Tuesday, September 30, 2008

AFTERNOON, pt. II

***

He found himself in a vast room, a private library whose walls were covered in books.

A well-built blond man sat cross-legged on a padded leather high-backed chair. He wore a blue blazer with a crest on it. A pipe nestled between his lips.

“You’ve turned out differently than we’d hoped,” the man said, serenely.

“I’m dreaming,” Phil said, removing himself from the floor.

“You always say that,” the man said, wearily, “and then you always ask ‘where am I.’ I always give you the same answer,” he took a long, thoughtful puff on his pipe, exhaled and said, “a flying saucer.”

“I found a skeleton,” Phil said.

“I know. You always find the skeleton. The first time it was an accident, playing football in the field, you tripped on the turf and kicked up a bone fragment. We hadn’t buried them deep enough.” The man got up from the chair, theatrically and continued, puffing away as he did so, “each time we bury them deeper and deeper. Do you have any idea how much trouble it is to cover the entire planet with layers of top soil and rebuilding everything over from scratch? Oh, the streets are easy enough to repave and nobody notices the trees shortening inch by inch, foot by foot, but to have to suspend the buildings and lay new foundation every time … it’s really too much. I’ve suggested a number of times that we just kill you or remove you, take you back home, but oh no, the high council won’t have it. They feel relocating you is more trouble than rebuilding the planet.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Well, since I have superiors to answer to, I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re too important. It’s only you, you know? You’re the only one that remembers, and each time you remember sooner than the last.”

“Why?”

“That’s the thing, we don’t know. That’s why you haven’t been killed.”

***

He awoke on a sunny, chilly morning. The kind he remembered from digging in fields.

Digging in fields.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

His skull was aching, nagging at him. He felt like he hadn’t slept in years. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Libby, I can’t come into work today … no … can’t, sorry … okay, bye.”

He got dressed as fast as he could and rushed out the door, headed toward the field …

***

He woke up.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

Digging.

Skulls.

He woke up eating pancakes in a flying saucer with a gun digging into the back of his skull.

“Don’t worry,” the Well-Built Man said, “it’s too much of a hassle to overwrite the entire programmed reality without you in it. And we won’t kill you, you’re too important to the program.”

He put down his knife and fork, chewed and swallowed carefully, and said, “then why is there a gun shoved into the back of my head?”

“We’re giving you back your memory.”

There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Phil thought. Then he thought, oh yeah, now I get it.

“We can’t fight you anymore.”

“Your experiment failed.”

“Did it?”

“Somehow, you’ve modified my appearance, made me look like you, but I’m not one of you. I’m an alien.”

“Wrong again, I’m afraid.”

“No, you’re right. This is where I belong. Those are my people buried in the ground.”


“You’re the last one. Anyway, you’re a success, as experiments go.”

“All that history, everything I ever learned about the world is wrong. Why go to all that trouble?”

“As far as the history, most of it actually happened, but not here. On a planet called Earth, where we come from. Rome, Greece, America, it’s Earthian history. But we managed to fit it in nicely to the genetic code we imprinted here, most compatible with yours. You see, everything in history happens for a reason, and everything you were told was written for a reason. Everybody has a purpose, but yours was more important than others.”

“What was this experiment you speak of?”

“Let’s just say we don’t like to have to kill our own people. Kind of defeats the purpose of colonization, don’t you think? Well, you proved to us that genocide is the only way to go.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s very simple, actually. We find a habitable planet, wipe out the population and re-seed it with our own. You've proven that the natural inhabitants of a planet have too much of a connection to it, a connection that can't be broken with memory implants or genetic tinkering. When we re-seed a planet we provide the pioneers with false history and memory implants as a service to them and to us. It’s easier to rule absolutely when the people have the delusion of freedom. For the most part, our own people don’t even realize we exist, or the great service we provide for them, because every planet’s story ends the same way.”

“Oh, and how’s that?”

“Mismanagement of resources which inevitably forces liquidation. Who knows, maybe with what you’ve learned you can become an even more important person, a whistleblower. How are the pancakes, by the way?”

“Delicious.”

“That’s ours, you know? That’s an Earthian invention.”

***

Phil woke up on warm, breezy afternoon. He slept in, he hadn’t called in to work. He wanted to call in, tell somebody, anybody the senses-shattering news. He picked up the phone to call in to work and tell them his amazing story but he gently set it back down. It’s not that they wouldn’t believe him, he was just too tired to be reamed out by Libby.

Monday, September 29, 2008

AFTERNOON, pt. I

It was a sunny, chilly morning. The kind Phil remembered from elementary school, where everything was right in the world, and everything was right in his life, and the world was full of endless opportunity and boundless enthusiasm. And then his whole world flipped around, and then everything he knew about life went out the window.

All it was, was a skeleton. But none ever found on this planet before. Thoroughly alien physiology. It could have been a deformed human, but it wasn’t. He opened up the field. There were dozens of them. They littered the landscape, left to rot like so much garbage.

***

“Good morning sunshine.”

Phil came to work five minutes early, as always, went out back, had a smoke, and was five minutes late to start his shift, as always. And, as always Libby greeted him as he made his way behind the counter.

“Good morning sunshine.”

“nnn.”

His head was cloudier than usual. He felt like he’d been up all night.

He tied his apron around his waist and signed into the computer.

“Okay, Libby,” he said, groggily, “what do we got?”

“Couple orders, I got a breakfast wrap in the microwave, I need a quiche and a short stack of pancakes.”

Pancakes, his mind repeated. He felt like he’d been up all night.

He grabbed the breakfast wrap from the microwave and slapped it on the grill, then fed the hungry microwave with the quiche. He grabbed the pancake mix from the cooler and poured it onto the fryer.

Pancakes.

He leaned back against the counter, folded his arms and closed his eyes.

“You’ve turned out differently than we’d hoped,” his memory spoke to him. His memory was a tall, well-built blond man.

The microwave startled him into alertness, sounding the alarm that the quiche was ready.

“What,” Libby said, shrilly, “you been up all night, drinking?”

There was a war going on. The tops and bottoms of both his eyelids constantly threatened to engage in silent combat. Just like the Americans and Russians he’d heard about and seen about in history.

He flipped the pancake and sent the quiche out. The breakfast wrap was starting to burn on the grill.

“Hello, sleepy head,” Libby said, laughing her matronly laugh, “get the lead out, huh? Keep an eye on those pancakes.”

Pancakes.

He flipped the first one onto a plate and got pouring on the second one. He watched the mix ooze out and flatten into a disc.

A disc.

“Oh my God,” he said, quietly.

“Oh your God, what?” Libby asked.

“Don’t you see?” he answered, suddenly vigorous, “don’t you get what’s going on here? Pancakes. Tall blond men.”

“Whew,” Libby said, quite seriously, “whatever you were smoking last night, keep it to days off only, hon. It’s kind of embarrassing when we’re trying to run a family establishment here.”

“No, no,” he exclaimed loud enough for everyone in the place could hear him. He grabbed Libby by the shoulders and said, “Pancakes, pancakes … flying saucers!”

He untied his apron and threw it aside, into the salad bar and ran around the counter, out the front door.

The second pancake was burning on the fryer.

***

He fell down to his knees in a great heap onto the field, limp as fresh laundry. His knees were wet from the grass. He dug his bare hands into the grass and started pulling, pulling, exposing topsoil. He dug, and dug, blackening fingers, smearing palms, making a big pile of dirt beside him. After a while, his forehead became smudged with gray earth from wiping off sweat. By mid-afternoon he’d dug down four feet or so and that’s when he found it. The first skull.

Phil looked up from his work and noticed he had drawn a small crowd, gathered around his hole ornamentally. When he uncovered the skull they mostly gasped, some of the older ones exchanged weary glances.

By then he was exhausted and he let the crowd know it by collapsing back into the hole, on top of the strange skull.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Far from truth

Mom, Dad, sister Kelly, brother Danny – the whole family Amuhn – began fidgeting around the room, appearing nervous; almost sickly.

It had been a strange few days leading up to Larissa’s 18th birthday; there was an absence of the normal arrangements and stupor that normally has everyone’s lid popping ala Pez. Usually, the Amuhn’s house would fill with chatter and bugaboo about who to buy a cake from, who to invite to the party, who to bring the flowers, who to give a speech, who-who-who……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Larissa, sit own my dear, we need to talk,” said Cheryl, also known as Mrs. Amuhn.

Larissa would normally have done what her mother asked of her but blatantly refused her mother’s offer and leaned against the wall awaiting word of her judgement.

“Larissa!” Cheryl said sternly.

“Mother,” Larissa mocked her mother’s tone………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

On Monday Dad, also known as Marty, began the day by rolling over on top of his wife like a tumbling rock and whispered slowly “you know what Sunday is, right?”

Cheryl did not at first pick up on Marty’s implications, having been confused by her racing desire revving up for a quick circuit. Marty notice the lack of acknowledgment as soon as she and he finished their good morning, and sat bedside to continue, “It is Larissa’s 18th.”

At the word 18th, Cheryl brushed past Marty without as much as a breath and rumbled over to the bathroom to brush her teeth……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Sitting across from her parents, Larissa made like a border guard on a power trip and stared right at her parents daring them to cross her line.

“Get the look off your face Larry,” Marty warned his angry daughter. “Or we won’t have any more discussion.”

“What discussion?” Larissa asked in a normal tone but with a dash of confrontation.

“Don’t yell,” Marty yelled.

This was not the way they had planned to tell her…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“We will not tell her that way,” said Marty.

Tuesday, and Cheryl had woke up earlier that morning resolute to tell her daughter the dark truth about how she came to be a Amuhn. But Marty had other ideas.

“On Sunday we can let her and the rest of the family know about her arrival in our family,” Marty said.

Cheryl saw the wisdom in his words and though her face looked strong, her knees were pathetically weak and her heart faint with anticipation…………………………………………………………………………………….

Calming themselves down, Cheryl got up and brought a beer over to Larissa. Cheryl and Marty had always planned on cracking open a beer with Larissa on her big 18. They had done so with their two older children with mixed results. Kelly hated the taste of beer and immediately removed any thought of drinking another sip of alcohol the rest of her life. Danny had enjoyed the beer so much that he had a few more and a few more and a few more until he had a few too many and was now regularly attending AA meetings…………………………………………………………………………………

Wednesday was a dark and cloudy day outside of the house, but inside it was sunny. At least according to Cheryl, who decided she would busy herself with a display of cleaning around the house. And was she ever busy. Top of the cabinets were attended to and so were the baseboards. If you were scum on the toilet you were gone from the bathroom after Wednesday.

Kelly was out with her boyfriend Jamie all day and was not seen, while Danny was secluded in his room apparently lost in his thoughts.

Larrissa was at school, first day of community college.

Marty went to work………………………………………………………………………………………

The beer sat untouched, Larissa’s eyes remained unmoved by the alcoholic gesture. She felt there was a lake of information held back by this dam of family unity, which she wanted to burst open at her whim. She wanted the whole thing to come crashing down.

Larissa glared at her father, he being the one she had always played for a fool, and waited for the first leak…………………………………………………………………………………

Thursday was dry and silent. Nothing was said and all was clean.

Larissa had been busy by her class work and Danny was busy with something in his bedroom and Kelly was busy getting busy with Jamie and Mom and Dad – Cheryl and Marty – were not busy but oddly quiet, and acting quite unloving.……………………………………………………………………

“It’s time you know the truth,” Marty said his voice tempered by an obvious sense of remorse.

“Truth,” Larissa said.

Cheryl moved over to Marty’s side and clasped his shoulder in the first sign of love from the two in three days……………………………

Friday Larissa got a feeling that something was amiss as normally she would have dug out the dreary present her parents had purchased for her and passed quick judgement.

Larissa had become so intrigued by the lack of anticipation in the house that she approached Danny’s bedroom door in effort to get at some information.

“Danny, can we talk,” she asked.


“Danny isn’t here,” Danny said, followed by the sound of an opening window and a cry “She can’t know!”…………

“The truth Larry is that we love you,” Marty said in last second cowardice. He retreated behind the shield of his words and then went on his full attack…….

By Saturday Larissa had bore enough. She wanted answers and in the morning sat in the family kitchen, a guarantee for Amuhn family traffic and waited and waited and waited.

By midnight no person had shown face in the room. Finding family empty, Larissa went to her friend Shauna’s house and wept…

Moment of truth.

Marty was slow to come up with the necessary words to tell his daughter what he wanted to tell her and so waited patiently for her relax.

“You are not our blood daughter,” Cheryl blurted out.

Kelly embraced her sister as soon as the daughter phrase had appeared but Larissa, completely blown away by the bursting dam could not move her arms and return the affection.

“You are our sister,” Kelly whispered in her ear.

“Ok, who is my mom?”

“We don’t know. We have no idea what or who she was,” Marty said.

“What she was? What do you mean ‘What she was’?”

“No daughter, you are not ONE of us,” said Cheryl.

“Truth is, we don’t even know when you were born. This is not your birthday, it’s the day you arrived on our doorstep,” Marty said.

Danny moved to Larissa’s side but did not hug his sister as Kelly had.

Cheryl pointed upwards to the ceiling.

“What, you want to send me to live in the crawl space?”

“No,” Marty screamed in pain. “You are from up ^^^^^^^^^^,” he began to point repetedly, “^^^^^^^ there, honey.”

Larissa could not understand.

“You’re an alien,” Danny said, his first words of the week in the house setting the room awash.

Danny didn’t wait to explain himself. He ran off with a bottle of beer in his hand.

“Well, glad we got out of that one,” Marty said and cracked open a beer himself. “Good week… goooooood-good week.”

Happy Birthday Larissa!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

THE THIN VEIL

They all left the safe warm confines of home in rockets. Countless billions of them, shot off into the mysterious darkness of space. Most left in the first wave, but they all got off the planet eventually. Their mission: colonization.

The planet exploded, hurtling large chunks of matter through the entire system.

The lucky ones were in the first wave, they found the wormhole in time, the rest were wiped out, flushed away into nothingness. Countless billions.

Through the wormhole the rockets swam into the deep sea of the cosmos. A place where life was possible, teeming with potential. The rockets explored. There wasn’t much time, they had to find a new home before supplies dried up. The Commander of the fleet could see it already, it wouldn’t take long for their race to be shed from existence in a tide of blood, brother against brother.

Navigating through a treacherous narrow passage between asteroid fields and cosmic radiation, the Commander saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

A new world.

His nav-screen showed that the planet was a twentieth the size of home, but it had a breathable atmosphere, and was remarkably fertile.

Despite the Commander’s best intentions, he knew competition between the billions of his people for planet fall was unavoidable. Billions were lost and drifted dead in orbit. The Commander’s ship was the only one spared, it had to be, he was the one. He was the man who would be king of the new world, he would not spoil the opportunity, would not repeat the mistakes of a previous life.

The Commander and his crew pierced the thin veil of atmosphere.

They were home.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Biff-lien

“So, wada-lien?”

The question rolled easily enough from Garry Perry but the answer sat square on the tip of Clay Biffley’s tongue. He thought long and hard about the answer and until one sprung to his mind, he sat there rubbing each hair on his chin. He always did this.

Garry Perry could not wait and his heart thumped many beats and spoiled the reflective moment Clay Biffley was trying to have.

“So?”

It was the winter of ’99. Nothing so spectacular happened in the winter of ’99 as to remember it for more than what it was. Many people have said that massive event of ’99 was the turn of the millennium but to give such an auspicious occasion more value than a clock simply turning from one minute to the next, as if the human phenomenon was actually a global phenomenon, was a fallacy.

On December 31, with the day off from work, the two Sloughians had spent the whole day discussing Slough matters when the subject had turned to belief and the millennium.The conversation at some point veered off the road of discussion and went off-roading through the world of aliens.

“So?” Garry Perry pestered strongly.

Clay Biffley smiled and said “id a bee wadever you lika id to a bee.”

“Bud-ahhhhhhh, wha if there bee no thing I like id bee?”

Clay Biffley was more stumped then a clear-cut forest and he began to ponder that question deeply. What if no one gave a hoot about life in outer space?

Garry Perry’s puppy Coloru began messing about on the dock of his home and Garry Perry ran to him, tired from the obscure answers he was getting from the father of all Slough culture, the one and only Clay Biffley.

“Oh a fug-a-loo Coloru. Wada you do?”

Coloru had let himself go all over the dock and the messy colour left was worse than the condition of the Slough booger-coloured waters. Garry Perry didn’t get mad. He couldn’t find that kind of anger for a puppy.

To celebrate the 34th anniversary of Garry Perry’s mothers first vagina vacancy, Clay Biffley bought the wallowing Garry Perry a puppy to bring his spirits up. Garry Perry had become depressed about living alone, saddened by his total isolation from people his own age and people he thought were just like him… well except for the alone thing.

He felt the whole world grabbing his shoulders tightly and dragging him to a dark place.

“Well Garry Perry,” hollered Clay Biffley, “you can-a do do whadever ya wanna, bud I belee that there bee more to dis than be in our eye.”

Garry Perry listened intently to the older man’s words. He had always been right even when Garry Perry thought for sure he was proven wrong. The latest word from Clay Biffley was that the whole world was feeling very concerned about this Y2K virus meant to spread around the world as soon as the clock turned zero. Garry Perry feared his eyeballs would jump out of his skull each time Clay Biffley said the word Y2K. Mostly he was afraid he would never get the chance to meet another person outside of the Slough and would die alone on January 1, forever stuck in the mediocrity of his life. He decided that day sitting on the deck of his raised home that Garry Perry would not die alone.

Walking out the door he bid farewell to his dear Coloru by patting him the head and giving him a smile. He then thundered down the bridge from his home to Dyke Rd and ran down the street.

“Bizarre,” said one of two joggers cut off by Garry Perry’s immediate departure.

“Muddy flatters,” the second jogger said with spite.

There was no plan – None whatsoever. All Garry Perry had in his mind was the will to run to Steveston Highway, the bearlike need to make his presence known, and the blooming idea in his head that he was to meet someone very special that day. He went in to the first store he could find and bounced inside the Wally Market convenience store on 4 Rd.

The only person in the store was a man he knew very well and did not like. Peter Nguyen, Wally Market convenience store owner. Once Garry Perry saw the expressionless face behind the counter, he pulled a quick 180 and was about to ditch the store when Peter Nguyen screamed “Stop you fieff!”

Garry Perry froze.

“I not robbery,” said Garry Perry.

“Leme check you out then, ok?” Peter Nguyen said, his hands patting down the lonely dove. His hands were thorough and particular, cupping at both the side pockets and the back pockets. Garry Perry’s heart raced and said very firmly, “I likey tuni sandy, no peady butter!”

“Oh you like the rest of the muddy flatter, huh. I’m watching all you come to my store. None of you work, I never see you leave the flatters. You are like aliens or monster or some freaky thing,” Peter Nguyen said walking back to the counter. “Now get out!”

Garry Perry returned home, his heart broken, his soul gone.

Sitting alone his home, his heart pounding slowly, Garry Perry thought to himself what life would be like dying all alone, his eyeballs falling out and no one there to pick them up. Before he could think of the answer Clay Biffley walked through the door…

“You wanna see-lien? They in the blacky-verse!”

The clock struck zero.

He rushed outside to sit beside Clay Biffley, two lawn chairs sitting side by side.

“And Y2K?” Garry Perry asked as stars striped the winter night sky

“CPU works,” Clay Biffley said in as simple an expression as man can.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

VIRAL

I saw a great commercial about a gun in the theatres the other day.

There was a viral ad going round that was a fake home video of a camper spotting and then shooting Big Foot. There was another viral ad going around about a flying saucer in a field taking off, it leaves something or other behind. Some kind of product.

These commercials were all the talk on chatrooms. People posted the videos on their personal networking sites, to share with their friends and loved ones.

I couldn’t figure it out.

I noticed it years ago. When the commercials came screaming, larger than life into the theatres before the sneak previews. What I noticed was that I was the only one outraged by it. It was a long time before they started interrupting the feature to show more commercials, sell more popcorn. The theatre became just like TV and no one cared, no one gave a damn at all about it.

“It’s great,” my friend Rich said, “now I can go to the washroom without missing anything.”

Great.

When the big religions started to decline in favor of science, there was a gap. The Christian market was no longer an attractive one, wasn’t big enough. Ah, but the theatre going crowd. People’s Sunday mornings were free so the Saturday night theatre crowd grew exponentially. Film. Film was the ticket. People didn’t gather in musty old churches to hear the preacher anymore. People gathered in well circulated, brand spanking new theatres to hear the word. The word of God. The word of Hollywood. Sprinkled through with a few commercials, but nobody minded much about that.

The viral campaigns were the most popular kind of advertising campaigns among companies and consumers alike. They started getting artsy with it. With the fact of commercials interrupting movies in theatres already in place, the next step was to camouflage the commercial itself. People left the theatres really thinking about what they’d seen.

“What was that scene about,” my friend Melanie would say, “where all of a sudden they’re in the woods and they shoot Big Foot?” And then she’d go home and look it up. And then she may or may not go out and buy the product the murder of Big Foot was selling. But it had nothing to do with the ad, of course.

She probably wouldn’t run out and get a gun in that particular instance. She’s not that kind of person. But you know what I mean. I like guns.

Then the stars of the films started to make special guest appearances in the ads that cut into their films. This led to more confusion, more curiosity. Sales of certain products shot skyward.

Skyward.

Something happened in the sky that changed everything. Something in the sky changed our entire concept of life, the universe and our place in it.

A flying saucer.

A real flying saucer that you could see with your own eyes, not just in a viral ad on a screen. It buzzed around for a while, making a big deal about itself, drawing a lot of attention and landing on the White House lawn.

You could imagine what a shock it was for everybody to see a thing like that. Everybody was curious. Everybody was watching.

Aliens came out of the flying saucer. At first communication proved an embarrassing difficulty, but their meaning was clear enough. They were looking for something. They had diagrams and pictures to show what they were looking for. Something valuable to them. They were looking for something in exchange for something else.

It was okay, because they were not hostile.

They were just like us.

It turned out they were looking for fuel to get back home, and were willing to trade for it. They had alien clothing and alien cosmetics, alien jewelry, alien music. You name, they were selling it.

We didn’t have what they were selling so it worked out for them in that regard. But we didn’t have what they wanted either and they were stuck here. Anyway they fit right in. One alien signed on for a three picture deal with Cross Over Studios and was given those most coveted of subsidiary rights: to star in his own commercials.

His first film came out and he played an FBI agent shooting things, looking for something, some product or other. The line between feature film and commercial hadn’t blurred, it was removed completely. Film was the new religion and nothing was sacred anymore.

You know, people say I take these things too seriously. But, I'm starting to like that commercial about the gun more and more.

Friday, September 19, 2008

SAFE HAVEN

He drove down Clinton road, at speed, frantically combing the treetops for any sign of them. The treetops flickered by like frames of film. The treetops sliced the peek-a-boo playing moon to pieces.

He saw nothing in the sky. Nothing unusual. Perhaps he had lost them. Perhaps the trees hid him. If the trees hid him from them, then they could certainly hide them from him.

He drove.

For as long as he could remember, they had visited him. It didn’t matter that he moved around, it didn’t matter that he didn’t sleep nights. They would come to steal time, steal sanity, steal peace of mind, steal flesh. It didn’t matter that he drove and drove and sped and checked. They’d find him.

The radio spewed sharp noise and static. Theremin sobs up and down in frequency and pitch. He hadn’t turned the radio on.

Rounding a corner the car’s headlights hit almost instantly upon a barricade. The car stopped with a smoky screech. A tree had fallen in the middle of the road, blocking it completely. A big tree. He estimated it would have come up to about his mid-thigh if he got out of the car to investigate. But, he didn’t dare get out of the car.

A loud snap echoed through the calmness of the woods and took his mind off the obstruction in front of him. He slammed the car into reverse and began to roll back into the red brake-lit road he had only just left behind. Turned around in his seat, his right arm gripped the passenger seat headrest with talon-like intensity.

Another, larger tree fell behind the car.

Without a moment’s hesitation he unbuckled and took off into the dark woods. He didn’t bother closing the car door.

***

He was tucked away in the cold bosom of the woods with no guarantee of safety, never pausing, never thinking, only reacting to the slight apertures between trees which dictated his blind stumbling passage. People get lost in the woods all the time, sometimes on purpose. The woods so dark and threatening now a haven, a place of escape. The woods with its many watching eyes.

No matter where his pursuers had come from, no matter what the landscape looked like, the forest was the natural surface world of earth. This was his domain. They could not encroach upon him in this most natural of settings, the woods.

As he moved through the forest he understood the bully’s mentality: if you’re scared, the only way to neutralize the big, scary woods is to be the biggest, scariest thing in the woods. He put on his most intimidating airs and hoped against hope his body language was not lost on whatever creatures were out there. Still, he’d rather something that was natural got to him before they did, something that was supposed to be in the woods at night. At least he’d understand his fate, understand the necessity of the larger animal to take life from smaller life, then the woods themselves to take life from death. The unspoiled stoic woods whose secrets could either save or destroy him now.

But, he heard no stirring, save his own frantic rustling, pacing and breathing. Heard no hoots or howls, no grunts or crickets. He didn’t hear them scanning his now vacant car from their ship above. He hadn’t heard them land, possibly sending scouts to investigate, or hunters. Little grey hunters to take him back for more tests. He delved further into the unspoiled safety of the threatening woods.

He came upon a tree that was different from all the others. Unremarkably tree-like in all features save one: it had a door in it.

He booted the padlock, bringing his heel up repeatedly, meeting metal, getting little results, save for the satisfaction of letting off a lifetime‘s worth of steam. Kicking, kicking, kicking, booting, booting, pounding lamely away.

His mind told him to go on, forget about the door, just get out of there, keep running, go! But his instinct and his curiosity took hold of his body.

He kicked around with his now sore foot in the underbrush, looking for something to bash the lock with. A faint red glow caught his eye from deep inside the woods, burning slowly towards him.

They were coming.

He heard the faint rustling of things just out of sight between trees, they might as well have been miles away. He knew he couldn’t fight them. He always knew. But they always found him. How many nights had he run away? As many nights as they’d found him. But this time was different. This time he was in his home element, about to find a secret. The door was important, or more specifically, whatever the hell was behind it was important. Maybe the most important thing he would ever find in his life.

He found it, a great big bashing stick.

The sound of movement in the woods was moving in closer, the red glow was closer still.

It was the perfect bashing stick. A thick branch with a giant knob on one end. He took it with both hands and swung it over his head, behind his back barbarian style, and brought it down with all his strength, dead center on the padlock.

The glow, the noise, right behind him now.

He tossed the war club off to the side and stepped forward, opening the door in the tree. There were voices now, shouting voices, directly behind, calling him, calling. He dropped to his knees.

In the slight crevice of the tree, sat a limp, lifeless Grey alien, the giant insect-like black eyes concave and without their usual luster. The red glow engulfed him, now pierced through with yellow streams of luminescence. In the light he could just make out a red rectangular sign above the compartment:

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

He turned to look at his captors, but it was all wrong. Guns were trained on him, from all sides. Guns held by soldiers in fatigues and flak jackets. They were just kids, younger than him, but they were so serious. They were shouting. Kids playing war. They were the Cowboys, he was the Indian.

One of them was shoving the door closed, but the alien’s foot had rolled out. As the soldiers dragged him away, he noticed something on the alien’s foot: boot tread and a zipper running up the side.

Something was all wrong about this, something wasn’t quite right at all. One of the soldiers stuck him in the neck with a needle and the scene dissolved away. The soldiers dissolved into greys, their guns into probes, and their vehicle into a flying saucer.

Finally, he could believe his eyes.

That was more like it.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

“Come, sit” said Mazzutshat to his younger, “the tale begins.”

Arzuchel fashioned the thin red sand into a bowl in which he sat, and waited.

Mazzutshat took one long haul from his hakloop - his pipe - and held in the heavy, razor-edged smoke. He exhaled purple fumes slowly, from his nostrils as he passed the hakloop to his younger. Arzuchel couldn’t hold in the acrid smoke as long as his older, but it was fine, because this was the day Arzuchel initiated olderness.

Once the hakloop’s final embers had been doused, the two sat on the red sandy hill together as two boneless piles of flesh sit. Perhaps Arzuchel felt more boneless, Mazzutshat had had all the practice between the two of them, and though his body was heavy, he was practiced enough to begin his tale in earnest.

“When the land was young,” he began, “and our people wandered wild, a noisy star fell from the sky.”

The smoke still clung to the air, stinging Arzuchel’s eyes. He closed them and saw Mazzutshat’s tale told in smoke.

“It landed here and cracked open like an egg, and from the star there emerged a host of horrible, pink-skinned creatures. They came bearing three gifts.

“But, at first, they found no one to give the gifts to. So they gave the first gift to the land itself in the hope that the free people of the land would see how generous they were and come to them. The first gift was fire.”

Arzuchel’s upper lip began to bead with thick salty sweat.

“The land glowed and raged with the fire, and before long, it had drawn many caravans of wanderers, who stared in amazement. The pink visitors knew then that they had the people where they wanted them and decided to endow them with the second gift.

“They erected a great city, the first seen in the world, a simple thing perhaps, but one with a very many complexities and accessories. It‘s towers rose above the clouds. The sides of the towers glimmered and reflected the heavens because they were made of glass, but strong and sturdy to stand up to the pounding of years and decades. The people were so enamored with the gifts that they became greedy and wanted to horde the precious baubles and trinkets that the city came along with. Olders and Youngers alike faught, fang and claw for scraps of worthless paper and discs of useless shiny metal.”

Arzuchel’s damp brow began to wrinkle now and though his body was still unbearably heavy, he stirred.

“Until that time, our people had never known battle, and with no one to mediate, there were no sides to take, everybody fought for themselves. It was anarchy. The pink-skinned ones held a competition of popularity to see who should mediate over the great city, and in no time it was done. The city had a king and order was mostly restored.

“It was then that the visitors, pleased with the work they had done, left this place, in the same star they had fallen from and shot back out into the heavens.

“But, before long, the king demanded payment from the people of the great city for the services he was giving them and not much longer after that, the king was the richest man in the city. With his newfound riches he was able to hire others to do the kinds of jobs he didn’t care for. People to cook his food, people to clean his house, others to guard his person against attack from jealous commoners, and the more bodyguards he hired, the more people tried to attack him.

“Knowing that if all the citizens were to attack him all at once he would surely be defeated, he put the entire city on wheels and moved it, at night, when all were asleep.

“But, the noise of the great city rolling away into the night was too much for some to sleep through and they awoke the rest of the people with cries of, ‘There goes the neighborhood! Look, it’s running down the road! Follow it!’

“When the people caught up to the rolling city, they sacked the king’s castle and left all his men for dead. And that is why, to this day, our people do not live in one place, we travel the land, for a city does not make a people great.”

Mazzutshat slowly and carefully got up from his seated position, and dusted himself off, rising fearlessly into the cold, purple night.

Arzuchel opened his eyes slowly, one by one, and found he had regained some control over his body. With some effort, he spoke:

“What about the third gift?”

Mazzutshat peered over the hill, opposite Arzuchel toward a small settlement of permanent shelters and pockets of fires in the distance, and said,

“I already said what the third gift was. War,” he pointed toward the settlement and said, “now go, Arzuchel! Today you become an older!”

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Born of Flesh, Made of Glass

The clanking of the metal chains around the prisoners’ ankles sounded like a sad chorus to the crowd of humans who had gathered at the side of the road.

“They are like animals – our boys are animals… for crys’sake do something about it… they have us now… We love you boys, never forget that… kill them all … nothing but a bunch weaklings!”

It was mid-autumn and the air had grown clear and cool. Six days before, it had rained incessantly never stopping but for a pocket or two. The clear sky had brought no relief to the prisoner soldiers for it was the colour of fading fire. They had grown irritable and tired amongst their captors’ unyielding march to nowhere. But like the cattle they were, they seemed unable to help themselves against their masters’ will, though they knew instinctually they were soon to meet the scythe.

Any time a man grew slightly restless he was tortured or worse yet, was fed to the zombie horde. The eyes of the invaders gave great council to their concerns. Word amongst the prisoner soldiers passed quickly, as intended, that a simple flinch was worth a thousand whips – an attempted escape a horrid death.

Fear raged in the eyes of the soldiers. This is what had become of the great Anti-Terrifying Forces. A simple flinch worth a thousand whips. Had RuWolf’s analysis come true? Were the ATF nothing but a bunch of fear mongers unable to truly defend humanity from its real enemy?

After a long march the golden invaders told the men to sit and rest. As soon as the golden men had turned their backs, childish arguing ensued amongst the group. The arguing must have stemmed from the knowledge that the worst was yet to come, that the journey would become horrible.

Fights broke out over food and water and jackets. All these resources had become vital. That they had become resources at all was a cruel joke played on the once mighty ATF. During the Zombie wars they had been given the most powerful and pertinent resources in regards not just to their victory but also to their survival. Now they were reduced to fighting over pathetic linen not thick enough to warm the fattest man.

Fire would be delivered once every three days. The golden invaders would ration it out though it would only be two pits, an eastern and western fire, which made it difficult for all 80 captors to have warmth. Though none of the soldiers knew why they did not use fire more often, they would often ask their souls ‘were they not afraid of the cold like us?’

The answer should have been as bright as the sun. As the rationing continued, it became quickly evident that the masters would never be near when a fire was lit.

The prisoner soldiers had not begun to realize their advantage during the early days of the invasion. Self preservation was the most dominant thought during this time and when the fires were sparked they did not question it and chose only to speak amongst themselves about pleasant thoughts of children, sunny days and speculation. And on these warm nights, the fighting lessened.

As time went on and new captives were found, something had changed. It was a feeling growing in the heart of each man but no words were directly spoken about their new understanding. They only shot malicious eyes at one another and discussed trivial things to keep their thoughts from betraying them.

But eventually every dam must burst.

Over at the western fire, the forty or so men gathered as close to the fire as possible and spoke earnestly about their future.

“Suppose they want us alive?” asked a soldier named Hatfield-Singh, who feared many things and had braved even more. “What you think it’s for?”

“Could be about anything,” said another soldier, slight in stature with a receding hairline. His name was Romero and he annoyed his fellow prisoner soldiers with his pesky questioning. But he never changed his attitude and one soldier – a veteran officer of some distinction – had taken a liking to the older grunt.

“It could be about building something, maybe a death ray or some other killing device. Makes sense to me,” said a deep voice away from the fire.

The conversation had aroused much suspicion from the men of the eastern fire, and unbeknownst to the men of the western fire, they stopped their own conversation so that they might hear the western word.

“No that doesn’t make sense,” said Hatfield-Singh. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that . I think they want to sacrifice us like the Incas did. ‘Fact I think they taught the all the pyramid people how to think. Think about all Mayan, Incan and Egyptian reverence for gold.”

“So we are going to build a pyramid,” wondered Romero. The eastern fire men laughed a horse laugh, almost as a sigh of relief.

“If they wanted to do us harm they would have killed off the citizens, instead they let them line up on the streets and let them demoralize us like the ungrateful cowards they are,” said the deep voice from the back.

The man who owned that voice in the back appeared before the fire and his face lit up like a jack o’ lantern in the unnatural light. His eyes were baggy and withdrawn, his lips thin and curled in. Over his right breast the soldiers could see the officer’s shield still shining bright and clean. Immediately as a sign of respect, the soldiers waited patiently for him to say something. In a deep voice he continued: “if they are building something it isn’t going to be useful for us earthlings. It’s going to be used either against or by us for some sort of aim they have. As for the citizenry, just because the citizenry are not in chains does not mean they are not held captive. What is the difference, huh, if the cell is a globe or a metal box? Where would they go, my man?”

Captain Frankie Biggs began to smile at his own words. He coughed and then in his deep voice continued to describe to the prisoner soldiers gathered by the western fire why he thought they were building something.

“Listen, if they wanted us dead we would be dead. We have seen that they have reluctantly killed prisoners that have acted up. They prefer to torture and shame us. Keeping us around for something, for sure.”

None of the soldiers said a word. They continued to listen.

“Why is that? Because they want something from us, naturally, and we will have to do something for them in order to stay alive,” said Biggs. “Listen I don’t know what they want to build just as much as you don’t. But the fact remains we will live until we find out what that is.”

“We could escape,” said Hatfield-Singh. His young heart showing more and more. “And we sit here like cattle awaiting our slaughter and for what?”

“We sit here because we want to live asshole,” said a tired voice from the eastern fire.

Several grumbles of agreement came from that fire.

“Ya fool Jonesy,” said Hatfield-Singh.

The eastern fire group’s grumbles grew louder and the men over there began to line up blocking out the direct light from the fire, making it difficult to see their faces.

“Shut up Hat, that talk will get us killed, you good for nothing punk,” said Sam Jones, the eldest man standing by the eastern fire.

The arguing went on between the two camps for hours, neither side giving an inch, the west wanting freedom the east wanting life, but neither gaining ground. As most fights go that are filled with fear and belief, the more they argued the worse the feelings got and the more the pressure built. For as much as the two fire camps would have loved to tear each others limbs apart, they were no more capable to do a thing about it then a baby is capable of choosing when he may enter and leave a playpen.

Capt Biggs had not said a word during the bitter bickering thinking very much about why they were even fighting about this to begin with. “Man is fragile,” he thought. “God, heaven, afterlife, ghosts – we use the terms but why? They form a belief...keep us going. The golden men? They use chains and drag us from one point to another in a never ending march. For what? To kill a belief… keep us quitting.”

“Our immortality?” questioned Biggs. “Forget that ‘mate. We are certainly no gods. We are man: born as earthly flesh and made as vulnerable as glass.”

With that a great struggle commenced amongst the two groups – a thought versus shame– born of flesh, made of glass. Many men – perhaps half the total – from both sides pulled as hard as they could to get at one another.

One of the soldiers, a young man not more than twenty, arose to his feet and begun to clank the chains around his ankles against the western fire pit.

Clank! Born of flesh – Clank! Made of glass – Clank! Born of Flesh – Clank! Made of glass… and on it went until the arguing and clanking it inevitably caught the attention of the golden invaders who made note of what was happening but did not approach the group.

A terrifying piercing sound broke over the fire. It was the sound the golden invaders used as a “humanitarian” method of subduing the prisoners. It did not work. The men of the western fire continued in their rebellion, certain of its success as a group who had once lost hope but had found it again, recharged and more vibrant then it had been before. Tired and without hope, the men of the eastern fire begged and pleaded the men of the western fire to quit and not upset their captors.

“Please, we beg of you. Do the right thing and shut up,” said Jones.

Capt. Biggs felt that the eastern men had begun to cherish their chains as a baby cherishes his play pen: outside the links horrible risk; inside the links loving captivity.

The golden invaders had not seen this split coming. Panicking, they began zapping their prisoners one-by-one, regardless of the fire, though as usual it seemed in their tentative actions they did not wish to murder the whole set only to make an example of a very few. But they had not accounted for the very words that seemed to have appeared just as wondrously out of the sky as they had.

“Born of flesh! Made of Glass! Born of flesh! Made of Glass!”

The western men kept going until they were subdued finally just before dawn.

When the cold and grey October dawn fell upon them and the fire pits had crackled their last spark, the men of the western fire were violently awoken to see what their eyes could not believe.

The men of the eastern fire were gone. And standing where they should have been was Sergeant Dmitri Moulaki holding his right hand high in the air.

A zombie horde stood behind him awaiting their orders.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Gotta have a share

“Morning – good morning. A Spormex get’s to have his share.”

The pilot begun to run his mind over the XzaneX hit:

“Morning – SaaaaaaaaaaDDDD Mornin’. A Spromex gotta grab his share!”

Chad – the pilot – a Spormex -- checked the window to his left Fan-Four Galaxy: Four gorgeous liveable planets, three pure resource planets and a bright young sun.

“Ah the golden age,” thought Chad.


Wait………………!!!!! No time for that. Purple and Green lights flashing after me…


Here they are, the Interstellar Travelling Space Police and their sinister friend Mr Ray Gun shooting on after like a fucking amazing dark plan right after our man Chad. Let’s go then.

They’ve been after him for thirty days on the space trip of a life time… the only way to do it is keep it really fast. Never slow down never give up, make space bend – make it bend down to earth on the long rainbow descent.

WAIT for no Police man. Always barge ahead, that was the Chad plan – barge ahead of any slow-ass punk not fast enough to fight for their share of the pie -- the reason for it: uncanny good forsaken fun.

Between the last galaxy and this one our man Chad had a thought that maybe the running wasn’t so good. His heart was beating mighty slow and maybe this hideaway plan Jimmy had – the Jimmy plan – was a better one and maybe they could find a drink of Move It on a surface bar. That would be nice. Drink Move Its all day, “ah dude it’s been way too long,” Chad said to his buddy on Zais, Jimmy, on his Sprint Spirit’ VisoTalk. He pulled a quick right in to the Spiral-Mono Galaxy.

“K’ Jimmy, your way.” Chad looked to his right... the fabulous Spiral-Mono Galaxy.

Oh Chad had heard of the “oasis” known as Spiral-Mono Galaxy: One liveable planet, one dead planet and bunch of bizarros surrounding them, spinning at tourist pace around a middle age sun. “Peace!” Chad wanted to say and get on with his day BUTTT-ttttt, the police kept it a coming.

Wahoo-wahoo-wahoo.

Chad sized up the deal burning out a stellar boom to the planet Three from Sun. Get off on this old school blue orb and roll with it for a while then stellar boom it over to the Fan-Four… oh the Fan-Four! Perfect size galaxy. He missed Fan-Four.

It took a long time to get Three from Sun but when he got on this low level civilization of Humanoids on Planet Three from Sun, he felt at ease. It was serendipitous. Green lush hills and bright blue sky made him sleepy and so he pulled over to some weak collection rocks. Possibly some sort of life exists in the rocks…

“Or maybe it was like the Reef on Lar-Lar, hmmmmm…
Fuck it. Let’s look for some Move It.”

The fire surrounding our man Chad’s Kick-Ass Spirit Sprint almost took our man Chad’s eyes out. He felt so humiliated. A scratch on this beautiful space cruiser, “oh poor me,” thought Chad.

A long journey that had seen its share of bumps and bale outs had made Chad Allen Bowellz -- our Spormex supreme – very tired but upon seeing the awesome hills that stood before his weak eyes, he made sure to take a picture with his phototron and SNAP! There my friends is Three from Sun on the baddest day of all – the arrival of our man Chad!

Chad moved on to the street so that he might take it all in…

“My god he’s parked on MY GRANDMOOOOOOTTTTHHHERRR!!!”

Sweet, Chad thought. Making friends already. He smiled took a shot with his phototron, which seemed to have an adverse effect on local leather, and said:

“Hi, no need to welcome me. Just another bloody trip from Zais.”

“Sooommee one call the authorities. Call the military! There is a monster on the loose!” a man cried running away.

Yes it all looked very amusing to our man Chad. He took the time to thank all his welcomers for his ear-piercing welcome but he wondered if they could quench his thirst… could they find him some “MOVE IT!” he enthusiastically yelled in excitement to his new friends. “MOVE IT NOW!” And he laughed.

The welcomers began running away but our man Chad was not perturbed by it. Instead he looked to the blue sky and didn’t see any ITSP making entry. What are they afraid of, Chad worried. They should come to me. I have it all, Charisma, Talent (best freestyle Moll in the Fan-Four galaxy), the ability to make people laugh… everything—shit god damn – basics on Zais but here it makes you a god.

“Dunno Jimmy,” our man Chad spoke to his watch. “If I can hack it out here,” Chad moseyed over to a beach and sat down. A group of people were kind enough to make way for him even though he just needed a strip. Stupid TFSers. Bunch of backward monkeys.

“Any Move It around here?” he yelled. Still more people just fucked off. Our man Chad was beginning to feel lonely. He missed Zais.

No! It was not lonely, it was only pathetic feeling of loneliness and that would pass, right?Our man Chad felt lonely and he made a move to the bar where people were dancing. Hey Chad wants to dance, thought Chad. TFSers had slow planet but it had some god-damn-fast music.

Our man Chad entered the music bar called Annabelles and parked his butt on the bar stool checking out the crowd. They didn’t seem to notice but Chad did notice the bartender was looking at him all real worried-like, like some sort of bad guy or something.

But they don’t get it, do they Chad. It’s not a crime to go for an Interstellar space trip – all Fan-Four planets now have the capacity to get out on it –that wonderful trip in a Spirit Sprint, the first civilian Interstellar Speeder. Back in the day you had to use those sloth-like FamWagins. They weren’t much use in leaving the galaxy. A new law says we can’t go but our man Chad don’t like that law and so he ignored it.
The bartender finally arrives and pluckily asks, “what are you having… AH, I can’t do it. Call the police.” And he bolts out the door.

“See ya,” said our man Chad, turning his head to watch the bar room dancing stop. “Can anyone serve me a Move It or not?”

He looked in the mirror and saw his beautiful red face and had a laugh. Behind him he saw many people march slow and cowardly out the front door. They didn’t dare to make eye contact with our man Chad. What retarded people live on this planet – “HAHAHAHA………………………………………….HA!”

The lights shining in the mirror blinded him and a quick THWACK! Ran across his back.

He woke up to discover that he was in jail. Perfect. Actually it could work, our man Chad thought. Even if the ITSP were to find his Spirit Sprint lying on those collapsible rocks, they won’t see his wonderful rosy face here. Those luckless suckers don’t talk to these Earth Police officers. Sweet.

They throw two other weridos in the box with our man Chad. Chad likes a good fight as much as he likes a sip of Move It. He thinks the one who thinks he’s a wolf would go a round with him. Maybe the skinny short guy who calls himself, The Breadman, wants to challenge Chad. Either way he’ll rendez vous fists with any earthlings skulls.

He then thinks, maybe the Breadman is called that because he’s like those good for nothing food suppliers in the jails back in Zais… maybe he needs to ask: “Move It?”

He asks two or three times wondering if the poor Breadman understands him clearly. He doesn’t. He just moves like the rest of them. So he lowers his head and shakes his fist but the Breadman doesn’t get it.

“Move little man.”

An hour later and the Breadman is sleeping and Chad has decided that the Breadman is not a food supplier and this Wolf Dude keeps harping about zombies and shit, well, Chad throws a large punch. The next punch he lands the Wolfman bites his exposed nose and Chad runs back. He don’t bleed like these TFSers. But it hurts bad.

“What are you doing?”

“I bit a cop so if you think, Chad, that I am afraid of biting you big boy then you are mistaken.”

The two sit down and Chad sees that the Breadman has awoken. So Chad asks one last time, his hope up: “Move little man?”

Chad sits back down with Wolfman and he asks Wolfman what he thinks about earth?


“I can turn anyone in to a werewolf, I am sure.”

“Did he turn?” Chad asks, curious if this zombie thing existed on Three from Sun.

Wolfman nods his head. “I ain’t ever gonna know, my good man. He pulled us off the bus that is sure. But whether or not a werewolf can turn a zombie in to a werewolf is unknown. Whether or not a zombie can turn a werewolf in to a zombie is unknown.”
“I think you get to choose,” the Breadman cries from the back of the cell. But his voice sounded so awful that he was ignored.

After the Breadman and the Wolfman were released, Chad began to fear he was going to be next. But if he was released? He mustn’t let that happen.

Chad paces and paces. He thinks and thinks. It’s only a matter of time. They got to let his type out. He only landed his car in a bad spot. Landing on the rock was no real crime. They had to let him out. Chad began to pace harder.

A nervous grip on his stomach rolled over and over and Chad began to sweat it.

“Hey when you guys letting me out?” Chad screamed. A Spant weight was lifted off his shoulders.

“You? You kidding me right? You ain’t ever going to leave.”

Perfect.

A happy morning. A Spormex has got his share.

For now.

Soon it will be another sad morning.

A Spormex gotta have his share.

WILLIAM CHALKER'S TIME MACHINE

Roswell, New Mexico, July 6, 1947

“Come get some sleep,” Audrey said.

“Can’t,” said William, jogging his foot up and down, resting his elbows on his knees, and running his hands over his face, “it all happens tomorrow. I don’t know why they have to make us wait.”

“I thought the weather balloon confirmed conditions weren’t right today?”

“It did, it did. But, all this waiting around is killing me.”

“It’s just a fail-safe measure. Hopefully, we won’t ever have to use the darn thing.”

“But don’t you see, Aud? That’s just it. We’ll know tomorrow if we do. Tomorrow, we’ll know if and when nuclear war breaks out.”

“I wish you hadn’t built the thing. If the Russians ever built one of their own, they’d fire off the nukes the next day, and I pray that won’t happen to us.”

“Yeah,” William said, flashing her a worried look, “me too. But I don’t think even the Russians would be that crazy. You see, there’d have to be some kind of grace period. You couldn’t just build the closed time loop and send the nukes the next day. You’d have to keep going back through it every single day, and eventually you’d drag enough radiation with you to wipe out the whole country. I mean, how long is the life of the statesman? 40 years left after taking office? We’ll know who wins the war if men from the 1980s walk through the device.”

“What if no one comes through.”

“Someone will. It’ll be too much of a curiosity for someone to not want to come back. Right now, it’s a one way trip, we don’t know how to go forward in time, except by just living. But if one day in the future, they find the way to get back, I imagine they’ll take trips back all the time, if for no other reason than to get the history books right.”

“But, won’t we know who won the war if no one comes through tomorrow.”

William paused for a long minute, trying not to think about it, trying not to show on his face, that that’s what had been keeping him wide awake all night, “yes.”

“There may not be anyone even if the bombs aren’t dropped. Like you said, it’s a one way trip. There probably won’t be anyone who’d want to take that trip if they didn’t have to.”

“Yeah, Aud, that’s a thought. But still, wouldn’t curiosity get the better of someone, somewhere down the line. Think of how amazing it would be to go back to the time of the dinosaurs, or to see the dawn of man, discovering fire, living in caves, fighting off sabre-toothed tigers! Why, if someone from our day and age went back a million years, he could be the one to give fire to the cavemen, to give them better weapons to fend off their predators. Think about how far ahead of the curve we’d be if someone were to go back and help speed up the process of man’s evolution!”

“Yeah, they’d have already used the bomb by now.”

He thought about it a minute, “You know, Audrey, I’m glad you said that, you see, because I’m starting to think that, well, we just won’t get around to using the bomb again. The future of the human race depends on it. There’s too much at stake. Think of how far we’ve gone, how far we’ll go. I think that, the leaders of the future will come to their senses. It’s because the bomb’s not important, it’s the threat of the bomb that’s the thing. See, what you said just now got me thinking. You’re probably right. Cavemen probably would drop the bomb, because they’d never seen it in action. That’s why we‘ll never drop the bomb. There won‘t be any men from the ’80s walking through the device tomorrow. I‘m starting to feel better already.”

“Or another way of looking at it is, if you were to go back a million years into the caves, and you brought a bomb with you, you’d be the most powerful man in the world, because you’d be the only man with a bomb. But, you’d only be powerful in your own mind, because they wouldn’t know what a bomb was, or a man actually because they'd be apes. You’d have to drop the bomb as a show of power, then you could rule over them like a king or a queen.”

“Audrey! That’s some hell of a way to think!”

She kissed him on the cheek, smiling, “now come to bed, my little caveman!”

***

The next day.

“We’re ready to go forward, sir,” William told the General.

“Good,” the General said, chewing a long stem of grass nervously, “commence activation procedure, Chalker!”

“You mean turn it on, sir?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just a little nervous.”

“No room for nerves here. We’re throwing open the doors of time.”

The device glowed. A great white light that could be seen from space flashed in the relatively small portal.

“Someone’s activated the device from the other side,” William had to scream to be heard, “a man from the future!”

The brilliant light began to fade and in the doorway from the future there was an outline of a man. The light bent around the figure giving it a skeletal appearance. The light subsides slowly, but the figure remained skeletal. It stepped further into the past, off the platform and onto the sand of the New Mexican desert.

“Oh my God,” William said.

“Great Caesar’s toga! What the hell is that thing?” cried the General.

It’s skin was grey. The Cranium enormous, giant black eyes called even more attention to the head, piercing, insect-like. The limbs skinny as pipe-cleaners, defied the logic that they would not be able to support such a top-heavy being. It was basically humanoid in shape and form, and glided forward with a graceful fluidity, almost as though suspended by wires. It extended its slender fingered hand toward the men in a gesture of peace.

“It’s us, sir,” William said, when he was composed enough to speak, “us in a million years.”

The General was awkwardly indecisive. He couldn’t tell if he was captivated by fear, or curiosity or being controlled by the damn things and ordered to stand down. He felt waves of serenity lap at him but a nagging voice tugged away it him, it’s a trick! Don’t trust it! Mother of pearl, man, if it’s not wearing a US military uniform, don’t trust it!

“Shoot it,” cried the General, “kill it, quick!”

***

This story is dedicated to Doug Phillips & The Lemon Tree

THE ORBLINGS

Tech support hacked manically away at their keyboards, jotting notes. Smiling and laughing with each other. We were all pretty young, just out of grad school. The kind of scientists who smoked grass and partied on the weekend.

When they’d finished sticking electrodes on me, I gave my thumbs up and said, “commencing dimensional shift.”

I placed the pipe between my lips and inhaled.

I sat for an indeterminate slice of infinity in attendance of divine congress.

It’s the colors I remember mostly, and the sense of wonder, but those two things seemed to melt together in a strange way. The colors were my sense of wonder. And the feeling that the big secret was always right around the corner, just out of the way, but perhaps reachable one day when the child-like gods stop playing with me and let me in the game.

Back in the lab, my support team were unhooking me from the machines.

“This is truly remarkable,” Jensen said, bewildered, “you went. You actually shifted. Earth’s first dimensional astronaut.”

“Not the first,” I corrected him, deep in thought, “the first documented.”

***

“Humans have been visiting this other dimension or dimensions for centuries now,” I read from my notes to the assembly, “via the hallucinogenic compound, DMT. This compound is produced naturally in the body and released in high doses during death. It is possible that when one undergoes the near-death experience, the DMT can actually shift a person’s consciousness into this other dimension, and there is life there. Other life with another kind of intelligence. These intelligences are playful and benign, seemingly helpful beings. Gifted children, beings of pure joy. In time, we will share knowledge in a free exchange of ideas. But, there can be no tricks. These beings may be benevolent in nature and very playful and they seem innocent, but there should be no attempt to deceive them. Remember these are extra dimensional intelligences, whose perceptions may be completely different from ours. There is evidence that these creatures, these machine elves, can see beyond our outer shell and into our innermost motivations.

“On my next interdimensional navigation, I will attempt to establish a permanent locus for the interaction of our separate realms. The trouble with this idea is the seemingly transient nature of timespace in this other dimension. What my team and I are hoping to accomplish is to give the self-transforming extradimensional beings a grid of coordinates that will help them locate our own origin point in timespace.”

The assembly was pleased with our findings and excited to hear more. I was excited to give them what they wanted.

***

“My best guess,” I said to Colvin, “is that our two dimensions are not so much separated by a single membrane, but are two similar membranes that rub up against one another, only slightly off centered. Like two sheets of transparent paper with the same drawing on it, off-set, each invisible to the other by normal human perception. The DMT allows our perceptions to shift over to the other dimension, with only minor almost imperceptible physical shifting.”

“And that’s what my research has proven,” Jensen said, “the minor physical shift.”

“Right,” I said, “that’s what we need you here for.”

“Yeah,” Colvin said, understanding washing over his features, “you want to ramp it up.”

“Ramp it up both ways,” I said, “we want to bring one of these beings to our world.”

Colvin thought about it for a long moment. Lines of concentration creased his forehead. “Okay,” he said, finally, “we can do it.”

***

Colvin’s telemetry cables were wired into my brain. Tech support giggled when my mouth retold long buried memories fired off at random as they found a stable neural connection.

“Okay White,” Colvin said to me, “you are now a satellite.”

This time, there was no pipe. Inhalation was a good way to get the DMT into the system quickly. Intravenous injection was a slower, less tangible experience. This time, they fired the DMT straight into my cerebellum.




Contact.


The bright long tunnel kaleidoscoped into a billion billion lights. I felt myself tethered to my body back in my home dimension, floating freely above and in a world beyond. The mercurial globes danced and smiled friendly curious smiles all around me. Their smiles were the dancing itself. They were helping me by dancing.


Something strange happened.



I danced with them and laughed by dancing, danced by laughing. The self transforming orblings came closer, closer.


Somehow they told me.



They knew. They knew by dancing with me what I was trying to tell them. Somehow they knew how to get to Earth. Somehow I knew they would have to go through me. Millennia of patience paid off. Their dancing was hunger. They were coming through me now, into the other world. Our world.


Their smiles told me.

Their smiles maybe not so friendly. The smiles became a physical thing. A mouth, and in that mouth, teeth.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

For love, life and duty

It had become so terrible. God damn zombies eating flesh and tearing out hearts from living people – living people!

For so many years Sergeant Malouki had killed his single-purpose foes and seen his comrades killed by single-purpose foes. He had come to known them as one identity.

From once he was named to the Sergeant post, he had seen many brave and selfless men throw themselves at the horde and fight valiantly until their gruesome end for simple words he used. The numbers were too large to count, the fate too obvious to ignore. And yet no matter how many words he used, there was no reason to acknowledge what was an obvious fact -- the horde would win.

What no one could figure out was who was to blame.

Had it been from the top of the ATF? If it been a question of leadership then perhaps the several changes at the head of the Anti-Terrifying Forces would have made a difference. But each change was no more effective then putting a new paint job on an old Pinto. No, leadership was not the question.

Had it been the ability of the troops? If that were true then the many disciplinary actions would have sufficed to put the young men in their place and perhaps then the well-oiled machine would have driven further and punched harder. But the troops had fought as clean a fight as possible and when the circumstances warranted they had cheated and become as thoughtless as the enemy. When the leadership, from Colonel Adam Whalen to Major General Mark Wasniewski even to Captain Frank Biggs, asked more from their troops, they received it. From this man learned the value of heart and synergistic cemetery space – graves having become a part of history.

Was it the support of the citizenry? Not in as much as had been blamed. The usual calls for patriotism were at first used in political means to deflect attention from the fact that no border controlled the zombie. It was the Russians who were weak. It was the fault of the Chinese. The Americans had given birth to the first zombie. Blame Haiti! No, the citizenry supported the troops efforts whenever they were called to do so and never questioned their political leaders even when the pasty white claws of the mindless monster was clawing through their doors. “We stand on guard for Thee!”

Was it him? Sgt Malouki thought longest on this question. He wondered if he had not loved his common man enough to say: “enough is enough. We have sent too many to their graves for a hopeless cause.” His mom had once said so much. That memory bit hardest then any other.

On the streets, in the farm fields, in the desert and in the mountains so many battles had been lost. There had been no winning answer. But there had always been enough fighters to lose.

Sgt. Malouki’s face had some time ago lost the innocence of youth: his beard was very thick on his lower face, his hair crumpled and curly stringing down to his shoulders and three scars from battles gone-by – one, a quick but prominent line above the bridge of his nose, two, a deep semi-circle below his chin (covered by his thick black beard), and three a scar that looked like a spike just below his right eye.

The warehouse he and his squadron stood was falling apart. Beams lied vertically hanging weakly from the roof. Windows were broken and allowing the cold air to seep in to the room. And the smell was rotten – many members of the squadron covered their faces when they could with dirty rags.

Looking in the mirror, Sgt. Malouki felt he had no one else to blame. He had fought too long and had not allowed his actions to truly accept the obvious truth that the war was lost. He could see the Maple Leaf on his left shoulder and remarked how faded it looked. He could barely look at it any more.

In the background he could hear another approaching horde. The sound they made must have come from thousands. He quickly ordered his boys – none of his squadron were older then 18 – to assemble. The fresh-faced meats were going to be sent to their doom, Sgt. Malouki thought. But he had not received orders to retreat. They must fight.

He would not allow his boys to go in alone. He would lead the charge and if no one lived then they died doing what was right. Follow the leader.

But they had a chance. Sgt. Malouki had seen and heard of victories. It was possible that they could do it. With every breath he breathed, he wanted to believe this were true.

Once the troops were properly assembled, Sgt. Malouki raised his right hand in command to let his troops know to wait. His right hand had the power of life and death. His hand determined the fate of 20 teenagers, pimply and pathetic but the best the nation had. Their fates belonged to his hand.

While his hand hung in the air, Sgt. Malouki remained reflective about events in his life since the war began. Most seasoned soldiers did this before any dangerous battle. But in the faces of many of his current troops he had seen an eagerness to fight to win. Youth had no concept of loss. He admired that in them.

He thought of Frankie Biggs -- Captain Frank Biggs! It had been a month since he heard from him. He wondered what news there could be of his good friend. There had been talk the zombies had captured the Captain – a captain! But this was impossible. Zombies would never choose to capture a man of any ranking. Choice was against their nature. A strange change must have occurred.

His thoughts were fleeting and he soon thought of Ernesto Chow's pulpit, who standing before him not two weeks before said “no matter the field of battle, a man is a soldier as long as he is fighting. And if he is fighting a soldier can not be separated from the human spirit just as wine can not be separated from the grape.”

And he thought of Stacy Berry. A painful sensation ran through his soul.

Infuriated, his arm still holding high, he cried: “We only live as long as we fight. We only fight as long as we love. We only love as long as we live!”

The sounds of the horde approaching the warehouse had brought along with it the cry of inevitability.

He dropped his hand and the symphony of gunfire and torturous screams, the sound of hell, bled throughout the night.

By morning Sgt. Malouki stood alone. His troop had been unceremoniously eaten. All 20 of his men made a main course. There were still necks oozing out crimson paint though they had no body or head to call their own.

Surrounded and defeated, Sgt. Malouki begun to think of Stacy Berry and that night in the abandoned warehouse. He had wondered all these years about whether or not it had been love or lust. He now realized that all these years he had wasted thinking about such a frivolou debate. It was obvious that she had meant more to him then any battle victory. It had been love all along.

Succumbed with dark depression, he awaited the horde to devour him and many decrepit hands did grab and pull at him, and some teeth had pressured his skin but before they did the sky burned and an golden man wonderfully floated in from the heavens.

The being – one solid golden manlike form – raised its hand. The zombies stopped and let Sgt. Moulaki down.

Breathing heavily, closing his eyes and feeling about as bad as man could feel, Sgt. Malouki looked upon this man with bizarre pigmentation and felt a renewed sense of hope fuelling his destroyed body.

But he did not shoot at the form for he was hanging on by just a thread.

The golden man began to communicate not in words but in a manner that was clear and obvious that Sgt. Malouki knew exactly the words that were being shared.

“Who are you?” it asked.

Moulaki did not know how to respond.

“Who are you?” it asked again.

Moulaki returned to his feet. The blank stares of his carnivorous foes remained exactly as he expected. They had always been blank and they looked as if they were possessed without passion, without thought, without anything at all. All that suppressed their desire to eat was locked in their vile empty minds. The burning sky gave him a peaceful moment and he gazed upon the sky as if he were looking upon it with innocent eyes, eyes with no expectations and no hope -- no fear.

“Who are you, human?” the golden man asked a third time, not changing its tone.

“I believe the better question is what are you?” Moulaki answered, his words tainted by cold hatred. “You have stopped the violent surge and burned the evening sky but I have no idea what you are. Why isn't the horde eating me?”

"Do you wish to be supper?"

Malouki shot him a look of confusion.

“Have you no faith?”

“No. Not as much as I can say I have love.”

“Can you not see when they do not heel and when they do? You must look in to the light."

At that moment a great fog emitted from the golden man and it enveloped Malouki’s vision, blinding him.

“I cannot see,” he screamed.

“But you need not see to have clarity,” the man said.

A great spell came over the sergeant and the horde’s voices seemed to echo along a hall like thunder in the sky.

In the hall he felt himself helpless as a boy and Dimi walked meekly feeling stripped of his title and of his value. A door was open to the left and he made his way there though he knew not what compelled him to do so. Off in the corner of the room under a dim light a man was scribbling on seven sheets with seven hands and was muttering something very indecipherable. Malouki was very interested however and moved in closer to hear the words spoken to him.

“Wicked,” the scribe whispered. “Punishment for all who sin.”

If a moment had been an hour and hour had been a year, Dimi felt it had been a millennium since had last seen the golden man send fog to his eyes. The room he was in spread wide and never ending. Seven golden lamps stood amongst the room. Dimi wanted to grab them but they were too far and too hot. Angered he walked over to the scribe and asked: “why am I here and where is the form?”

The scribe did not turn his eyes from the table but he spoke in soft tone:

“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer,” he said. “I tell you, the devil challenges even the most pious, and you will suffer. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

A crack in the room floor spread long and Dimi was sucked in to the gaping division. Falling, a large hand grabbed hold of him in a large pale palm and took him to a dark room. A warm sensation flowed from his heart but he was scared and he wept.

In an effort to comfort himself he asked the questioned that weighed most heavily on his heart even though it was trivial to his mind.

“What is love?” he asked himself. Though the question seemed trivial, he answered it nonetheless. “Love is harmony. Love is separate. Love is what keeps me going and what destroys me. Love is forever fleeting.”

The room then filled with four men without faces and four horses without sound. A white man carrying a bow and wearing a crown asked him whether the war had been fought valiantly.

“It had,” Dimi answered unsure why he felt the need to answer the question.

Just after the answer, the white man and his white horse disappeared.

A red man carrying a sword approached Dimi and asked if he had given his and their blood for righteousness.

“I have,” Dimi answered.

Just as the white man, the red man and his red horse disappeared right after Dimi answered the question.

A black man carrying a scale asked of he had fed who he could and cared for who he could and paid respect for those he couldn’t.

“Of course,” Dimi answered not angrily as he expected but with an unexpected calmness. The black man and his black horse repeated the pattern set by the first two men.

The final man was pale green. He seemed alien to earth and not like any of the former men in the room. He asked no questions and stood silently until Dimi was sure he could answer a question that was unasked.

“I am ready,” Dimi said. The pale green man and his pale green horse did not disappear like the previous three. It was Dimi who disappeared from the room.

At his awakening Dimi felt he died. Though he was living and could smell and see and speak he was dead. He looked upon the golden man whose face had become visible and the golden man looked upon Dimi and began to weep. To Dimi the man had the most beautiful eyes and his peace was Dimi’s peace, his heart was Dimi’s heart, his spirit Dimi’s.

“I am ready to leave this earth,” Dimi said.

Yet the horde stood still.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Things mom should have told you about aliens


5). Do not conduct intercourse with extraterrestrial beings:

How can this end well? Whether it’s an attractive girl from Cocoon or an ugly and powerful girl like the Queen Alien from Aliens, what is important is the answer to the question: what happens if someone gets pregnant? Well we saw what happened in the Aliens movies.

But there are far less disgusting – but just as terrifying – results awaiting you if you do get it on with an ET.

For instance who gets custody of the green little critter and how does that work when one parent lives on Earth and the other could live on a planet named Marmor 100s of millions of light years away?

What if, e-gads, that planet allows abortions to go on without a sniper following them around? That is a way of life we have here – do you want your half-earthling child to grow up in a planet like that.

What if they don’t believe in God? Your child could be raised to be an unholy little bastard and there is little you or your priest can do about it.

No, the complications are too many. The results too few.

Keep it in your pants.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Things mom should have told you about aliens


4). Never approach an alien on your own:

Would you approach a pack of wolves? Of course not and you wouldn’t want to approach an alien or a group of aliens. Lord knows where they have been.

Think about it. Theses are aliens. They came from outer space. If you didn’t know they existed before their visit then you don’t know what else exists out there. We’re talking disease on a universal scale people.

You touch an alien you could end up with a cosmic communicable disease. The rotting insides become a precursor for your decaying outsides.

Better not to touch them before the Hasmat team sprays them down.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Things mom should have told you about aliens


3). Keep it real:

If an alien visits there is no need to "freak" out. Assume the best. Remember you are the first human they will see – you are the AMBASSADOR OF EARTH.

One thing you should keep in mind is that an alien invasion is not a right to make the joke, “take me to your dealer.” We have all seen the poster. Aliens don’t smoke pot and they don’t know where the “good stuff” is. The only thing smoking at that point will be your insides after a death ray "incident".

Instead, kindly wave to the newcomer and tell him or her – or it: “Welcome to earth, home of cheese.”

They will be suitably impressed that the dominant species on earth could use friendly surrogate spoiled milk for nachos.

If they look at you like you are an idiot merely walk away and yell: “cows, get em!” Watch them get scared.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Things your mom should have told you about aliens


2). Hitchhiking safety:

Never hitch a ride with an alien. Sure, they might seem nice and sure that flying disk pulling up beside looks like it would pass Air Care, but then you are riding up the universal highway listening to your favourite Engelbert Humperdinck tracks and… BAM! There goes your face. Things in the flying saucer can get pretty hairy. Think twice before you jump in that oblong-eyed bastard's ride.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Things mom should have told you about aliens


1). Buy alien abduction insurance:

The rides in open space can be bumpy -- especially with a three-foot rod stuck up your large intestine. Isn’t it time you prepared for the worst?

Why take a chance that the anal probing won’t go wrong? You know it will – no man has ever walked from a probing without feeling a little different. Voices change, men buy purses and begin to cry. WE CAN OFFER MONEY FOR THIS!

The lame people with Heaven’s Gate knew all about space safety.There was a time when you could buy it directly from Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson (GRIP). However, those days are done since those Heaven’s Gate pussies snuffed themselves before their alien overlords were able to abduct them properly.

As you look to the skies you need not feel fear for now you can buy AAI from The Theater of Technicolor Dreams. At $10 per month – a meagre $120 per year – we guarantee a pay out of 4000 pesos if you are abducted. If your story checks out and we can sell it to the press your benefits triple at no extra charge to you.

Too good to be true? You believe in aliens don’t you?

Buy now and we’ll throw in an Arizona Cardinals t-shirt from their 1998 glory season. Remember the “We are wild (card) winners” slogan? Neither do we – and now you can relive that slogan year-after-year.

TTD’s Alien abduction insurance. For when beam me up Scotty goes very badly.

Welcome Earthling ... to Alien Month!

Are we alone in the universe?

The question has plagued man since he first set eyes upon the starry sky at night. The first theory man developed to the answer the question was that we are not alone, because there is God. Now, we take that idea for granted. Which leaves us to ask the original question all over again.

Exobiology is the name given to the speculative scientific field of ET biology (could it exist, if so, what forms would it take, etc), yet few efforts have been made by scientists to answer the question. Indeed, how can one answer a question asked in an unknown foreign language? The further questions of where and how to look for clues have left mankind equally baffled. The most famous example of the search for interstellar neighbors is the SETI program, whose sole purpose is to search for alien transmissions. Again, how can one answer a question when one doesn’t know it is being asked?

Dr. Frank Drake attempted to answer the question with an estimation. It looks like this:

The Drake equation states that:

(from wikipedia)

N = R^{\ast} \times f_p \times n_e \times f_{\ell} \times f_i \times f_c \times L \!

where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
f is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

The number of stars in the galaxy now, N*, is related to the star formation rate R* by

 N^{\ast} = \int_0^{T_g} R^{\ast}(t) dt , \,\!,

where Tg is the age of the galaxy. Assuming for simplicity that R* is constant, then N* = R* Tg and the Drake equation can be rewritten into an alternate form phrased in terms of the more easily observable value, N*.[2]

N = N^{\ast} \times f_p \times n_e \times f_{\ell} \times f_i \times f_c \times  L / T_g \,\!
It has been estimated, from the Drake Equation that there could be as many as 10,000 alien civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy alone.

Daniel Pinchbeck has speculated that, since mankind, apparently, assumes ET intelligence, and even ET dimensional axes, will resemble our own, that we will never find it (You can find his website here).

And that’s just for starters, there’s just not enough time in a month to cover every facet of such a seemingly simple question.

So, are we alone in the universe?

Well, dear reader, you’re never alone in the Theatre of Technicolor Dreams, you have your ticket, and the minds behind the curtain with whom to witness Astonishing Tales of Wonder!