 
Engines of Creation

Louis Shalako

This Smashwords edition copyright Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

Cover Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-0-9921026-6-1

The Parting first appeared in Breath and Shadow. Leap of Faith first appeared in Perihelion Science Fiction Magazine under the title Love and Death at 300,000 Metres. The story Grey Poupon first appeared in Antipodean Science Fiction Magazine. Hydra originally appeared in Bewildering Stories.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination. The author's moral right has been asserted.

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The Man Who Was Born Yesterday

Monday mornings could be bad enough at the Driver's License Bureau, but Friday afternoons were the worst. Even so, after a long week her feet didn't hurt too bad and she would get through it.

Mondays was when the dealers came in to register sales made over the weekend, but they were all pros and came prepared. Fridays were different. Everyone showed up on Friday afternoon.

The place could be a ghost town at certain times on other weekdays, all for the most random reasons.

In addition to all the normal traffic, for renewal was due on a driver's birthday, there were the procrastinators and the ones who thought their sticker was good until the end of their birthday month. They might have been pulled over and warned. It was the last long weekend of summer, and Monday was a holiday. The reasons were as variable as the people themselves.

There were eight kiosks in the busy center, each with its correspondingly line, occasionally this afternoon stretching back to the door and curling back along the rear wall, and bunching up when the herd intuitively sensed someone was about done.

Alicia Reese cleared the present client, a nice young man of seventeen, with a genuine smile. She handed him all the requisite papers.

"Signed, sealed, and delivered." He would be walking on air out that door.

"You're good to go, sir! Drive safely."

The young man, wearing a work shirt and greasy jeans, nodded and grinned in tired fashion. It was four-thirteen p.m. So far, here in the air-conditioning, she had been immune to it, but he looked bushwhacked.

"Thank you. Have a nice weekend."

She nodded and pressed the button.

A bell rang and a light flashed.

"Next."

A slender man dressed in a limp grey suit approached. The suit may have once been fashionably cut, but it hung on him, fine in the shoulders but appearing a little too big overall, especially around the waist. She had the impression the belt was three notches too tight, the way the waist of the trousers was all bunched up.

"Hello."

He seemed nice enough, and she only had another forty-five minutes to go.

"How may I help you, sir?"

"I would like a driver's license."

"Okay, sir. Do you have a valid driver's test?" The gentleman didn't have any papers.

They were usually shoving them across the desk, and this guy had a kind of bewildered look about him.

"Ah..."

"Beginner's permit?"

He shook his head, looking confused.

"Um, okay, sir." She went to the sloping display behind her and selected several pamphlets.

She brought them back to the counter.

"Okay, here's the driver's guide, you have to know all this stuff to pass the test." She thought he was about thirty.

A lot of males got their license or at least the beginner's at age sixteen, it was a familiar rite of passage.

There were sheltered types and the ones who took busses and cabs, she supposed.

"This one is a sample test. This one is an application form. You'll have to fill all that out." She opened the next one. "You study the rules of the road."

He looked at the papers, and up at her again. After three years in the job, and more importantly, in her little house in the Aspen Meadow development, her patience knew few boundaries these days. She really was a people-person, and you really did meet all kinds in this job.

"Could you help me, please?" He looked like a little lost boy, wide of eye and so innocent.

He was kind of cute like that, and she was in between prospects in terms of her personal life. How the heck did illiterates get licenses? Someone must help them, she thought. The other lines were moving, she saw in her peripheral vision.

"Okay, sir, you put your name here, and your full address, your date of birth, stuff like that. Don't forget the zip code. It's all very simple. Then you take it to the office down the hall, that's off to your left. They'll give you an appointment for a beginner's test, and if you pass, they'll let you have a beginner's license." She gave him a brilliant smile. "See?"

That's not so bad, her body language implied.

"Um, um."

She sighed, resisting the urge to look at the clock or her watch. There were still nine folks at least behind the gentleman.

"Look, what don't you understand?" She picked up a blue Bic pen and held it poised over the application form.

Perhaps if she got it started for him...

She looked up pleasantly.

"Name?"

"Fred."

Repressing another sigh, she wrote it in the box.

"Middle initial?"

"B."

She put it in the appropriate box. In the background, the incessant murmur, the shuffling of feet and papers, the low voices of the staff, went on unabated. But her own little world was reduced to just this. Two wickets off to the left, a bell rang and a light flashed. That was her friend Hermione.

"Next!"

"Last name?"

"Jones."

"Okay. Now, what's your date of birth?"

The tip of the pen hit the paper in the correct box.

"I was born August thirtieth, twenty-eighteen."

She got almost halfway through it before she caught on. She snickered as she looked into his eyes appreciatively.

"So you're saying you were born yesterday, Mister Jones?" She smiled into his boyish features.

This could be fun.

He nodded brightly.

"That's right. I was just born yesterday." He swallowed convulsively. "Basically, I just want to drive a car."

"I...sir." She thought he was serious, she was pretty sure he was. "I think I'm going to have to call my supervisor."

Yes, they were creating people now. She took another look at those worried brown eyes, seemingly unable to meet her own. Her pulse quickened at the sheer novelty of it, and she tried not to gape or stare. Of course he had no idea...she bit her lip in a moment of sheer poignant empathy.

She'd never had one of these people before, and yet the state being what it was, she was sure there must be some viable procedure for this eventuality. There usually was, if only you knew who to ask or where to look in the handbook.

***

Mr. Jones was serious.

She waited patiently, examining the man before her in a neutral, courteous fashion that she hoped conveyed the proper dignity and respect. This was a minor matter and she was sure it could be worked out. The door at the end clattered open against the wall-stop and the tapping of Marissa's heels came down the polished terrazzo towards them.

"Here she is now, sir."

He tried to look confident and relaxed, but she saw that he wasn't. He had a little too much white around the outside edges of his eyes, and when he pulled his hands off the black plastic counter he left little sweat marks which disappeared almost as soon as she saw them.

"Good afternoon, sir. Hi, Alicia. What's up?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Doucette. Mr. Jones would like a driver's license, or I think a beginner's permit. Unfortunately, he was born yesterday—and it's going to mush the computer, I just know it." Alicia didn't get to finish.

Marissa's head snapped around to Mr. Jones, taking him in up and down. Swiveling the upper half of her body, she looked at Alicia and her eyes glittered. Her face was frozen in a mask of indifference.

She took two short steps to the counter, and put her hands on it. Marissa leaned forward and grabbed the partially filled-out forms. She looked up in malice and hissed at him.

"We don't serve your kind here."

His face white with shock, he stared at Marissa and Alicia, who was just as shocked as Mr. Jones.

"But, but—" But Alicia had just read something the other day, about an artificial person.

They had a car, and a house, and a job in some big corporation doing business overseas.

"That will be enough."

Further protest died instantly at the look in Marissa's eyes. Alicia coughed slightly, hands neatly folded in front of her.

"Yes, Marissa. Thank you."

Mr. Jones' face was enough to make her guts quiver. He just seemed so vulnerable, and now this.

"Please, ma'am, I—" Fred thought it would be good to have a driver's license.

Maybe he could get a job or something.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Otherwise I will call security and have you charged with trespassing."

The dull murmur picked up in tone and fidelity, as the sound came in rather more clearly now as Mr. Jones backed up initially, and then turned and blundered through the crowd and into the vestibule. The sunlight swept across the room as he exited and then everything returned to normal allowing for one or two surprised faces looking this way.

There was a long silence.

"I thought it was legal."

"Not as long as I'm here."

Alicia swallowed.

"Are there any more questions, Alicia?" It was hard to look upon that face, and yet she must. "Otherwise, I'll be in my office."

"No, ma'am." As soon as Marissa had stalked away with the papers still in her hand, Alicia stepped back in to her work area.

She hit the button. A bell rang and a light flashed.

"Next!"

An elderly couple shuffled forward, replete with the necessary forms, all perfectly filled out, and with the woman clutching a special case, no doubt for the reading glasses.

"Well, don't that beat all. I've never seen anything like that before." The man was agog.

He turned to his wife and shouted at the side of her head.

"An artificial person! Don't that beat all."

She put her hand to her ear.

"Eh?" Her voice was hardly much quieter. "Eh? I can't hear you. My hearing aid's dead."

Her skeletal hand fluttered around in the air beside her head, all covered in liver spots.

Alicia smiled, relieved the unpleasantness was over and glad to be of assistance. She took the proffered papers, opening them up and smoothing them out on the countertop.

"Good afternoon. And how may I help you folks today?"

The clock on the wall said four twenty-three p.m., and at last the line was getting shorter.

Spores in Space

The asteroid had been travelling through deep space for a billion years, when it came into the orbital influence of a planetary system. Bending its trajectory just a little, in response to this stimulus, it changed its course and headed towards a fate that had always been inevitable, and perhaps even long overdue.

The first few times into and out of the inner system, it missed all of the planets, moons, and the star itself. Like a yo-yo, it went around and around, and in and out. Every nearby body bent its trajectory, some just a little, and some a lot. At this stage of the game, the odds were even that it would hit something. Or perhaps it would find its own home, and take up an orbit, and begin circling around the star just like any other body in the system. With its mass fighting against its momentum, there was one brief moment of time when anything was possible. But ultimately there was no escape. That brief moment occurred when the nearest other star body was on the far side of the system, relatively speaking in relation to the asteroid. If it had been on the near side of the system, its gravitational influence, small as it was, might have pulled the asteroid out into space again, with sufficient velocity to escape the system. It was not to be. All on its own, the object's energy was insufficient.

When the balance is so fine, even a feather can tip the scales, and with the accretion of several small comets, an asteroid or two, with the aggregation of dust, and particles, the thing finally became too heavy for its own good. A decision had been made, whether by mischievous spirits, or God in his infinite wisdom, predestining all things at the time of creation. Or perhaps some unconscious decision had been made by an indifferent Mother Nature. What had caused it makes no difference. A cause is a cause and an effect is an effect.

Millennia passed, and it finally found its mark. Plunging down past a trio of small, stony satellites, each snug and secure in their own familiar orbits, it hit the atmosphere, dense and deep compared to the hard vacuum around it. With its fiery mass streaming a tail of flame, it smashed into the unnamed planet, which wasn't much bigger than itself, with enough force to shatter it.

The planet was about one and a half billion years old, and uninhabited. No animal life, other than small, unicellular creatures, sharing the characteristics of plant, animal and something else.

But their simplicity made no difference. Their fate was all the same.

Except for one. This one was different. While dormant in the cold winter months, this life-form was neither plant nor animal. With the extreme conditions, inimical to life at the best of times, the life-form had adapted. It had grown, and adaptively radiated, filling in ecological niches, and since there was little competition, it filled in all of them until it covered the planet. With the brief flash of heat and light to stimulate activity, the spore-sacs opened, and began to gently drop their precious burden to the ground below. Summer was short, and there was much to be done. When the planet disintegrated, the spores had no ground to fall on. With the rushing winds, the vortex created by the wreckage of a planet, the little spores, the only hope of posterity for the life-form, found themselves floating in an unfamiliar environment.

To the spores it did not matter. They were designed, built, and adapted to prevail under the harshest conditions, and they went back into dormancy. While the greatest number of them perished, enough survived. Some of them had sufficient velocity to escape the system, as over time the asteroid was not the only object to impact or pass through the system, and the spores were subject to the attraction of bodies just like every other body in the universe.

More millennia passed; tens of millions of years passed.

And then one day, although the spores were completely unconscious of it, they began to speed up. Perhaps they were coming home, although they would not have recognized the word.

Every life form needs a home.

Antarctica, June 21, 2018...

Roy Poirier and Selena Burridge were walking on the ice-cap, looking for meteorites.

"What have you got, babe?" called Roy, as Selena waved from fifty meters away.

Selena was getting tired, with the wind howling at about sixty kilometers an hour, and they had been leaning into it since they had set out. Roy's tall form was temporarily obscured by horizontally blowing powdered ice.

Selena yelled in a frustrated voice, partially drowned out by the Hercules transport plane, running all four engines up on the end of their two-thousand meter ice runway, preparatory to taking off after a supply delivery. From three kilometers away, normally it would have been unobtrusive, but they were directly behind it.

"I don't know," she yelled in an exasperated tone. "Get over here!"

Roy planted a fluorescent-orange painted stick into the snow, so he could find this exact spot again, and slowly trudged the short distance to her. It was their day off. Normally meteorite searches were much more widespread, but the truth is, the supply of meteorites was replenished daily, and motor transport was a commodity that was not lightly used on day's off for recreation.

There wasn't much to do around here on your day off, mused Roy, except drink, and smoke, and write letters, or watch TV. It was a little hobby of his, Roy had explained, the wind blows the top layer of snow off, and you look for little black pebbles. The actual bedrock was so far below, that it almost had to be a meteorite. The ice-pack under them was precipitated, it wasn't glacial in origin. Anyway, she had seemed to buy it. It was necessary to get her alone, and not with a hundred ears eavesdropping in on every conversation, as in the mess hall or the community centre and recreation building.

Selena was a tall, violet-eyed honey-blonde, and Roy was a single man, although she was married. If you accepted what she said about her husband, very little of which was complimentary, Roy had figured that he had a chance. In any case, she was attractive, and they were going to be stuck here for the winter, and what did he have to lose? She was twenty-five, and Roy was twenty-eight.

In some forlorn fashion, they had become friends. Ultimately, Roy was afraid to make the move, which might destroy their friendship. Selena was seemingly oblivious to his needs, hopes and desires, some of which had not been entirely convincing, even to Roy in his most private thoughts. The truth is, Roy had a conscience, which was a damned inconvenient thing sometimes, and he had found her to be a very lonely person, lost in some ways.

"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously, as he approached.

She shook her head negatively. She pointed at the ground.

"What?" he asked. "Have you got one?"

He said this with a tone, half-mocking, half-chiding, and half disbelief.

"I don't believe it," he challenged her.

"No, dummy, it's not a meteorite," she said, with a bright smile lighting up her face.

"Where?" he asked.

Still not seeing anything of interest; he was looking for a black spot, a stone, a rock, a pebble on the surface of the snow.

"Here," she said, falling to her knees and then going down on all fours, closely examining some tiny little thing he couldn't make out. His scratched-up old goggles were rimed with frost already, and they had only been out about ten minutes.

Roy didn't see anything.

"What?" he asked again.

Selena ignored him, pulling out a tiny little digital camera. Still on her knees, she began to try to shoot some pictures, but the white stuff which appeared to be growing there didn't have much contrast.

"Huh?" asked Roy again.

He dropped down beside her, and pushed his snow goggles up onto his forehead.

"What is it, Roy?" she asked breathlessly, as the flash unit momentarily dazzled him.

"If you would just stop your blasted amateur photography shoot for half a minute, I may be able to tell you," he griped.

It looked like a simple white mould. Even all bundled-up in the snowsuit, her hair or something smelled fresh and flowery. He felt his pulse begin to pick up. Sure enough, as he touched it with the tip of a gloved hand, it certainly looked like mould. It closely resembled the stuff that grows on vegetables when they have been left too long in the fridge.

"Well, that's strange, but it's not a meteorite," he told her. "It's interesting, though."

For a moment, their eyes met, and he had to force himself to look away and try to be objective about the situation. They were just friends, out killing time, looking for meteorites.

"I wish I had something to put it in," she mumbled, searching in her capacious pockets for something, anything that would hold a sample.

She wasn't worried about contaminating it, she was just curious at this point.

"Don't bother with it," he advised her, risking another quick look, almost grateful that she was busy rummaging through all the suit pockets.

"Do you get a lot of this around here?" she asked, as they unexpectedly locked eyes again.

As a seismologist, she wasn't totally familiar with the flora and fauna of Antarctica, but she had never heard of anything like this before. This was her first time on the base.

Roy had been here five years in a row. She thought he was an expert. Roy was grateful that with frozen cheeks, she wouldn't be able to see him blushing like a schoolboy. He rose to his feet. To stop moving for too long brought a sense of chill. As a weather specialist, studying the effects of global warming on the Ross Ice Shelf, this was not just out of his league, but beyond any interest of Roy's.

"I don't know," he said. "Ask Moriarity."

"I will," she replied, and ripped up a little bit of snow, impregnated with strands of white filaments, which seemed stiff and hard, and not all floppy and soft like mould should, he observed. Still, it was awful damned cold today. Perhaps the stuff was just half-frozen.

"Yes," said Roy. "Moriarity will know. But I've never seen or heard of anything like it, that's for sure."

Why then, did his heart pound so much? Perhaps it would be a good time to go in and warm up, and who knows what might happen, once in the privacy of his room? He already knew she liked scotch. The challenge was how to pour enough of it down her throat...

"Have you had enough for one day?" she asked, seemingly unable to tear her eyes off the snow, where the growth was all but invisible.

She was still holding the sample in her gloved fingers, studying it curiously. It didn't seem all that impressive to Roy.

Roy's heart sank. Were they going looking for Moriarity? That wasn't what he had in mind at all.

"Sure, why not?" he said with a slightly rueful grin. "This is as cold as I've ever known it, this early in the season."

They heard the roaring of the Hercules, as it thundered into the sky, circling once over the base to gain altitude, making sure all systems were go before its long trip over the frozen ocean.

He fished in his pocket, rewarded with the feel of a film canister. He pried off the cap, and stuck the film in his upper coat pocket, and gave the empty canister to her.

"All right," she said. "Let's see what Moriarity has to say about this..."

Doctor Moriarity had heard all the jokes...

Doctor Moriarity had heard all the jokes, which were based upon Sherlock Holmes' well-known arch-enemy. Normally a light-hearted person, capable of making fun of himself at the drop of a hat, he had never let it bother him.

As a young lad, he had read a book on put-downs, and being a small, slight boy, he had used them to good effect; taking a little of the stuffing out of the bullies that haunt every elementary school yard. The fact that his father, a Marine drill sergeant, had taught him a few moves, had made him not just confident, but perhaps a little too bold for his own good.

What happened to bullies, or what they thought of him, didn't matter much to Thomas Moriarity. It was only when he realized the effect of those friendly insults on his friends, relatives and acquaintances. Then he realized that being a little too quick on the draw, plus the advantage he had in terms of sheer verbosity and his remarkably sharp wit. Then he had learned that every joke has to have a victim. Sticks and stones can break your bones...but words can hurt too.

Yet some of those lines were truly, unbelievably funny. That was when he had learned to use the lines on himself, to make himself the victim of his own jokes. It was only later, when someone had pointed out that putting oneself down all the time, might indicate a certain lack of self-esteem, that he had cured the problem altogether. The skills, while allowed to rust, had been exercised from time to time, but only when strictly necessary. Only when the situation truly called for it, and never to help himself, but only others who could not stand up to, or defend themselves against, something or someone bigger and more powerful than themselves.

Doctor Thomas Moriarity had built a lot of friendships with the kind of people he cared about, and the enemies he had inevitably made had learned to give him a wide berth when possible, and treat him with the utmost respect and courtesy when contact was necessary or unavoidable.

When Roy and Selena arrived at the door of the small building he shared with a team of botanists and biologists, pounding on his door and entering with a flurry of finely-crystallized shards of wind-driven ice, he sat up to take a quick break from his studies. Snapping off the power switch on the scanning electron microscope, he was ready for a break anyway. His eyes weren't getting any younger, and neither was the rest of him.

"Hey, you old stick in the mud," called Roy to the balding, round-faced man inside.

"Are calling me a queer, Roy?" he muttered mildly, rewarded with a quick gape of disbelief from Selena and a loud guffaw from Roy.

"Haw! I've never heard that one before," admitted Roy. "For the record; no."

Roy stood there grinning for a moment. Then he pushed Selena forward in the direction of the lab.

She stood there looking around the room for a moment, unsure of what to say to the mustachioed figure, with his white lab coat, twinkling grey eyes visible behind thick, wire-rimmed half-glasses.

"I don't think he's capable of molesting you, little girl," Roy quipped unhelpfully.

As a newcomer to the base, Selena was still shy, and didn't know her own place, let alone the names and status of all the individual people on base. While she had been introduced to all the staff on arrival, there were upwards of two hundred of them, and that sort of thing takes a while.

She found herself tongue-tied for a half a moment. But Roy wasn't shy about anything, as she was quickly discovering.

"She found something weird out on the hill," Roy explained. "Come on, babe, give it up."

Selena pulled the black plastic film can out of her coat pocket, and proffered it up to Moriarity.

"It looks like some kind of mould," she said shyly, wondering if she was going to be laughed at like some newcomer, who didn't know anything, which was in fact exactly what she was. For some reason she wondered why she didn't have more confidence.

Roy was tipping Thomas the wink, and indicating Selena with sideways jerks of the head and rapidly twitching eyebrows.

Thomas Moriarity understood the situation perhaps better than Roy himself, and grinning a little in a non-judgmental fashion, he took the canister from her and led them into the other room, where the stores were kept, and where some of the simpler tasks were performed.

"Mould, is it?" he murmured.

Inwardly he marveled at Roy's sexual ambitions. Roy was anything but handsome, but he seemed to compensate for it with sociability and rough good humour that couldn't be ignored, whether you approved or not. And Selena was almost too good to be true. But she was clearly a grown woman, and the doctor had a funny feeling that she had learned to look after herself.

Selena wouldn't have been selected to come to Little America if she had been a fluffy-headed bimbo, that's for sure. He wondered if Roy had figured that out yet. You couldn't judge a book by its cover, or a woman's mind by the size of her breasts. Selena wasn't just another pretty face. He and Roy had been friends for a long time. The African-American scientist was a poker buddy, and they talked shop quite a bit. Over time, they had gotten to know a little bit about each other's families back in the States. Tom wondered if Roy was biting off more than he could chew with this one. But that wasn't any concern of his. In an isolated environment such as this, you got to know the people around you pretty well.

"Can you get us a cup of coffee?" Doctor Moriarity asked, and Selena looked wildly around as if trying to locate a coffee pot and percolator.

"He means me," grumped Roy, his flashing dark eyes glaring mock-fiercely at the doctor.

The tall, gangly figure of Roy shuffled off while Doctor Moriarity showed Selena how slides were prepared for examination.

"Ah, yes," he muttered, temporarily lost in his own little world.

She stood there attempting to be fascinated, or at least polite, but felt some inner regret at putting the aging scientist to all this trouble.

As if sensing her unease, he looked up from his task from time to time with a smile, but almost unbelievably, he found her slightly intimidating. Her violet eyes and slim, lithe figure weren't disfigured by the heavy parka and fur-lined hood, in fact, he could see at a glance why Roy was in the process of falling in love with her.

Yes, there was a distinct chance his friend was going to get hurt, but there was nothing to be said or done about it. If he had been a little younger, the good doctor might have given it a go himself. Not that he would have stood the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell, he thought.

Love is blind, but lust has crystal-clear vision. When he got the chance, he would write that one down. You never know when you might need a good line.

Right about then; the two of them could hear Roy opening up fridge door after fridge door and cussing mildly in the outer room.

"Maybe I should go help him," suggested Selena helpfully

"No! Let him suffer," said the doctor with a hint of mystery evident in his cultured voice, the product of years of education, as well as decades of social interaction with councils, committees, and boards of governors.

She giggled a little at that one, and Thomas Moriarity felt a little more comfortable, aware that if nothing else, she was a human being, and they could get along at some level.

"Try the other one, the far one," Moriarity bellowed out through the open door, as Roy had obviously started in the wrong corner of the lab, and opened up the ones with all his samples in them. The whole place was crawling with samples, you had to admit.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," they heard the peevish response from the other room.

"All righty, then," said the doctor. "Let's have a look-see."

Then he led her back out to the lab, where all the really interesting machines and devices were located.

He snapped the switch on the optical microscope suite. His studies of fossilized microbial life encapsulated in samples of sedimentary rock taken from hundreds of meters below the surface of the snow-pack could wait.

"This system is much more suitable for this size of critter," he began without preamble. Placing the slide on the focus plane of the stereoscopic viewer, he rotated the heads until the magnification range was proper for the specimen. Taking a quick look, he changed heads again.

"What were you guys doing out there, anyway?" he asked curiously, studying the specimen.

"Looking for meteorites," Roy told him, as he hesitantly sipped at the steaming mug.

Roy and Selena had taken off their coats. The heap of cast-off outerwear steamed on the coat-rack in the corner by the double door and vestibule. Most buildings used for professional purposes had a deep tray by the doors for boots, and they were wearing the courtesy slippers which were omnipresent in the community.

The plane was four hundred nautical miles out...

The plane was four hundred nautical miles out to sea. At this time of year, and at this time of day, the crew could look forward to a surreal twilight that might go on for six or ten hours. Even on arrival at the Rio Grande airbase on Tierra del Fuego, it would be dark, cold, wet and miserable according to the weather brief. Although it would be warmer there, relatively speaking. Major Steve 'Slick' Dayton turned to the right, taking a long, hard look over at the face of Captain Bret 'Hairball' Cheevers. Bathed in the dim green glow of the cockpit instruments, his partner seemed alert and well rested.

"I'm going for a whiz," Steve informed him.

The copilot gave a little shake of the controls, making sure he had it. They weren't running on autopilot just yet. This was never a routine flight.

"Roger," said Bret from the far side, turning and giving him a quick nod.

It felt so good to un-strap for a few minutes.

Dayton could see his copilot doing small shoulder exercises, and sitting up straighter. These were long flights, and it was good to get out of the seat and move around from time to time. Their loadmaster for the trip was Master Sergeant Phil Zatylny. The Major could see his dark form slumped down in the seat provided for him. That son of a gun could go to sleep at the drop of a hat. There were times Dayton envied him this ability. Making his way back through the aircraft to the small head, an essential item on this long-range transport, the chill of the cargo bay became apparent. The cold came as a real contrast after the snug feel of the Hercules' cockpit, spacious as it was. While the walk was nice, he wasn't planning on wasting a whole lot of time back here.

His bladder was full, all that coffee in the weather office before takeoff. He should have taken the time to fully relieve himself before climbing into the pilot's seat, but he hadn't really felt the need. It was a long trip home, and he just wanted to get going. While fully experienced in Antarctic flying, Steve was aware at all times, not so much of the dangers, as the price of a mistake. They all accepted the same dangers, no matter where they flew. But somehow this was different. The very nature of the cold, forbidding, world-encircling ocean below made it a kind of a lonely flight, where the small electronic voice of the tower, bidding you 'farewell and good luck,' was said in pure and humble sincerity. And sooner or later they all had to fly out of here. In the tiny washroom, the buffeting and turbulence were a distinct inconvenience, and Steve was having trouble getting the flow of urine started. When one massive buffet came up and slammed him into the wall of the cubicle, he gasped out a curse in dismay, although as a professional, military airman, swearing was usually left out of his vocabulary. It's not that he didn't know the words, but all-weather, night-time instrument flights in poor conditions requires clarity above all else.

But he managed to get the pee flowing, and then all of a sudden, he felt a kind of lifting force pick him up off the floor and set him down with a bang again. He cursed again, zipping up hastily. Damn it all to hell! But he'd rather piss himself in his seat if conditions were worsening.

As he popped open the door, it suddenly occurred to him that someone was screaming up there in the cockpit. Steve pelted down the hall, with a blast of adrenalin rocking his guts and spurring him on. The ceiling kept coming down and hitting him on the head. Bret was hoarsely calling his name at the top of his lungs...Steve couldn't get into his seat...he was bouncing around too much...all he could do is clutch onto the grab bars and try to force himself down...he could get himself down...voices screaming in fear, all around him...he could force himself into the seat but needed two hands to keep himself there...

"Ah! Jesus!" Steve could hear Bret and Phil, both men were screaming at once.

"I can't strap in!" Steve yelled, trying to tell them something, but what good would it do?

"We're stalling," shouted Bret, sawing at the controls. Putting the nose down in these conditions, at this weight, would be touchy, especially in what had suddenly become zero visibility. Out the left window, there was nothing to be seen, all the engines were good...

"Put the nose down!" shouted Steve. "What's killing all our lift?"

Unknown to Steve, there was a fast-growing shroud of white filaments covering the plane.

To the life-form covering it, it seemed unusually warm out. This spurred its reproduction.

The President of the United States...

The President of the United States sat at his desk in the situation room, relaxed, confident, with an ankle across his knee, and leaning slightly back in the chair. Surrounded by a semi-circle of grim faces, they all waited silently and impatiently as a small crew of assistants scurried about. One man rose, General of the United States Air Force Mark Taylor.

"The Hercules went down about four hundred and fifty nautical miles from the edge of the Antarctic landmass," he began, clicking the thing in his hand and bringing up the first image.

"They were en route to an air base in southern Argentina," he added. "There wasn't time for radio transmissions, or else it happened very quickly. So far no tracking signals, but that isn't surprising, due to the great depths of the ocean at that point, and the fact that the nearest, most recent satellite over-flight is, or was, rather, three hundred miles west of there. We'll have another shot in a half-hour or so."

Other satellites were being diverted to this task even as the briefing went on.

"Now please listen to this very carefully, ladies and gentlemen."

The Air Force general sat down, but retained control of the button for the moment. The fourteen men and women in the room, all members of the Cabinet or senior advisers, the highest-ranking officers, and civilian advisers, sat in the swiveling chairs and listened intently.

"...seems to be some kind of extra-terrestrial life-form...clinging to a few tiny meteorite fragments...must have evolved at slightly colder temperatures...the reaction has speeded up ...hope someone reads this soon...fruiting bodies...rapid growth rate...not carbon or silicon based...almost like arsenic and something else..."

A loud burst of talk drowned out the man's voice, so distant, desperate and urgent, the fear and tension evident in every syllable.

"Shut up!" shouted the president.

"Yes, Mister President," they all murmured humbly, nodding sagely.

"Tell me more, Mark," he commanded.

The general rewound the machine and played it again up to that point at low volume, then turned it up again; noting, "He was texting and using the radio. Some of it's quite technical."

"...quickly forming mushroom-like colonies...divides into three equal parts about every fifty-seven minutes...rapidly taking over my lab and offices..."

The machine stopped for the moment.

"There's more, but that's enough. Anyway, it's more for the technical people to analyze, Mister President," stated the general firmly. "You've got the gist of the problem."

"The next shot is the really compelling one," noted the general. "We have one hell of a problem on our hands, ladies and gentlemen."

He rose again with alacrity, seemingly unable to remain in his seat calmly.

The next picture popped up, and they all gasped in amazement. The room was dead silent, as the group all stared with open jaws and raised eyebrows. It was a satellite picture at high resolution, although the typical low Antarctic visibility meant the pictures were relatively poor.

"While they don't exactly look like mushrooms, don't forget mushrooms and funguses take many forms. They come in all colours and all shapes and sizes, Mister President." A small, bearded man, Doctor Rami Panagelow, barely known to the President; spoke up.

"The oldest slime moulds are centuries, perhaps millennia old, and cover many square kilometers," Doctor Panagelow told them. "There's quite a large one in British Columbia, living under the forest floor."

Rising, he strode over to the big screen, and pointed at various features while the general stood to one side, watching with a kind of barely-repressed tension. Clearly the general considered this an extreme threat to the security of the United States. The mysterious loss of the aircraft was serious, and any kind of a threat to the Little America base and the men and women stationed there was to be considered important indeed.

"What is the scale?" the President asked. "How big are these things?"

"We estimate these to be six or seven meters in height, Mister President," the scientist told him. "There are the fruiting bodies, presumably, that he was talking about. These long strands are the mycelium. That more or less corresponds to the normal underground growth of a mushroom. It's on the surface, perhaps due to being on snow and ice as opposed to topsoil. Or perhaps it just evolved that way..."

The man continued.

"This might be somewhat analogous to a bacterium," he went on. "At the time of the avian flu in Asia, there was some speculation that it had arrived from space. But normal mutation accounts for Avian flu's differentness, and in fact it had all the normal types of DNA stands..."

The general made a hand motion, and the gentleman quickly shut up. He stood there, patiently awaiting a barrage of questions.

"Just exactly how dangerous is this thing?" asked the President calmly.

"Unless we can figure out a way to kill it, or unless it runs up against something else that kills it," sighed the scientist, "Or perhaps weather, maybe pollution..."

"What are you getting at?" gasped the President of the United States.

"If Doctor Moriarity was right in estimating its rate of reproduction and if nothing stops it, it could take over the world, covering every square inch of land, every square inch of the Arctic ice cap, in about three years, Mister President," the scientist told the stunned, silent members of the briefing circle.

"Bearing in mind we will be taking countermeasures, we probably have a little longer," he added into the starkly silent room. "Mister President, we require nuclear authorization. Immediately."

General Taylor stood there nodding vigorously beside him.

"Immediately, Mister President," said General Taylor. "I plan on having warheads-on-target in about six hours. I need authorization immediately, sir. Or I am prepared to act unilaterally, and to hell with the personal consequences."

There was a moment of absolute dead silence. The President and his advisers just sat and stared at the screen, and the scientist, and the general. Then consternation broke loose and pandemonium reigned, as everyone all began shouting at once.

The Sleepwalking Time Traveler

Tim Norton woke with a start. Staring wildly around the room, nothing was familiar.

It was happening again. An unknown woman stirred beside him, mumbling in her sleep. A trickle of drool came out of her mouth. The pillow looked wet beside her face, and Tim was in a whole heap of trouble because he had a funny feeling this wasn't nineteen-ninety-eight any more.

He eased out of bed, with his heart beating hard in his chest.

No clothes! Nowhere could he see anything that resembled his clothes, or the clothes of any other male.

A younger woman, sleeping on a couch at the other side of the room, sat up, yawned, looked at the shutters, and then she looked at Tim.

Tim stood there in a total funk as the servant screamed bloody murder, and while he couldn't really blame her, considering he was a naked man in a private bed chamber, it didn't seem fair because it really wasn't his fault.

***

"I would like to know how he did that!" stormed Doctor Panjay Sumalamalon. "People don't just disappear into thin air!"

Nurse May Dowlings huddled beside the doctor. Her head was hanging, but why should she feel guilty? She wasn't the one who let him out.

"He was right here ten minutes ago," she insisted, seizing the moral high ground. "And that damned door was locked, as you yourself can testify."

The doctor, on Nurse Dowlings insistence, had in fact checked the lock upon seeing the picture in the monitor—an empty bed, some disheveled sheets and no one in the adjoining bathroom. With their swiveling camera, snug behind its plastic bubble in the ceiling, there was no way for Tim to hide around the corner.

Reality mocked him, and he sure didn't like it very much.

"There has to be some explanation," said the Doctor. "Check the corridor cameras and the security log."

It sounded like a warning, or an accusation, and she wasn't going to put up with that, not even from the great Panjay Sumalamalon.

"Good," she said. "And then you can sit down at your little desk and give me a written apology."

***

"Guards! Seize him!" the husband shouted, red-faced and feeling at his side for a stiletto or a poniard or something.

"Oh, Jesus," stammered Tim.

Two colorfully-garbed and rather beefy young men strode forward, and when Tim saw the tip of the spear coming down to face level he just naturally bolted.

There was nowhere to go. Except for the bed, the couch, a window, a door and a lot of tapestries and curtains and wall hangings, there wasn't too much in there to hide behind. The maid was shrieking, the husband was hollering and cursing, and the guards were threatening and poking with their weapons. The second guard had a wavy-looking sword and seemed to have a pretty good idea of how to use it as he jabbed and swiped at Tim.

Tim tripped and went down, and the guard with the spear went right over him, falling heavily. There was a terrifying moment when he thought the second guard was going to chop his head off. He rolled away with alacrity, with a sudden shriek ringing in his ears.

The guards stood there, gazing in terror as the master of the house died horribly, staring up at them from a half-sideways position on the floor with the butt end of about a six foot long spear sticking out of his chest.

Tim grabbed the sword from the second guard's limp hand and stepped in close.

"This is over right now, buster," he said and drove the thing into the man's guts just below the lower ribcage on his right side.

Gurgling and screeching, the man fell at Tim's feet.

The other guard ran from the room.

"I have to stay alive until I get so tired...that I just fall asleep," he explained to the lady.

"Hopefully, I will have some kind of a crazy dream."

Tim stepped in close and she tipped her head back for one final kiss.

"Thank you, thank you, oh, golden stranger," she moaned in despair. 'Whatever happens, it was worth it. And these guys were just pigs anyway."

"Yeah, whatever," said Tim, and dove out the window.

Luckily for the impulsive Tim, they had a moat or something down there.

***

Three doctors, four security men, two lawyers, eight cops and eleven other staff members watched the recording in ultra slow-motion.

"Well. The man actually disappears on screen," said Stone, the night janitor.

He was a well-read college boy who could be pressed into service in an emergency.

"Interesting. I'd like to meet him if you ever get him back."

Stone was leaning on his mop. About forty eyes turned and stared at him and he blushed.

"So, I'll just get back to work then," he murmured, and slowly began to back and nudge his way out of the press.

"You have to admit, it's a pretty darned good trick," sighed Sanjay, rubbing his left hand around in small circles, in the area of his mouth and chin.

For the fiftieth time, they watched as Tim's body just sort of faded from the bed, where he was peacefully sleeping by any standard of judgment. The bedclothes dropped and Tim wasn't there anymore. He was just gone.

"This is not happening," said Constable Brewster.

Everyone called him 'Buff' for some reason.

"Who wants to write this report?" asked Constable Willikens, a new officer, one who gave the same sort of initial impression as a side of beef hanging there on a hook, all big and hard and cold.

"I'll do yours if you do mine," said Doctor Sumalamalon, and the group broke up in nervous laughter.

They were past the panic stage.

"Jesus, Christ," said Brewster. "All we can really do, Doctor, is to take a report. I'm not even sure we can classify this as a 'complaint.' I guess you would call it an incident. We'll do an incident report."

"The tabloids will never believe this," muttered Panjay. "They'll think we're putting them on.

Honestly, all I can do is to document everything, and give it to you guys. This is going to drive my malpractice insurance guy buggy!"

They all made several copies of the file, wrote their own reports and notified the next of kin.

There was nothing more they could do for Tim.

***

Walking around a strange land at night, buck naked and soaking wet, with nothing but a sword wasn't much fun, but it could have been worse. Tim killed the first person he found who looked about the right size and at least then he had a cloak, some sort of leg-wrappings and sandals.

"You shouldn't have laughed, you bastard," said Tim.

The body was out of sight, and there wasn't much blood. It was mostly on the grass. The rain would soon wash it away. Tim threw some dirt from the road around on the more visible splashes and then got out of there.

Thinking it through carefully, he kept the sword, hanging it awkwardly inside of his cloak and down his left leg. In a stroke of genius, he walked with a limp and hunched over. Painful as it might be, it was better than getting hacked up with swords and hatchets and things.

Tim cut straight into the woods. Almost anything was better than the two-lane cow-path that passed for a major highway in this part of the world, and in this era. Tim figured his survival and even comfort and convenience depended upon chucking all the old rules out the window, and for some strange reason, he had never felt better in his life.

"As for why all this is happening...frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn," muttered Tim, weaseling through a thick growth of hawthorns.

With enough of this stuff behind him, he would feel a lot better about evading any mounted pursuit.

***

Tim woke up feeling all soft and warm and cozy. He wiggled his toes in sheer bliss. What a wonderful feeling to wake up and feel safe.

Morning light streamed through flimsy curtains.

"No," said Tim.

This was not his bedroom.

"Good morning," someone said and Tim's heart almost shot out of his mouth.

He sat up in a heartbeat to regard a tall, spare figure dressed in a black suit, a white shirt and a bowstring tie. The man was seated at his bedside on what looked like an old wooden Shaker chair, all spindles and things.

"Good morning," said Tim confidently, swinging his legs out from under the covers, which looked like real linen and a quilted comforter with tiny white points, quills ticking out here and there.

"Please don't kill me," said the man, and Tim paused with his feet on the floor and his hands on the edge of the bed.

"All right," said Tim.

He waited.

"You were all covered in blood," said the man. "You had some awful clothes on and you were sort of clutching this big old sword to your chest. I mean you no harm. You can have your things back..."

His voice trailed off as Tim nodded.

"I found you sleeping the sleep of the damned, and you wouldn't wake up," the dark-haired, blue-eyed man explained.

He looked to be about forty-five years old.

"Thank you," said Tim, noticing that he was wearing clean pajamas, although he still felt grubby.

"You need a bath," said the stranger. "My housekeeper, Missus Lee will draw you one. My name is John."

The stranger waited patiently as Tim thought it all out.

"Your things are right over there," he added, beckoning at a side table near the window. "I suppose if you must go, you should maybe sneak out of town the back way, or even wait until nightfall. People would talk."

"What do you want?" asked Tim.

Tim drew a long breath and let it out again. He sagged on the edge of the bed.

"I would love to hear your story," said John with a grin.

"What year is this?" asked Tim, and John's face lit up in a look of pure awe.

"I knew it!" he said.

The stranger put his hands on his knees and dragged himself to his feet.

"Rheumatism," he advised, and then he went out into the hallway. "I'll get you a drink."

Tim nodded. Tim heard his footsteps receding and then the voice lifted in query.

"Missus Lee! Missus Lee!"

***

Missus Lee found clothes that fit Tim, although they were a little big. To his delight, John had an old pair of boots that fit perfectly and there was even an old Stetson for him to wear.

The two men sat on the porch, looking out over the street, wide and dusty.

"And you have no idea how this happens to you?" asked John.

He was filling up notebooks at a prodigious rate, and plying Tim with questions about his adventures. John was not so much in doubt about Tim's time travelling, as he was interested in the details of the cultures he had visited.

"All I know is that I went to sleep one day and woke up in the middle of a big plain, with a cloud of dust on the horizon," said Tim. "It was the Chaldeans, or the Hittites, or somebody."

John shook his head in envy.

"You may find this hard to accept, but I would switch places with you in a heartbeat, if I could," said John, sipping a mint julep.

"You're welcome to it," said Tim.

They came up with a plan. John slept for a few nights beside Tim's bed on a cot, uncomfortable as it might be, with the two men hand-cuffed together. This seemed reasonable, as the sword and the clothing stayed with Tim when he 'moved,' as he put it.

But it was not to be.

***

Tim woke up in his own bed. It was really his bed. The handcuffs and John were gone. He lay there, afraid to move, afraid to think, afraid to do anything...but he had to pee. Tim's heart leapt, for while it was surely temporary, it was also home.

Oh, God, this was his home.

The room was chilly, as he stiffly got up and lumbered to the bathroom, looking at all the familiar things, the stereo system, the big-screen TV, and the fish tank.

There was someone in the bathroom. The noise came again.

Tim stood in the hallway, and the bathroom door was closed but he could see a crack of bright yellow light along the bottom. His jaw dropped, as normally, if anything about Tim's life was normal, normally he lived alone.

The door opened and the light went off, but he could see just fine.

"Ah, there you are, my darling," said a woman who was dressed like Cleopatra. "We've been looking all over."

She clapped her hands and a whole bunch of weird flute music started up.

"Are you hungry, my love?" she asked Tim.

"Yeah—yeah, I'm real hungry," he agreed.

Tim rolled his eyes around, taking it all in. He noted a strange air of unreality about the place.

There was no roof, no ceiling, nothing but blue sky above. Tim looked up at the sky, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck with a cold chill of indignation. It was an awful feeling.

There were times when he felt like some plaything of the Gods, and that they were all sitting around up there watching him and laughing at all of his misfortunes.

Advanced Fighter Command Wing #313

August 17/2017

United States Army

Southern Theatre of Operations Command (S-TOC-AFCW- #313)

Major Paul Garson was behind his desk, catching up on some important technical bulletins, when a distinctly unwelcome knock came at the door. He was about to call out, 'enter' when his door popped open and Captain Jeremy Timmermans stuck his head, neck and a shoulder in around the jamb.

"It's urgent, Major." The deep, rumbling voice of his second-in-command informed him, and then Jeremy, as opposed to, Captain Timmermans, was gone.

It wasn't that the captain wasn't the total professional soldier, in fact he was very much so, but he was also very young in Garson's eyes. What might constitute an emergency could be anything from an airman feeling ill, to a request for transfer, or worse, a visiting general. That notion had him up and out of his desk with alacrity. He grabbed his jacket off the coat-rack and followed Timmermans with a measured haste befitting his status. He saw the other go into a door just yards away.

The captain was stooped over at the back of Lieutenant Richard Bell's combat booth.

"What's up?" The combat centre was barely ten metres away and straight ahead from his office door.

He was just doing up the last button.

"It's one of them enemy fighters again, sir." The lieutenant reported. "He's climbing up to the south, he's going to try to get into the sun."

Bell hit a blue button on the right-hand control stick, speaking clearly and succinctly.

"Red Tail Two, keep coming along at four thousand." The major heard two clicks over the booth's audio monitors. "He should be port, thirty-five degrees, level."

They heard two more clicks from Red Tail Two. The senior pair of officers looked at each other in anticipation.

"Captain? Another fighter?"

"Yes sir. This is their third attempt to shoot down one of our reconnaissance birds this month."

The clipped and dry bass voice of Captain Timmermans was impressive in its professional simplicity. The enemy was trying to interfere with tactical support missions to their troops in the field, and this involved putting bombs and guns on target. These also needed to be on time, in the event of an attack or, 'a measured response,' or it had to be on-demand, and give quick and reliable service in the event of an emergency call-up by hard-pressed ground troops.

Timmermans stood at ease with hands clasped in front of him, patiently still while Garson reviewed the basic situation.

"Okay." Garson watched impassively.

Then he grinned, a tight, happy little smile.

"Carry on." He had a certain grim relish, and then he turned to lean in and monitor Bell's progress.

From a propaganda or morale point of view, from the enemy's point of view, a kill would be useful. And of course the enemy would try to upgrade the capabilities of their aircraft, and their tactics. The enemy believed in on-the-job-training, but then so did the U.S. Army. The key was to learn your job faster than the bad guys. The enemy didn't like these tactical, photography missions, and would put a stop to them if they could.

All in all, this took priority over the photo op. An interesting puzzle for all concerned. With the enemy flying in the sun, it dazzled their weapons-system's sensors to a certain degree.

"They're also getting a little better." Garson spoke in a flat tone. "Lieutenant?"

"That's right, sir." Lieutenant Bell agreed in a quick aside over his shoulder.

Somehow the enemy had to navigate these things, intercept a target, and then maneuver them in three dimensions in order to attack that moving target. Not bad for illiterate, gun-toting jungle tribesmen. Not bad at all. Of course, you couldn't believe all your own propaganda.

"Bell is our best." Timmermans' reminder was unnecessary. "Remember, he almost made fighter training."

"Bad heart." Bell's body English reeked of a supreme confidence.

There was contempt as he smoothly maneuvered his bird, that Garson didn't personally share.

Bell rolled in and powered up, a virtuoso performance. Yet Bell only had about three hundred forty hours on these birds. Most of that was in training.

Garson watched as Bell began to maneuver to meet the attack head-on, his reconnaissance sortie momentarily taking second priority. The major was practically hanging on the left corner of the back of Bell's combat armchair, with Timmermans on the right side.

"Are we certain there's no one flying that thing?" The Major had never been sure. "I've got Corps on the phone all day long asking that question."

"That's a tough call." The captain agreed. "Bell, and especially Lieutenant Novakowski, say they're either running some dumb little program, or their remote pilots have maybe even worse visibility or field of view than we do. With all due respect, et cetera, that's actually kind of hard to visualize. Right, lieutenant?"

"Shut up sirs." The lieutenant and the senior men fell silent.

There was a little whiff of something, perhaps tension in the atmosphere, perhaps adrenalin-induced sudden sweats, as the lieutenant spoke up again.

"They may be badly trained, sirs."

The senior officers looked at each other for a moment, eyebrows raised. Bell knew more about actual combat flying than either one of them. That much they both sort of admitted privately, with a look exchanged quickly between them.

"Coming around, I'm climbing to meet the threat, he's in the sun. Where's my wingman?"

"Four kilos south, four thousand." The air crackled with reports from Red Tail Two. "Holding south, coming to your twenty. I'm hot. Over."

The two officers hovering at the back of the combat booth were now listening on headsets, and watching the three major screens and a couple of smaller side-view ones. Garson kept looking at the displays, for Bell didn't always tell them what he was doing when he flipped over a mechanical switch or clicked on an icon on his tactical screens. The two green dots representing Red Tail One and Red Tail Two crept inexorably towards the slightly larger red dot of the bogey, an ancient word that still had validity. With their stealthy materials and radar-deflecting surfaces, both their own craft and the enemy's were difficult radar targets. Their planes showed up well on the tactical screens due to their IFF, 'International Friend or Foe,' transponders. The enemy's perhaps a little less so.

At times like this, in the absence of a rear-view camera, waiting was a kind of anguish, but that was why Bell was climbing, maneuvering left and right for reasons best known to himself. Garson realized he was just stalling, killing time while Red Tail Two got in position...suddenly the enemy blip sped up, according to the readout numbers.

"He's coming down, coming down now." Bell spoke clearly for Red Tail Two's benefit.

He wrenched the plane around to meet the attack.

The glowing hot ball of the sun, bleeding huge streamers of electronic flare across the screens, loomed up suddenly. The two senior officers watched in sick fascination as Bell flew the machine far outside of its design parameters. The things were surprisingly strong, and so far no one had pulled the wings off of one. Originally the Pelicans, a robotic-drone and remotely-piloted series of aircraft, had been developed for sea-borne missions; launched and recovered from small craft. They were meant for a light ground-attack and surveillance role, short-range interdictions over a friendly border, as in the case of the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or even up into Canada, if things went bad up there too. Too lightly-built to survive in a high-technology, conventional warfare environment, the drones were really meant to stealthily penetrate undefended aerial environments. They were seen as perfect for anti-guerilla or anti-insurgency operations. Simply put there were cheap to make and cheap to run...

But this new war, this war against insurgents in the rain-soaked and mountainous jungles of the southern hemisphere, meant that old weapons must be adapted anew. The full-sized, manned aircraft were simply too expensive to operate this far from their dedicated bases in the Homeland. At the price of a hundred and fifty million a copy these days, perhaps the fighter jocks, the 'real' pilots, had priced themselves out of the marketplace. Garson had the luxury of an inactive overview, and had often marveled at just how quickly the most bizarre sequence of thoughts could go through one's head in combat...one's life really did flash in front of one's eyes from time to time.

Bell put the sun directly ahead of his machine, pushing full power to the pair of small jet engines, and then he pulled back slightly on the stick. A rapid-fire growling noise assaulted their ears as Garson and Timmermans winced in shock.

"He's gotta be there..." Bell muttered in the headphones. "Ugh!"

Suddenly both men were hooting and hollering as a dark blotch of smoke, and little chunks of what had been the enemy machine fluttered and spun past the camera view out of the front of Bell's Pelican. Garson marveled at the young fellow's eyesight. He hadn't even seen the thing coming. He felt the sudden urge to let something loose.

"Wow! You got 'em, boy!" Garson yelled, overloading the audio circuits in a howl of feedback.

"Red Tail Two coming in now, I'm watching your tail, over." The firm but youthful voice on the headset was calm as a cucumber. "I got a picture, Captain. It's a confirmed kill for the big three-thirteen, over! Yee-ha-ha-ha!"

Garson and Timmermans could hear yelling and shouting all up and down the long hallway in the bunker, coming from the booth where Red Tail Two was operating. As usual, there would be a gaggle of backseat drivers, either training or simply spectators. Major Garson found Captain Timmermans' sober grey eyes holding his own for a moment, a grin of sheer, unrepentant glee evident on the other man's features.

Garson cracked a grin of his own at that point, and the two men exchanged a spontaneous high-five, their palms slapping together resoundingly.

"I'll get you a case of beer and two days leave for that, Bell." The Major might have spoken too soon.

The view screens lurched alarmingly in a great slewing arc and both officers found themselves irrationally clutching on to the seat-back for dear life.

"Break, break, break right." There came a sudden call as the adrenalin rush came back with a vengeance.

Garson was aware of Timmermans' heavy breathing in the earphones.

"He's got a friend!" Red Tail Two blasted everyone's ears with a high-pitched squeal, as Bell was trying to talk at the same time. "I'm on him, too far back, coming around to your right again, do a one-eighty! Turn right! Do it!"

"Red Tail One coming around." Bell shut up abruptly.

There were two seconds of silence, as the officers watched, enthralled by the horizon sloping up and off to the right as the aircraft came around. The slight curve of the Earth was visible, even at this relatively low altitude, and the dark and forbidding forest down below looked like heaps of wet spinach.

Bell was pulling a lot of gees; then he let up and unloaded the airframe. He seemed to wait for an eternity of time, but it couldn't have been more than two seconds...

"Pull your nose up, power up, I'm bringing him around..." Bell and Red Tail Two chattered back and forth.

"I got 'im! Break right." Bell had acquired the target, and again came that rattling-buzzing note of the weapons-system gun-noise, completely artificial but a necessary part of the pilot's feedback.

The two officers watched as a tiny black silhouette, a delta-winged fighter of small dimensions, wobbled and wavered in the gun-sights. A low, moaning, warbling note was now sounding in the headphones. The thing just popped up out of the edge of the screens, literally coming out of nowhere, and again Garson cursed the limited visibility from these aircraft.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Timmermans gasped in sheer frustration and Major Garson reached over and clutched his arm to shut him up.

His subordinate caught himself, with a kind of guilty look.

Then Captain Timmermans reached up, switched channels on his headset, and stepped back out into the hallway for a moment. Garson watched the action, and then after a minute or so, Timmermans came back. Garson lifted up the earpiece, as Jeremy bent close.

"Reconnaissance Team Two reports no opposition." Garson nodded in acknowledgement.

Number Two seemed to have a total grip on his demeanor again, as Garson gave him a nod of approval. Bell was having trouble getting a strong radar-type missile-lock on the tiny, ever-shifting profile of the machine, and all the heat came from the back. Reports from 'Red Tail Two,' indicated that he couldn't turn tight enough to get off an infra-red missile shot or use his guns either.

Somehow this fighter got away, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Bell had missed his one opportunity, and in sheer flying terms, it got more technical all of a sudden. Bell and his partner were attempting to cooperate in their attempts to attack the enemy fighter. While their tactics had turned the tables somewhat, neither was getting the chance to take a good visual shot with their cannons. As Bell had been saying lately, these aircraft were not really designed to operate in three dimensions, as in the, 'vertical element.' Yet this was where Bell seemed to excel, diving down from above, and swooping away quickly as his wingman focused on covering Bell's backside from enemy attacks. Garson watched Red Tail Two break up several attempts to attack Bell.

They kept trying, with both pilots continuing an expletive-ridden commentary that Garson was finding amusing in some objective fashion. The stress of the remote combat was audible in the voices of the two pilots, perhaps less so in Captain Timmermans' occasional short comments and suggestions. But Timmermans didn't have to fly the planes. While the photo operation looked to be scrubbed, they were still gathering valuable intelligence. Garson was aware of a grudging respect for whoever had programmed, or whoever was flying, these little black drone fighters.

They were fast, and maneuverable, and while so far; they had been lightly-armed, clearly they had a lot of potential for development. Whether or not the enemy would be able to build them in sufficient numbers to seriously disrupt operations, remained to be seen. In the meantime, anything they could learn about the enemy machines was useful.

Technical Sergeant De Wayne Leckie was right there all of a sudden, proffering cigars, but Garson waved him off.

"I'll put them in your office." The sergeant mouthed the words quietly and exaggeratedly, and Garson gave him a quick nod and grin of gratitude.

"He's diving away." Bell and Major Garson patted him on the shoulder in proud congratulations. "I can't catch that guy in a dive."

"Okay, check your fuel." Captain Timmermans took over mission control again. "Both you guys, check fuel, check fuel."

"Red Tail Two, we're going home at two thousand, we have fuel for busters." Bell's calm, cool voice came, and Garson marveled at the physical and emotional resilience of the young.

"We have a replacement reconnaissance team orbiting just outside the zone." Captain Timmermans explained for the Major.

Garson nodded his understanding.

'Busters,' meant full-throttle all the way, in the unique parlance of what was rapidly becoming a crack drone-fighter squadron. The boys and girls of this squadron were cooking up their own lingo, and it spoke well for morale and the squadron's esprit de corps. With Billy Novakowski's almost accidental kill two weeks ago, and now with Bell looking pretty hot, they might even have the first fighter-drone-ace in the history of the world on hand. And even though it was all remote-control, and there was no real blood-letting, the stress of battle, the sharp mental edge required in the cut, thrust, slash and parry of aerial combat was real enough.

The toll it took was real enough.

Under his own shirt, Major Garson's armpits were soaking with sweat, and he didn't actually have to fly the darned things.

The Sphere of Invisibility

"What are we supposed to be looking at?" muttered Doctor Phelps impatiently.

It had taken some dragging to get him here.

"Remember Doctor Johnson was working on the invisibility thing?" Ralph asked.

"Yes," he said. "Oh! But surely you don't mean—"

"I'm not sure what I mean, because if he's not actually invisible, in that goofy metallic sphere he built, and which formerly sat right in the geographic epicenter of this room," Ralph laid it out. "Then I'd surely like to know just where in the hell he got off to."

Phelps was the senior research fellow in this department. Ralph was the janitor.

"And yet, as you can see, the sphere is not visible," explained Doctor Phelps. "His theories as to why surfaces reflect light, due to irregularities and imperfections in the crystalline latticework structures of their molecules, stands on the shoulders of giants, and goes right back to classic color theory. I admit, I could never really get the part about how you could see right though all of those multiple layers, how he expected to make things totally transparent, without distortion or diffraction. In that sense, it's not a paint that he was working on..."

"Yeah, I know, you can get all that off of Wikipedia. Considering all the empty space in a molecule, I think it's the weak nuclear forces, a kind of gravitational bending of light wavelengths," Ralph said before the dummy bolted right back to the staff luncheon, where they were serving a rather nice bouillabaisse, and an indifferent little Merlot. "It has something to do with the corpuscular nature of light, like a sperm swimming. This is just my little theory, but I think most of the light actually does go right through, and only that light which hits stuff due to its wavelength, versus the size, shape and aspect ratios of the crystalline structure, actually gets reflected back to our eyes."

"Oh," said Phelps, then went silent for a moment while he attempted to digest this.

"Well, what's the problem?" he asked again.

"The problem is, is that he's not here, Doctor," Ralph told him, elucidating slowly and carefully. "The doors are quite small, as you may have observed."

The doctor's jaw dropped, and his eyebrows rose up real high and then froze in place.

"He what—?" gasped Phelps.

Ralph walked over to the other side of the lab, right through the middle, weaving past the four curved, bracket-like, heavily insulated supports the sphere rested upon, under dangling cables and hoses and wires, all of which were still live, simply throbbing with electricity, or super-cooled liquid nitrogen, or whatever; according to the readouts and displays.

"He's not here," he repeated, staring at Phelps from twenty metres way, across the open space, where originally, the machine that was to become the sphere of invisibility had once rested.

"That bit about an electron going from point A to point B, splitting into two; and how one of them must be going into an alternate universe...I think Doctor Johnson may have accidentally built some kind of time machine, or sent himself into another realm," Ralph said with a rising sense of impatience. "He's maybe popped over into the next dimension."

No one ever listened to Ralph, and it was his lunch hour. As Doctor Johnson once told him, he didn't get paid to think, 'just sweep the floor, man.' Johnson's equations were seriously- flawed right from the outset, and he never listened either.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" Ralph prompted the good Doctor Phelps, who was standing there, gasping like a landed carp. "Do you want me to shut the power down, or leave it running, or what?"

"How...How?" gasped Phelps. "Why didn't you stop him?"

"I didn't know! I was sweeping the floor, man. I looked up, and there he was...gone," Ralph explained as best as he could.

Doctor Phelps was mortified. On the one hand, this institution had made a discovery of epoch-making proportions, and on the other hand, he had no clue as to how it actually worked, and that idiot Johnson hadn't even left a simple scribbled note on the fridge door.

"Well. It's up to you, Doctor," Ralph said.

"But, but," spluttered Phelps.

"Look. All chemistry, at its most basic and fundamental level, is the study of electrical phenomena, right?" Ralph asked Doctor Phelps.

"Right!" he seized on it like a drowning man.

"Color, or lack of it, is a chemical property, right?" he asked just to be sure, because he dropped out of school in grade ten.

"Yes," he stammered. "Yes! Yes it is."

Pointing up at all the thick cables draped over supports and dangling down over the center of the floor, Ralph went on.

"We're presently burning about fifty-eight million giga-watts of electricity, and the Board of Governors will be asking questions," he said.

"Turn it off!" he gasped, and Ralph smiled at that, because that would have been his suggestion as well, but it wasn't his responsibility and he didn't want to have to make the decision.

He stood clear and switched it off, and they were grateful to see the sphere slowly but surely begin to re-emanate from some other realm, with its dark, dark surface slowly lightening up, waves of something flickering over it. It sat there, right where it should be, ticking and snapping a little. It sucked the heat out of the very walls and floor of the room. With a quick nod to Doctor Phelps, Ralph pointed at the release handle on the front door of it, and Phelps stepped smartly forward with a funny look on his face. Ralph went back to the boiler room and had soup and Merlot a half-hour late. With all the screaming and shouting going on in there, it didn't seem like poor old Ralphie was going to get much sweeping done in lab 24-B for a while.

He could have told them that was going to happen, but no one ever listened.

It wasn't his job, really. Although they say, the greatest scientific discoveries in history were purely accidental.

The Voice on the Other End of the Line

"Tyrell?"

"Yes?" He didn't recognize the voice.

It was one of those rare moments of propinquity. The phone hadn't actually rung yet. That had happened once or twice with people before. He was just thinking about a girl, Cindy, but this was not Cindy. It was just that he was going to be a little late for work. He really should phone in to let them know.

"I'm here for you, Tyrell." It was a young woman. "I just want you to know that."

"Ha, ha, ha." Tyrell wasn't particularly amused. "Well. That's good to know."

Holding his breath, he waited on the line impatiently.

"Do you hear me?"

Maddeningly, he still had no idea who it was.

"Yeah, I'm here. Sure. And if you don't mind my asking..."

"I'm here for you." Then she was gone.

"Huh!" Tyrell stood staring off into space and shaking his head gently.

Who in the hell was that?

***

Tyrell stood at the bus stop, holding a brown cardboard coffee cup, warming his hands and hoping against hope that the bus was on time. Carefully peeling back the tab, he had a little sip, but snapped it down again. He preferred to have some of the coffee left when he got to his desk. The trip itself was a good twenty-five minutes at the best of times.

Late as he was, everyone else had pretty much all gone before, and he was alone for once.

He wished he still smoked, but perished the thought quickly. The phone in a kiosk a few metres away began to ring, cracking the morning calm with its shrill, insistent note.

He looked around in annoyance. There was no one nearby or anything.

"What's that all about?" It was a complaint to the world in general.

It was best not to get too involved, he knew that. The phone rang for the fourth or fifth time.

Surely, it couldn't go on for too long...still it rang.

"Shit." He stumbled to the booth.

He would tell them there was no one there. He grabbed it with a sense of futility, certain it would be a hang-up. Someone was wasting someone's time. Today started off well enough, in spite of waking up twenty minutes late. This was just an added irritation.

"Hello?"

"I just want you to know it will be all right."

"What? Who is this? I think you might have the wrong number—"

There was nothing but a buzz on the line.

***

So. He had a friend. A secret admirer! He grinned ruefully at the thought. No, it had to be something so much worse than that, considering the way his luck was going lately. She had to be a lunatic, in every sense of the word.

"Oh, wow." He didn't have time to deal with it, and she couldn't really be talking to him.

Although she had his number...it could be anyone named Tyrell. That didn't seem too logical for some reason. Mind you, with a person like that, it didn't have to be logical. Bizarre thoughts revolved around and around. What was up with her?

It was a troubled young man who booted up the computer and cracked open the first of the client files he was auditing this otherwise fine November morning.

"Tyrell?"

He could hear it as clear as a bell inside his head.

Oh, God! Now he was doing it to himself.

***

The voice on the phone was oddly familiar. Maybe he was just over-analyzing. The strange girl's voice had some haunting quality. That was the weird part. He could almost accept that some woman might get hold of his number, but now that he thought about it, she seemed too young to be predatory, at least in that sense. Money? Was she after money? How did she hope to get it? Didn't they usually just break in? Or pick your pocket? She really ought to try picking me up in a bar, he thought.

For the rest of the day, he would be distracted. With the pressure of work, he really didn't need it right now.

"Tyrell!"

"Ah-ah-ah!" Tyrell lurched up out of his seat as if stung.

"It's for you." Mister Evans was there, holding the phone and standing in the door of his cubicle.

***

"Hello?" he asked, standing there beside Mister Evans, impatient to get his desk phone back.

"Tyrell, I just want you to know—"

"I don't want to know!" he blurted and hung up abruptly.

His heart rate went shooting up and the boss-man was looking shocked.

"I'm sorry, sir."

"What's going on?" Who was that? Not one of our clients, I hope."

"I have no idea!" Tyrell told him. "She's been calling me, and calling me, and I have no idea what it's about!"

"She keeps calling you? Why would she keep calling you? What does she say?"

"She's insane," snorted Tyrell.

"Is she threatening you? Maybe we should call the police." Nigel Evans was a pretty good guy to work for.

"No, she's not threatening me," said Tyrell. "Let's forget it. They would never catch her anyway."

"But what is she saying?" Evans was all insatiable curiosity.

For all Tyrell knew, this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

"She says it's going to be all right," groaned Tyrell.

He would be a laughing-stock for sure, and maybe that was what it was about, as Nigel's face cracked wide open in the biggest grin Tyrell had ever seen on him.

***

"Something wonderful is going to happen," came Sid Rushton's voice, overly loud, and half the cafeteria cracked up.

The story, predictably enough, was all over the building by lunchtime. Tyrell, shy enough at the best of times, blushed beet red and focused with all his might on the coleslaw and a few cold, sodden French fries, all covered in congealing ketchup.

"They'll get over it," nodded Raphael, his only major acquaintance in the building.

"Anyway, she'll probably figure it out sooner or later and maybe her hubby or whatever deserves it!"

"What do you mean?' asked Tyrell, looking up momentarily into his friend's sardonic blue eyes.

"Well, she's obviously doing it for a reason," suggested Raphael. "She's just missed a digit on the phone number."

"But why keep calling?" asked Tyrell.

"She's got it on the top of the list, and she keeps hitting speed-dial," said Raphael. "Next time she calls, just tell her. It's too simple, really."

"I suppose you're right," sighed Tyrell. "I don't know, but that call at the bus stop. That one creeps me out."

Raphael didn't have too much to say about that.

"Maybe she's hot. I wouldn't rule it out. She must want you pretty bad."

***

The phone was ringing, and everyone was looking at him.

"I'm not answering it!" he said, and they all laughed.

Still, the unit bolted to the cafeteria wall was ringing, and ringing, and ringing...

"Aw, no," grumbled Tyrell as that damned Sid Rushton got up and sauntered over with a big grin on his face.

He picked up the handset and appeared to be listening intently. His eyes stabbed Tyrell.

"It's for you!" he shouted the length of the room, almost collapsing in hysterical giggles on the floor.

But this one was clearly a prank as his perpetual side-kick, Sam Kennich, held up a sleek black cellular phone unit and laughed as hard as his co-conspirator.

"Oh, man," said Tyrell, holding his head in his hands.

***

A woman screamed and some kid fell onto the tracks and the trolley was coming and Tyrell didn't even think about it.

"I'm here for you..." The words rang in his head and all was a roaring as he dove the few yards and grabbed him.

With a monumental heave, Tyrell tossed the kid into his mother's arms and with a clang the thing was upon him. There was one half second of shock and awe and pain and then merciful blackness.

***

"Unbelievable," observed Doctor Sheridan Daniel Delorme. "The man stepped in front of a trolley to save a child, and look what we have here."

"You'll be fine," the woman at his side assured him.

"Some kind of miracle," he added. "It is a privilege to see this."

The joke didn't get too far. There were a couple of dutiful chuckles, but that was okay, the effort had been made.

"The man shouldn't have made it this far, but apparently he took a lucky bounce, according to eye-witnesses."

Machines clicked and hissed and sucked and pumped while they waited.

"Wow. I don't know." He ran through the facts in his head.

His hands were all ready to go.

Doctor Delorme took a deep breath. In a quickly acquired habit they had come to know, he engaged all the operating room staff with a long look. A ring of shining eyes looked back at him in a kind of worship. They, at least, had no doubts.

"Looks like we're committed now." They all laughed.

It was like he was still learning his trade some days, but confidence had gotten him this far; and a kind of cheerful acceptance. If he couldn't do it then no one else could either. In which case it didn't matter anyway. Thank God for those hands and those eyes.

"All righty then! Let's see if we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Doctor Delorme went to work, as his mentor Doctor Amy Cardiff looked on.

"I'm here for you. I just want you to know that."

Island of the Dead

Doctor Malcolm stood in the hallway, pausing for a long moment while the group shuffled in closer.

"The story of Mister Walter Lee is a strange one indeed. In my case book, perhaps the only incident of true insanity, although we should learn to hate that word, brought on by trauma followed by isolation. Incidents of this type are quite rare. It was undoubtedly the long-term isolation that did it. Lots of victims of the recent tsunami on the southern and eastern coasts of Thailand and other nations survived loss, shock, trauma, heartache; the loss of everything that people hold dear. But they still had other survivors around them, and once the initial cycle of wave action was over, the rescue and relief efforts began."

The students paid rapt attention.

"Walter's story is different. Walter Lee was swept out to sea by the first big wave, and he is extremely fortunate to have survived the tsunami. It seems he held on to a tree, and only let go, completely exhausted, when the surge was receding rapidly off the shore again. He fell into the water, and was sucked out to sea. How he survived amongst the maelstrom of debris, broken tree-trunks, shattered building materials, dead bodies and smashed boats, is beyond speculation. Survive he did. He found himself clinging onto a large log, which had a bit of other detritus, flotsam and jetsam, tangled up in some wire caught in the roots. Mister Lee was on vacation, and lost his wife and young family, three small children, in the flood and tidal wave that day."

There were gasps of sympathy and dismay.

"Understandably, he was traumatized by all of this, as he was conscious, although dazed and disoriented. He did not actually see what happened to them. He didn't know they were dead, or it seems unlikely that he would have survived. He seems to have hallucinated quite freely. Their images were the only thing that sustained him...for over six months," explained the doctor. "He believed that they must have survived, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. He still believes, in some ways...this is what we call, delusional."

A small buzz of mutterings and whispers, half-heard and half articulated, went through the small group.

"What is extremely unusual about Mister Lee's case is that he somehow managed to survive something like thirty-one days, floating on a log at sea. His recollection is hazy. The man collected dew on a plastic tarp, drank rain water collected in a cutaway plastic bleach bottle. Ultimately, he drank his own urine, and ate flying fish snagged in the net-like contraption that he built, or even just batted them out of the air in sheer reflex. Unbelievable; a real triumph of human fortitude and dogged stubbornness, in that he wasn't even rescued by a ship or a plane, as a number of extremely fortunate individuals somehow managed. At last count, quite a number of them have been accounted for in this way. They were mostly picked up in the first few days of the aftermath."

There was nothing to be said about all this on the part of the assorted students. They peered in through the hallway window, de rigeur on every ward of this award-winning mental institution.

"Walter is about thirty-four years old. He was born an American, but had become a naturalized Canadian citizen, and was a successful sales manager in Hamilton at a well-known steel supplier. The family went to Southeast Asia on a two-week holiday vacation."

Doctor Malcolm studied the semi-circle of faces around him. Although he never would have admitted it, his students were objects of study to him. It was a habit he couldn't shake.

The group of students had absorbed all this without comment.

"Mister Lee is the only known survivor to have drifted to an uninhabited island in the Nicobar chain. And then he managed to live off the land for over five months. He apparently ate crabs, coconuts, seaweed and all the mosquitoes and biting flies he could get. I admire him in many ways, to be honest with you. How many of us would have survived a similar ordeal? Mister Lee just sits there staring at the window, not even really seeing out through it. He's quite lucky to be here, but then he had purchased health insurance coverage for himself and his family prior to going away."

He thought for a moment.

"It seems to me, that if he had been reunited with his family upon his return, he probably would have made a full recovery, and he would have gone on with his life," said the doctor. "But Mister Lee simply doesn't want to recover. He would in fact, prefer to die. But it's just not that easy, is it?"

There was a stark silence in the room while they all digested this.

"That's not exactly my job, is it? To choose for Mister Lee, who is temporarily incompetent to choose for himself. He's simply too healthy. After five months on the island, his physical condition was quite extraordinary. The diet, fresh air, and exercise seemed to quite agree with him, although he's softening up here in the hospital."

"So he's depressed and delusional?" asked a fellow on the left end of the group.

This individual seemed to think they already knew everything, and merely had to put in a stipulated amount of time in order to get his degree automatically.

"Something like that," nodded Doctor Malcolm.

The doctor paused for a minute with his hand on the doorknob.

"Now ladies and gentlemen, if you promise to be quiet, and observe objectively, you can take some notes and study this case further, a little later on."

The teaching doctor looked at the students and saw a lot of bright, chipper, blank looks. Some of them looked a little hung over or very tired. Rumour had it there had been a big party at Ursula Mason's place last night. That was their problem. Mister Lee was his.

He opened the door and led them in, going to the far end and taking a moment to fully pull the curtains wide. The students clustered round as he dragged a small, smooth, fake-leather covered chair around and sat beside Mister Lee, who was just sitting there in a chair at his bedside. An unopened book lay on the table by the bed, along with a glass of water, and a pair of reading glasses.

"Hello, Mister Lee. How are you today?" asked the doctor.

"How do I look?" Yet the question was not asked in hostility, or menace. Walter just didn't seem to care anymore.

Clearly this wasn't going too far.

"Can you tell us about the island?" asked the doctor, aware of the intent concentration of most of those students in the room.

"Why?" asked Walter.

"It's just that it sounds like an interesting place," the doctor suggested with calm, placid friendliness. "These are my students. I've told them all about your amazing story. But they would just like to hear more from you."

"You don't believe me," said Walter flatly.

"Well, but that doesn't really matter, does it?" asked the doctor patiently. "It's amazing that you survived your ordeal."

Walter looked up at all the gleaming eyes, and lowered his head. His chin began to come out, and he looked like he was going to be stubborn.

"Tell us about them, Walter," pleaded the doctor. "We want to hear about the ghosts, Walter!"

The doctor suddenly slapped Walter on the shoulder and giggled insanely, which acted instantly with its intended effect.

Walter's almost catatonic calm was broken.

"You don't believe the ghosts," he hissed at the doctor, only fully seeming to see the students for the first time. "He doesn't believe about the ghosts. But I saw them, I talked to them. I heard them. I watched them, and I followed them. They're real."

Walter sat there, glowering at the ring of faces, all with their mouths slightly open in some breathless state of suspended animation. Suddenly there was a little giggle, and Walter clammed up again; glaring fixedly at an suddenly embarrassed young woman, taller than most, with a florid complexion and long dark hair, standing at the back.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said, eyes falling back to the floor.

"What about the others, Walter?" asked the doctor. "Believe me, we're very interested in what happened to you. We'd like to help you if we could. If we may? Please, Walter?"

"Who were the others, Mister Lee?" a small, patient voice came from one of the students in the front row, a small, buck-toothed blonde girl, about five feet tall and wearing thick glasses.

The doctor was about to shush her when Walter spoke up.

"I don't know. Sailors, soldiers, people like that, native boys, old people, dead people; women in long skirts," Walter said in a sudden rush. "No one believes me, and so they won't let me go home," he added plaintively.

"Where do you want to go, Walter?" asked the doctor quietly.

"I want to go home," said Walter firmly.

"No, Walter, you want to go back to the island, don't you?" asked the doctor gently.

"My wife...my little girls...they're there." Suddenly Walter was weeping inconsolably. "They saved me. They were with me every minute, every second. I could see them...they were there with me...all the time...Oh, God."

Walter wept, as the doctor looked at the ashen faces of the students, eyeing them one by one.

Some would crack. Some would transfer, perhaps to other fields or to other branches of medicine. Some would become quacks, pill-pushing charlatans. Some...one or two might succeed.

"What about the others?" someone asked, but Walter was in no shape to continue. "Sailors, and soldiers? What's that about?" the voice continued peevishly.

"The man's obviously delusional," murmured the doctor, to gasps and muttering in the back of the group.

The beginnings of some kind of revolutionary movement, back there, he thought. Someone pushed forward and the group parted.

"I believe about the ghosts, Walter," said a slender young man of medium height, with dark sideburns and longish hair hanging over the wide, pointed collar of his paisley shirt.

The young man glared at the doctor. He stood there blinking back a moist sheen of tears in his eyes, then he pushed his way forward, and standing close at Mister Lee's side, awkwardly patted him on the shoulder.

Yes, that one. Victor. The revolutionary. That one would succeed.

The Other Guy

Bronson Walker had a nice home, a nice wife, a nice family, and a nice car. He had a nice job and a nice career. He had nice kids and lived in a nice neighbourhood. He had nice parents, nice brothers and sisters, and worked for a nice boss.

It was a nice town in a nice part of the state.

So far, Bronson Walker was having a pretty nice life, although to be fair, he worked very hard to achieve these things. He was a prudent and thoughtful man, a good husband and wonderful father. He was also very lucky.

The hell of it was that he knew it.

Simply put, the tall, athletic, well-educated African American was a very, very nice man.

Bronson even had the wit and the grace to feel a little guilty about it sometimes.

***

"Why are we here?"

Shawna's voice hissed in his ear as they sat in the fourth floor lounge area. Several patients had visitors, and the more mobile used this area rather than lay in a bed, taking visitors while someone took their time about dying in the next bed; or was merely laying there with ears wide open.

"There is someone I would like you to meet, if he will see us," said Bronson.

There was really no way to explain this, this feeling, and so he preferred not to attempt it.

"Who? Who are we meeting in the hospital?" she insisted.

A white-clad figure clattered down the hallway and came to a stop.

"Lawrence says he doesn't know you, or at least he doesn't remember you," the nurse told the couple. "But he will see you. He doesn't get any visitors."

"Yes, I know," said Bronson. "Come on, honey."

Reluctantly, with a hand from her husband, Shawna dragged herself up from what was a deep and comfortable couch and reluctantly tapped along beside him. What was he dragging her into? Normally a stable and considerate man, all the mystery was simply infuriating. Making a scene was not her style, and all she could do was to endure.

They turned and entered a sunny, double room. Thankfully, one bed was empty, although wrinkled and disturbed bed-coverings attested to an owner. The other bed had an occupant, sitting up with the back of the bed on an angle, and looking at the pair of them expectantly.

Bronson halted.

"You don't know me, or us, I should say. Are you Lawrence Bliss?" he asked, with Shawna hovering uncertainly at his side. "I'm Bronson Walker and this is my wife Shawna."

"Pleased to meet you," said the figure on the bed as Bronson quickly stepped forward.

They shook hands briefly and a little awkwardly, with Mister Bliss reaching across his body with his right hand, as Bronson was sort of on the wrong side of the bed.

"What is this about?" asked Lawrence.

"You are the guy who fell off the bridge," noted Bronson, as Shawna drew a sharp breath, in sudden recollection of the story, if not the name.

"Yeah!" agreed Bliss. "That was a long time ago. What about it?"

"Well, it's pretty amazing that you lived," said Bronson. "I heard you were off work for a long time."

Lawrence sighed.

"Never really got back, actually," he said.

There was a silence as Shawna studied the thin, pale and emaciated features of the man before her.

"Are, are you disabled, Mister Bliss?" she asked.

"No!" he said. "Car accident."

"Oh," she said, nonplussed and unable to contribute much.

Bronson had something going on inside his head, and she sure wished she knew what it was!

Her hubby pulled a roll of bills out of his hip pocket.

"Your house burned down in two-thousand and three," he told Lawrence Bliss.

"Oh, yeah! That's right," said Lawrence. "The furnace broke down and the dog knocked over the kerosene heater..."

"Yes, I read about all that in the paper," said Bronson. "Look, I want to give you some money."

"Why?" asked Lawrence. "What did I do?"

"Well, you were just hit and almost killed by a hit and run driver, probably a drunk driver," noted Bronson and again Shawna was struck by the reminder.

"You were in the paper! I remember reading all about it," she said brightly.

"Yeah. I kind of doubt if they'll ever catch the bastard, though. Some kind of black car, they all look the same these days," noted Lawrence, mystified by the attention of these strangers.

"I've never been in the paper," observed Bronson obscurely, and pressed the wad of bills, about a thousand dollars worth, into the man's reluctant hand. "I'll give it to the nurse if you won't take it. She'll stick it in the bank for you. We'll get you a trustee or something. Please take the money, sir."

With a big lump in her throat, Shawna nodded brightly, and the man accepted the gift.

"Thank you," he began, but Bronson held up a hand.

"No, thank you," he said. "If it's all right, I might come back and visit in a couple of days."

"Sure!" said Lawrence Bliss.

And then they were gone, with Shawna no more enlightened than when they set out.

***

It was a long, silent walk down the hall to the elevator. She said nothing in the elevator, just looking and wondering at the strange behaviour of the man she loved. The walk through the lobby and out into the parking lot was silent, with neither one saying anything.

Unlocking the car without a word, the pair got in and Bronson started the engine. He left it in park and just sat there for a moment.

Finally he turned and looked into her inquiring gaze.

"That man was flooded out in ninety-four and ninety-six," he told her. "His dad was an alcoholic and his mother ran away and no one knows where she went. His little sister died of cancer at nine years old."

She said not a word. All she could do was to listen.

"He did eleven months in jail, and then the charge was withdrawn when the actual culprit was caught, some sort of convenience store robber," he went on. "He was in an armoured vehicle in Iraq when it hit a roadside bomb. He has four steel pins in his leg and a titanium plate in his head...he fell off of his bike and lost his front teeth. He was kicked out of school because he didn't want to be a choir boy...the list goes on. Oh, Lord, the list goes on and on and on."

"Oh," she said.

"Do you know who that man is?" he asked her, his voice rising in some deeply-rooted emotion, a near hysterical tone evident. "Do you know who he is?"

"No, honey I don't," she said very, very quietly. "Who is that man?"

"He's the other guy," said her husband with a tone of finality. "He is the other guy."

And without another word, Mister Bronson Walker put the thing in gear, and calmly drove to their fine suburban home, and she never mentioned it again.

Working with Pete

Pete and I stood by the big board where work orders were pinned up. They're all on a computer, but we aren't allowed to touch it for some reason. So they get printed out and pinned up on a wall.

"We can't do that one." He muttered, afraid someone would hear him. "We're still waiting for the materials."

"Right. Forty lengths of titanium angle."

"Was it forty?" He gaped. "I thought it was four."

"No matter." I shrugged. "We can't do it today anyway."

"Why not?" He asked very astutely.

"We don't have the materials."

"Ah." He thought as deeply as he could.

"Well, what about this one?" He pointed.

"I don't care," I said. "Let's just grab one and get out of here before Fuckhead comes along."

Just at that exact moment, Fuckhead, our immediate supervisor here on the station, stepped around the corner with a blank look on his face.

"Oh, there you are." Coming from a man who normally set my teeth on edge, this was welcome news.

"Yes. Here we are." I said it brightly; and chipper, too.

If he knew I loathed him, it would just lessen my displeasure.

"I need you guys to go over and fix loading dock four." Assistant Commodore Bradley McGoohan was a didact and a pedant, which Pete would interpret as something that hung around the neck.

"Okay." I was hoping to shut him off.

He's not really in the military, although he might have been in the Space Cadets when he was younger.

"There's the closer for the access hatch on the bulkhead in Bay Nine." Pete mentally reviewed it out loud. "Then there's the leaking seals on door thirteen-twenty-two-A, or the porthole replacement in personnel and administration."

"No. I need you guys to go over and fix loading dock four," McGoohan informed me, ignoring Pete altogether, which makes him either smarter or a whole lot smarter than I am.

"The guy from the other side called." Give Pete an 'A' for persistence. "He was asking about the door to the recycling area. And don't forget the broken lock on that toilet stall in the bachelor's quarters."

"We don't really have enough materials for the job." Bradley fixed me with a glance.

"Why not?"

"Because we only have about four lengths, and we need forty."

"How in the hell did that happen?" His voice rose and the beginnings of a dull red flush crept up his neck.

Craning his neck a little and peering up in mystification, Pete waited for my answer along with the boss.

Pete was lead hand, due to having about five minutes more seniority than I do. Old Pete was in charge of ordering materials for the door and hatch repairs on the space station. His last name starts with a 'D' and mine with a 'J,' so he is senior man. He disembarked first. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

"I don't know." I tried to subdue a pained expression.

"That's okay. Some idiot probably just read four point zero when it really said forty." Then he turned to Pete. "And you were supposed to be looking after her."

McGoohan turned and did the one thing he was good at and went away.

"So...what do you want us to do?" Pete asked rather plaintively, and the boss-man spun around like a figure skater.

"I need you to go over and fix loading dock four!"

Bradley, unlike me, doesn't take a whole lot of brain-dead, can't be bothered-to-wake-up, why shouldn't I point a loaded gun at your kid's head, I checked and it's not loaded, applied stupidness, gross ignorance, carelessness, just plain nonsense and applied idiocy from Pete.

That's my job and he doesn't cut my grass, as the saying goes.

"He wants us to go over and fix loading dock four," I added reasonably enough to good old Pete.

"But why?"

"Because it's broken," Bradley and I said simultaneously, and both at once, with mutually reinforcing degrees of peevishness on both of our parts.

Pete was having a good day, at least so far. The important thing was that someone had made a decision and thank God it wasn't him.

When Pete started using his head around here, things began to get really scary.

***

Left to our own devices, Pete managed to bang his head, and snag his helmet faceplate on the top of the hatchway. Since he's eight inches shorter than I am, that's a unique accomplishment, although our one-third gee status might be a partial excuse. He's only been here three months, after all. I resolved to keep fingers and toes clear of pretty much everything for the rest of the day, or in other words to stick to standard operating procedure.

***

"Don't put grease on those threads, Pete."

"No, it's too tight."

I grabbed his arm.

"It's an oxygen bottle, Pete. It will blow up."

"Oh. Right. It's a good thing you remembered!"

Pete yanked up his tool pouch by the buckle on the end of the strap and oddly enough, everything fell out.

"Aww, fff..." About then, Melanie, one of the scientists growing space-dope, local jargon for dope manufactured in space, walked past.

"Hi, Melanie!" She accidentally kicked a hex-driver, lost for days now, the length of the corridor.

In the low-gee of the station, the thing bounced and clattered its way up the curving floor panels and disappeared from sight about thirty metres away. The station is a big doughnut, and so is Pete, rather fittingly. Actually, the station is a pair of big doughnuts, with a spindle and some braces holding them together. It's just like some long and interminably boring space movie which turned out to be all too accurate, insofar as the interminable part went.

***

Pete opened up the service bug, while on some insane impulse I went around the side and opened up the first tool bin. A handful of tools fell in a leisurely manner to the deck, although I managed to grab an open-ended wrench on the way past.

The door opened and Pete started climbing out, the vehicle lurched forwards, and poor old Pete was hanging half in and half out.

"Whoa!" He squawked while desperately trying to disengage the power system.

The vehicle juddered to a stop, as Pete had accidentally jammed full power to it at about the same time he applied full emergency braking. Admittedly, this is not easy, what with only one foot in the vehicle and the controls well separated inside the cabin in order to prevent such incidents, which are very hard on the machine. The machine was exactly three-point-one centimetres from the heavily dented back wall of the hangar bay, or about average for a Monday.

"I just wanted to check and make sure my saw is in there."

"It's not."

He nodded sagely.

"I knew that." He turned and climbed back in.

"You are often pretty much half-right about such things."

"Yeah."

It's hard to out-think someone who is truly stupid, but after the last three months, I was getting pretty good at it.

I was standing well off to one side, having anticipated this part of our morning routine, and so I wasn't harmed or even crushed.

"I guess you forgot to snap the lid on my toolbox." He informed me matter-of-factly. "That's okay. You can pick all that up and load the bug while I go have a shit."

"Would you like me to put the saw in there?" I asked courteously, which he takes at face value.

"Naw, we're not going to need it."

"I think Jerry's done." I said it in sheer bliss. "Today's paper is probably still in there."

My daily survival largely depended on using reverse psychology of a paranoid-schizophrenic nature to assign simple tasks to Peter that he might safely attempt without killing anyone but himself. This would be a big loss to his long-suffering wife back on Earth. Thank God. I figured out a winning strategy in time to save myself. As I recall, Pete sent me to get the work-completion form signed while he packed up all of his tools, (mine were already secured, because I don't let him near them,) but the day before is ancient history to a guy like Pete. And it takes Pete a long time to have a shit.

To a guy like Pete, what happened yesterday stays in yesterday, and every day was like his birthday and Christmas, all wrapped up in a fresh box of strawberry douche-filled chocolates.

He climbed in and back out of the bug several times, in anticipation of a blissful half an hour or forty-five minutes alone with the paper.

***

The reader may think I am being a little hard on Pete, who is after all not here to defend himself. Bear in mind, I had plenty of time to observe the gentleman and I learned not to take my eye off of him for a minute, or even a second. (Unless he was safely taking a shit or something like that.)

***

"Whoa, Jeez."

Whack!

"The other reverse, Pete."

"Oh, no! Argh." He gasped.

Clang!

"The other left, Pete."

It looked like the door could be closed when we returned, and there was no harm in leaving it open all day. We could just hammer the tracks back into position. We hovered there uncertainly for a while, and Pete discussed with me why it wasn't necessary to put in a report.

Then it was off to work.

***

The loading bay door is fairly large, but about forty lengths of titanium angle would have been enough, after straightening out the external sheathing, to have braced and reframed the thing, and quite frankly I was sure I could fix it if only left alone for half a minute. But I'm never too sure if I will live through the day. There were other problems, too.

"How are we going to do this?" He looked at me, as I knew he would.

Let's face it. I'm the only one out there.

That's the big drawback with being lowest in seniority. You don't get any overtime unless it's the shittiest job in the world, and you are expendable on a whim. In that sense, it really is no different from any other highly-skilled job back home in any type of construction, fabrication, or service industry.

Oh, yeah. they also stick you with a guy like Pete, who killed his last partner, although they don't talk about it much when I'm around. No one wanted Pete for their helper, so they made him a lead hand and put him in charge of training me. Not that he hasn't been doing a good job of that, and you have to admit it kind of kills two birds with one stone, um, sooner or later.

"We stick a big 'out of service' sign on it, and then we go back and tell Fuckhead to get on the horn and order forty lengths of titanium angle."

"Four. But don't worry, we can't do it anyway."

"Why not?" I was sure he would get to the bottom of something or other soon enough.

"That's irrelevant, and anyway I'm not taking his shit. Besides, we can't order it, because some things are better left unsaid."

"It probably was my fault. I just wasn't thinking."

"You sure weren't!" He grinned. "You know I'm no good at writing up estimates. Anyway, I guess we'd better get out there."
Pete loves to work. I will give him that. It sure beats sitting there writing up estimates and accident reports.

A man defiles himself by his actions,' Pete once said. 'And every mind leaves its footprints upon its works.'

"We can't, Pete." I sighed deeply.

"Why not?" He stared in sheer disbelief at my attitude.

"Because it's break-time in fifteen minutes, Pete." I pointed at the dashboard clock. "By the time we get our gloves on, and you hook up your oxygen bottle..."

"Right." He reached for the door handle. "So it's one of them kind of days. The curse is upon you, you're on the rag and I now I'll just have to try and show some sensitivity."

***

They say life is pretty boring on the station. Not much to do there, but read, listen to music, or watch TV. After a day with Pete, I always found that locking myself into my cabin was pure bliss.

The really strange thing about him was that he wasn't such a bad person. If you didn't actually have to work with Pete, he was a sweetheart of a man. He was friendly, and thoughtful, and courteous, and got along well with everybody. I never did figure out where he learned the highly advanced skills in pure time wasting, but that might have had something to do, deep in the turgid recesses of the subconscious mind, (which was the only kind he had,) with the hourly rate.

Sitting there watching Pete make a boiling hot cup of soup in zero gravity was always fun.

Since he wasn't looking, I flipped my visor down and shut off the radio. Let Pete scream all he wants. I can sleep on break...it's in the contract.

It sure didn't take long, what with the low cabin-pressure and high-powered microwave oven, more usually used to heat and soften sticks of pressure-repair putty. Technically speaking this shouldn't be contaminated with organic materials. What happens is, the sterile putty is also an organic compound, and any uncooked little microorganisms tend to feast on it with relish.

Oddly enough, we didn't have any disposable wipes, as Pete had ordered me to remove them from the cabin yesterday, as 'they were just taking up space.'

As the reader may be aware, this contamination weakens the structural bond with the material to be repaired...but I digress.

Anyway, Pete never listened to one single word I ever said, which is a helpful thing to know.

I screwed his oxygen connector into place while he was fiddling with the knobs on the AM/FM radio in the dash, his own installation. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the wire to the antenna came off again because he is simply too smart to tighten it up with a wrench. He's had the radio in and out ten or eleven times trying to figure out why it won't go. I never said I was a saint.

I have my own tunes in my suit.

***

We never worked alone anywhere on the station, inside or out. This was a safety regulation, and there was also a stiffly-worded subsection in our contracts.

To watch Pete extend EXWOP, our 'extensible working platform,' (a ladder in other words,) similar to the one on top of a terrestrial fire truck, without actually puncturing the sidewall of the station was always a joy. At times like that the safest place to be was out of the repair bug and snug in the vastness of empty space anyway. As Pete was fond of pointing out, its un-lubricated ball bearings made the ladder and its work-platform sticky on the rollers...it kind of hung up, and it needed to be maneuvered with authority, according to Pete.

"Oh, God!" Pete gasped, all too close in my helmet. "Is that Sergeant Peacock?"

"Yes. I believe that's his office right there."

The round, red face at the window was shrieking some commentary and showing two big fists...no doubt we would be notified, which means that I will be notified, and Pete will have another proud accomplishment to write home about.

***

"Okay, so I'll just go up there and start taking the fasteners out."

"And what do I do? Float around and screw the dog?" Pete spluttered.

Pete is nothing of not a man of actions, lots and lots of actions.

I watched in disbelief. It's not that his next trick was a new one on me, but because I had seen it fifty times before. Frankly, it really is fascinating.

Poor old Pete was spinning, around, and around, and around.

"Ahhhhh! Pull the plug, pull the plug!"

I took a moment and turned the volume down on my suit while I considered the gravity of the situation.

Poor old Pete shouted and shouted, and we were running out of cord, and I don't know, for whatever reason I just sort of reached over and yanked the cord out of the receptacle. Slowly, Peter rotated to a stop, cursing and swearing like a trooper.

"You should have reminded me." He ignored my advice to clip himself to the ladder, which is what all the little clips and clamps are actually for. "Argh, argh, argh."

"It's got a lot of torque, Pete." I agreed, referring to the wrench. "About the same as yesterday, I reckon."

He struggled helplessly as I tried to unwind, untie and untangle about a hundred metres of electrical cord from him.

"Yeah!" Pete was still mystified as to exactly how I made him do that to himself again. "Maybe even a little more!"

My mistake was to tell him this one time that I was pulling the Jedi mind trick on him. That was early in our career, and now I don't fuck around with his head. It's a full-time job just trying to survive around him. Pete needs to keep his wit about him.

Pete was fit to be tied at my sheer incompetence and lack of respect for his authority over me and his role as my teacher in the training program he had patiently worked out for me over so very many long minutes seated upon the toilet while eating an apple. Having heard such things from Pete before, I took it all with a grain of arsenic. His mercurial pout, visible only to himself in reflection from his helmet faceplate, quickly faded like a plumber's curse in the shine and glare of his butt-cleavage. (I mean the plumber, not Pete.)

***

After climbing to the extended work platform, I snapped myself on good and had those nasty old bolts out of there in jig time. I didn't lose a one either, every one was accounted for in my pouch, and with the Velcro strip safely fastened.

"You know they can't pressurize that chamber until we fix this door."

"Ah! I was wondering why the rush, but then I thought of Christmas."

"It will be Easter in another week or so." He noted it as if for the record.

"No, no. I thought of Christmas," I replied calmly. "It's a big job, after all."

"Yeah! Some asshole drove a fork-bug halfway through it, and now it doesn't work at all. That's why they called us. For some reason, when a door gets broken, they always call us."

"We probably will need that fork-bug, once we get these panels off."

"Want me to go get it?" Sheer joy was invisible on his homely mug, as I started to remove the bolts from another panel.

I was temporarily holding them in place with just two bolts, and about three turns of the threads.

"No, Pete. We'll let the bug-lift guy do it, or we'll have the union and the safety people all over us, er, again."

Pete was real quiet for a couple of minutes, so I just let him be.

"Yeah, them workplace safety incident report forms are a bugger." He reached this conclusion after thinking it through in a fairly linear fashion for him.

But it was not to last.

***

"How the fuck did that get in there?" Pete threw the saw out into space.

Pete was in one of his moods, all of a sudden. He bounced off the open tool-bin, inches above the magnetic running boards of the service-bug. These are meant to walk on, but he never bothers to charge the suit batteries.

"Ahh!" I grabbed him to prevent him from sailing off to the moon or Jupiter or whatever.

"Fuck! We'll have to use the God-damned torch to cut the angle." Flecks of spittle appeared on the inside of his faceplate...

"It's lunch time, Pete!" I slapped him on the arm. "We'll get it later. Anyhow we can't."

"Why not?"

"The hoses are still cut from last time."

"Oh. Oh, right!" Then he glared at me. "That took some real thinking."

And let's face it, I was the only one out there.

***

"Some days, it just don't seem worth it," Pete said.

We sat in the truck, I mean, 'space-truck,' eating our lunch, and as usual, for some reason, his absolutely must be composed of watercress, and cucumbers, and alfalfa sprouts, and a lot of stuff it's actually pretty hard to get around here. It has to be the most luxurious, and expensive and almost unobtainable foods, otherwise the poor guy simply can't hold anything down. I don't want to know how he does it, and have never inquired.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Any day you live through is a good one."

"That's easy for you to say—you've always got some kind of a woman problem."

***

After lunch, he stood at the top of the ladder and emptied his tool belt by throwing literally every tool in it at me as he searched in vain for his tape measure, sitting right there on the work bench back at the shop. Strangely enough, it hadn't been there when I went to get the saw to cut out the broken framing, so Pete must have taken it off of his belt and put it there so he wouldn't forget it while he had a shit...and then after a while it was break time again.

***

"So, what do you think?" Pete considers his art superior to that of Salvador Dali.

It's distorted enough, and God knows it is idiosyncratic.

"Looks like we really did something today."

"Well, fuck you then. I don't care."

***

Following his normal pattern, Pete bolted for the showers a half an hour early, leaving me to write up the reports, which after all is a good thing because like many astro-mechanical engineers I can actually spell.

"So what do you think?" Fuckhead came around the corner the moment I put my feet up on the desk, which is actually in the contract too.

"We need forty lengths of titanium angle, and maybe five sheets of the neo-aluminum sheathing, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to ground the bug for a bit of maintenance."

"How was Pete today?" He asked obscurely, but I knew what he meant.

"Fine."

"It's only another three months."

***

After a quick shower, I grabbed a pair of easy-meals from the dispenser and locked myself in my cubicle until tomorrow. I flipped on the TV, and uttered a deep sigh of resignation, drained of all thoughts and emotions.

I cracked a beer from the mini-fridge and took a big slug.

It's just so good to be home sometimes.

Murphy's Law

It was a day like any other day.

Somewhere a moon crashed into the ocean.

Three new stars were born, and two old ones flickered out.

A motorcycle hit a tree. A man jumped off of a bridge.

A tanker truck blew up. A baby robin jumped out the nest.

A lady stepped out in front of a bus. Somewhere, twins were born.

The fire trucks were lined up outside of the tenement.

A ladder was extended, but it didn't reach.

A young father threw his baby, and then he jumped.

A tree fell in the forest, and it landed on a beaver.

Channel 49 was experiencing technical difficulties.

A clutch of reptilian eggs was laid in the cold, soft mud of autumn.

A bus crashed, a hotel burned, and the young lovers were oblivious.

A piano fell out of a nineteenth story window, and a man quit drinking.

A woman resolved to change, a youth repented, and mothers mourned.

The artist laughed, and no one cared.

I ran out of milk, and so I had to go out.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and that's when everything went black.

***

I was watching a man in coveralls with a tool belt at his waist.

"Oops! Sorry," he called. "That's not quite what I was looking for."

"What?" I said.

"I'll send you right back, if you promise not to tell," he grinned.

"Wait!" I gasped.

He stood there expectantly.

We stood on a thin white line. We were hanging in a great, vast void of pitch blackness. It was like a plank, painted white, and it wavered off into forever, a pale, attenuated tendril of something-else, in nowhere-space. The end of it floated around aimlessly, drifting about in little curlicues, as if questioning its own existence.

You could say it took a moment to sink in.

The words of the Beatles went through my head.

"...he's a real nowhere man..."

All around were the white lines, going off into every which direction. They were all connected by cross-lines at regular intervals, and he had a wrench and he was doing something.

One of the adjacent lines dropped away, and the end hung there, limp.

"What are you doing?" I asked in astonishment. "Who are you?"

"I'm Murphy. I do maintenance," he assured me, unfazed. "Are you ready to go yet?"

"No! What is this place?" I asked again. "Where in the hell is this?"

"You mean you don't know?" he asked, without any real curiosity.

He was a just a happy little worker.

He didn't care either way.

"Why did you just disconnect...that thing?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "I just do whatever I feel like. Whatever feels right."

"But why?" I asked.

"It's my job," he said.

This was the most amazing thing. I'd never heard of anything like this before.

"What's all this...about?" I asked.

"Murphy's Law," he said.

"What! Murphy's Law?" I asked.

"Sooner or later, if something can go wrong, it probably will," he explained.

"But why?" I asked again.

"Well, someone's got to do it," he muttered, perhaps for the first time sensing my disapproval.

"But...but...that's just crazy! Where is this place, really?" I demanded.

"The only constant in the universe is change," he advised, and then, he reached out and grabbed the end of my line, or whatever. "If it wasn't for Murphy's Law, the whole cosmos would grind to a halt. That's what makes everything go around!"

He did something funny with his tools and he sent me right back here.

And now, of course, I don't know what the hell to think.

I don't dare tell anyone, or they'll send me to the loony bin for sure.

I don't know if I'm going crazy or what.

Project Laundry: The Top Secret Battle for Null-Space

"Mister President?"

Even after a year and a half, it was unbelievable to sit in the Oval Office. To sit in the chair of the President of the United States.

This was his desk now...

Eugene Farrell looked up from the notes he was preparing. In a half an hour, he'd go down to the press room and make a brief statement on events of the day. He'd learned to use his time well.

"Yes?"

"Your three-thirty appointment, the Admiral, is here now."

"Ah. Send them right in." There was never just one of course, but always two or three.

Zeke, his personal assistant, ushered them in and made brief introductions, the most important of which was the admiral himself.

Scott Hopkins was young for the job at forty four, and this was their first meeting.

They shook hands with professional bonhomie.

Farrell already liked the other, the trouble was the president couldn't really trust his guts. Not anymore. They all took their seats.

He knew nothing about the man. They'd had a few of these visits, requested as official courtesy calls, or otherwise rather mysterious in the details. Then, usually, all they wanted was more money. Most of the projects seemed fairly legit as far as his advisers could ascertain. Conning the president wasn't exactly unheard-of. If nothing else, it took nerve, something he'd always admired.

"So. Gentlemen." The President put his hands up behind his head, leaning back in the deeply-padded leather swivel chair and giving them his full attention.

He put a foot up on a knee, looking comfortable.

"Thank you, Mister President. Our purpose today is to give this office an initial briefing on Project Laundry."

The President straightened up with an odd look in his eye. He exchanged a glance with Zeke, who shrugged.

"Project Laundry?"

"This is the first time you've heard about this, Mister President. It's not a high-priority weapons-system or rather, a strategic-balance-altering bomb, missile or laser. No, Project Laundry is pure science, and long-term science at that. We may not see the benefits in our lifetimes..."

"It's not even particularly expensive, as such projects go." Doctor Anton Schneurle was an elderly man with thick, dark, rounded glasses and an accent that sounded Dutch, possibly German.

"Oh, really." The President pursed his lips, tipping back again as he listened. "Go on."

They probably wanted him to intercede with the armed services committee. Budget allocations were a heated and very partisan subject under any administration. Allocations, or at least proposals, were ongoing.

The admiral hesitated, unable to meet the President's eyes.. He looked up and cleared his throat.

"This may sound rather odd." He pulled notes and diagrams, a sheaf of glossy colour photos of a laboratory complex, out of his leather valise.

"You see, Mister President. It's all about the missing sock."

"Hence the name—Project Laundry." Captain Edward Beachey, the admiral's youthful adjutant, stuck in an oar to clarity.

It was his project and he wasn't so shy about it.

"Sock? What sock?" Eugene stared at Zeke in awe.

He was sure someone was playing a quick joke on him. They'd done it before, even hammed it up for the media a time or two. Eugene had been tempted to blacken a tooth and wear a straw hat, after what Senator Don Beemer of Oklahoma said about him.

It was important not to take it too personally.

The admiral beckoned to the captain.

"You can explain it better."

Eugene nodded at the young officer.

Even Captain Beachey had to take a breath and clear his throat.

"Okay. So when the lady of the house does the family laundry, approximately forty-four one hundredths of the time, a sock goes missing. This is a scientifically-established fact. Problem: where does it go? And how would we ever be able to verify that?"

"In other words, what happened to the sock?" The admiral stepped in, trying to be helpful.

"You can't be serious." Zeke almost slapped himself in the side of the head.

His boss Eugene hated time-wasters. His time in office was precious and he had a lot of things he wanted to see over and done with. Not everyone got a second term, as Eugene said himself.

Their current president hated pork and slush projects, projects that were off the books and run with little oversight, the whole hideous, seamy underbelly of federal funding for military development and research. The intelligence community was really bad for that. They already had several feuds going with them.

The president gasped. He stared at Zeke.

"These people are serious."

"Yes, we are, Mister President." The captain was deadly earnest in his need to convince, to explain, to convert if necessary.

Eugene's head swiveled inexorably around to the captain.

There was a long moment of silence as the president digested the fellow's mien, the unusual gravitas of the old scientist. Hopkins was nodding complacently.

Those eyes were brimming with some thrilling secret.

"What are you trying to tell me, young man?"

With a quick glance at the admiral, the captain took a breath and began at the beginning.

"What if they're going into Null-space?' The captain's eyes bored into his.

"Hah?" The president swallowed. "Null-space? You're out of your mind."

Captain Beachey shook his head decisively.

He explained about the static electricity buildup, its interaction with the regular kind of electricity, the rotational motion of both the motor and the drum, the lines of electromagnetic force crossing other lines of electromagnetic force, the heat, and the humidity...finally, the blank look on the president's face brought him crashing to a halt.

"I'm sorry. It's just that science isn't my thing."

"The President is really known more for his economic theories." Zeke was apologetic, which was actually a bad thing as a defensive posture was usually unproductive in these little sessions.

This would be going on the taxpayer's tab.

The captain took another deep breath and tried again.

***

"So you have a thousand dryers in a room? A sealed environment?" Eugene shook his head, glancing in disbelief at his assistant. "Unbelievable."

"Yes, sir. And we have a couple of hundred washers, forty-eight employees, all top security status, anda hundred thousand pairs of socks, all numbered and tagged, with a seamless web of checks and tracking points."

They had fifty thousand internal camera pickups. It was wired tighter than Fort Knox, as the captain assured.

Apparently they were trying to catch a sock in the 'act' of vanishing, or so he explained.

They were doing loads of laundry, around the clock, in three shifts.

The admiral leaned forward.

"And get this, Mister President."

The president sat calmly composed, still sure it was some kind of odd-ball prank. His birthday was coming up, maybe that had something to do with it.

"We still don't know where they go, Mister President."

"What? What the hell are you talking about? Where what goes?" The President, not sleeping well lately and tied up with preparations for the economic summit, was quickly becoming exasperated.

"The socks, Mister President." The captain gave Zeke a significant look. "Even under hermetically-sealed conditions, even with professional lab personnel, forty-four one hundredths of all socks still somehow manage to disappear, Mister President."

"They cannot just vanish into thin air. I am convinced." Doctor Schneurle's face was set in concrete.

According to the captain, the laundry machines were regularly dismantled, again under lab conditions, and only seldom was a stray sock ever found. Ductwork, piping, drains, it had all been checked over and over by highly-trained people.

"In a half a million cycles, we have recovered exactly two socks. This is lost in the statistical noise. I mean, it doesn't prove anything, either way." The accented voice of Doctor Schneurle was calm and assured. "They were in the dryer vent and the machines in question were rebuilt, as some of their parts had become worn and sloppy."

"Really?" The President quickly recovered his composure. "And what, pray tell, is the significance of that?"

It only sounded half snarky.

The admiral took over again, as the captain, especially, wilted under that gaze.

"Those socks must be going somewhere, Mister President. Whoever commands that secret, for surely that is what it is, commands the next battlefield. We will command the next battlefield, and by that I mean the one for time and space, matter, and energy itself. We will win the battle for Null-space. Trust me. You can count on that one, Mister President."

There was no trace of a smile.

Eugene's gambler's heart spurted into a trip-hammer beat. This was real...?

"So you're saying this is not a joke then?" The president looked at his hands. "Hmn."

"No, Mister President. No joke." Doctor Schneurle smiled thinly, sounding an awful lot like Henry Kissinger for a moment, a man whom Eugene had always admired.

Eugene Farrell looked helplessly at Zeke, who shrugged and looked thoughtful.

"It's your call, Mister President. They're here now. We might as well hear them out."

"Holy shit." Mother always said there would be days like this.

And she was right, too.

The Interview

I had a new job. The trouble was that I had no idea of what it actually was. I think it was a big warehouse or something with a lot of office space up in the front two floors of the building, all kinds of people coming and going.

Everyone in the place was ignorant, or threatening or abusive. Either that, or they ignored me, just rolling their eyes. They were all nuts. Nothing they said made any sense, and I had no idea of why I was there—I hadn't worked in years and I sure as hell wasn't looking for a job, not that I recall. You'd think that I would remember something like that.

Finally, when I just couldn't take it anymore, I turned to the nearest guy and let him have a big one right in the kisser. My arm went out to its fullest extension and I caught him on the side of the face, slightly high so I wouldn't bust his jaw.

He went down.

***

I was confronted by a sloping concrete wall, and I was standing in a foot of water. I wanted out of there real bad so I dropped to my knees and began clawing at the mud and gravel where the slot allowed the dirty coffee coloured water to flow under and into the tunnel.

The gap was too shallow. The slot was too small for my body to squeeze through, and there was just a thin slice of air above it. If I could lower the water level, maybe I could slither through on my back. There was light out there. It would take a while, and turning, I saw to my relief a square patch of sunny glare only fifteen metres behind me.

I was in a culvert or something under a road. That must be it.

Sloshing my way to the daylight, the sides of a ditch or drainage canal sloped up, all covered in thick green grass, curling and uneven. The sky was blue, with thin high clouds. The sides of the ditch were ten or twelve feet high. The sides must have been seventy-five degrees. Cold water flowed past my feet as I tried to kick or cut a foothold. Grabbing grass, I pulled myself up, attempting to plunge my fingers into the soil, but it was harder and drier than I thought. It took a couple of attempts, but I made it up, kicking and clawing all the way...

***

My little red sports-car handled fine. It was a lovely summer's evening about seven o'clock. Dodging oncoming traffic, I pulled off the left side of the road into a field, with a big down-slope and trees coming up fast. I picked a thin spot and discovered it was a narrow lane through the trees, although I had to steer right and left to avoid the bigger ones. The grass was very green. The ground was smooth, or at this speed I would have been bounced out.

I got to the bottom and the other side began curving up, but I turned left and over in a big arc and then followed the valley up a hillside to a wide open street when I bounced down over a curb. I turned left again, went about two blocks and pulled right into the driveway of a French Colonial house, a monster of a home. The garage door opened so I put the car in there.

I walked through the place, very quiet in there, and it had a couch and a few items of furniture. There no curtains on the windows and light streamed in. All the windows were closed. There was a bedroom, and there were empty rooms but someone had been using the kitchen recently. There was coffee in a pot and a little food in the fridge. I saw one or two dishes in a rack. I was standing in the end of the kitchen when car doors slammed and some people came in. One guy in an expensive charcoal grey suit came in, and walked right past me. There were voices in the house, but I didn't see where they went. He went into the other room.

He sat in a chair in the living room and opened up a newspaper as I came in.

He glanced up, and went to the next page, but then he ignored me and I wondered if he belonged there. It could have been my house.

Something wasn't right here.

There was a funny pricking pain at my left temple. I felt thin wires, hard, like bell wire going down to somewhere else, and on the side of my head a round pad of something shiny...like plastic.

***

"Not bad."

"What?"

Jerking against some kind of restraints, I looked wildly around. I wanted so badly to sit up.

We sat in an office, with me in a dentist's chair. I was wired for sound, wrists strapped to the arms of the chair.

"Congratulations. You've got the job."

"What?"

"Only eleven seconds to pull yourself back to reality. That's very impressive."

"What? Who the hell are you?"

"Welcome to the firm."

He came over and began unsnapping buckles.

"What's this all about?"

"It's okay. You passed the test with flying colours."

All of this was a just little too surreal to me.

"Screw you. I don't want the job."

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Don't worry. You'll fit right in around here."

***

And it was true, too.

I've been working here for, ah, I don't know, about twenty-nine years now, and I just love every minute of it.

The Briefcase

Screening him, they found nothing, TSA pulled Mortimer for questioning. In his briefcase, there was an apple, a condom, a pair of socks, a pair of underwear, a carton of duty-free cigarettes, a freshly-sharpened pencil, and a steno pad with nothing in it. He had no luggage. His watch was so obviously a bad copy street-Rolex that it warranted no questions. The fact that the gentleman had probably overpaid for it was of some small comfort to agent Macdonough.

He wanted answers.

But he wasn't going to get them. Sighing deeply, agent Napier Macdonough consulted higher-ups.

He was gone for a while, but then he stood in the door of the interview cubicle.

"Okay, buddy. You can go." The words were spoken in a non-judgmental fashion with just a hint of official sarcasm.

***

Right on schedule, he stepped out into the bright light in front of the building just as a blue Dodge pulled in to the curb.

He kissed his wife Angela and then she turned out into traffic.

"I missed you."

"Me, too."

She glanced over in fondness. The crazy bugger had done it again.

It would be a cold day in hell before TSA figured out Mort was smuggling fake Rolexes, briefcases, apples, condoms, socks, underwear, cigarettes, pencils and steno pads into the country, all designer knock-off brands, with an estimated street value of over three hundred and fifty bucks to five hundred bucks a pop...they got, well, a third, maybe twenty-five percent in some circles. It depended on the customer.

By the time they retired, it would be a nice little nest egg. It was crazy enough that it just might work.

The Parting

All good things must come to an end.

Fuego lay in the entrance to the cave all morning long. Soaking up the wan, late-summer sunshine, should have brought contentment and a sense of well-being. His belly was full, having sated his hunger on a fat buck three days before. Fuego had nibbled on a few choice greens to aid in digestion, as was his habit these many years. The aches and pains were mostly gone.

Sooner or later they would flare up, and he should have been enjoying the sloth, the ease--the sheer luxury of not having to work for his living. But it was no good.

At first, he thought she wasn't coming, and his heart ached. But it would ache, and it was going to ache, and there was nothing to be done about it. As the sun rose higher in the sky, his ears caught the click of a stone, dislodged from its habitual resting-place with a small cry of indignation. He knew it was her foot that had kicked it. A flicker of white dress caught his eye through the trees lining the trail. He sat up then, with anticipation, and a sense of dread. He watched the gap in the cedars with the intensity of the hunt, with his big old heart beating coldly but insistently in his deep, hard, barrel of a chest. Flaring, pebble-skinned nostrils sought her precious scent on the wavering breezes. Her complex tangle of emotions were sensed rather than seen, although there were signs; as she clambered up the bluff to the base of the cliff, where the caves began and the forest was dark, wet and thickly-festooned with creeping vines. Something about the tension in the neck and shoulders, a clue in the tightness of the chest, the unhurried pace somehow languid and hopeless-looking; unconsciously putting off the telling of some unpleasant truth. He could feel the heat of her now. Even closing his eyes, he could follow her path as she managed the last few twists and turns.

So it was true, then.

Diana was going off to school. There was nothing he or she could do about it. Higher powers had decreed it. And once having gone, there was no coming back. He knew he would inevitably lose her. Little girls grow up and turn into tall, healthy, intelligent young women. They go on to other things. The slender, raven-haired girl, with the bottomless, sea-blue eyes, with her berry-like lips pursed up in tender pain, looked at him, and he just knew.

"Fuego," she said with pleasure, and regret.

He cringed and cowered at her feet, tongue hanging out, and then, as if he couldn't help himself, he rolled over on his back, exposing the wide, flat, cloud-grey scales, fading into the sky when he hunted, just where they were the smoothest and the finest.

What had to be had to be, but not just yet. One last precious moment with her...

She stood just ahead of his thigh, and reached over and scratched him so, just the way he loved it. As she stroked and scratched at his abdomen, just where the ribs stop to make way for the soft, white underbelly, he rolled from side to side and his tail whipped gently and yet with blinding speed around to sweep itself about her feet and then crawl up to wrap her hips in a loving caress. He held her there, with a tender gentleness that belied his sheer size, speed and strength. The very symbol of courage, wrapped around her little fingers, if only; if only; as he tasted the base of her throat with his lighting-forked tongue, with the red centre, and its long stripes of jet-black on each side...the two lobes as sharp as a pin at the extremity. But he could never have hurt her. Never.

"Oh, poor Fuego," she said with half a laugh and a sudden catch, like the very breath had seized up in her throat.

She stared into the hollow orbs of his golden eyes and he felt a kind of panic at losing her.

"Oh, Fuego," she said simply.

She was uncomfortable with this moment, and yet it had to be done. He felt her pain as she shifted a little, back and forth, and forwards and backwards. He danced with her in sweet regret and joyful longing, a kind of grieving for a past that they could never forget; still laying flat on his back and swooning in physical contact with her. She put her hands into his wickedly sharpened talons, and they danced there for a moment, both feeling the same unspoken song of sadness, and love, and parting. He lay on his back and danced with her.

"I'll never forget you," she told him, as he carefully jetted out small bursts of smoke and ringlets of fire from his nostrils.

It was his way of saying that it was okay. Since they had known each other for quite some time, she understood. He had watched her grow up. She had gotten to know him as a gentle and lonely creature, with no other creatures like himself to be with. The girl walked over to the ledge and he followed. She stood beside the dragon for a moment, looking out over the valley, with its horses, pastures, fields of softly-bending ripe grain. They could see her manor, the red roof of the house where she lived on the far distant hill-top. He only had eyes for her, as she stood there with her arms wrapped around herself in a kind of desolation. Fuego lay on his back again, with his legs and forepaws sticking up in the air as if gravity had gone on vacation, and just stared at her in hopes of remembering this moment forever, to remember her just as she was at just this moment.

"I want to see you fly, for one last time, Fuego," she said.

The dragon felt her using both hands to rub and stroke him under the chin, which always made him feel so sleepy...but this time he felt tears, big salt drops of tears, each enough to fill a bucket, forming in the corners of his golden-orbed eyes, with their inscrutable, black vertical pupils.

To spare her as much pain as possible, he leapt up ever so carefully, yet startling in its sheer quickness, spinning right-side-up, and flapping his wings in a joy that he hoped was well-feigned, hoping to fool her. He fluttered up and down in lazy figure eights, backing and diving, and hovering there in an exhibition of pure, unrivalled vitality. She looked down at her feet for a moment, and he knew that he had failed, but it was all right, that she understood, and he settled to the ground momentarily. The strong beat of his leathern wings slowly subsided. The dragon rested his heart, aware that she had a long journey ahead, and that so did he; although he was trying not to dwell upon it.

Standing there, she looked so alone. The girl allowed him to approach; and yet what courage she had shown the first time they had met! What kindness...what compassion.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close.

"Good-bye, Fuego," she whispered, and they clung together for a long time.

He knew that he had to let her go, to set her free. He could not keep her here forever. To attempt to do so would be wrong.

Fuego sighed deeply. Sucking in one huge, vast, barren sob of air, he tried to speak. It turned to a low, forlorn howl, starting deep and low and building to a siren-like crescendo of love, and longing, fearfulness, and loneliness, grief, and despair. She stepped back, her eyes staring at his face, all lumpy, and green, and with the bones, great huge bones so alive and hard under the skin, as his muscles worked in response to emotions he could not articulate. Tears ran down her face.

Fuego turned his back on her; forcing himself to take two, then three steps; and dropped over the ledge, and then catching the rocks and boulders one by one with his talons, he thrust himself into flight over the hillside, with the gloomy darkness of the trees coming up from below. He gave a series of strong beats, with the heart and lungs responding magnificently, with his wings reassuringly flexing without unexpected cricks and aches. Turning into the stronger winds coming up from the far valley to the west, cautiously hooding his eyes internally to avoid burning them in the blazing globe of the sun, he stroked his way up to safety. With careful timing, matching his breath to the beating of his wings, purging his vast lungs each time with a forceful grunt, he clawed his way up, and out over the river, foaming in the rocky valley below.

And then he had no choice but to turn again...

There was time for one last look back; to see her standing there in fragile dignity. Her outstretched arm, the pale glimmer of her outspread fingers, her last, gentle, farewell wave, was almost more than he could bear.

She was all grown up now, and it was time for them both to move on.

Naveed

Naveed clung to a vertical girder in the dimness, other grey-painted I-beams slanting right and left. A small satchel was tucked into the corner where they all met in a massive gusset, liberally planted with thirty-five millimetre bolts.

Pinned by several powerful lights, he waited, gasping and sobbing for life.

The top of the bag was open. The gusting wind high over the Gut sucked out a page and it flew off like an avenging angel of death, intent upon some mission of punishment far below.

Naveed's white-rimmed eyes stared pitifully up into the faces of the emergency responders.

"It's proof—proof," he yelled in despair.

"We're just trying to help you," called Jim Melshevik, the negotiator. "What's this all about?"

He found it hard to be reassuring when hanging over a chasm of several hundred feet, and yelling at the top of his lungs at a crazy man. At his present weight of three hundred and forty pounds, bending over the rail at all was something of a miracle.

He huffed and puffed, and then tried again.

"What's this all about?" he shouted weakly down to the man known as Naveed.

"Proof that genetic engineering and hormone-enhanced agriculture is causing Americans to get really, really fat," shrieked Naveed, his rising hopes threatened by a gust of heavy rain.

***

"Did he just say what I thought he said?" asked Staff Sergeant Paul Monnopo.

"Yes!" said Jim, a highly trained psychologist, and the hostage-negotiator, suicide talk-down guy, and duty shrink at the hospital on Jones Boulevard.

"So what do you think?" asked Paul.

"Kill him," advised Melshevik. "He's obviously not going to shut up about it, and he did say he has proof."

Staff Sergeant Monnopo drew his service revolver. By standing on his tiptoes, twisting his upper body, and tucking his belly carefully to one side, he leaned over the rail.

Melshivek waited patiently, but no shot came and the sergeant popped back up for air. He put the gun away, noting the raised eyebrow. After a minute of deep, slow breathing, he was able to talk.

"He saved us a bullet," he said, giving Melshevik an old-fashioned look. "We'll have to get one of the smaller men down there and recover the papers, but I think we're all right."

Sergeant Monnopo reached up and pressed the button on his transceiver.

"All right, he hit water, ladies and gentlemen. Let's see if we can wrap this up tonight," and with a nod to Melshevik, the good sergeant strolled back to his cruiser.

"Phew," muttered Melshevik. "That was a bad one."

Naveed came so close to getting away.

The consequences of a successful departure just didn't bear thinking about. Worrying about that part really wasn't his job, it was merely the reason for it.

Looking idly over the rail again out of morbid curiosity, he saw lights and boats milling around a common point. Men with poles and hooks were hauling in a sodden form, draped in Naveed's long white raincoat.

Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.

With a wink and a nod at the firemen rigging up some brave volunteer to go over the rail and grab the bag, Jim Melshevik headed for his own Escalade. His thoughts were already elsewhere. It might be a good idea to grab a double box of French fries and maybe a barbecued sausage on a stick while he was in the neighbourhood.

The Man in a Bubble

Eldritch was a man in a bubble. Naked, he stood in the bottom, the elongated, distorted reflections of himself going up the curving sides in every direction he looked.

All around was blackness, punctuated only by the brilliant, glistening pinpricks of the stars.

How long he stood there, he could not say. It was an eternity. He cried, he screamed, he raged. He threatened, begged and cajoled. He fell to his knees and bemoaned his fate.

Still he floated in the bubble. He wept, moaning and sobbing, and finally he slept.

***

Again, he cried, begged, and was silent. He roared and gnashed his teeth, and tore at his hair.

He struck himself about the head, and ripped his own flesh with his own hands. He swore and cursed the name of God and the day he was born and his own mother and father.

He threw himself at the ever-tumbling floor and shouted imprecations and threats so loud that he tore his vocal chords and ran out of breath.

Exhausted, a spent thing, he sank down in despair.

The stars, unknowable in their inky blackness, were indifferent to his suffering or to his fate.

***

Eldritch was silent, huddled in the bottom of the bubble. He stared at the stars, and forlornly scrabbled at the covering, in one last vain attempt to get free, to end the agony, the loneliness, the terror.

He sat there for a very long time, staring out at the stars.

Finally, again he slept.

***

Something watched him. There were many of them. Invisible eyes, unknown thoughts, something touched him and he shouted for them to go away. Something was right inside there with him, but he could not see it. It was very cold and he cried and huddled, and begged it to go away.

***

Days passed, and they came again.

***

The silence was appalling. He sang insane little songs, any word would do and he sang it. He tried to confuse them, and to disgust them. He soiled himself, and relieved himself right where he huddled, and he laughed at them.

He defied them.

He mouthed the most foul abuse to them. He told them what he thought of them. He abused himself in front of them. He hurled feces at the sides of his container. He slept in his own filth, and vomit, and urine, and sweat.

He slept.

***

When Eldritch awoke, the bubble hovered far above the Earth, and his heart leapt. He shouted for joy, if only to see it once again, and he laughed and he cried, if only to see it once again, for it was real...it was real.

***

He awoke with a start, and practically jumped out of bed in sheer fright...sheer fright...his own bed. His guts fluttered inside of him and he hyperventilated.

He sagged at the knees.

"Oh, Jesus," he said in relief, heart palpitating beyond control, the rush of adrenalin causing his knees to shake, and his hands, and his guts to quiver.

He stood there trembling for a moment, staring around wildly. His head hurt and the place was a mess, even in the darkened room. He smelled stale beer and stale tobacco smoke and stale sweat, and it was pure bliss.

"Oh, Jesus," he said, sheer, unmitigated, unbelievable relief flooding over him like a wash of cool, foamy surf, splashing over him and then receding, warmed yet again by the touch of his body.

Eldritch gasped, and muttered in recollection. Rubbing his eyes and running a hand through his tousled hair, he stumbled, buck-naked to the bathroom, feeling grubby, half-nauseas, his guts rumbling, and with his spirits at low ebb.

Flipping on the light, Eldritch stepped to the sink.

He reeled in shock at the sight of a week's growth of whiskers, and the black and blue marks around his eyes and forehead, and all of the angry welts slanting up across his chest, and the dark stains all over him...and the smell...and the taste in his mouth...and full comprehension struck.

"Holy, Jesus!" he gasped, trembling like a leaf and staring in wide-eyed shock at the horrifying apparition in the mirror.

A Leap of Faith

It was a leap of faith every time they jumped. Everyone knew the odds. The statistics didn't lie. People said that when you lost the fear, it was time to quit. Jason Bridger had passed that point a long time ago. Now, he just felt resignation, a kind of fatalism. He no longer cared if he lived or died. While his body still wanted to live and reacted just as it should, his mind was cold and jaded.

From three hundred thousand metres, the planet was just a brightly glowing, blue-white ball with no visible detail. It hung there inscrutably on the screen beside the exit. Beyond, all was blackness back up by an impossible number of stars. Their intercept arcs looked good. There were four of them this time.

"The weather's fine." The Drop Sergeant slapped him on the shoulder..

Two drop points, ten seconds apart.

"Bend your knees. First two. Bridger and Yancey. Drop thirty seconds. Brace."

They clutched the rails and clung to the back wall until the flashing red lights turned amber.

"One gee." The impersonal voice of drop control came in their helmets. "Gee dropping. Holding at half a gee...reducing gee...hold...hold. Hold. Prepare to drop."

As he stepped to the door, Jason wondered if it really was addictive, this flirting with the skirts of death. To be confronted by death was a curiously liberating experience. Now he knew what he was capable of. Angela Yancey patted his shoulder.

The physical touch reminded him that to be too divorced from the moment was unwise. He had a partner to think about, and duty and honour were stronger than pain and despair. It was more than sheer discipline that drove him. One chance in ten of dying. All he could do was to pray. In cheating death so many times, he was cheating life itself. He had let himself down so very, very badly. With every opportunity before him, he had failed to live. He had failed to convince himself.

This was a good time to stop thinking.

The lights ringing the door turned green.

"Go! Go! Go!"

Angela's hand strong at his back, Jason bent at the knees and pulled hard on the jambs, and launched his body out of the airlock at the planet waiting below. The gut-rush of adrenal juices was not a pleasure so much as a necessity, or otherwise he would have hardly been capable of the act.

He dove out and over in a tuck position, coming out of a full somersault and stabilizing perfectly. With arms close at his sides and his chin up, he was a missile.

It was a kind of exaltation. Maybe that was why he did it. Falling through space, plummeting down towards the blue sky below, was about as close to God as a man could get. It was as close as a man like him ever got to a state of pure grace.

Jason was flying.

***

Angela followed out of the lock hard on Jason's heels, with Master Sergeant Julie Southam's hard hand giving her one final push. She tumbled, as Jason flitted in and out of her view. She struggled to stabilize herself.

Angela had the irrational thought flash through her mind that she could quickly switch off and let her feelings loose. One quick stab at the button would do it. Tumbling, head over heels, and it just seemed to go on forever. Fighting the urge to call out, to curse, to swear and piss and moan...she tumbled and just couldn't get a handle on it. The ship and the planet and a dark object she took to be Jason spun through her cone of vision several times in quick succession. One blotch suddenly got bigger.

"Are you okay, kid?" His voice was close and warm in her helmet.

"Gyros!"

The ship, hanging in black space as she fell away, slid across her faceplate, rotating lengthwise as it went, and then suddenly she felt a strong grip on her ankle.

"Relax." He was right there.

Off to the bottom, down low on her tactical view, were the two dots of Sam and Alan. The planet was coming up slowly. Most of her icons, the arrows were jammed up against the side of the tactical display.

"Thank you." The visual horizon popped into view, although slanted up and to the right. "Gyros off. I can stabilize manually."

"We have a minute yet."

She didn't respond. The signals-traffic could still give them away, even though the signals were tightly beamed and slaved into unidirectional, person-to-person mode. A pair of scouts could communicate perfectly well in their insertion-suits deep inside enemy territory.

Jason's grip shifted. He had both hands on her now, and her body gyrated a little as he pulled her into position underneath and in front of him.

"Doggie style." She stifled a laugh.

She was still flopping about, so she stiffened up as best she could to make Jason's task a little easier to manage.

"Play your cards right."

His silence was predictable. Poor Jason would be blushing beet red! For some reason he always thought his jokes were hilariously funny, whereas hers were often unwelcome. They seemed to make the hard-bitten Jason a little uncomfortable sometimes. Riding along under Jason, with his gyros stabilizing the pair of them, was a safe and comfortable feeling. She enjoyed it for a moment. When she took over using body English only, it was going to take a lot out of her, in spite of years of hard physical training and monthly fitness tests.

"Another minute."

"That's what they all say."

Angela convulsed in her suit, almost throwing off the descent.

Jason's hold and her orientation wobbled for a moment, as she stifled it. This was rewarded by an ache where the diaphragm met with the ribcage, down low in the area of her hips. She was going to pay for that later. It fascinated her, since she had an unaccustomed moment to think, how it really was exhilarating to be up here...floating with Jason. With a turn of her head, she located Sam and Alan. Jason gave her a little tap on the helmet to let her know he saw them too.

She checked her wrist.

"Finally." She spoke and Jason unceremoniously shoved hard, down and forward on her body.

"You got your three minutes worth."

Then she was on her own as the first faint hints of atmospheric drag tugged at her outstretched fingertips.

"Bye-bye-birdie." He focused on the virtual navigation guide-points out in front of his faceplate.

***

There were two black dots to the right, stark against the white cumulus rising up from below. Then there was one black crescent, as his own pilot chute snagged open and his feet flew out in front of him.

"Oh—"

There was radio silence from the three of them. Jason's thoughts immediately turned to Alan DeKalb over there, watching Sam fall into the clouds.

His heart ached as the silence continued, but the discipline was strong. Jason looked up to pray in the direction of the blossoming black lotus flower above him. The primary chute continued to deploy normally. This extremely intense feeling, of wanting to live in spite of all, was a rare and unusual occurrence—which was just one more reason why he did it. His thoughts raced, his heart pounded, and there was nothing anyone could do, not even scream—Sam wouldn't even scream.

They were all volunteers. The black dot falling into the cottony white puffs was a friend. Sam didn't say a thing. He was in there, trying and trying to get the chute to deploy. Sam would sail into the ground at Mach speed in a little less than a minute.

Sam was invisible, gone into the clouds now. He could see it all in his mind's eye.

Jason fought the urge to retch. He thought of Angela, and Alan, alone in their suits. Sam, alone in that suit, still trying to hit that button, to deploy the chute. With a glance at his wrist, the altimeter display told him it was already too late. There was no way the chute would deploy properly this deep in the atmosphere. It would simply rip itself to shreds. Sam was already dead, yet he was undoubtedly shouting and cursing, twisting and spinning, and trying to rip open the pack with one arm up around behind his back.

That silence.

He couldn't afford to puke right now, and so he swallowed it right back down.

They watched their chronometers. They could hardly help it. It was only human, and each marked Sam's passing in their own way.

It was over now.

Still the awful silence continued.

***

Three figures squatted low down amongst the tangled underbrush of the jungle floor. They were head-to-head. Eyes met, and right fists touched. A nod, a shake of the head, and the ceremony was over. Jason and Angela awkwardly held Alan as he sobbed and shook in his suit. They could only give him a little time. For them, the grief was there, and real enough, but it would have to be dealt with later.

The mission proceeded according to plan.

***

Eight days later, they were relieved when elements of the 119th Brigade liberated their hilltop. Their position overlooked a large, mossy plain, first scouted nocturnally by them and then suitably marked with landing beacons.

Guided by laser-beamed landing zone, weather and tactical data provided by the team, neither a ship nor a man was lost in the initial insertion. It was only later that casualties mounted, giving the battle of 9491-G a reputation for ferocity and dogged courage in the face of heavy enemy resistance, on the part of the Third Galactic Infantry Division. The enemy had been routed in this sector, and an advanced battle fleet fueling station would proceed as planned in geosynchronous orbit.

The Commendation noted that exemplary courage and extraordinary devotion to duty on the part of reconnaissance forces was a major contribution to the victory.

A number of recommendations were made, and perhaps suitable chest-hardware would be forthcoming. The news hounds noted that Sam's body had not been found. With no guidance inputs, and no chute, his body could be anything up to a hundred kilometres from the landing zone. Experts estimated for the evening news that his suited body might have penetrated anything up to ten metres in soft ground.

The 119th as a whole was rewarded with a unit citation, something old hands could point to with pride as the unit rested, refitted, and was brought up to strength with new levies from the Home World.

There is nothing like a real bloodbath to buck up a unit's morale. The fact that ninety percent of the unit had no memory of the campaign, because they hadn't actually been there, might have had something to do with it.

While still pretty green, the unit would mature quickly under the pressure of battle. This was the general consensus of opinion. At some point, the new adjutant closed the book on that particular chapter of the Regimental History.

***

"There was nothing wrong with the suit?" Colonel Beauville was puzzled.

The drop-suits were capable of sustaining human life of a kind almost indefinitely, when sufficient resources were available, or even a couple of weeks in full deep-space mode. Originally designed as escape and survival suits for the Fleet, subsequent development made them a formidable weapons-platform in their own right. The unit's own recon suits were unique in the service.

"According to information provided by our own technical people and the factory reps from the Home World, the general consensus is...in spite of certain indicators in the redundant software systems, nothing they can really put their finger on, but there was once a glitch in testing..."

"Cut the crap!"

The telemetry, the data stream before and after the drop, was all they had to analyze in the absence of a body or wreckage.

"Well, that's all they're giving us, sir!" The captain was fifteen years older than his superior. "What can we expect? I can't give you what I don't have."

Either he didn't hit the button or it didn't work, and herein lay the problem.

"I want you to say it wasn't suicide." Robin 'Butch' Beauville grunted in disgust. "I'm sorry, Stan. No one wants to make the call, and those suits cost about a hundred billion dollars each. War is very public these days, and everyone has some interest in some outcome."

Both men's thoughts turned to the video logs, endlessly analyzed, officially and unofficially. The only thing anyone got out of it was a kind of vicarious horror, and after a time, even that wore off. Lieutenant Ginoro was just dead.

"No one wants to besmirch Sam. Or Lieutenant Ginoro's service record either." Stanley Zonta felt the same way. "I can't make the call. He seemed perfectly fine before the drop. Alan can't recall any little indicators either, even with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight."

The two sat regarding each other with a kind of mutual trust and confidence. Captain Zonta just shrugged. He disposed of the three sections in the field, and Colonel Beauville took responsibility for the unit. There was no real hostility, just tension and confusion in the air. Both men were taking it too personally. It was hard.

"Of all the people under my command, I liked Sam the best. He was the easiest to get along with. He stayed out of trouble, with eight good missions. He was an exemplary soldier. I don't know, Colonel. I just don't know. Personality-wise, he was the best balanced of them all, and quite frankly, the most likable."

"Well, I know." The colonel was worried. "I know that they had better find something wrong with one of those suits, somewhere in the service, or they are going to crucify Sam, and Alan, and us. They don't give a tinker's damn about the facts, but I do. This is a people problem, Stan. Tell me about our people. Your people."

After a long, searching look from the captain, the colonel spoke again.

"I love them as much as you do, Stan. But you work with them much more closely—I'll always be the 'old man,' to them."

"The one that worries me most is Jason. I asked him, 'how are you today,' once."

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say a thing. He just looked right through me. It was like he didn't even recognize me. It really is a stupid question, isn't it? But they're all different, distorted people in their own way. No one could survive the first drops without some strong focusing skills. You have to be a proper psychopath just to make it through the training—you and I both know that, sir. I don't know what else to say, Colonel." The captain sighed. "It is a kind of refusal to die more than anything. But they like it too much, is what I'm thinking."

There was a long silence.

"Maybe the thrill wore off." Captain Zonta wondered. "I'm sorry, that was just a really shitty thing to say right now."

"Is this going to happen again?" Colonel Beauville had a tight, pained little grin at the captain's jibe. "When I had seven missions, and they offered me promotion, I took it. For some reason, this death-seeking stuff is totally alien to me."

"Hell, yes. It will happen in some unit somewhere. It's just a matter of time. We're all bucking those one-in-ten odds, and after fourteen missions in the case of Angela, one wonders just exactly what her problem is." Stan thought. "She owns a small farm in Ohio. She could opt-out at any time. But she just won't do it."

"And Jason has twenty-three. At some point you have no odds at all."

Captain Zonta had personally done nine combat missions, and thirteen under training conditions, having re-upped rather than get out when he could. The odds in training were more like forty-to-one, or about half of what twentieth-century Bomber Command crews faced over Germany. That precious little tidbit of information was one of the first things recruits were told. But the trainees only got one real hard-space certification drop, and then they were shipped out to face the enemy.

They all knew the odds. Recruits were never hard to find, and as Captain Zonta had to admit, the recruiting videos didn't even come close to doing it proper justice.

***

There was just the three of them, as Vernon and Metcalfe were needed elsewhere. Rumour had it the unit would be going back into action in a month or so, and rumour was so very often half-right.

Alan was dead drunk, asleep in his chair. Angela looked over the table at Jason.

"About had enough, pal?"

Jason had been keeping up with them both, drink for drink, but he gave the impression of stone cold sobriety. He shook his head morosely. There was a hint of defiance or something about him tonight. Something deep and unsaid lurked within him.

"Well, I don't know about you."

"We had better do something about Alan." His face was long in the dim light of the bar.

The three bolted for the nearest steakhouse upon disembarkation, as per tradition. But the food tasted like ashes, and the drink was the only thing that could satisfy them.

"We've been hitting it pretty hard. And not having any fun at all."

"We've seen better days. Let's find a room for the boy."

Jason drained the last half of his mug of lager in a couple of big gulps.

***

Like the Fleet in port after a three-year cruise in deep space, they stumbled along the sidewalks, singing, laughing, supporting Alan between them. They must have passed three or four tawdry motor-court type hotels along this suburban highway, before they could agree on anything.

As soon as they got Alan into a room and a bed, there was an awkward moment. As if by mutual accord, neither one let it go on too long. Jason had the room on the left of Alan, and Angela had the one on the right.

"Goodnight, soldier." She wondered what she really wanted.

With a quick nod, he turned and headed for his room. As she fumbled with her own key, she heard the other door open up and slam shut again.

***

He lay in the darkened hotel room, listening to the swish of rain and watching the flicker and sweep of vehicle headlights wash across the pale ceiling. Sleeplessly, he lay there and tried not to think, with only the on-off button, the single un-blinking green eye of the video set to keep him company. There were so many things that he wanted to say tonight, in the wake of Sam's death, and once again, he had discovered that he did not have the courage.

He flaunted death, he taunted death, and all because deep down inside, he knew he was gutless.

It was more than Sam's death, and the deaths of others, friends who passed in the night.

Jason ached inside, with the knowledge that he was a moral coward, and that he would pay for that weakness dearly, every stinking day for the rest of his life. Some things deep inside of a man never change, he thought in anguish. While things hadn't been so bad lately, he had to acknowledge the truth. He was suffering, from some thing, some affliction, that he could not name. Everything about him was just wrong, somehow.

With a deep sigh of self-loathing, he flung off the sheets and swung his feet to the floor. Padding to the bathroom, he relieved himself and spent some time in there, scrubbing his face thoroughly and luxuriously, such a wonderful thing after days in a suit.

***

He snapped off the bathroom light and waited for a moment, getting his bearings in the blackened room by the faint glare of green from the video set. Padding along carefully, wary of forgotten coffee tables and unfamiliar furnishings, Jason was resolved to a long and frustrating night. What struck him as odd, as he found the edge of the bed, was that normally he never had any trouble sleeping, and strangely enough, it was easier for him to sleep in the suit than without. It was sobering to think just how wrong a man could be about so many things. His state of mind tonight was nothing if not unpleasant.

Jason dropped carefully onto the bed, suddenly becoming aware of a soft, warm form in there beside him at about the same time as his tired mind and dull senses registered that the smell in the room was distinctly different from when he had left it.

"Whoa!"

"I bribed the night clerk." Angela giggled as he snapped on the bedside light in pure, unadulterated shock.

"Jason Bridger, I want to have a word with you." She stared into his eyes with the most wanton look, and his heart almost stopped dead in his chest.

***

The hatch slid back and Jason stepped to the door. The lights flashed amber. The Drop Sergeant's voice was close in his ears. He felt a tap on the shoulder.

"I just want you to know one thing." She ignored the fact that everyone else within earshot of the bridge monitors would hear it too.

"You love me?"

"I wait."

"What?" He was completely mystified.

Eleven seconds to zero...

"I wait until I see your chute. Then I pop mine. You never knew that before, did you?"

For the first time in his career, he froze for a half second in the door.

"What?"

"Go, go, go!"

"I go where you go. I die when you die, Mister Bridger."

Angela had both hands on his hips and she gave a hefty, no-nonsense push.

As Jason leapt out of the ship for the twenty-fourth time, her words were right there with him.

"We'll talk about this later. See you on the ground, dear."

"Go, go, go!" The sergeant booted Angela out of the door and into the cold hard vacuum of space.

Grey Poupon

Derek Kane watched the view plate as the unidentified ship made a quick corkscrew turn to port/negative pitch/zero yaw and headed his way.

The ship's alarm had alerted him to its presence, but there weren't too many people out there and the maneuver was immediately suspicious.

There was a signal coming in, fairly strong but the machine language didn't match. The computer was looking for software to decode it and he would have to wait.

The voice didn't seem strident or unfriendly. The tonal register was similar to human, and his impression was of polite inquiry—but assumptions about alien mores and cultural norms, courtesies and polite forms of address varied considerably from region to region.

For no good reason he did up the lap belt but left the others. Now a picture came up. A being sat in a flight chair, with no helmet on, so that was good. He waved in what Derek interpreted as a cheerful fashion.

The fellow had two slits where his nose should have been, and the slightly orange tint to his skin revealed him to be from a white-dwarf planetary system. Two eyes and a mouth, that was helpful. The real eebie-jeebies were harder to talk to. He looked lightly built as well, and that was one of the hallmarks of inhabitants who had evolved on the small, lower-mass planets that were often found there. If he wanted to come aboard, that would be a bit of a giveaway.

There was a beep from the console.

"Got it."

"Take your time."

"Running translation. One moment please."

"Put his voice up on real time when you crack it."

"Roger."

He might as well give the other ship's computer a little lead time on their own translation, assuming they needed one. He keyed the microphone.

"Hello. I'm Derek Kane, skipper of the Hornet. Over."

Let them work on that for a while, as the other skipper's face lit up and he leaned forward to make some kind of an input.

His own bridge speakers crackled and then it came in.

"Excuse me, my good fellow. Do you speak English?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

"I do so hate to trouble you."

"No, you're quite welcome, go ahead." He was getting curious.

The being held up what looked like a half-metre long hoagie, or perhaps a Ruben sandwich made out of something like the cultural equivalent of a baguette, with slices of pinkish mottled reel-meet and green leafy stuff hanging out all along it...maybe even what looked like some kind of alien cheese.

"Do you have any Grey Poupon?"

So that's what it was all about. The idiot just wanted some mustard.

Cracking the Crop Circle Code

(Our unknown source has requested anonymousness, and he has since disappeared anyway. -ed.)

'So what happens is you strap on your Bergen, which includes plenty of bottled water, because you will be out until near dawn. Then you climb out of the lorry, and your mates hand out your stilts.'

Q: Stilts? Bergen? You mean like, 'a gunny-sack?'

'These stilts are not skinny poles, but wide, flat boards, with a kind of toe-clamp for your boots, remarkably similar to those worn by cross-country skiers.'

Q: Clamps?

'You snap your boots into the clamps, and two friends help you up. Then you walk out into the field, using the stilts. Arriving at a pre-surveyed GPS point, you locate the stakes previously placed there by others. The stakes have a steel pin on top.'

Q: Stakes? Steel pin?

'Unlocking the 90-degree feature of your specially-designed boot bindings, you can sort of carefully let yourself down to the ground, where you now have footwear that looks like a pair of water skis.'

Q: Water skis?

'Snapping the reel onto the pin on top of the stake, you begin walking around in circles while the line feeds out from the reel. When you reach the end, you carefully go to the centre of the circle. The spring-loaded line rewinds itself automatically, and then you remove the reel from the stake.'

Q: And then?

'Then you move on to the next location.'

Q: Tell us about the truck and the rest of the film crew.

'Meanwhile, the last two friends have taken the truck, oops; I mean 'lorry,' back to the parking lot behind the nearest pub where they will await a simple cellular phone call.'

Q: Alien film crews have cell phones?

'Those in the field never have to leave a single footprint. Each has to do, at most, ten or twelve circles in a night. They do the biggest one first. They carry plastic shopping bags to take a dump in; and the only real hard part of the job is not breaking out in hysterical laughter. However, with the adrenalin pumping and the hefty fines for pranksterism in Great Britain, not to mention a long, sustained, physical exertion, it's actually pretty quiet out there after a while.'

Q: So that's why no alien crap in the field!

Sound advice from an old hand: "Don't try to take a leak while standing on stilts, I once lost it in a gust of wind and fell in a clump of brambles. It was a jolly humbling experience."

Q: So then you pull up stakes and move on! I get it.

(Editor's Note: Since publishing this a few minutes ago, we have begun to get quite a few death threats, (a couple, anyway,) from documentary film-makers. Coincidence? I think not, ladies and gentlemen.)

The Entity

No one can say how the entity began or who started it. Speculation among analysts is that the entity was conceived by one man. Some say he did it just to see if he could do it. Others believe it was revenge against a system gone mad. As for the real or intended purpose, or whether the perpetrator even realized where it would end, no one knows. It is believed by some that the entity was conceived by an obscure science-fiction writer, sitting in the basement in their underwear, drinking beer, dreaming of Star Wars conventions, and 'surfing the internet,' as they used to say in those days.

The entity is the first truly alien intelligence in human experience. That is, if you discount the existence of God and other supernatural beings. The entity has taken over the planet in a most benign fashion. Of course there are those who pine for better days.

Can you blame them?

***

Elmer Brentard sat across the polished diplomatic table from the Ambassador of la Republique and other senior officials.

"Pardonnez moi?" he asked in mild astonishment.

"Yes, it's true," said Pierre De Seneshchal. "The thing started off as a Paypal account, and a few ebooks, and a couple of deceptively simple apps. Some chess playing game, one or two other little things, 'watch' features, and the buy-low-sell-high program on the Exchange. It's all cloud-based. He could smash his machine with a hammer. It wouldn't matter. Our analysts have traced it all the way back to day one. The author of this, er, 'prank,' has been dead for several years. Cancer."

"We looked for back doors, all of that stuff," said Brentard's aide, Mr. Radcliffe O. Stephen. "How did you pull this one out?"

"We'll be providing details," said the Ambassador. "We are hoping that with inter-service cooperation, along with our EU and other stake-holders, we can shut it down before it owns every last thing on the planet...I pray."

"Duh, yeah!" said Jensen. "We're seventeen wars behind now! We're going broke! The Entity keeps buying our companies, making ploughshares, and providing micro-finance to third world partners! This thing is just hammering us! You're not going to believe this, but it's taken to designing smaller, more efficient cars with big doors and comfortable seats!"

"That's enough, Radcliffe," said Brentard, patting his arm paternally. "Of course, you will have our fullest cooperation."

"Thank you, merci," said the other. "Delighted! Absolutely...er."

He rose with a quiet and gentle dignity, and they shook on it. Enough said.

***

When the Ambassador and his aides got down to the sidewalk, their car was gone. They discovered after a few phone calls that their privatized limousine had been bought and sold three times for the depreciation, and then scrapped as a tax write-off. The driver was laid off as well.

For some reason, it was extremely difficult to get a taxi in that neighbourhood, although it wasn't a particularly busy time of day. The evening was warm enough, and so they ended up walking back to the Embassy.

***

The entity explores a world which it believes to be very real. It roams the internet(s) seeking more things to acquire and consume. Whether the entity is aware of that other world of meat popsicles surrounding it, is unknown to this author. That's okay, there are three or four hundred of me at last count, and the micro-payments always come through.

Aliens better think twice

Ever since the late 1940's, there have been a large number of UFO reports by individuals who appear to believe that they have witnessed alien spacecraft. (Refer to "Project Blue Book," etc.)

Some have claimed abduction. A few photos exist which, while not exactly defying analysis, cannot be clearly proven as hoaxes.

It is not my intent to state with certainty whether or not alien spacecraft have indeed visited our lovely planet.

There is little doubt that people have, on occasion, seen lights in the sky that cannot be readily identified. And it's true that some photos and amateur films are quite provocative.

It should be noted that what one wants to see often appears and, of course, those who are capable of taking things on faith have a predisposition to believe with little material evidence.

I myself have seen things in the night sky, which I could not immediately identify. Having a reasonably good imagination, it was enough to make my hair stand on end.

Later, I decided it was probably tundra swans, lit from below by the lights of the city. It seemed obvious that they were traveling at 40 knots at an altitude of perhaps 1,000 feet, not a squadron of UFO's in echelon formation, doing 120,000 mph at 90 miles altitude.

Yet I can't say for certain that they were swans either – really just pale, amorphous blobs that seemed to flicker and shimmer in their silent path o'erhead, going north in early spring.

My point is this: If in fact aliens have visited this planet and are in the process of studying our culture for scientific or other legitimate purposes, then let them do it properly. They should send an embassy to the United Nations and ask for a permit. They should reveal them-selves if their purposes are honourable. I suggest this for their own safety and convenience. (Ours, too.)

Because until them, if I can't sleep one night, get up and see a bunch of aliens traipsing around my backyard, I'm gonna pop an arrow into one of them. No questions asked.

Recently, I saw three lights in the southern sky, about ten degrees above the horizon. First, one appeared. Then another behind it, and then another. The group slowly spread apart, then the delta formation stabilized. The trio of bluish-white dots cruised across the night sky in a northeasterly direction, covered about sixty degrees of arc, then silently faded out. The whole process took maybe 20 to 30 seconds.

What really ticked me off was the thought of them up there looking down at me...and laughing.

Yep, if I ever get my hands on one of them little guys (rabid feminists may substitute the term gals), I'm gonna throttle them.

The body of an alien could be worth billions. Then I'd really be somebody.

And it's all nice and legal. There is no law against murdering aliens for profit, is there?

I mean let's face it. Aliens were not created in God's own image and obviously they have no souls to worry about. I'm just "a good capitalist."

Engines of Creation

An intelligent man might look at a grain of sand and deduce the universe. Is it such a stretch to look at the universe and deduce the presence of God? That freaking Jung or somebody believed in universal 'archetypes,' and a kind of inherited, shared-consciousness memories. I hope you'll forgive me for being an 'archetype,' for a second while I play Devil's advocate.

The Bible versus evolution debate is always fun to watch. We must exercise our freedom to express ourselves from time to time, to keep it strong, flexible, and adaptable.

Scientists theorize the universe sprang into being through a singularity. A singularity is an infinitely small point in space from which infinite matter, energy, space and time exploded outwards in all directions at extremely high velocities. Public opinion, so often wrong, believes this happened in the centre of the universe, but this is a contradiction.

Where is the centre of infinite space? Or as the lady once said, 'Where are you measuring from?"

Philosophers and scientists believe that if there is an effect, there must be a cause. The ancients called this 'the first cause,' or the 'first principle.' People who make statements regarding Christianity call this 'God.'

It seems to me that evolution is one of the engines of creation, no matter how it all came about. And if God created the universe, He would have needed an impressive set of tools. These tools are the immutable laws of nature.

Man may have been created 'in God's own image,' I'm not competent to say. But man was clearly an imperfect being, as Adam and Eve quickly demonstrated. The truth as I see it, is that we are still evolving, at times perhaps not quickly enough. If we did not evolve, how could we account for nipples on men, the appendix, our relative hairlessness, wisdom teeth, or even just the crowding of teeth in our jaws, for that matter?

Surely God does not make mistakes of this kind? But evolution is an ongoing process—which accounts for the little inconsistencies, for we are ever-changing as a species.

The once constant in all of Creation is change. And I will preach once in a while. As a writer, I recently confronted the inevitability of teaching, and to be honest with you, I don't like it much. Sorry, my mind tends to jump around a bit, but you'll get used to it.

Anyhow, if God exists, surely He permeates and encompasses all things; including the infinity of the universe. He transcends everything—everything. If you wanted to find God, the first place to look is in your own hearts. And if He's not there, well, now you have your answer. Sometimes I go out back at night, smoke a big fat cigar and look up at the stars. That's when I figured out that time is like a Moebius strip, in the sense that it doesn't have a top or bottom. Oh; and when people refer to a parallel universe, they fail to take into account the fact that it came from the singularity. There are no parallel universes—they're all at a slight angle to each other. People like that tend to forget that a straight line is really just a curve of infinite diameter.

Yes, I just sit there and look up; wait and listen to those engines of creation.

There are at least four known dimensions visible to our eyes. These are height, width, depth, and this 'space' exists over time. These are the 'dimensions' that we ourselves live in, and perceive with our senses.

So that's my new theory, a 'grand unified theory,' that synthesizes science and religion.

Did you know there is a fifth dimension? It's a kind of force that cannot be measured or quantified, or proven in any way. I like to think of it as love—perhaps even God's love. What could be better than that? I suppose I really should quit smoking, but then, I don't want to live forever. That would just be crazy.

You want the truth? That kind of 'thud-thud-thud' off in the distance is really just trains idling in the yards. But what the hell—what the hell.

That's what we call 'inspiration.' And no one can really account for where that comes from. It seems we either give me credit for pulling that up out of my own brain, or maybe God gave it to me. Quite frankly, it has to be one or the other. 'Cause I was the only one there.

The Book Thief

"My Lord?" the deferential tone of a servant broke into Lorenzo's reverie.

"Yes," he sighed. "What is it?"

"We've caught a thief," Zacharias informed him. "Antonio has him in charge. What shall we do?"

"Who?" he said shortly.

"The Santoro boy," Zacharias muttered. "I'm sorry, master. He seemed like such a good boy. It's a little out of character. But these gutter-whelps are always needing money for something, always gambling, always falling into bad company—"

Yes, and sometimes they just grabbed a couple of loaves of bread and ran for home.

Lorenzo de Medici sighed deeply, for he had initially thought of Pietro as a pretty good prospect for one of the family businesses. The son of a recently-departed cousin, Lorenzo felt some kind of familial responsibility. No matter how poor or distant the relations, and the Santoro clan was distant indeed, family was family. They were also very poor. Originally, that was a consideration, although he couldn't take on all of the children in spite of his considerable personal resources. Always a pretty good judge of character, he wondered anew at life's little surprises. Had his almost-legendary eye for talent failed him? Thank God it was just a kitchen lad, then.

In spite of the huge array of papers and documents he was presently reviewing, some small spark of curiosity came over him. Why, he could not say. But first impressions were often lasting ones. And Pietro Santoro, a slender lad of about thirteen, had impressed him as a good kid.

"What did he steal?" he inquired. "Maybe he just got hungry. I remember at that age, I would steal a pie off a windowsill. And I thought nothing of burning my fingers, even my lips and my tongue! Half the time I had the money to buy my own."

He grinned a little in fond memory. Zacharias smiled too. It was just as well that his master was in a relatively placid and contemplative mood this evening.

"If it was just a couple of cream buns, the cook would have taken care of it," he allowed. "No master. He had your only copy of Tacitus in his possession."

Lorenzo sat up then.

"Whoa!" he said. "Holy Mother of God! Was he trying to sell it then?"

Zacharias just shrugged and raised his hands with upturned palms.

"Who knows? He claims he was going to bring it back!" he reported to de Medici. "But it seems a little far-fetched."

"Was he going to read it, then?" gasped Medici. "Bring me this boy. Immediately."

"Yes, my lord," Zacharias bowed, carefully concealing a small grin.

***

"What else have you read?" blurted Lorenzo when the child was brought before him, a frail and slightly-grubby looking kitchen boy, yet seemingly defiant in spite of being forcibly restrained by Antonio's huge paw.

Struggling in the big man's grasp, he was clearly prepared to run for it.

"All right, all right, Antonio, he's not going anywhere," he added. "Stand there, boy."

The boy shrugged off the big manservant's grip, eyes boring into his own. Lorenzo felt his jaw drop—such a burning intensity of desire, anger and something else—something else.

"It's all right boy, no one's going to hurt you. Now, what else have you read?"

The boy was silent, suddenly hanging his head now, resigned to some uncertain but no doubt horrible fate. Revelation hit and Lorenzo understood.

"What did you think of Plotinus?" he said in a different tone.

The boy's eyes came up and locked on his own, but still he would not speak.

The kid's jaw stuck out so far in front...somewhere along the line this boy had learned to stick up for himself.

"Plautus? Terence? Aristarchus?" he asked.

"They're all right," said the boy, looking away.

Suddenly the kid was right back on him.

"Actually, a lot of it is nonsense," he informed Lorenzo defiantly.

Medici tipped his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Finally he collapsed into barely-suppressed giggles, falling back into his elaborately embroidered and upholstered wing chair.

"I like you, kid!" he said. "I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal. Are you interested?"

The kid shuffled his feet and couldn't quite manage to look at him.

"Well. I'll put it to you and then you can decide. How's that?"

No answer, no eye contact.

"You have one week to read Tacitus. And then you bring it back in the exact same condition, all right?"

It took a while, but the boy finally managed to get it out.

"Yes, sire," he mumbled.

"Other than that, promise you won't be awake all night, reading until dawn; or the cook will have something to say about that. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord," mumbled little Pietro.

"Very well, then. We'll talk later. Return to your duties, or go to your room, or something. Go out and play. Books are all very well, but there are other things in life too, you know." said Lorenzo.

With a nod to Antonio, the interview was over. The big man's hand touched the boy on the shoulder, and the three of them turned to go. Just as Zacharias was about to exit, Lorenzo called him back.

"Yes, my lord?" he inquired.

"Thank you, Zacharias," was all he said.

With a smile, and a nod, and little tug on his lanky black forelock, Zach was gone.

For one brief moment of time, he did consider asking how long Zacharias had known about this boy, but thought better of it. Sometimes you just didn't want to know. Sometimes it really paid off to accord a little respect to one's servants. Lorenzo employed people like Zacharias for their knowledge and skills, for their facility with languages, and arithmetic. One would have to be a fool not to make use of it.

And it really didn't pay to go around leaping to conclusions.

"People shouldn't have to steal good books, just for the privilege of reading them," he muttered aloud to the four square walls surrounding him; and was startled to discover tears welling up for no good reason whatsoever.

None that he cared to consider right now.

Yes. That thought bothered him for some reason. It resonated inside of him, like a finely-tuned musical instrument. And even at his age, he learned something new about himself every day.

When he had a minute, he would put some more thought into that. In the meantime, he had a lot of paperwork to get through, and then perhaps he might relax with a good book of his own.

Still thinking of Pietro with a small smile, Lorenzo de Medici got busy, for a man's works define him in so many ways.

"A lot of it is nonsense? The boy has talent, all right," he grinned.

The Weeping Guitar

Father Ricardo entered the miserable abode, humbly, as befitted his mission. While he did not quite know what to expect when he went in, he was pleased to see the place was tidy and well organized, although not exactly clean.

The place bespoke an orderly mind, and the man's incoherent pleadings completely mystified him. More than anything, the father saw it as a cry for help. So many special souls were just lost in this community, too many simply abandoned by families unable to care for them. It saddened him to think, but Pablo was afraid to talk about something, and the young man had nowhere else to turn.

"Tea, Father?" asked Pablo dutifully.

The young fellow's eyes regarded him nervously from over the bushy black beard and under the long, unkempt hair.

"I would be delighted," beamed Father Ricardo.

Pablo gave a quick grin and turning, bolted for what was presumably the kitchen.

"Have a seat, Father!" Pablo blurted, his head popping back into the room from around the corner for a moment.

"Thank you," said Father Ricardo, wondering how long all this might take.

He wished he knew what it was all about.

It seemed as if Pablo had a serious problem. It was something that he could not talk about in the confessional. Father Ricardo was aware that there were more human concerns than sin and damnation. Maybe Pablo was in trouble, or was shy about asking for help with a job application form. As the Father recalled, he saw Pablo once or twice at the evening classes for adults, but hadn't thought to inquire what he was studying. Many of the barrio folk were illiterate. Pablo may very well have been trying to learn to read...it was the only way out of here for unskilled people. He preached that message from his pulpit. The father was delighted to see Pablo take advantage of whatever the church could offer in the way of education.

The silence was oppressive. Father Ricardo noted a fresh breeze wafting in from the rear of the dwelling. With a glance, he was the front door was properly closed. Small as the place was, he wondered at the lack of noise, but perhaps Pablo went to fill the water-jug or borrow a tea bag...Father Ricardo felt heartsick, something he had once described as 'a kind of dread and a kind of grief.'

The father was hopeful he could help Pablo with whatever the problem was. God knew that was why he was here. Most likely some simple little problem, although daunting enough to barrio folk. The father had a lawyer friend if it really came down to it, and known to perform a hasty marriage upon occasion.

There was a faint noise coming from the corner opposite the kitchen door. It was the strangest thing...Pablo's battered guitar...thin, metallic noises emanated from it. The sounds diminished, and then rose again, still barely discernable...grinning fondly, the father recalled that Pablo could really make that thing sing.

"Huh!" thought Father Ricardo.

Where was Pablo? The father rose and stepped across the room to the far corner from where he sat and had a quick look. Pablo was not in the kitchen. There was a pot of water on the stove, which wasn't lit. A small pile of kindling attested to no lack of fuel. So where did he go?

Father Ricardo's initial impatience fell quickly, as it had only been a couple of minutes after all.

He returned to the one and only good chair in the room, although it had seen better days.

In all honesty, the father should be grateful to rest for a while. If only he had the nerve to just fall asleep in Pablo's chair for half an hour! He realized that guilt or his conscience would not allow that to happen.

"It's too bad, really," he muttered.

The noise from the guitar was not exactly annoying, but it was certainly very odd.

Father Ricardo held his breath for a moment, almost cursing as people's voices, loud and obnoxious, passed by outside the thin and ill-fitting front door.

It was the music of the spheres, or something, he thought inconsequentially. What a sad and mournful tune. It was like a million lost souls, calling on the night breeze, yet caught and interpreted by the strings...stretched taught like a man's life, with the fates measuring out the thread.

Perhaps it had something to do with the breeze, or some unheard vibrations from the rail lines nearby. Maybe there was a locomotive idling in the yard, and the vibrations were coming up through the ground. It was a dirt floor, and the guitar was perched on a wooden box in the corner.

Still, he couldn't really account for it, and in the enforced confinement caused by Pablo's mysterious disappearance, he didn't have much else to focus on. On impulse, he got up again, and went over and picked up the guitar, thinking that maybe just to move it would stop the weird sounds.

To his surprise, the ethereal music seemed to get louder, and even stranger, the guitar was wet.

Instinctively the father looked up, but the roof, which was really just corrugated galvanized metal sheets, seemed sound enough.

He heard a faint noise, and then Pablo was right there holding two pasteboard cups from the grille just up the street.

Father Ricardo's jaw dropped at the look of sheer relief on Pablo's face, his words almost meaningless.

"So you heard it then," said Pablo.

Father Ricardo held that weeping guitar as if it was the most amazing thing he had ever touched. The two men stood there transfixed, together, listening to the rising, swelling music of the weeping guitar with a kind of fear, and hope, and horror, and sick fascination.

Two hot tears washed down the father's cheeks, his thoughts raced here and there and everywhere, and he couldn't think of one single God-damned thing to say.

Hydra

"What?"

When the phone rang, I had no intention of working, no matter who called or what the job entailed. Tony Di Bianco was hard to say no to. With Tony you are polite.

"I need you to get rid of something for me." It was his bum-boy Tazio the Knife.

Tony never talks on the phone. It's beneath his dignity. Presumably, he must have talked to his kids or his wife or his mother on the phone, or someone, during the course of his lifetime.

Tazio is a total lunatic. He never cares. A proper guy should wise up and assume someone is always listening. He would be right happy to go to jail and do twenty-five-to-life for his old friend Tony. Tazio's a bug in every sense of the word. He worships Tony.

"I'm very sorry, you must have the wrong number." I grumbled, dead tired after a long day.

I promptly hung up, but that was just our way.

An hour and a half later, I was sitting a little bleary-eyed in a back booth at the truck stop near the main Highway 401 interchange. My tail was clean, and I was using my spare car and my spare name. I just don't know who I am anymore. It helps to be stone cold sober, and I got no wants and warrants and nothing up my sleeve. My prints aren't on file anywhere. I'm never armed, and I never carry dope. Honestly, I have nothing to worry about. All I could do was to sit and wait and try not to worry.

Finally another guy came in. It was Phil, and thank God for that. So far, plenty of truckers and travelers had come and gone. I was getting a little antsy, what with the imagination working overtime and the knowledge of who I was dealing with. It is extremely hard to turn down work from these guys, and I was wondering what I had been tapped for. I was happy enough that it wasn't Tazio or Tony.

I waved him over. Phil and I are troubleshooters. He's got a full-time gig. I'm kind of a subcontractor. It's like working on permit from the union local.

"Hey, Brad. Sorry to keep you waiting."

"Hey, that's okay, Phil."

He ordered coffee. We chit-chatted about sweet nothings. He had a wife and kid, I once had a wife and kid, and we always make sure to ask about each other's wives and kids, right? He commiserated on my loss, but I told him not to make a big thing out of it.

"I prefer to try and forget."

We went on to the Blue Jays, and then the waitress brought him a coffee and she was kind enough to refill mine. I handed her a ten and said "Thanks." Being able to take a hint, she screwed off and stayed off.

Brad swilled the coffee down quicker than anything, but then all of us have iron guts and gravel-bottomed throats. He probably wanted to get home to the family.

We stepped outside and swapped keys. Phil told me to lose the blue plastic barrel in the back of his black pickup truck, a Dodge with a V-10 motor. Phil's not an idiot. He had it strapped down properly, which is not easy to do with a barrel. I wouldn't want that to come in through the back window.

"Any suggestions?"

"Not really. Just stop into the barber shop tomorrow and drop the truck off. If you come at eight, I'll drive you home before I open up. If not, we'll make arrangements later."

"Any idea what's in it?" I wasn't that curious, but if there was a body in there, it would be helpful to know.

The contents of the barrel would have some bearing in my choice of disposal, obviously, and Phil gave it a moment's thought.

"Pour it out into a pond or a ditch somewhere. Then take the barrel to a car wash and wash it out. I don't know, blast off the label and squish it up or something and toss it out somewhere five miles down the road. Chuck the barrel anywhere, I suppose."

"I could drop the barrel off near the barrel factory. I'll go down Oil Patch Road and toss it over the back fence."

An empty plastic barrel shouldn't be too heavy. I worked in the recycling area when I was fourteen. Them old steel barrels, still half full of chemicals, solvents or motor oil or whatever, were pretty hard to handle, at least for a skinny kid.

"Sure. No one would even care. Anyway, Mister Bawnz can't take the shipment right now. All those congressional hearings. They won't do nothing to him, but it's just too hot right now."

"Okay, whatever." I would have preferred to know even less. "Do you think he'll make the Hall of Fame?"

He grinned at that. Bawnz had the hits and the fans wanted another myth.

"Of course. I got a lot of money riding on it." He had a gleam in his eye.

I was damned glad it wasn't a corpse, although there are ways to liquefy a body. But then it wouldn't have been such a rush job.

Phil handed me a thick wad of bills, and that was pretty much it. "Put it in number thirteen-twelve. Leave the keys under the passenger-side floor mat and lock the car," I said.

"Okay." He grinned and we shook hands.

All Phil had to do was to drop off my spare car and then walk two blocks and call a cab. If he was worried about leaving a trail, he could walk maybe ten or twelve blocks and be home in half an hour.

"The common pond hydra is a small, freshwater animal," Detective Sergeant Andreas Papadopolous told me four days later, from across the little desk in the interview cubicle.

His angry black eyebrows, almost a mono-brow at the best of times, met heavily in the middle. His black mustache, thick and long enough to stick out past the end of his nose, quivered in outrage, but then we were friends once. We played Little League softball on the same team. Our team always came in last place, as I recall. In my whole career, I hit one home run, and I had one single-handed double play to my credit. I caught a fly ball and some guy was leading off from second base just a little too far. Dead easy. My homer took a funny bounce off the fence in the smallest of the parks we played in, and the fielder tripped and lost his glasses. No Hall of Fame for me. Maybe I should have gotten onto the steroids.

"So?"

"In order to capture food and for self-defense it has a kind of poison. It has stinging cells in, ah, the ectodermic layer. These critters are normally pretty small, Brad." Some deep tension lurked below the surface.

"And?"

"It's just that when a hydra is cut up, even into fairly small pieces, it has the ability to regrow, like a lizard that loses its tail. They re-grow into whole and complete individuals. You kill one and you end up with four or five of them. It just doesn't seem fair, does it? It's just that you're not such a bad guy, and it's just that you went through some tough times, what with the losing your house and stuff, Mary and little Bradley getting killed by that drunk driver and all. You know we're all genuinely sorry and all that. We're just trying to keep you out of trouble here, Brad."

"What are you implying?" The key thing is to be patient with the cops.

Amateurs think they can talk their way out of it and somehow go home at night. It's the amateurs that fill up this nation's jails. My lawyer will be here tomorrow for the bail hearing, and then I can go get a good meal and be at home and in my own bed by tomorrow night. And I'll never do another minute in jail, at least not on this bogus little beef.

"What I am implying, is that you made a run for Tony Di Bianco, and that while you really didn't know what you were doing... I mean, how could you know what a two-hundred-something litre drum full of concentrated growth hormone would do to a pond full of innocent little organisms? Uh... you are in one hell of a lot of trouble." He growled.

"What are you saying?" I allowed just the slightest tone of rising impatience to creep into my voice and my demeanor. "What are you getting at?"

"What I am getting at is that now we have four people dead and an unknown number of ten-foot tall hydras. They're running around in suburbia. They're following the old river and the canal. We don't know where they're going to pop up next. They're kind of hard to kill, and you really haven't lived until you've seen your best friend and partner of fifteen years sucked in and ingested by one of those things."

Andreas broke off for a moment to take a couple of deep breaths.

"And if you don't wipe that smirk off your face, I'm..." He broke off in red-faced anger as a heavy knock came at the one-way mirror on the wall.

Detective Papadopolous — whom I had grown up with and gone to elementary school with — got up and stalked out of the room. His only other option would have been to beat the living crap out of me. It's what I would have done if the situation were reversed.

"I don't believe any of this." There were guys behind the mirror. "Anyway, screw you if you can't take a joke!"

***

They couldn't charge me with anything. I bet they tried that scam on ten other guys. We all fit the same kind of profile or something. There was one bad moment when I wondered if maybe they had me somewhere on a surveillance camera. None of them other suspects knew anything more than I did, and arguably less. Tony and Phil's names were never mentioned, except by the cops.

A few of the boys came around and picked me up in a limo a few days later. We got pretty drunk, at least I did, and they were all saying how Big Tony owes me. I never knew I had so many friends. All good guys, really.

As for the offer they made, I'll have to think about that one for a while. It all depends on what he wants me to do. Sooner or later the authorities will kill off the last of those hydra-thingies, according to the news boys. Maybe we'll get a couple of really cold winters in a row or something. That will probably kill them.

Now I'm on my way with the family firm if I want. There may still be time to back out. It's better than social assistance, food banks, soup kitchens, and geared-to-income housing. There's no future in that. Tony takes the whole crew to Florida for a month every year. It's first class all the way. This is the greatest country in the world.

End

About Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time.

http://shalakopublishing.weebly.com

