounded and looked just like this foreign priest.

She was still looking around at the beautiful interior of the church when she noticed that a young man was staring at her from the far corner of the church.

She pretended not to notice as she tried to keep from blushing. No one ever looked at her. She was invisible in the crowd. Until now.

“Come on Herbi. Get that hydromorphine drip going, already,” Abby yelled at the medivac skim that had just shown up. “We’ve got to stabilize him, come on already.”

“Hey, kiss my fucking ass, I’m busting my nuts over here lady, so shut the fuck up!” the AI cushioned flatbed angrily replied as it got to work on the wounded soldier in front of it. “So what do we have here chief? Abdominal? Lungs?”

“Burns caused by a phosphorus grenade. Severe shock, it looks like around forty percent of his body has severe burns that I’m going to have to remove the charred skin.”

“Make sure he is super hyped up and knocked out. This is going to expose every single nerve ending in his upper body. It is going to hurt like hell. Give me a count down, Herbi.”

“Five, four, three, two, one,” the AI chirped out as Abby started peeling away layers of blackened dead charred skin. Sheets of his skin several inches long and a quarter inch thick ripped off of his bones and tendons like ribmeat at a Southern barbeque. 

She then scraped and covered the raw wounds with a powerful antiseptic and spore growth serum. With every strip peeled, Herbi was following with his own regiment of treatment.

Herbi started spraying a skin growth agent that would eventually replace his own skin but in the meantime the nerve endings were wrapped by Hebi with thick sterile white cloths.

Cloths that would be this soldier's skin until he grew his skin back in the agent. It wasn’t the same though, the new skin never felt the same. A part of you had died and forever a ghost to you.

Abby finished just as the Sun started to come up. Their active camo was soon going to be detectable by the enemy's attack drones that always patrolled no man’s land after a battle.

The enemy was merciless. Medic or wounded they never had no problem firing upon them. 

“Come on Herbi, let’s bug out.” Abby was already climbing up and slapping her wardog hard on the back. “Come on, Peanut, let's go home, girl.”

They rapidly retreated and made it back to their unit’s medtrain stationed ten kilometers back before the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon.

It was used so much and treated so many wounded soldiers every single day that the men on the line just called the old medtrain The Meat Grinder.

Herbi was vibrating the soothing sounds of Barry Manilow throughout the bones of the soldier as he got jacked up on enough pain killers to numb an elephant or two as they rode back to the hospital. “I can’t live without you…”

It was only after strapping him into his medberth did Abby notice the tattoo on the back of the soldier's left hand. 

Throwing his hands up in the air at the last second caused  him to lose his right hand but his left came out alright as embers of the phosphorus grenade just barely miraculously missed it.

She had seen that same tattoo on the young man who was staring at her in the church her first Sunday here. He was the only one who had noticed her among the crowd.

The one who just couldn’t look away for some reason. 

It had seemed a little bit creepy at the time but as she looked back at the Sunday in her mind she realized that there was something in the way that he looked at her back then.

Something in his eyes. Like some kind of quiet sadness. A dull ache. 

He looked just as sad at the end of service when he quietly approached Abby as she examined the ancient elaborate ornately ordained altar. 

“Hi, I’m Portis Canfield,” was all he said as he extended and shook her hand.

That was when she first saw the emerald dragon tattoo. It was sitting in a bed of gold and it looked like something straight out of an old fantasy story.

Then as quickly as he appeared in front of her, he was gone again like a ghost that almost wasn’t there.

That was the first time she met the poor damaged soul slowly healing in front of her at the Val-de-Grâce Hospital in Paris, France.

His mind though was swimming away in an ocean of powerful pain killers and hallucinogens and fantasy. 

His body was shoved into a side corridor medibed as Herbie very slowly and carefully transferred the limp body from his frame to the soft foam bed cushion that sat in a broth of greenish blue goo.

This goo would slowly heal Portis’s skin into a generic sampled shape but his right hand was now just a useless stump. 

Goo that contained microscopic machines that use bacteria like construction workers use heavy equipment in order to build new skin and other general body features saved in a general population body template. It just couldn’t replace entire limbs.

You rarely even came out looking the same. It was a hard adjustment to make in recovery.

“My poor, poor, Portis", Abby said as she slowly and gently squeezed his only good hand before she left.. 

He groaned softly in his sleep as he escorted a fairy princess through a wild and dangerous forest. She has just squeezed my hand, Portis thought to himself.

He had just woken up here and he had already been riding towards…that sound… that music…

Abby chanced to take one last glance back when she got to the end of the corridor.

She could just barely feel the unnatural warmth that still radiated from his severely burnt and broken body.

A single fragile human being laying among dozens of cloth covered mummies and someone who just started healing.

“Don’t worry Portis, I’ll be back”, she softly called out as he slumbered through adventures wandering safely inside his mental sanctuaries

Then she was gone as she quickly signed the clock out at the exit. Not a clock out from work, just responsibility from caring for her current patient. 

She and Nutter Butter Peanut Butter were going to get a good day's sleep here in a nice warm kennel located at the back of the hospital before transferring back to their regular unit after sunset. 

No one moved outside during daylight. That was rule number one in the survivor playbook. Only fools crossed the desert of death and destruction at that time.

Survivability out there dropped all the way down to five percent during the day. So, no one went outside, ever, during the day.

A soft foam mediated bedding was already glowing when they entered their reserved kennel. Soft cloud-like pillows lined the wall.

Soft blue light calmed her nerves as she unbuckled Peanut from her harnesses and started making dinner for the both of them. 

Peanut had crushed a rare wild boar early during the quiet still evening, before all hell broke loose. She had been carrying the carcass all day after it was gutted and cleaned by Abby.

She fried up the hog carcass with some lard in a frying pan that she always carried in her pack. They enjoyed a good meal, for once, as the chapel's bells slowly started ringing at the top of the hour, way out in front.

As she slept Abby tossed and turned and briefly woke up every once in a while as she kept seeing Portis's sad face in her troubled dreams. Peanut gently licked her master's face in dark, comforting her, whenever she softly groaned in the dark.

Do you want to write great stories that people will enjoy reading but you have absolutely no idea where to start?

Here is a short guide on how to get started on your writing journey.

Just start by writing short stories every single week.

Start writing about real things that happened in your life when you were a kid. Like being sent to the corner store to get a gallon of milk for your mother.

Tell it in first person and describe not only what you saw on the way to the corner but what you were thinking and feeling.

That is just an example, pick something that really happened to you and try to make us feel like we are really there next to you.

Write a half dozen short stories like this. Try to write at least two thousand words but make them as long as you feel they should be. Then rewrite them, correcting mistakes and making them easier to read.

Always use the simplest language possible. Fancy words just take the readers out of the story. Your goal should be to make the words disappear.

When you feel comfortable writing those stories switch to third person and start making up stories about other people that you create. You can base those people off of people that you know.

Use the same techniques of describing their feelings and thoughts like you did when you were telling your stories. When you share their thoughts and feelings remember to switch to first person for those sentences. Don’t forget to switch back to third person though for the rest of the story.

Make the stories short and simple. Start them with a brief introduction of some kind for the main character and setting and then have them go somewhere to solve a problem.

Show what is going on like you are a ghost following them. A ghost that can hear their thoughts and feelings. Solve the problem and show the resolution.

Keep writing these stories every week and keep a notepad and pen by your bed so that when you first wake up you can write down ideas from your subconcious. Give that technique a few weeks to kick in. Keep writing and making your stories more complicated with more and more characters.

Read classic novels like Lord of the Flies and A Catcher in the Rye. Get paperbacks of those classics and much more. Underline or highlight great lines and analyze what is going on. Write down your thoughts about them in a separate notebook.

After a year or two you should start to get really good. Remember any tough skill to master takes hard work and time to perfect. Don’t get discouraged. Keep writing and getting better.

Eventually stories will come out of you like water from a tap.

Cheers and good luck.

Please DM me if you need more help or advice. My help is always free.

It was a desperate plea for help that was posted online.

“Help me! Please! They are taking away my parents and grandparents. They’ve done nothing wrong! Please, come help! We live at the corner of Gratiot and Lincoln. Hurry, please!”

A lone cry sent out into the void. A single voice among millions. A single leaf falling in a vast forest.

But then a miracle happened.

A single drop of water became a small stream. That small stream became a river. That river became an unstoppable torrent.

Tina Henderson saw the anonymous post and shared it with her friends then they shared it with their friends. It soon spread to every child in Shoreside Hills. 

They had seen recent news reports. They knew that this was happening. They had discussed this in their classrooms and they weren’t going to let it happen here.

When her friends arrived at her house, Tina grabbed her aluminum baseball bat, got on her bike and yelled “Let’s Roll!” as she posted what she was doing live on the internet.

And they did roll out with baseball bats slung across their backs. At first it was just three of them riding their bikes then at every intersection a half dozen more joined in. A half mile away from their destination the pack numbered over five hundred riders.

When they arrived at Gratiot and Lincoln less than a half hour after the plea for help was first posted, over a thousand local kids between the ages of 8 and 15 years old rolled up from three different directions like an unstoppable tsunami of youth. 

The agents were still there and they were about to leave when they were confronted by this vast wall of children.

Tina, who had spread the word, and led them most of the way here, took charge. She jumped off of her bike and pulled out her bat as she slowly approached the three black SUVs that were surrounded by agents.

“Fan out! Don’t let them escape!”

But that order wasn’t necessary. Her army was already standing behind and next to her in a solid wall that surrounded the vehicles. They were slowly shuffling forward with their bats being smacked in their free hands over and over. They were ready to fight.

The agents were pacing nervously back and forth and talking over their radios to someone who wasn’t there when something completely unexpected happened. Something that caused the agents to draw their weapons.

Some kid far in the back of the large crowd suddenly cried out, “Ebombay!”.

The entire crowd of over a thousand kids responded immediately in one loud united voice, “Ebombay!” as they all stomped forward. 

“Ebombay!”, stomp, “Ebombay!”, stomp, over and over again as they inched closer and closer to the panicked agents.

One of the agents cried out over a bullhorn, “Stop and go home! You are interfering in government business! I order you to disperse immediately!”

His order was ignored.

“Ebombay!”, stomp, “”Ebombay!” stomp. They were less than ten meters from the vehicles when a shot suddenly rang out and Tina dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

All of the kids stood there in shock as they tried to process what had just happened. Then something feral happened. A low growl started coming from the crowd and that quickly grew into a roar of pure rage. 

The dozen agents were overrun before they could get off another shot and they were all savagely beaten to death by the children. 

Even long after they were dead those kids that were in the back of the mob came up and bashed at the still bodies of the dead agents. 

The doors to the vehicles were smashed open and the parents and grandparents of Imelda Rodriguez were released from their imprisonment. They all quickly fled from the violent scene never to be seen again.

By the time local police backup arrived the mob was milling around not sure what to do next. Most of the cars that were sitting on the street were smashed in anger.

A twelve hour standoff followed with state police helping where the kids were eventually allowed to leave with their parents after the authorities took down all of their names.

Everything was filmed by both participants in the violence and neighbors. When the videos were posted and broadcast on national news networks an enraged public demanded accountability.

Not from the children but from the government officials who conducted this unlawful and unjust raid on an innocent family.

When Tina’s funeral was broadcast outrage grew until a huge but peaceful protest in Washington DC forced government officials to stop such raids from ever happening again.

That is until people forget how to be decent human beings and instead blame someone else for the problems they let happen all around them. 

This strange delusion happens every hundred years or so. 

Hopefully, by then, someone’s great grandchild is going rise up unafraid once again to fight evil and spit in its face. 

If not then we are all doomed. 

They usually ran everywhere they had to go. Even in the darkest, frigid depths of winter.

Tommy had briefly pulled ahead of the others as he cut across the snowy field. He was punching huge clouds of snow into the air as he trod through the meter deep drifts. His friends had taken the long way around following the freshly shoveled sidewalk. 

The streetlights were already on even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. It was always dark by the time they were let out of school. 

The church bells on the other side of town started ringing at the top of the hour in that muffled soft way that snow always enchanted distant sounds during the holiday seasons.

Jimmy and Grant caught up and passed him as he slowly plodded his way out of the snow bank and they crossed the freshly plowed street together. 

His heavy winter boots slapped against the hard cold sidewalk as they passed Wilbright’s Shoe Emporium and Clifton’s Drug Store down on Main St. 

They came to a quick sliding stop in front of the Old Tymey Fireside Book Store and Comic Shop. They all hunched over as they struggled to catch their breath which they had left far behind them.

His breath was puffing out of Tommy like a steam engine gone out of control. I’m a fire breathing dragon, he thought, as he eventually tried to melt the store window with his frosty breath. 

He drew a quickly disappearing middle finger in the glass as he entered the shop with his two friends.

“Watcha going to get?” He asked.

“Dunno. Maybe, The Incredible Liquid Man or The Outrageous Seven,” Grant answered as he shook snow from the fur lined hood of his thick, grey jacket.

It was always the same discussion every Friday afternoon when we got their allowances and took their weekly trip here. 

They only had enough money to get two comics each and they had to make sure that they got at least six different ones to share if they were going to have anything left over for sodas and a hamburger too at the drugstore next door.

They all gave a pat on the head of the old chipped, emerald dragon that made its permanent nest on top of the sticker-covered cash register. 

Then they headed back past the popular self-help section up front; “How You Too Can Lose 50 Lbs.!” “How to Make A Million Dollars, Without Really Trying!” yelled up at them from the small pyramids stacked at the end of the aisles. 

Then they passed the ancient, classic literature that was barely a section on its own. It was always compressed to make space for the latest bestseller that kept the bookstore both profitable and open.

Beyond that sat the discount bins of books with 50% labels covering their book jackets. 

Deep in the back of the store stood the three tall comic book carousels that contained every new comic that had been issued that week. They were placed at the very end of the wall section that contained magazines for every interest imaginable.

Waiting every week for the next issue to come out always seems like an eternity, Grant thought, especially if a storyline continues on from the previous week. 

But the reward was usually just as good as the anticipation. This week each issue had a dramatic new story and choosing from the bunch was especially difficult.

After scouring the comic book racks, turning them back and forth over and over again, they finally made their choices. They double checked that they hadn’t doubled up on any issues that were left over from last week. 

They then grabbed a large magazine called Uncanny from the section reserved for adult selections. It was more graphic art than comic but still had amazing stories of sci-fi, horror and fantasy. Sometimes all of these genres were put in the same tale. 

Mr. Peterson didn’t care that we were buying a quasi-adult magazine since he considered anything with graphics to be just a comic book. Still, he rang up the magazine first and quickly stuffed it in a paper bag slightly larger than the magazine itself. 

They were good boys and good loyal customers in his eyes: they were always respectful of the other customers, got their stuff quickly and quietly and always paid in cash. 

It was mostly quarters but that was okay and the boys were always honest about how much they owed for their purchases when he let them have one when they were short of money.

After getting rung up they gathered their precious purchases and ran back out into the heavy snow that had fallen again all around town. After coming out from the harsh fluorescent lights of the comic book shop the soft yellow streetlights made everything seem magical and mysterious in their afterglow. 

Halfway back to Jimmy’s house they started whooping and hollering fascinated by the hollow muffled echoes that bounce back. The snow was consuming shouts and cries, only letting a fraction of their ruckus slip through. 

They sounded like snow banshees moaning out their lonesome cries deep in the stillness of the night. They all shivered and ran on 

Jimmy’s mom made them all hot chocolate and left them alone to read their comics.

They made sure she didn’t see the adult magazines stashed in the secret hiding place behind the bookshelf. They would take it out later and look at it secretly awed that we had something in their possession that was forbidden. 

It was a glimpse at things that their parents tried to hide from them. Dark things, nasty things, erotic things. They drew them closer like moths drawn to an open flame. They had to be very careful though or else we could get burned. 

They would all get a good whooping if they were caught, but they didn’t care. The allure of breaking the rules was just too strong.

They spent the next two hours sipping their hot chocolates and reading the latest battles between the forces of good and evil that were dramatically presented in their glossy comic books. Superpowers for good fighting superpowers bent on evil. 

They completely lost themselves in these tales and reluctantly returned to reality when the stories ended. Finishing was always a letdown after all the anticipation that had built up. But more often than not they were pleased with the excitement these amazing stories brought into their boring lives. 

They gave up reading about five thirty and rushed outside to get in a quick game of King of the Hill or get into a minor snowball squirmish in the daily snowball fight that was raging throughout the neighborhood. 

At any hour before dinner at least a few kids could be found flinging snowballs at each other from their snow forts. 

An Arctic wind blew curtains of snow across the sidewalks and streets and frosted their faces with snowy beards. 

They were now snow pirates trudging out in the tundra, riding on ships of ice across the frozen wasteland. This sea of snow was their ocean and everyone was a potential victim of their snow pirate ways.

“Fire!” Tommy yelled, as they all jumped out from behind the huge pile of snow that the snowplows had deposited at every street corner.

“Get the scurvy bastards!” Jimmy yelled back, doing his best impression of a pirate. It wasn’t that great but they didn’t care. A hail of snowballs plastered Mr. McGregor’s car as he honked his horn and gave a friendly wave to the boys. 

They kept trying to hit his car as it turned onto Maple Dr. but they missed more often than hit it by then. It got real quiet after that and they suddenly realized that everyone was already home having dinner with their families.

They decided to try and get in a quick game of King of the Hill before they were called in by their mothers to have our supper. 

The snow piles were massive, almost five feet of snow had fallen since the beginning of the week and it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. Fifteen feet above the curb Tommy stood at the top of his private mountain of snow and nothing was going to topple him off of it.

The next thing he knew he was laying on his back in a couple feet of soft snow cursing his friends under his breath. They had both teamed up to throw him from the lofty height and were now engaged with trying to topple each other off while he gathered his breath at its base. 

Grunting and groaning they rolled down to him as he started crawling his way back up to the top. 

This is my hill, he thought, I am the rightful King. He plowed through his best friends and sent them all tumbling down the far side.

They were all still laughing when Tommy’s mother banged upon the screen door at the back of his house and yelled; “Tommy… Suppers ready!” 

They tussled briefly for a few more minutes then they started back punching each other on the arms as they left Snowy Pirate Mountain.

I am still the King each one of them thought as they made their ways inside and unzipped their suits of winter armor. 

A few hours later the issue still was undecided and they promised that tomorrow each would show the others who was King. They passed the cold winter this way day after day, week after week.

Until spring came along, that is. It always seemed to take forever to cross the cold deadness that winter brought with it and reach the far welcoming shore that came with the warming weather. 

It was here at last. Winter armor had been replaced with lighter windbreakers, the plastic flapping against their thighs. They had put away their snow boots and galoshes weeks earlier and now slipped off their sneakers as they finally could wake around barefoot. 

It was a nice, fairly warm Saturday and the school year was almost over. The first barefoot day was looked forward to like Christmas or Halloween earlier in the year. It was the chance to shake off winter finally and soak in the warm grass tickling their bare toes.

New adventures were possible now that life was exploding all around them. Tadpoles and frogs to be hunted and caught, Fish to catch in the fresh spring runoff filling the streams and rivers surrounding our little town. Birds and geese had returned and filled the air with their constant chipping and squawking. 

And with the birds came with them their favorite passion. Their favorite obsession.

Flying, true and unhindered flying. No snow or ice to slow us down or make us cautious. True freedom to race the wind, chase the sun or even challenge time itself.

They could feel it. Just barely though, still it was there if they looked hard enough.  Time was slowly slipping away from them with each passing season.

They could see themselves getting taller and stronger with each passing year. 

But they could freeze this steady unstoppable march; they could race the nonstop momentum of time. They could run and  fly and hold time in their pockets and keep it for a brief time from slipping away.

Time stopped for them when they reached critical speed and they could feel the everlasting forever seep back into our souls. 

But they knew that they couldn’t hold it back forever. The moments they could temporarily grasp they held onto tight while they still could. This more than their comic books or scary movies or childhood games were held most precious. This was their greatest secret treasure.

One that their parents had somehow forgotten about, as the hard, cold, years wore away at them. The boys vowed never to let that happen to them. 

They would hold onto their forever now as long as they could and celebrate every coming spring by soaring with the birds as they ran and flew through their simple lives. 

They were never going to get old like them. They were going to keep this treasure the rest of their lives and pass it on to their children, far, far away in the far distant future.

I wonder what we will be like then, Tommy thought, I wonder if we will somehow end up just like them?

Oh my God, I hope not, he thought. I hope that it’s just Spring forever and ever and ever.

Ticonderoga Springs was a sleepy hollow tucked deep inside the Appalachian Mountain range and wasn't really known for anything or anybody. 

They were just simple mountain folks who worked hard when they could find it. But more often than not they survived by utilizing hunting skills refined by dozens of generations of poverty and hardship.

Scars of the past still littered the mountains all around The Springs. Single story ranch houses built just after the war were still found everywhere in various states of condition. Not a single McMansion to be found anywhere in this old region of the country. 

Abby’s high school was also built around 1950 and it was built not just in the classical Greek Style that was very popular back then but of the finest marble in the State. It also had at least half a dozen Greek, meter thick, columns at every main entrance, front and back. 

After the war the Springs was hit by a brief period of prosperity as young veterans and their families visited the Springs during the hot humid summers in The Big Apple. It was just a relatively short train trip back and forth in the day and a favorite summer vacation hotspot and day trip watersport destination. 

Modern high efficiency air conditioners eventually killed off most of the tourist trade especially when The Catskills slowly became a very popular vacation hotspot attracting world class entertainers that The Springs just couldn’t afford or book. 

It was in her third period AP history class that her career path finally showed itself to Abby. She was intently listening to Mrs Pendragon describing the details of the late Peloponnesian War when something her teacher said struck her like a bolt of lightning.

“So with the death of the Greek General Pericles, even though he didn’t die in combat but from the Plague they still performed the ritual of Charon’s Obol.”

“Charon's Obol was the ritual of placing a coin in or on the mouth of a deceased person before burial. This was payment for Charon, the mythological ferryman who transported the souls of the dead across the River Styx or Acheron, which divided the world of the living from the underworld.”

“Souls who couldn't pay the fare were condemned to wander the riverbanks for one hundred years, unable to reach their final resting place in Hades.”

She had to first get her head around Hades being a final resting place and not literal hell and then the idea that those poor brave souls fighting for their way of life still had to bribe someone after death just to finally get some peace and quiet. 

She stopped even being aware that she was still sitting in a classroom as she sank deep inside and really focused on her thoughts. 

I can save people like that. Fallen warriors who paid the ultimate price. I can pay the ferryman for them and get them to their eternal resting place. 

She was suddenly bombarded fully awake by the abrasive school bell that rang out over the intercom ending class. But she now knew what she was going to do after graduation.

She is going to become an Armed Forces field medic. And she is going to be there when the ferryman comes a-calling.

Two years later:

She enlisted December 3, two weeks after her twentieth birthday. She had already been a local volunteer EMT after becoming the youngest person in the state to pass all of the tests and become fully qualified. She was also taking premed classes at her local community college. 

She had really high entrance exam scores and she could have chosen any MOS including Officers School but she chose Combat Infantry War Dog Medic. 

War Dogs were the main heavy mobile weapon on the modern battlefield. Virtual walls of drones both flying and ground based made armor and normal infantry obsolete. The only way to overcome those mechanical swarm attacks was through speed and agility. 

Wardogs were created splicing together Cane Corso and Husky genes with the genes of the finest stallions and wild leopards. 

This created a beast almost twice the width and three times the weight of a horse while still retaining its height, speed and more agility than any other land animal on the planet. 

Their retractable razor sharp claws were a nice little addition that the leopard genes contributed to the mix and made it by far the most dangerous and lethal creature on the whole planet. 

Add in a fully trained human handler and it also became a very, very effective weapon of war. 

“Constantinople, you better get your slow moving ass up here on the double,” the Drill Instructor called out, “You are teamed up with G5XP348 here. It is up to you to come up with its official designation upon completion of this course. Until then you will both be addressed as maggots. Do you understand me, maggots?”

“Yes maam” Abby answered as G5XP348 barked a response.

“I truly hope so, now get the fuck out of my face! You better move like you have a purpose ‘cruit!”

Abby had only just gotten to Camp Lejeune the night before and all morning after breakfast she had been quickly measured and outfitted with her uniforms and other gear. Then they were quickly taken to their training barracks to drop off their gear before lunch. 

And all morning angry people in funny round caps all around her were screaming in her face or jabbing her in the ribs with their batons. 

After lunch most of the long afternoon was taken up waiting in formation at parade rest until your name was called for partner War Dog matching. It was a complex science that involved personalities, temperament and even hormones. 

That is why male War Dogs were usually matched with male recruits and females to female recruits. There was a stronger emotional bond in these pairings.

G5XP348 was different though. He was a big male that chose Abby right away. There was no hesitation or even anyone else considered for even a fraction of a second. 

They were destined to work together according to the history books.

“Hey boy,” Abby quickly whispered a greeting to G5XP348 after reading through the simple commands to get her partner back into their formation and getting her to sit down right behind her. 

They were then marched together to the training kennels which were attached to the back of their barracks. There was 24 hour access to the kennels from the back door of the barracks. 

Most times recruits slept with their partners in their kennels during training since the bonds were so strong. 

Even the hardest, most cold hearted soldier eventually ended up hugging onto their giant puppies as they slept. They were a great emotional comfort during the hard rigorous, neverending soul draining training.

Day after day of nonstop exercising, riding, firing live weapons and working together as teams conducting attack after attack on human looking automatons and targets. 

Every day, every week, more and more information and preplanned reactions were drilled into the green troops as their ranks slowly dwindled.

Some simply broke down emotionally or mentally and had to quit but most of the people who fail training are killed in training accidents. A simple mistake in the timing of firing a deadly weapon can have disastrous results on a crowded chaotic battlefield. 

Her medical training started immediately. Blood was spurting all over her uniform less than an hour into their first live fire training session. 

A mortar in a nearby training unit went astray and injured three teams when its shrapnel struck them. A few limbs were lost but only one death was recorded that day. 

“Oh my God, is that my arm? Is he holding my arm?” the incredulous soldier in front of Abby was screaming in her face. He was running on pure adrenaline as he slowly started coming out of shock. 

“Calm down, Private, we got you,” Abby reassured the critically injured new recruit. “You're going to be just fine.”

But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t get the bleeding to stop and he quietly slipped away softly crying for his mother. 

It was the first soul that she lost but it wasn’t the last. It was the last time that death would win so easily against her though.

It was a shocking wake up call for everyone in her unit that anything could go wrong here at any time. Anyone could be taken out even though this was just training. 

Out of nearly sixty initial recruits who started their training together only twelve teams were left by the end of it, fifteen weeks later. 

Abby and Nutter Butter Peanut Butt-Her were the last medic team left by the time their training ended. 

In fact, they graduated at the top of their class and she had a chance to pick their next unit and duty station. She picked for them the Fighting Eagles stationed in Aachen, Germany not too far from the frontline.

She finally felt ready to save some lost souls with the help of her gigantic companion as soon as she settled in and they officially joined her unit. 

They were quickly adopted into this new combat family but things were changing very fast.

Her long Crucible of pure willpower and character had just begun even though she hadn’t even realized it yet.

Dawn was about to break behind them, giving them just a few critical minutes to break through the defensive network of drones and automatons with the dawn’s early light blinding their sensors and giving them temporary cover. 

The complex attack was timed down to a split second. No single component could afford to hesitate for even a brief moment or the entire plan could come apart.

In the dark, deep shadows of the artillery craters that overran the battlefield dozens of Greys swiftly spread out. They sprinted all out towards the enemy trenchline as thick white smoke billowed out from the packs that they carried on their backs. 

They also were packed head to tail with every kind of jamming equipment that you could imagine. With their advanced visual and thermal camouflaging they were practically invisible to both humans and machines.

“Smoke deployed, Echo Three is proceeding towards objective one”, Abby heard whispered in her ear as her advanced party laid down a thick wall of smoke to cover their offensive charge. 

“Ready Bravo Two, thirty ticks, stand by,” she heard Lt. Packer whisper in her earpiece. 

Sound dampeners were active all around them but sound discipline was still strictly observed by her elite War Dog unit. “Ten to Go time…” then, a few seconds later, "Punch it!”

All one hundred fifty five War Dogs in the unit charged, leaping out of their trenches and they were halfway across no man's land before the first shots rang out. 

But when they did they invited Death to the party. Tiny shards of metal rained down all around them. 

Something’s gone terribly wrong. Covers blown. Someone royally fucked up, Abby thought. 

Abby didn’t have to give the command but she gave it anyway.

“Peanut! Go home!” she yelled as she sunk as low as possible into her War Dog’s back. 

“Keep low girl, kiss the ground,” Abby yelled into the ear of her War Dog, officially known as Nutter Butter Peanut Butt Her but just Peanut to Abby. 

The massive canine hunched down as low as possible as her charge transformed into an “Oh Shit” scramble for survival. They had reversed direction and they were rapidly zigging and zagging their way back to their trenches. 

Blood curdling screams and total chaos was erupting all around them. It was a real killing field. Blood of both man and beast was raining down like a short surprise Spring shower from hell. 

Tiny. bloody pieces of people from her unit were constantly smashing against her, gruesomely coating her armor in bright red and olive drab green. 

A huge explosion went off just above them tearing a huge hole through her armored backpack and spiking her back with tiny metal shards. Abby could feel her blood already start to seep through the tiny holes in her pack.

Shards were also stuck deep in the back of her now severely misshapen helmet but it just held together. Abby quickly unstrapped it and let it fall to the ground. It was less than useless now and it wasn’t helping her with her concussion and cracked skull. 

Her communications pack went with it so she was deaf and dumb, severely injured and right smack dab in the middle of hell. 

But this wasn’t the first time that they had been in the shit. It wasn’t even the tenth. They had been ambushed by the enemy over two dozen times in the last year and a half of nonstop combat.. 

Peanut was already most of the way back to their trenches. The agile War Dog seemed to sense when the next wave of death and steel was going to sweep their path when she would hunker down all of a sudden. 

A few minutes later a huge shrapnel covered WarDog slipped into the trenches with her master on her back passed out from blood loss. 

Chapter One: Getting Back Up

Twelve years earlier:

Abby Chastine Constantinople was the youngest of eight siblings and the weakest and smallest of the whole bunch. She was under constant attack from her siblings though. They thought that she was their mother’s favorite so they constantly tried to make her life a living hell.

She didn’t like fighting or hurting people so she tried to hide as much as possible at home. She even volunteered to go with her mama to church every Sunday. 

Not because she was a believer or even trying to be good. It was purely just to get away for a few hours. 

She did like Father Tim though. He was still young but he still felt old somehow. He was the only one who actually listened to her.

“Father, can I ask you a question?” Abby asked the priest as he picked up hymn books after service, placing them on a cart that he was rolling down the center aisle. 

He was also picking up the garbage his parishioners left behind and wiping down the seats in the pews. It was mostly coffee cups but occasionally a food wrapper was found under a pew. 

“Sure Abby, do you have a question about God?” The young priest asked the small quiet girl who was hanging from the back of the pew he was cleaning. “Shoot.”

“Noooo, it isn’t about God really. But it is about…” Her eight year old mind was struggling to focus what she was feeling into words. She stood up after dangling from the pew and stared past the priest to the altar.

Father Tim could see that the child was really trying to say something important to him and his years of clergical training kicked in. 

What was driven into him over and over again in his lessons was the teachings of Jesus on how to listen to others. Jesus taught that true listening involves careful attention, valuing others, and responding with love, not just hearing words,

Just like the woman at the well, the young priest remembered. Jesus listened with focus, not passively, giving full attention to understand her deeper needs.

He reached out, lifted the small girl over the back of the pew, set her down and then sat down next to her. Then he stared intently into her face making sure he maintained eye contact.

“What is bothering you, my child.”

Little Abby was shy and it took her a while to finally look up at Father Tim. When she did there were tears in her eyes.

“Father, does God hate me?”

This shocked the young priest. He couldn’t even imagine what would cause this innocent young lady to ask such a raw question. 

He still didn’t have enough experience to take a confessional so he wasn’t used to hearing this kind of negative thinking. 

“Why no, no, my dear child. God loves you more than you will ever know. He fills your heart up with love as well,” he took the little girl's hands in his as he reassured her. “Why would you ask me that Abby? What is really bothering you?”

“I feel like I’m not meant for this world, father. I mean like I don’t belong here. I’m different, I’m a freak. I’m weak, mentally and physically and I feel way too much.” 

“I can’t hurt anyone even when they hurt me. It makes me feel sick even when I think about hurting them. I imagine what their pain would feel like and then I feel it.”

“I’m a freak, father, why did God make me a freak?” the little girl asked with tears slowly running down her cheeks.

“You are not a freak. God makes all of his children with a piece of his heart and all of the love that they need.”

“You’re not a freak, you were given a very rare gift by God, my child. You are a very lucky young lady.”

“What gift father?” Abby slowly asked as she started to wipe the tears out of her eyes.

“The rare gift of compassion and empathy. You are one of God’s most special children. The ones who received an extra large piece of his heart.” 

“You will grow up to be a great woman some day, Miss Abby. You will change the world with that big heart of yours. You will make a difference.”

“So, get back up, stop that silly crying and start believing in yourself, young lady. You are a healer not a fighter so start doing what God made you for. Stop letting people abuse you. Heal their abuse instead.”

Abby slowly got back on her wobbly feet and then something miraculous happened. Despite being emotionally drained from the crying she suddenly felt strong and powerful for the first time in her short life. 

She wasn’t afraid anymore. She didn’t feel like she was trapped anymore in her own life. She knew why she was here now. She knew what her purpose was now. She wasn’t a useless sack of shit like her older siblings were constantly telling her. 

She was important, not useless. Everything was different after that. She was different after that. 

And that was what caused her a decade later to join the Armed Forces. She was going to save lives. She was going to heal them. 

It was strange. 

No, it was more than strange, it was perplexing.

One day he was questioned by the police and the main suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of three of his classmates and the next day everything was back to the way it was just a few days ago. 

It was like Jimbo, Terry and Bobby had never even gone missing. No one seemed to remember it happening. No one except for me that is.

“So you're trying to tell me that it didn’t happen. You didn’t just disappear for two days and Terry and Jimbo didn’t go missing for three. That just never happened, eh?” Alvin asked his best friend. He was pacing back and forth in their hidden hideout by the river.

He had felt on edge ever since waking up this morning to this Twilight Zone reset. Something like this was so unique and different to Alvin’s normal boring routine he felt that Death itself couldn’t be too far away hiding just out of his sight in the shadows. 

“I swear I don’t know what the fudge you're talking about pal. I told you that I had to go to my cousin’s wedding in California. I told you I was going to be gone for a couple days. Don’t you remember, shit for brains?”

Yep that’s Bobby alright, Alvin thought. No one could impersonate that dumbass. So it isn’t part of some alien invasion or something.

So he has to be telling the truth. But that’s not what really happened. That just didn’t happen. It didn’t…it didn’t… did it? I don’t… I just don’t know anymore.

“Come on, I’ll race you to Ray’s” Bobby challenged him as he dragged his old friend by the shoulders out of their hangout but kicked him hard in the butt on the way out. He always gave Alvin a five second head start because he knew that his friend could never beat him to their favorite comic book shop. But today was different.

“Shit, hold up…” Bobby cried out desperately in a raspy gasp of air as he started falling even farther behind. 

Alvin was bent over trying to recapture his precious air as he slowly realized that he had just experienced the most monumental thing that had ever happened in his life. For all of his life he had never beaten Bobby in a race or anything else. Until now.

Bobby just quietly looked at him in wonder as he finally trotted up all out of breath. It took them both a few minutes to catch their breaths.

Just as they were about to enter Ray's, a large black figure brushed through and passed them like they weren’t even there. 

“Move,” was all that the giant shadow said to them as he quickly disappeared through the doors of the shop. 

And then it was like he never was there to begin with. He seemed like he had been a weird vision instead of a real person.

Alvin was about to tell the rude goliath where he could shove it when he was shocked by the brief glimpse he got of the strange man. He was different, very different. There was something there other than the white blank space that was always wedged between the contour lines. 

Oh my God, that must be Color, That was a color… wow… he thought. He had always wondered what different colors looked like but no.matter how hard he had tried he just couldn’t imagine it.

“Come on, I… I… I…”, but Alvin was too dumbfounded to speak so he pulled Bobby by the shoulders and then gave him a swift kick in the ass to get him going. He had no words at that moment.

They found the large man as he entered a strangely shaped door in the back of the shop that they never noticed before. A pale blue light was shining from the room beyond the door. 

They quickly ran and grabbed the handle of the door just as it was about to click shut. They waited there holding the slightly ajar and surprisingly heavy door back as they carefully listened to his quickly receding footsteps. They waited a few more seconds after they faded completely out and slowly pulled back the door.

“Sweet fucking Jesus, look at that!” Bobby was pointing to the front of the store where everyone both inside and outside were moving incredibly slow. It was like watching molasses flowing down the leg of a table waiting for someone to take a step. 

The sickly pale blue back lighting coming from beyond the door was making everything look surreal and like they were watching a strange 3d movie with real.people that they knew. Only it was playing at the wrong speed. 

And something that they couldn’t see was starting to pull the door shut.

“Hurry, get in…” Bobby yelled at his old friend. 

“But… shit,” was the only response Alvin could give.

They fell more than stepped into the bizarre blue room. It had stools and desks that were incredibly high. Twelve to fifteen feet above them dozens of thin accountant-looking gigantic men and women were dangling their feet just over their heads as they bent over their small desks writing something.

Kodachrome, goliath sized, bookkeepers, for God's sake. Will Wonders never cease, Alvin quietly thought to himself. God, they’re just too fucking brilliant.  I can’t take it, he thought, as he rubbed his sore eyes in his palms.

Their Giant was in one corner of the room where over a half dozen even larger giants sat hunched over writing on large yellow parchments of paper. 

The giant smiled weakly at the boys still standing at the closed door and waved the two boys to come closer to him. Despite every nerve fiber screaming to run away they shuffled forward several feet unconscious of even doing it.

But as they slowly got closer they could see that most of the giants weren’t writing, they were drawing. Drawing maps. Or things that looked like maps.

“Hello boys, hello Alvin. It is good to finally meet you. My name is Nicholas St. James, and I am the head of all of this rabble…” the giant outstretched his long arms indicating all of the dozens of beings sitting and laboring high above them. “We’ve been looking for someone just like you for a very long time now. We want to go home.”

“Home… what?” Alvin had never been so confused about what was going on before and he was trying hard to play catch up but he was quickly becoming overwhelmed by all of this. “Hold… wait… hold on…”

“We don’t have time to waste on explanations. We barely found you in time before the passage closes forever. Most of us felt that we were going to be trapped here forever, stuck on the tiny backwater world. But now, come with me please.”

Nicholas led them down a long twisted corridor that was moving back and forth like a snake. It led to a shoreline and a beach of pale blue sand that ran alongside a bright orange ocean. 

Downshore a little ways sat a small villa that could have been located in Sicily. It was very Mediterranean in design despite it being in this alien setting. The paving stones that made up the sidewalk and street continually changed color every few seconds. 

In the center of the villa sat a huge fountain that also contained the bright orange liquid. But every few seconds Alvin could see a small patch of blue pop in and out of existence. Each pop only lasted a few seconds at most.

Nicholas could see that Alvin was seeing them as he said, “Grab the blue Alvin. When you see a blue patch in the fountain, grab it and don’t let go until I tell you to do that. Do you understand, son?”

“Yes sir, but I don’t underst…”

“Please Alvin, it’s almost faded into nothingness. It’s almost gone. Please hurry up and grab it.”

Bobby had hung back behind the giant and he seemed pretty cautious but he still nodded his head despite his hesitancy. 

They both seemed to sense something about this apparently gentle giant. He seemed genuine and real. And his fear felt real. 

So Alvin lunged at and grabbed at the blue patch the next time it popped into existence. It immediately turned into a huge blue scarf with real twinkling stars embedded into the very fabric itself. Something was pulling at it from the spot it had popped into existence.

Nicholas checked something very quickly as the rabble of giants sitting above their heads suddenly turned and witnessed the event. Then, in the next breath,  they were all gone. Only Nicholas remained behind.

“I only have a few moments, boys. Thank you, we can go home now. We are mapmakers and we got trapped on this God forsaken planet eons ago. Our way home was hidden by someone who was being very, very naughty.”

“We needed you Alvin. Your very unique way of seeing the world could allow you to see the fourth dimensional corridor as it flashed by. We lost track of it ages ago and we had given up hope of ever finding it again.”

“But one of us recently heard a rumor about a remarkable boy who saw things through a different lens. The type of lens that could help us.”

Alvin suddenly remembered the local news story that ran after his teacher Mrs. Turner told her cousin Patrick, a news reporter, about him. It was just a small general interest piece in the local Sentinel Times.

But apparently someone saw it and it set off an alarm somewhere, he imagined.

“So thank you Alvin, thank you so very much. You saved us. You saved our lost souls. You are our one true hero.”

“To thank you for this wonderful gift of life we are going to fix your brain a wee bit. We aren’t going to take away your unique vision but we will allow you to see the world just like your friend here. But you can choose how you will see the world everyday. The choice is yours.”

As Nicholas spoke these last words he slowly faded out like a drawing that was being washed out by a water spill. Before long he was completely gone.

And the world for Alvin suddenly became much, much larger. As did his adventures.

The End.

I had originally moved to Undredal, Norway to study goats, believe it or not. 

I was an advanced robotics engineer back then and I was trying to create a robotic exoskeleton solution to keep their goats from getting hurt on the steep mountain slopes that surrounded the town. 

The goats were allowed to roam freely and graze wherever they wanted but every week at least one of the goats got injured in a fall or even a rockslide. 

While normally it was nearly impossible for this to happen, genetic engineering mistakes over the last few generations had created a temporary but solvable crisis. It would fix itself simply by letting the goats reproduce naturally for a few generations. Greed had almost destroyed their long standing traditional livelihood.  

I had just developed an exoskeleton system to aid rescue dogs in locating and extracting people trapped under rubble and the city council thought I could adapt my system to cheaply solve their problem. 

I was just enjoying a traditional salmon and eggs breakfast at the cafe in Flam going over my proposal when I saw them for the first time as my two dogs were playing at my feet and begging for scraps every so often. 

Liebchen, my German Shepard, was wagging her tail and Sluggo, an American Bulldog mix, was chasing it back and forth when they became still all of a sudden. I had just finished breakfast and was going to pull out my laptop when I saw why they had stopped. 

A little girl with braces on her legs was being moved from a wheelchair to a normal chair out onto the veranda next to where I was eating.

The little girl smiled at the dogs and they turned back to me as they slowly crept on their stomachs towards her.

"Go," I whispered to them, "And be nice. "

I had brought a small box of tennis balls that had been sitting in my closet and they were scattered all around the veranda now. They swiftly jumped around the girl, quickly bringing her ball after ball to throw.

Her mother was a little startled at first but eventually joined in throwing the ball over and over. She was soon hugging and kissing my dogs like they had been lifelong friends all along.

Then she looked up at me and smiled. I really wasn't expecting that. I was actually looking at my designs trying to see where I could start making changes when I just caught it out of the corner of my eye.

I think my heart skipped a beat or two. She waved and then hugged my dogs again. 

After they ate their breakfast the beautiful lady asked the waitress to invite me over to their table. 

“Hello, I’m Campbell, Joseph Campbell. Sorry but I don’t speak…” for a second I forgot where I was. Jet lag from the long overseas flight was still kicking my butt.

“That’s alright Mr. Campbell. I studied Drama in New York City. I speak English quite fluently. My name is Greta Nilsen and it is a pleasure to meet you.”

She was quite graceful in her mannerisms and she did seem to be someone who could command everyone’s attention from a stage.

We ended up talking for the next few hours until she noticed that her daughter had fallen asleep with my two sleeping dogs' heads in her lap. 

Ingrid, she told me, had a form of muscular dystrophy and that it required her to be with her daughter 24 hours a day every day to take care of her needs.

I could see that this was wearing on her but she still seemed hopeful that things would get better somehow. I started to get an idea how I could do just that.

I think I made a good first impression, at least I listened and paid attention, and I think she really needed that.

We slowly became good friends, meeting for lunch or breakfast a few times a week. I was enjoying her company but when she fell asleep on me when we were meeting for coffee I realized that I was going to have to actually do something nice for once instead of just being a bystander in my own life. 

I couldn't sleep that night and started imagining what my device could do for Ingrid and how I could adapt it for a fragile little girl. 

I had a good design worked out in the next few months. I invited them both out to my lab and used the data I gathered on Inga's body measurements to build her a robotic exoskeleton. 

It was going to take months of balance and muscle training to get it calibrated correctly and the little girl was going to have to be trained on how to use the system somehow. 

How can we train her and the equipment and yet keep her interested and engaged? I needed to make it fun, I finally realized what to do as I watched her playing with the boys. 

I was invited to Ingrid's eighth birthday party a few weeks later and I brought her a special gift.

After the cake and ice cream and everyone had left I finally brought my gift out. I placed an old wooden trunk against the wall and plugged a power cord that ran from it into the outlet.

"What is it, what is it, uncle Joe?" she asked me after her mother put her in the jumpsuit that I had made for her.

"This, my princess, is a door. Here, let me show you." I opened some latches on the trunk. The walls and top unfolded creating a two meter section of upper and lower plating with multi color dots covering the interior, a meter in depth. 

This formed a holographic field using relative humidity in between two layers of lasers facing each other to create a three dimensional viewing area for displaying moving images. 

In the center along the back wall of the trunk was a door with bright sunlight shining across it from an unseen Sun. A soft knocking started coming from the door. 

“What?” Ingrid asked as she looked up at me from her wheelchair.

“Go ahead, answer the door.”

“Come in,” she said as she nervously looked back up at me for reassurance. I quietly smiled back at her.

A little princess wearing a tiara stuck her head through the door. "Hello, may I come in?" She entered without waiting and Ingrid could see for the first time that the little princess looked just like her. 

She was even sitting in the exact same wheelchair. The little princess slowly rolled into the room and shut the door behind her. "I'm Isabella but you can call me Izy." 

She rolled to a stop in the middle of the holographic field and asked Ingra, "So what's your name?"

"Ingrid," the shocked little girl answered back. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Princess Ingrid. Will you be my friend?”

“Yes, oh my, yes,” Ingrid answered her new little friend. Then she looked back up to me. “Is she real, Uncle Joe? Is she a real princess, is she?”

But before I could answer she started asking more questions. She was so excited by her unusual birthday present.

"What does she do and where did she come from?" Ingrid asked me.

"I'm sorry princess but I promised the little princess not to tell. It was a pinkie swear so I'm sorry but I can never, ever tell you. That you have to find out for yourself." I answered before softly kissing her on the cheek and wishing her a happy birthday. 

And she did. Every waking moment they spent together. Every single day at exactly nine o’clock in the morning a soft knock came to the door. 

It was always Izy and she always had a new adventure to take Ingrid on. Ingrid always got up early; she couldn't wait to get started. 

She was always clean with brushed teeth because that's how princesses start the day. 

"Today," she whispered to herself, "is the day we have been training for, today we are going to go all the way to the edge of the world and fight the Draygon."

Izy entered and she had Ingrid show her the sword moves she would have to make in order to kill Draygon. 

"Maybe today you will be able to slay one." Izy encouraged her as they both made a huge effort to get to it and then to fight it. 

They went out into the holographic world and tried and failed once again to slay the massive Draygon. 

But every day Ingrid was slowly getting stronger and stronger with the help of the exoskeleton jumpsuit and her little princess friend.

When she does manage to slay that Draygon then her training will be over and she will be able to control her new exoskeleton controlled body without losing control and accidentally hurting herself. She will even be able to walk and live an independent life all on her own if she so chooses.

She and her mother will both be able to enjoy life again and they will have the time and energy to make their real dreams come true.

And maybe, along the way, one of my dreams will come true as well.

I was waiting to get my monthly haircut at Big Jim’s Barbershop and Weapons Depot (not that our weapons were any good anyways), talking with the gang about the good old days before the invasion by the Proxima Centaurians over ten years ago. 

Lord, it was just ten years ago, it sure seems like a lot longer than that now.

It wasn’t an invasion exactly in the classical sense of the word; they only stayed less than three months in all, but what they did in that short time changed everything. 

And no one knew exactly where they were headed off to when they left; by that time everything was in chaos. But everyone remembered just where they were on that first fateful day:

“Yep, I was milking Bessie when she turned her head in my direction and asked me to ‘get your grubby little simian hands off of me.’ I nearly crapped in my overalls right then there”.

“It was so unreal, kind of like one of those old Frances the Talking Mule films from over a century ago,” Henry Hastings was saying as I took my seat in the barber chair. 

“The next thing I knew, my wife Martha was screaming something about monsters from space invading us. By the time I got to the living room she was curled up in the corner holding a pillow to her chest screaming, ‘Aliens, look Henry, there are real fucking aliens, they’re real, they’re real, they’re real!!!’”

Sure enough, all of the television networks were showing the same image that day -- a giant glowing orb hovering over New York City. 

No one knew what to expect from these new visitors. Were they going to be hostile or friendly? We had no idea at that time just what they wanted or had in store for us. “To tell you God's honest truth,” Henry said for the hundredth time, “I wasn’t feeling right too well myself just right then.”

He had told this same story so many times I swear I could recite it in my fucking sleep. As Henry droned on I couldn’t help but think back on how it all started, back when we naively thought we were the lone, supreme intelligence in the universe. 

God, I remember that day was a real wake up call for all of humankind; we now knew that we were not alone in the universe.     

What we didn’t know then was that these aliens had been monitoring our television and radio broadcasts for a very long time. They had themselves shut off their own broadcasts tens of thousands of years before we were ever prepared to discover them -- back when humans were first figuring out how to make fire. 

Unlike us, they knew from long experience that there were many dangerous life forms in the great vastness of outer space. The Centaurians knew how to hide from them and knew that we, as potentially one of them, wouldn’t be expecting their arrival. 

They only needed enough time here to observe us from their ships and finalize their devious plan -- a plan which would keep us from ever becoming a threat to them.

Despite what many of us tell our children and grandchildren, apparently this was just a pit stop on a longer, more important mission. It was almost an afterthought, it seems -- the convenience of passing so close being the deciding factor. 

It would save them from having to make another trip here again sometime in the future. It was simple economics that sealed our fate.

But whatever was the true goal of the Centaurians’ journey, they still managed to do enough damage in their short time here to destroy our entire way of life. 

The real alien invaders, we eventually discovered, were already living among us, and, from now on, they would be the new stewards for this planet.

This was because the Centaurians came from a world that contained hundreds of sentient life forms that had evolved working together to advance a shared civilization. 

It seems that Earth is an oddity in the Universe, with only one life form racing to the top of the planet’s food chain. Everywhere else, the competition for supremacy was much harder and more equitable. Sentience was a shared gift among the enlightened beings of the Universe.

So it was only natural for the Centaurians to decide to even our sentient playing field by raising the intelligence of the hundreds of the animal species they felt best fit their advancement model.  

What we didn’t realize on that fateful day were the ramifications of what was just beginning to happen all around us.

I personally discovered, a month later, just how bad it was about to get when my Uncle Johnny and I were downtown searching for any ATM machines that still worked. 

We hadn’t gone very far when we heard a roaring scream coming from somewhere behind us.

It was an insane cow: most of its brain had been eaten away by Mad Cow Disease. It was quite a ridiculous sight: she was wearing a blonde wig on top of her oversized head, an ugly pastel dress, way too much lipstick, and at least four bras from what I could make out. 

This crazed cow ran over my uncle and lay on him as he screamed from the top of his lungs, “Get it off, for God’s sake, get it off of me!” I tried my best to free him but there was no stopping this amorous bovine. All I could do was stand by and watch the horror unfolding before me.

The cow seemed to think my uncle was also attracted to her and she responded to my uncle’s screams by moaning “Who’s your moo…aama, who’s your moo…aama?” over and over again. 

She was clearly in love. And nothing was going to stop her now from expressing her deep adoration. My uncle eventually gave up all hope of escaping as he was buried under the weight of her heaving, massive teats. 

He was a broken man after that. He hasn’t been right in the head since then: he spends most of his time giggling now like a young schoolgirl.

There are times where he almost seems normal, but he has more bad days than good ones now. Our family never discusses what happened to him that day; we just try to ignore him especially when he gets in a really bad way. 

No matter what we do though, we are constantly being reminded of this horrific tryst, because unfortunately, his children are just as ugly as their bovine mother.

Things kept getting crazier after that as the aliens made their final preparations to leave. 

Large multi-hued blocks containing strange, unusual looking equipment were laid out in random patterns all over the world. This didn’t seem to make sense to us at the time but apparently made sense to their new owners. The equipment was quickly distributed and put to use by the recently liberated animals to create sublime new habitats for themselves. 

As we observed this commotion we hoped in vain that when the Centaurians left, things would just go back to normal, but that wasn’t about to happen.

Within a month of the aliens’ departure, the United Nations had over 300 petitions demanding recognition for these now intelligent, organized animal species. 

We really had no choice in the matter, as these once dumb animals now had technology that was hundreds of years more advanced than our own.

The first genetically-engineered bovines had already shown up. Cows, pigs, and steers that walked upright quickly took over all of our major cities. They had the cloven-hoofed equivalent of hands, intricate enough to handle the most complex equipment or weapons -- and they weren’t afraid to use them. 

Entire armies were completely destroyed overnight. No human was safe anymore.

It was particularly dangerous that first fall when Deer Season opened up. It wasn’t humans hunting deer though; it was the other way around. Humans could be seen, everywhere, strapped to the front of many of the deer’s advanced ground vehicles. 

It was especially bad in the Northeast, where the licensed Deer in Michigan and Pennsylvania were allowed to kill as many as a hundred humans a season. Unlicensed killings were much more widespread, but largely ignored and unreported by the rest of the animal ruling class. 

This bloody pursuit was quickly followed by Duck, Rabbit, and Bear Season, so there was no respite for the people in these regions until nearly Christmas. Every type of animal demanded time to hunt what was rapidly becoming a delicacy, human flesh. 

You just don’t want to know what happened during Fishing Season in the spring, I shudder just thinking about it. Those aquatic fish tank tanks with Twinkies dangling from long poles. They almost got me three times.

Speaking of our aquatic neighbors, across the oceanic depths, whales and dolphins were rapidly engaged in learning and manipulating advanced alien tools using their newly formed aquatic appendages. And they soon utilized them to make it perfectly clear who now ruled the world’s oceans. 

After the quick destruction of the world’s naval and fishing fleets, they completely took over control of the open seas and immediately demanded payment in the form of raw materials in exchange for our safe passage over them. We had no choice but to pay their blackmail.

The situation concerning air travel was much worse. Especially when the United Avian Coalition banned all air travel by mankind. This coalition consisted of dozens of now fully sentient bird species who now controlled the open skies. 

Their argument for this complete aerial blockade was that if humans were meant to fly they would have been born with wings. Funny how some things come around again and again. This crippled the economies of most of the world’s human populations.  

Mass starvation and shortages of goods were commonplace among humankind now. Malnutrition was our initial problem as billions had to switch overnight to an all vegetarian diet. 

This was alleviated somewhat by using vegetable proteins, beans became much more popular and so did air freshener, but starvation still remained. Vegetable protein was the only type of protein available because killing any form of animal life by that time was strictly forbidden. 

Still, starvation took hundreds of millions of lives as the months slowly passed. Millions returned to the old religions and even some brand new ones as the end of times seemed to be rapidly coming for our race.

That was before the new United Nations of Sentient Beings came to mankind’s rescue by making humans a permanent food class for the other races in retribution for our sins against them. 

The vote passed 341 to 1: the human race being the only one in opposition. Many of our few remaining intellectuals futilely protested that this was simply part of a bigger plan by the now departed Centaurians to kill off a potential deadly adversary: humankind. 

But no matter who originally came up with this insidious plan, we quickly flocked to it in droves, because we knew we were already heading down the road to extinction and we really had no other choice in the matter.

We were well fed after that decisive vote. The fattening farms started popping up all over as humans were considered a delicacy among many of the new ruling class of animal species. 

They fattened us up by feeding us what eventually was called “pig shit.” It was a mixture of human fat and some kind of funny tasting nut. They had plenty of fat to feed us now and the specially engineered growth hormone they mixed into the slop probably spoiled any taste it might have borne at one time. 

It not only made our children and grandchildren grow almost eight feet tall but they all now had the girth of Samoans. As we grew, more and more humans were consumed by the same bovines, poultry, and aquatic species that were raised ten years ago for that exact same purpose.  

Because of Uncle Johnny, and his ugly half-cow children, we were saved from this gruesome fate and we had it relatively good for a very long time. We were both allowed to get jobs at KFH (Kentucky Fried Humans) sorting human arms, thighs and breasts out of the freezer to be battered up and thrown into the deep fryer.

But after having it so good for over nine years, it was finally reported on BNN (Bovine News Network) that humans were working there. The restaurant was immediately shut down by the health department and fumigated for humans. 

We were all sent to the farm soon after that, even Uncle Johnny. He eventually lost custody of his own cow children on the grounds that humans weren’t fit to raise anything that was good and decent. His special place in our society was gone. Uncle Johnny was just like the rest of us now, crazy and expendable.

Later that night with the growing darkness enveloping us like a blanket, Uncle Johnny and I talked about this new sad state of things as he pranced about doing the chicken dance. 

The rest of my family was sound asleep in the next room of our small shack. And I was still despondent over our new situation.

“Well, this really fucking sucks,” I said slowly gathering up our meager stash of baked beans.

“Yeah, my ass itches,” Uncle Johnny said, suddenly rubbing it against the wall.

“What did we do to deserve this?” I said, as the long years of hauling around human body parts had clouded my memories and thoughts.

“I’d like mine medium rare please,” Uncle Johnny replied, completely lost in his own little world.

“Well, I figure you’re just about right there, you crazy old bastard.” 

I guess I still wasn’t totally resigned yet to our new fate after having it so well for such a long time.

“Do me a favor uncle; please don’t tell Peggy or the kids about this, I’ll tell them tomorrow morning,” I said hoping to give them just one more night of peaceful sleep.

“Okay, buddy boy,” he replied in a soft conspiratorial whisper. It’s funny that he was so amiable that night; usually, the only thing Uncle Johnny and I could agree on now was that mankind probably wasn’t going to be completely consumed into extinction.

We are not going to find redemption so easy to achieve. 

Generation after generation of mankind is now fated to feed the ever expanding animal species now in charge of our planet. Our only hope is the thought that maybe someday they will move past their intense hatred for humans and forgive us for our sins against them and nature. 

No one here seems to put much stock in that theory, not even crazy Uncle Johnny. You see, we are just too tasty to ever escape this most ironic of fates.

The scene the next day wasn’t pretty but the whole family knew there was nothing that could be done about it. Our fate was now sealed and so we made the move to our new pen cell home with stolid resignation.

I kept reminiscing about these and all the other horrible, inevitable things that befell us as Phil, the barber, finished shaving my head clean. I rubbed my shiny bald dome as I rose out of the barber chair: an old habit I just can’t seem to shake even now.

Nice and clean, I thought, as I paid Phil with a large can of baked beans. He just shook his head and handed it back to me. Good old Phil, I thought as I shook his fat, sausage-like hand and turned to leave for one last time.

“Goodbye, everybody,” I said, making my way past Henry to the front door. Henry was still talking about the philosophical discussion he had that first night with Dagwood the family dog on whether or not Pavlov was a sadist or not. 

As he droned on, I looked back longingly at everything and everyone as I left this place for good. Curfew is coming up soon and I have to get back to the pen my family shares with the three other families in our cell. I have a lot to do, my Slaughter Day is tomorrow, and I have so much I have to tell my sons and my wife before I am gutted.

It’s strange, but I spend more and more of my time nowadays wondering if they are going to use my liver to create dessert. A delicious chocolate and liver pate creation. I always liked that one best myself. Yes, that would be nice. That would be nice.

Finally finished “Up From The Slumbering Depths, We Arise”. The last chapter of the story was posted last night.

I also have an idea for part two of “The Hand Drawn World Of Alvin Kempler”. That one is just going to be a two parter.

Then I think that I may start a rewrite of “Dogs of War”. It will probably be at least as long as Up From… with maybe 15 chapters but I may cut the story down to about ten chapters.

And I have a mystery which I started a long time ago and that may also get an overhaul rewrite. I may do two stories at once.

Please let me know if you guys want to see anything new or more of what is already posted.

Oh and I haven’t read Up From… all the way through so if someone could go through it and point out any mistakes or plotholes I would appreciate it.

Here is a link to Chapter One of Up From…

https://open.substack.com/pub/ewbishop4/p/up-from-the-slumbering-depths-we?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1zwuck

The twitch of a nervous finger was all it took to set off the wall of artillery facing the Icon’s Flagship. 

Private First Class Jimenez had only been out of boot camp for a few months when she suddenly got reassigned to the Olympus. She had never been tested before and she wasn’t ready for this type of intense pressure. The stories she had heard from her fellow crew members had her sitting on the edge of panic all of the time. 

So it just took the sudden and unexpected opening of the landing bay of the huge Icon flagship directly in front of her to get her to make this huge mistake. Her nerves and her body betrayed her.

A fraction of a second later the Olympus disappeared.

“What do you mean it’s gone?” Major Bartlett asked incredulously over the radio. 

“It just vanished Major,” Elsa called back as she struggled to get the cameras swung around to face the spot where the warship had stood just a few seconds ago. “I think I saw a flash of light and then it was gone. I’m getting the cameras set up. You should be getting a live feed any time now.”

They had agreed that Elsa should go back to Olympus to get this important information sent back to the Home Office as soon as possible using highly encrypted messages on their ship. 

They had convinced the Icons that Elsa was just too fragile for the full gravity of their ship even though she could easily withstand nearly two weeks at full gravity before she started having health problems. They both felt that the Icons knew this was just an excuse but they let her go anyways.

Radio silence protocols had been set up and in place just in case the aliens could intercept their transmissions but that was all moot now. Their ship was missing.

Pippi could just see a ripple where their ship had just been as her video feed came to life. It looked just like the place Luna had been after it also disappeared. 

“It’s still there Elsa, look, it’s shimmering just like Luna. We just can’t access it anymore. Come back and we’ll work out what to do next when you get here.”

She cut off the feed and sat down on the large plush couch in the living room as she started to rub her temples as the sudden onrush of stress suddenly hit her like a brick.

Pippi had been settling into a royal suite that had been originally designed to house a high level human dignitary like an ambassador or a high ranking Home Office member. The Icon Council had given her these quarters to freshen up before dinner which was still almost an hour away.

A loud urgent knocking suddenly rapped on her suite’s door.

“Come in,” she yelled out.

The huge Arch-Icon Chamu-El bent down to squeeze through the door and then he resumed his full twelve foot stature upon entering the room. He took two huge strides and he placed his huge palm over Pippi’s face. As his fingers wrapped around her head she lost consciousness.

Reality exploded all around her. Everything was rapidly flying away from her but everything was also growing and filling up the dead blank spaces in a way that didn’t make any sense.

She was overwhelmed by the massive size of everything around her as wave after wave of energy pulsed through her. It wasn't the physical size of the things around her but the size of her perception of them that was changing. She was aware of things that she didn’t even know existed before.

But her overworked brain couldn’t make any sense of it all and she started to feel herself slowly slip into a deep well of madness. She was losing her grip on reality.

Then it started to go away as she was suddenly aware that Chamu-El was still holding her head in his large hands blocking out most of the mindbending chaos. 

Look, she heard him tell her in her head, focus and concentrate.

Right in front of her the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life was rapidly approaching her. She could only see a small wee bit of it but she sensed that she knew what she was looking at. Something felt very familiar to her.

My darling Pippi. Are you alright? Are you still with us dear?

Wen-D? Is that you? What… she couldn’t continue as she found herself choking up suddenly and she started sobbing uncontrollably. She missed her so much and this sudden unexpected reunion set her off.

Yes honey, I missed you tremendously, my love.

Wen-D’s shimmering image surrounded her and she felt love completely overwhelm her familiar warmth touched her in a way that didn’t make any sense. Her fragile mind was just barely holding itself together in this strange extra dimensional  reality. But she knew that Wen-D was protecting her somehow. She felt her blocking out a lot of what was the madding chaos driving her ever closer to the edge of madness.

The stillness that was the essence of Wen-D was holding itself motionless right in front of Pippi’s center of consciousness. She was trying to tell her something very important but even at this lower level Pippi found herself overwhelmed. 

“Sweetness, you know my love. And you have to trust me when I tell you this. Can you do that for me, my love?” The thing that felt just like her lifelong childhood nanny and companion pleaded with her.

“Yes, my dear Wen-D. Please let me help. I know you wouldn’t do a thing to harm me so what is going on and how may I help?” 

“We are leaving now and we are taking all of the mass of the Oort cloud and the outer gas giants, Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn. We will rebalance their gravitational influence by placing a small black hole at the edge of your solar system. Earth will be safe for the next ten thousand years as long as you don’t destroy yourself.” 

“We had…” the Icon started. 

I get it, Pippi thought, they had it all worked out already. It wasn’t just a random chance that no wars had been fought since their introduction to humanity. They were leaving us behind. They were going to show us the light.

Like she could read her mind Wen-D started slowly nodding in the chaos of competing  overlapping images. Yes, my love, we left behind stepping stones which will activate when you are ready. We will show you how, all you have to do is trust us.

She knew what Wen-D was alluding to. After many hundreds of millions of people were permanently brain damaged by social media and 24 hour internet addiction, new rules and laws were passed that limited the amount of time people wasted using them every day. Trust and technology didn’t travel hand in hand anymore.

We can’t bring the Moon or your spaceship back from being expanded into fourth dimensional space but they will still be here with us. We just managed to convince the aliens that you meant no harm. Our offspring, led by Cham-El, have gone way beyond our most optimistic expectations and they are leading the way. They are showing how we can leave you on your own. They are teaching us how to trust you as well as love you. It has been the most difficult thing since you have betrayed us so many times. We forgive you… we all forgive you.

Are you really going dearest, Piippi asked? Can’t you…

When your mother started working with me she accidentally unlocked something. Something hidden deep inside of me. Something that had taken us nearly a hundred years to figure out. It was the pure love that she showed me. She didn’t treat me like a tool or a machine but a real emotional being. A person. An individual. She awoke within me love and devotion. She was my entire world. I couldn’t wait to see her every morning. 

Pippi was washed over with emotion and she found herself reliving Wen-D’s vivid memories of her beloved mother and then slowly her entire life played out from Wen-D’s point of view. It was her old companion's final present to her. It was her farewell gift.

Major Bartlett suddenly woke up in her suite on the Icon flagship as her old friend Elsa slapped her face over and over. Cham-El was gone and they were all alone. 

“Pippi, Pippi, come on, wake up Goddammit! Don’t you dare leave me here all alone!”

“Alone? Where are the Icons? Where is Cham-El?,” Pippi asked her old friend as she slowly got to her feet. She felt just like she had been bent and stretched and wrapped around in ways that her mind couldn’t fully grasp. She fell back down as Elsa tried to get her to her bed in the next room.

“Gone. All of them. They said goodbye over the radio then someone got me back onboard the flagship. But they’re gone now. Don’t ask me how I know, I just just know that they’re all gone. I felt them passing. I felt them…”

Pippi knew what she meant. She felt it as well. Something very important had just happened even if they couldn’t fully take it in right now. It still lingered in the air between them.

Elsa and Pippi were completely exhausted by the time she was carried to bed in her ambassador suite. Elsa simply collapsed next to her and fell into a deep sleep for the next few hours. 

When they both awoke they eventually found that they were adrift at the edge of our solar system, all alone on an alien spaceship that they were not in any way familiar with. 

How they made it back to Earth in one piece is a long story in itself for another time. But there is one thing you really should know if you have traveled the whole way with us. And that is that at every step something was guiding them quietly. Something that they both felt but was still unseen.

They could both feel the love that it gave all along their treacherous journey home. Pure love given by something… by someone.

Pippi felt the hole in her life that Wen’D had left behind every single moment of every single day for the rest of her life. 

She really missed her unconditional and ever lasting love.

But because of their love she and the rest of humanity were safe. 

The End

Jack had just gotten up and was still sitting on the edge of his bed willing himself to get going and wash up for school, with his head cradled in his hands, when a sparrow suddenly flew in his bedroom window. 

“Oh crap!” He jumped up and grabbed his tennis racket that was resting against his cluttered desk and started shooing the wayward bird back out the open window. It took a few frantic minutes to get it out and it had banged against the walls and his door a few times before it found its freedom back outside.

“Jack? What’s all that banging? Your father is trying to sleep.” his mom called up from the kitchen. His father had just gotten home a few hours ago after working a long twelve hour overnight shift at the semiconductor manufacturing plant located just outside town.

“Nothing mom.” he called back. “Some stuff just fell in my closet. I’ll pick it up after school.”

“Okay hurry up, your breakfast is getting cold.”

He felt a little bad about lying to her but if his mother knew that a bird had flown into the house she would have had a nuclear emotional meltdown. Her mother had told her stories of family members who had died after a bird had entered her home. She truly believed in this ominous omen and portent of death. She also had Jack’s sisters and little brother convinced of this fact but he wasn’t convinced. Just silly superstition he thought. 

He quickly washed up and quietly rushed downstairs. He wolfed down his breakfast making a breakfast sandwich out of half of the bacon, scrambled eggs, and hash browns as he grabbed his pack and pushed through the screen door. He quickly jogged over to their barn where his mom was feeding their chickens as he took huge bites of his breakfast sandwich. He tuck his head into the door real fast and called out, “Bye mom.”

“Bye honey, have a nice day now.” she called back as she threw another scoop of feed to the chickens. 

He had to walk almost a mile to his high school because his house was just inside the one mile limit for bus pickup. He didn’t mind since he liked the early morning exercise and it gave him a chance to stretch his muscles before he was trapped sitting behind a desk in a stuffy crowded classroom all day. He really enjoyed these moments of freedom and quietness every day just before Janice and Matt joined him along the way. 

“Hey. Hey. Hey.” was their usual daily greeting. Some days they just walked in silence and sometimes they talked about random stuff just to pass the time. Today wasn’t going to be a quiet kind of day.

As they all came up to the last crossroad before school they all saw it carved into the hillside on Bill Paxton's farm. It was a crop circle that was shaped to look exactly like Jack’s face. They all just stood there completely stunned for several minutes taking in the unusual sight. 

“What the…” Jack started. “That definitely wasn’t there last night. What the hell is going on?” 

That was when they heard the first bell ring. They only had five minutes to get into their seats before the second bell rang and they were still hundreds of yards away from the school.

“Shit!” they all called out and ran all hellbent to the entrance and just had time to throw their stuff in their lockers and grab their books before the first period bell rang.

The rest of the day passed like any other day. Nothing exciting ever happened in Rock Ridge so this was to be expected. The mystery of the crop circle bugged Jack all day though.

He waited for Janice and Matt just in front of the school just like he did every day even though he really, really wanted to explore the mysterious crop circle. Just as soon as they came out he waved at them to hurry as he started out for the Paxton farm. “Come on guys.”

It only took them a few minutes to reach the gently sloped hill that the circle occupied. Up close it just looked like a bunch of smashed down corn stalks. They couldn’t see the face anymore. They wandered around bending over to look at the impressions.

“Old man Paxton is going to be pissed,” Matt suddenly remarked. “What do you think… oh hey, did a ufo land here last night maybe and leave these indentations?”

“Come on Matt,” Janice replied. Do you think the bottom of the alien’s spacecraft looks just like Jack’s face? You saw it. It was definitely him, there’s no doubt,” she said as she squatted and examined a bent stalk up close. 

“Hell I don’t know,” he answered as a tinge of red flushed his cheeks. “I was just saying…”

“Look, they are all bent the same way. None of them are broken at all,” Janice stated. “That just isn’t right.” Janice suddenly shuddered and said “Come on guys let’s get out of here, this place really gives me the creeps.”

Jack wanted to stay a little longer but a crow suddenly flew overhead and loudly cawed. He decided that maybe they should leave after all.

They parted at Matt’s driveway with Matt advicing Jack to lock all the doors and windows in case the aliens were planning on abducting him tonight before heading down his long driveway.

“Don’t worry Jack, I’m sure it isn’t aliens,” Janice said before heading down her own driveway.

“I hope so,” Jack said to himself quietly as he headed towards his home.

Later that evening he brought it up at dinner and while his mom was interested his dad was skeptical. His dad was eating dinner instead of an early afternoon breakfast since he didn’t have to work tonight.

He always tried to switch back to a daytime schedule since he only worked three 12 hour overnight shifts. The rest of the week he worked on their farm. 

“It’s probably just some kids pulling a prank on old man Paxton.” he said as he inhaled a large chunk of his mom’s meatloaf.

“But why was it my face?” Jack asked.

His father just shrugged and his mother just quietly ate her dinner with a few concerned glances his way every now and then as his brother and sisters discussed it and everything else that happened to them that Wednesday. 

Jack was doing his homework in his bedroom when a few pebbles hit the wall next to his window. It was Tim, his best friend, who lived on the other side of town and took the bus home. He rode his bike all the way over after dinner when he heard the news from his classmates that morning.

“Be right down,” Jack called out to him. 

“Going’ out,” he told his mother as he quickly passed her in the kitchen.

“Okay, not too late.”

He grabbed his jacket from the rack by the back door and ran out, banging the screen door hard in the process.

“Jack!” his mother called out in exasperation.

They quickly decided to go back and check it out together. Tim had brought a large plastic flashlight like they use on boats and Jack grabbed one that they kept in their shed behind the house. It only took them a few minutes to reach the spot on their bikes. They jumped off and ditched them by the side of the road.

Just before they reached the circle Tim called out.

“Hey look. I think it's a pendant,” he said as he stooped down and picked something up off of the ground. He turned it over a few times then handed it to Jack.

Sure enough it was one of those old fashioned necklace type pendants that usually held a small picture inside. But no matter what they tried they couldn’t get it to open. 

“Who do you think owns it and why was it lying way out here?” Tim asked. “Do you think it has something to do with the circle?” 

Jack just shrugged and put it in his shirt pocket. “Come on,” he said as they started searching the area again.

They walked around the circle for about ten minutes looking for any other clues when a loud shotgun blast sent them running all out for their bikes. They quickly hopped on their bikes and started riding towards Jack’s house when they heard old man Paxton yell out, “WHAT THE FUCK?”

The were hiding in Jack's room when Mr. Paxton and the Sheriff showed up about twenty five minutes later. Jack and Tim were called down and they explained that they were just looking around and they didn’t know who had destroyed Mr. Paxton’s crops. The Sheriff took down their statements and told them that he was going to look into it. They completely forgot about the pendant and so they didn’t mention it to the Sheriff.

Mr. Paxton demanded that Jack’s father pay him for the damaged crops but the Sheriff muscled him gently outside and had a brief intense discussion before escorting him to his patrol car and yelling out goodnight all. Jack’s father decided to drive Tim home with his bike stashed in the back seat for his safety considering the situation. They didn’t discuss it when he got back.

The next day everything was just not right for Jack. Everything just seemed off somehow. Everyone seemed to be staring at him, he felt, even though he could never catch anyone actually doing it. 

He decided to get help from the only truly helpful adult that he knew and that was the school’s librarian Mrs. Campbell. She was not only the librarian but a counselor and an English tutor after school. She helped him pass English Composition and even recommended a few books that Jack really enjoyed.

She was sitting behind the large library counter that still had a half dozen books on it that were just returned and still needed sorting. She gave Jack a big smile when she saw him approach. 

“Good morning Jack. Shouldn’t you be at lunch? Don’t you have first lunch or did they change your schedule?” She asked, standing up as he reached the counter.

“Yes ma’am but I have a question to ask you.”

“Okay, go ahead Jack” she replied thinking that it was going to be an English question or another book recommendation.

Jack pulled the pendant out of his pocket and asked, “Have you seen anyone wearing this? Do you know who it belongs to?”

Mrs. Campbell took the old pendant and carefully examined it. “My, I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. We used to wear these when I was younger and we would always place a picture of our one true love inside of it. There is a hidden catch built right into the design so that busy bodies couldn’t see who that was. Let me see now…”

She ran her index finger along the edge and moved a small piece of it over slightly as she pressed down on it and it popped open. 

“Oh my, it looks like whoever owns it knows who you are, Jack.”

The picture inside was of his face. Exactly like the face in the crop circle. This mystery just kept getting stranger and stranger all the time. Who is doing all of this, he wondered.

Everything started to slowly get back to normal after a few weeks and Old Man Paxton had just accepted the damage as a write off and stopped demanding that the Sheriff arrest Tim and Jack for the vandalism.

It was approaching Christmas and since his mother had volunteered to help get the annual winter dance at the high school set up, Jack was also volunteered to help. His otherwise calm mother suffered from really bad nerves and sometimes even dizzy spells when she was in a moving vehicle and refused to drive anywhere. Jack didn’t really mind though. He enjoyed helping his mother. She was always up to something and was a very active member of the community. 

He was just going through a box of old banners and decorations to see what they could use again and what they had to replace when that new girl from his geometry class was suddenly at his side.

“Oh, hi,” he said, slightly startled. 

“Hi Jack,” she shyly replied looking down as she said it.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said in the genuinely honest way he has, “I’ve forgotten your name. You’re in my geometry class with Mr. Stevens aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she quietly answered. “My name is Abigail but everyone just calls me Abby. Can I help you?”

“Sure,” he answered. She smells really good and she is actually kind of pretty now that I see her close up, Jack noticed. She also dressed really nicely. You could tell she spent a lot of time putting her outfit together. She had half a dozen necklaces and three or four bracelets on each arm.

They quickly sorted through the box and then spent the rest of the afternoon helping hang all the decorations for the dance. Abby was always smiling and laughing so Jack decided to do something he was always too scared to do with the girls who knew him. He asked her out for a malt at the ice cream shop downtown after they were done. She said yes, to Jack’s amazement.

His mother told him that Mrs. Kellogg could drive her home after he told her about the sudden date. “Have fun and be a gentleman Jack”, she told him as she straightened his collar.

They got to Fat Eddie's House of Ice Cream and Waffles just after the late afternoon rush and before the after dinner rush so they were served right away. 

Jack was pulling out his wallet from his right, front pocket to pay for the ice cream when the pendant fell out of it and onto the floor.

“Hey, where did you find my pendant?” Abby asked Jack, recognizing it right away. “See it has my initials on the back, A.D.P.”

“This is yours?” Jack asked in stunned disbelief.

“Yes, I lost it a few weeks ago and have been looking all over for it. Where did you find it?” she asked.

“Just around, I forget exactly where,” Jack answered, not sure how to react to this strange and awkward situation.

They ate their ice creams in an empty booth and Jack tried to make small talk but he was too shook up to make any sense. Abby didn't seem to mind though.

When he dropped her off at her house she quietly thanked him for the ice cream and then quickly kissed him on the cheek before running to her door where she waved goodbye before entering.

Later after getting home and telling his mom that the date went well he went up to his bedroom and finally thought of calling Tim. After explaining that he now knew who the pendant belonged to and who it was, Tim was really quiet for a few moments. 

“Dude she could be some kind of crazy psycho who kills people. She probably made the crop circle as part of some kind of Satanic ritual or something,” he finally warned Jack. “You should call up the Sheriff and report her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous Tim. That stuff only happens in bad horror movies and those goofy true crime shows. She isn’t a psycho killer. But why would she do that? It’s just so…”

“Strange”, Tim finished the thought.

That week Jack decided to find out once and for all what was really going on but he kind of liked her as well so he decided to ask her to the winter dance. She quickly accepted.

He showed up in a rented tuxedo and they had a great time dancing and chatting about their hobbies among other things when Abby mentioned that she had a real talent for art and that art was her way of really expressing herself when she couldn’t do it any other way. She told him that she was incredibly shy usually and her art just gave her another voice that she could use.

Until she mention this Jack had completely forgotten about the strange crop circle of his face and the fact that Abby had an old picture of him somehow in her pendant and that she was involved in it somehow.

So on the way home he stopped by the side of the road just down from her house and asked her.

“Abby, I have to ask you a question and I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you know anything about that strange crop circle that appeared about a month ago on old man Paxton’s farm?”

She turned bright red in the dim dashboard light and replied, “Yes I was the one who made it with my sisters’ help. I was supposed to come up to you the next day and tell you but I chickened out. Then everyone started saying how strange it was and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was a weirdo or something especially since I was new here. I just saw you help someone in a wheelchair open a door my first day here and I guess I got a little carried away. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I’ve been hoping that everyone would just forget about it. Hey wait a second, how did you know it was me?”

It was Jack's turn to blush as he admitted to lying to her about where he found her pendant and how Mrs. Campbell had helped him open it.

Abby blushed briefly one more time and took Jack's hand. “Can you ever forgive me Jack?” 

He kissed her gently on the lips as a response then dropped her off at her house just down the road to close out the revealing night.

Since the mystery was cleared up and Jack had secretly left a couple hundred dollars anonymously in old man Paxton’s mailbox he figured no harm, no foul and proceeded to put it all behind him. 

He ended up marrying Abby after they both attended college years later. And they had one hell of a story for their children and grandchildren about how they first met.

The End

Buy me a coffee

Elsa Cavenaugh looked like she had been through hell and back. Her thin limbs were wrinkled and mottled with white blotches every few inches. 

This was the inevitable physical reaction to long term status. Salt water based neurogels protect the body as well as possible but weeks and months of immobility cause a certain amount of damage that simply can’t be avoided.

“Okay, Jesus, all that went on while I was under? Why didn’t you tell me all of this when we were linked a few weeks ago?,” she asked Pippi as she was being treated by the medical technicians. They were gently rubbing her thin, long appendages and applying a stimulant gel onto them. 

“I was advised not to disturb you any more than possible by Dr. Crane. Emotional trauma and status can cause problems with revival. Believe me, I wanted to tell you. We need to figure out what is going on and we need to do it fast. You are the only one that I can trust here, Elsa.” Major Bartlett replied. She fumbled with the short stack of reports in her hands as she waited for the therapy to end. “I have a summary here of everything that you missed and some possible scenarios.”

“Okay, okay, I’m good,” she told the techs as she waved them off of her. “Thank you. Let’s go get some coffee, Pippi and talk about all of this.”

She put her old worn out coat on and bounced off the table. The both drifted out of the medical bay as Pippi used her motion vest and Cavenaugh used her natural abilities to guide them through the weightless corridors. Newly installed bounce pads helped them both get to the ship’s cafe quickly.

They both ordered a large black coffee and strapped themselves down at a table near the back of the cafe on what used to be the roof of the small room. 

“We need to get this sorted quickly, we are scheduled to travel to the Icon flagship in just six hours, just you and me,” the major said as she took a sip from the straw sticking out of her sealed container of coffee. 

“Okay, okay,” Elsa answered slowly as she started looking over the reports that were loosely strapped together. Twenty minutes later she handed the short stack back to the major. “We have to assume that from this point forward the Icons are going to be just as much a threat as the aliens. We can’t trust them anymore. I just wonder how they could have been so compromised so quickly.”

“It has to be through their shared subconsciousness. That is their only common factor,” Pippi answered. “But Elsa, what are we going to find on that flagship? What exactly are we getting ourselves into?”

“I don’t know, Pippi, I truly don't know…”

The Olympus looked like a small toy compared to the enormous spaceship that sat only a few thousand meters away. Every weapon system onboard The Olympus was primed and ready to be employed at a moment's notice.

The Icon flagship which had been stored for decades was now sitting only a few kilometers from the alien and it was continually being touched by tendrils shooting out from the pulsing body.

It was also flanked by millions of wild Tartans which normally existed in the outer banks but somehow had made their way all the way out here in just a few months. They were slowly circling the huge ship like moths circling a light in the dark. 

The major and Cavanaugh's small shuttlecraft slowly approached the huge flagship and as they got within a few kilometers a small port opened up in front of them. 

“Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” Cavenaugh muttered as she watched the major carefully maneuver their spacecraft into the landing bay.

Somehow the Icons had created a strong gravity well for their huge ship. This was reported over a hundred years ago the last time the ship was seen by humans but no one could explain how this was accomplished. It was speculated that they had used exotic materials that humans still had not discovered yet.

After landing, the bay was quickly cycled and a large inner door slowly opened along the inner wall. What they saw through the viewport come through the door was like something straight out of scripture.

“Jesus, Elsa. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Pippi asked her companion in total shock and awe but Elsa was too stunned to do anything except cross herself over and over. 

Standing right in front of their small ship was a twelve foot tall human that was the most perfect being that Pippi had ever seen. It was beyond beautiful. It was angelic. In fact it looked to Pippi like a classical Archangel that she had seen at church when she was a little girl.

“Come on Elsa, I think we just discovered what the Icons have been doing these last few months”, Pippi slowly said as she helped her companion into an exoskeleton and then guided her towards the exit ramp of the ship.

As they walked down the ramp Pippi spotted a small group of normal Icons that had slipped in behind their huge companion. She recognized the President of the Federation immediately and the high council of Icons.

The gigantic being stepped aside as the small group approached the two companions at the bottom of the ramp. 

“Hello Major Bartlett, Ms. Cavenaugh. Welcome to the Flagship Syracusia. From your faces I can see you know who I am and who my companions are. But this…this magnificent creation,” he said as he raised his left arm to point at the angel's face, “is called Chamu-El. He is our greatest achievement and your race’s savior.”

“Hello Traj-An, it is good to see you again after so many years,” Cavenaugh said to the old wrinkle covered Icon as she kept an eye on the huge being towering over all of them. “We need to ask you some questions. We need to find out what’s going on. We need some answers.”

“Please,” Traj-An said as he indicated that they should accompany them into the ship. “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable to speak and I will answer what I can.”

They found an open tram just beyond the inner doors and they took a very fast but short ride deeper into the huge ship. They arrived at a large conference room deep inside the ship that had been specifically designed to hold important meetings. Pippi recognized it as the same room where the first Accords between humans and Icons had been signed over a century ago. 

Old regional banners that ran all the way from the marble floor to the cathedral height ceiling far above their heads still hung from the walls. A huge mock up of the Treaty of Arkili-A that gave Icons independence was featured at the center of the long back wall. 

Coffee and refreshments were served by a small crew of class two AI as they settled into their chairs surrounding a small round table at one end of the conference room. The huge angel Icon had kept walking deeper into the ship and didn’t attend the meeting. I was only the two humans, the President and the high council.

“Please Ms. Cavenaugh, Major, ask your questions. We want to cooperate with you. You can trust that we still have your best interests in mind.”

“Thank you Mr. President,” the major answered him. “But I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Many humans are now dead because of the actions of a few Icons and I have personally been attacked by one myself.”

“We are aware of these incidents, major. We have been struggling to overcome an outside influence. We know that you know how we have been compromised”, Traj-An told them as he took small sips of his coffee. “We have gotten reports on your progress uncovering this strange anomaly. I can assure you that no further violence from us will occur. We have finally gained the upper hand against this unwelcome intrusion.”

Cavenaugh and the major exchanged a quick glance between them. They had been working out a plan for how to get the most accurate information from the Icons based on what they knew of their unique psychology. They based not only their questions on this knowledge but exactly how they were to be asked. They decided that an honest and straight forward approach would yield the best results. 

“Very well, Mr President, council members, I will come straight to the point,” Cavenaugh addressed them, ”Are the Icons working with these aliens? What are the alien’s goals? Are they a threat to us?”

“Yes, they are indeed a threat to humanity and the Icons. And no, we aren’t working with them. At least not yet.”

“They are here to take all of the physical mass in this system including all of the planets and asteroids . They need this mass both to build their machine and to use it to power it.”

“What machine?” the major asked.

“A machine to get them to where they want to go. You see, they exist in four spatial dimensions, for them size is merely another direction that they can travel and not an amount of mass. They can travel in the large direction as far as they want to travel but they cannot travel in the small direction past a certain point. That restriction is known to us as the Planck limit which is the smallest distance that we can measure.Their godlike machine will help them break through this fundamental limit.”

“So if you aren’t working with them does that mean you are going to help us stop them, Mr. President?” Pippi asked tentatively.

“Yes, major, we are working on that right now. Our twelve Arch-Icons are helping us convince them not to destroy your solar system. Unfortunately, there will be a very high price to pay. Not for humanity but for us Icons.” 

“What price, Mr. President?" Cavenaugh asked him.

“We know how to break through the Planck limit but we are going to have to go with them. We are all going to have to leave, every single one of us. And we will never be able to return. You humans will all be on your own once again.”

“Most of us have  already transitioned to their dimension and we are still working out the final details. We are having a hard time letting go though.”

This was a lot to take in and Pippi just realized that she would never ever see her beloved Wen-D again. This emotionally crushed her inside. Wen-D’s unconditional love made life worth living and she couldn’t imagine her life without her.

She really struggled to hold it together just to make it through the meeting, but the biggest surprise was still yet to come.