Snowdog's Den

History from the Edge - A 9/11 Remembrance

2009-09-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 9/11/09.

"History from the Edge - A 9/11 Remembrance"
by snowdog

Monday, August 27, 2001
Damn, I've come a long way, I thought as I gazed from the window of the 48th floor of 1 Penn Plaza. My first trip into Manhattan had been a horrendous experience. Did you know that there is a Newark Penn Station as well as a New York Penn Station? And that when mumbled over an aging train's PA system, the names sound almost identical? I had spent about an hour and half wedged into the small space between two packed New Jersey Transit rail cars en route to some vital training for my new job. As a born-and-bred Southerner with a mild fear of crowds, I don't need to tell you that I was less than mirthful.

For the moment, though, all was quiet save for the hum of the air conditioning. The other students were still at lunch somewhere in the bustling streets below. To one side of the skyline, there was the Empire State Building. I recognized that, having seen a certain giant stop-motion ape swat at planes from that perch some years ago. There was another building, a more Art Deco style skyscraper. I recognized that as well, but didn't know the name. It turned out to be the Chrysler Building. Then there were two towers that needed no introduction. The World Trade Center dominated the skyline in lower Manhattan. Having moved close to New York City only a month earlier, it would be a surprise to find out that this would be my last and only glimpse of those giants.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Two weeks later, I was back in my beige/brown cubicle near Edison (named for its famous former resident), New Jersey. Corey, a young intern from Canada poked his head around the corner and told me to check the news sites. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. It took several tries, but I was finally able to get a response from the Fox News website. At this point, I was operating under the assumption that it had been a small plane, perhaps a single-engine Cessna. The picture showed an awful lot of smoke pouring out of that tower, though.

I tried to return my thoughts to the Perl script I was writing, but then I heard someone shout that another plane had hit the towers. What the hell? On such a clear day? Corey poked his head in again and beckoned me into the cafeteria. Almost everyone in the building was gathered around a large TV tuned to CNN. I saw the footage. There were no small planes. Huge passenger jets were slamming into buildings in Manhattan! We were under attack! At that moment, I didn't know who was responsible, but I correctly guessed their religion and which part of the world they called home.

Back in my cubicle, the panicked news filtered its way to us via websites--which at this point were getting hammered with hits and had crawled to a near stop--, television, and a small radio that one of my colleagues had set up. Some of the reports turned out not to be entirely accurate, but that was understandable given the gravity of the situation. Another plane had hit the Pentagon. Another had gone down in Pennsylvania. How many more were there?

A short time later, an announcement came over the radio that one of the towers had fallen. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around that. Finally, I gave up trying to concentrate and walked to the back of office so I could hear the updates better. I found that Mary-Lou, our Administrative Assistant, was in tears. Her father worked in one of the towers as a security guard and she couldn't contact him because cell phones weren't working. (He survived.) About then, the radio reported that the second tower had come down.

We were all sent home around 3pm where I sat in stunned silence in front of the TV with the rest of the country and waited for the body count.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - August 2002
The next several days would bring the revelation that we had a branch office in the WTC and that we had lost one employee to falling debris. Our already crowded building made room for the rest of the displaced workers. My commute became harder for a few weeks because the Holland Tunnel was closed, presumably to make way for wreckage being hauled out of the city. With all the inbound NYC traffic having one less point of entry, the overflow spilled back onto the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway.

The classic rock station I tuned in for my drive was playing songs that they saw as patriotic. They weren't kidding anyone, of course. There just aren't that many pro-America rock songs. Still, "Volunteers" by Jefferson Airplane made me feel a little better for some reason. As that song played, a pickup truck came over the peak of the Raritan bridge, heading in the opposite direction. The driver had mounted a pole in the bed, flying a huge American flag, big enough to cover the entire truck, I suspected. "Counter-revolution, counter-revolution"* sang Grace, Marty and Paul. I couldn't help but smile. It looked like something you might see in the South. It was one of those moments that have really stuck with me.

About a week later, I went back into NYC to visit a friend. While waiting for him to pick me up in Penn Station, I stumbled across the entry-way walls where desperate family and friends had hung pictures of their missing loved ones in hopes that someone had any information. There were hundreds of them. My heart fell into my stomach as I moved from picture to picture, some pasted onto paper decorated by children missing their fathers or mothers. As hope faded, this wall would become a makeshift memorial to the lost.

On another trip in, my friend Joe guided me like a relunctant child into the confusing subway system that connects the station, which was now crawling with police and armed National Guardsmen, to numerous stops throughout the city. As we moved past a group of cops, one of them looked at me and started applauding slowly. In my confusion, it took me a moment to realize that I was wearing a NYFD T-shirt that I had bought to help support the families of the lost firemen. To my horror, it dawned on me that the officer was mistaking me for one of them! I couldn't come up with any words to stop him. After a moment, he seemed to realize his mistake and just said "Great shirt, man."

That December, I purchased a surprisingly inexpensive plane ticket from Newark, where some of the terrorists had boarded, back home to Florida for Christmas. Round trip: $109.00. It took forever to get through security and I finally quit bothering to put my driver's license back in my wallet, but it was actually cheaper than paying for the fuel to drive.

September 2002
For the first time in years, my mother decided to fly up from Florida to see me. We got rooms at the Best Western in Times Square and I took her to see Aida on Broadway, the only show running that I wasn't afraid to take my mother to. Since it was within walking distance, we also went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and hobnobbed at a party of eerily real-looking wax celebrities, built to exact dimensions. An especially scary Woody Allen sat in the corner and gazed thoughtfully at us. I half expected him to launch into some neurotic rant.

The last exhibit on the tour was a tribute to 9/11. It was an exact three dimensional reproduction of the famous photograph of the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero. All around the statues, slide shows were synced to audio from the police and fire communications of that day. The whole thing was more than a little overwhelming. Feeling my eyes tear up, I had to get out before I cried in front of my mother for the first time since I was a child. Here are a few pictures I snapped with a cheap digital camera.

Since it was Mom's first trip into New York, we went on one of these sight-seeing double-decker bus tours and saw the entire city. About two thirds of the way through we were dropped off in lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero. Although I had experienced much of 9/11 peripherally, I had never visited the site itself. We saw St. Paul's Chapel, the small church which had escaped the calamity unscathed despite being in extreme proximity to the towers.

The nearby park was gearing up for the one year anniversary of the attacks, preparing for a visit from President George W. Bush, among others.

From there we moved along with the other quiet, somber tourists to Ground Zero itself. We stood for a long time behind the chain link and gazed silently into the chasm. By now, the vast majority of the debris had been removed and it was mostly just a large hole with levels and tunnels visible. Construction workers still moved about in their task to clean up the mess in preparation for what was to come next for the site, a matter that is still the subject of some contention as of this writing.

There was little talking amongst the spectators as we shuffled back to catch the next bus and see the rest of the city, and from there to begin the slow process of healing that the years would bring.

...I need your kiss, but love and duty called you
someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
--Bruce Springsteen

* After writing this, I found out that I had been misinterpreting the lyrics to "Volunteers" all these years which are actually "Got a revolution, got a revolution", but I decided not to change the essay since that was what I was hearing at the time.

Day 25,915 of My Incarceration

2009-08-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 8/21/09

"Day 25,915 of My Incarceration"
by snowdog

Sept 17th, 2097. Day 25,915 of my incarceration

Damn, I wish the bastards wouldn't take up their fathers' profession. Seems like I had just finished celebrating the retirement of the one guard who once beat the hell out of me in the gym, then he reappears with a younger face and a grudge. Daddy told him to look out for me, I'll bet. Worse are the female guards. Most of them are nice, I must admit, but damn if they don't make me feel like I'm back in elementary school. "Ms. Halderman, may I take a piss?" At least most girls don't follow their mommies' dream of being a corrections officer.

Seventy-one years in this place today and no end in sight. I ran out of room marking the days on the wall long ago. Actually, I got punished for doing that sometime around day one hundred and seventeen and spent some time in cuffs while the walls were painted back to their cheerful bright white. White. Sterile. Cold. Could be worse, I guess.

I try not to let myself think back to that clinical trial that drove me to violent insanity, then took my ability to die. It tends to put me in the familiar depression spiral which I can see coming a mile off, but can't stop. I just needed a few lousy bucks to pay the rent on my fleabag apartment. It seemed like a good offer--free blood pressure meds, payment for my time. In hindsight, maybe I should have told them that I was addicted to heroin before I let them give me the other chemical they were testing. I wonder if the new drug made it to market? Does the label say "May cause immortality?"

You might not believe this, but I felt the pills hit my stomach. It burned like hell itself. I started screaming for the doctor. Everything went dark after that. Next thing I remember I had killed two of the lab workers in the room with various improvised weapons--I'm good like that--and was working on the doctor. I had him on the floor, both hands tightening around his throat. That's when I got hit from behind.

The corporate goon lawyers got a jury to believe that it was impossible for the drug to make a man violent. It had never happened before. It was the heroin they had found in my bloodstream. And, therefore, I was one hundred percent in responsible for killing those two girls. Then they pulled out the police record showing where I had attacked my father as a young man. That was all it took.

When they sentenced me to life in prison, no one knew about the other side effect.

I knew I shouldn't have started thinking about the past. Shit. There goes the son of that asshole guard now, eyes on me as he walks past my cell, just a little slower than the others. And a little smirk on his face as he fingers that stick of his. Punk.

I can't stay here forever. One day, one of the idiots they keep putting in the White House will be the death of this country. Let the Mexicans and the Muslims have it. I only hope I'm on the outside of the bars when the end comes.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I can wait that long. There is a faster way out. I could improvise a weapon to end it all today. Like I said, I'm good like that.

Sedna 90377

2009-08-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Second Annual Ultimate Snowdogging Competition. I chose the very first challenge from March 8, 2005 (then called the Gedanke Experimentieren) because it's short and I'm already late submitting. Again.

Sedna 90377

90377 Sedna is an electric terminal attached to a huge gear made of dark matter. It's slowly making its way around the galaxy to meet up with another of its kind, as yet undetected. In 2216, the two contact points will come together, then the universe will stop its expansion for several minutes. There will be an infinitely deafening, but unheard creak as the the gears and pulleys that control reality stop and re-engage. Thus will begin the Big Crunch as the arrow of time starts to run in the opposite direction and the universe will begin the fall in on itti no ni llaf nigeb lliw esrevinu etisoppo eht ni nur ot snigeb emit fo worra eht sa hcnurC giB eht nigeb lliw suhT...

A Study In Contrasts

2009-07-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

A woman is pulled from near the Center Street dam by construction worker Jason Oglesbee on Tuesday. A man who was with the unidentified woman died in the Des Moines River. A rescue team from the Des Moines Fire Department tried several times to rescue the woman but could not get close enough to her. (Andrea Melendez/The Register)

Ms. Valerie Hudson of foreignpolicy.com believes we could do with a lot less of this sort of man, but let me assure her that the woman in the water is probably quite happy that Mr. Jason Oglesbee isn't some smooth shaven, hair-gel snorting, metrosexual.

The news story can be found here.

Ms. Hudson's opinion can be found here.

I'm just sayin'....

Snowdog's Untitled Western Vampire Story - Chapter 5

2009-06-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 6/19/09

"Snowdog's Untitled Western Vampire Story - Chapter 5"
by snowdog

The sky over the desert which had started out a stark blue that morning sagged overhead now like a dirty grey blanket. Eddie cleared away the last of the paper plates and sandwich bags, using the cooler as a makeshift trashcan. He glanced at his iWatch and translated the binary in his head.

"Two thirty-three," he announced.

Bob was leaning against the side of the pickup. He stopped wiping down the shotgun long enough to survey the horizon.

"Should be any time now," he said, "if memory serves." He opened a trunk in the back of the truck and started sorting through the ammunition. Even in the subdued daylight, his skin was mottled with red patches. If the transformation were to ever complete itself, even overcast skies would be too much.

Eddie rubbed the day-old stubble on his head and wondered again what it would be like to never feel sunlight on it. It wasn't like he was the outdoorsy type himself, preferring cathode-rays to the solar variety. To be trapped indoors, though, that was altogether different.

Tess came walking from behind some dry brush near the front the truck, buckling her gun belt, somehow making it look fashionable.

"If you knew what time it was going to happen, why'd you bring us out here so early?"

"'Cause I don't know," he said, tossing her the shotgun and grabbing a second for himself. "I'm only guessing."

Another truck pulled up alongside. Richard had brought Josh and Eli along, but the brothers were looking bad. They were drenched in sweat and breathing heavily as if they had jogged to the site rather than riding in air-conditioned comfort.

Bob put his arms on the bed rail and leaned. "Thought you might not show after last night."

Richard didn't look at him as he flipped open the corrugated chrome toolbox in the back of his truck. "I said I'd he here," he said, reaching deep inside. "I still think you're nuttier than all my mother-in-laws put together, but I'm here. Not sure what that says about me."

"Look!" Tess shouted, pointing ahead to the West.

Eddie followed her gesture and cursed. A dark gray curtain of rain had obscured the distant mountains and was advancing in their direction at a startling speed. At that moment, green streaks of lightning reached toward them from the towering thunderheads.

Richard pulled the double-barreled shotgun from his toolbox and shoved some shells into it and handed the rest to Josh who had managed to get out of the truck behind his brother.

"Here it comes." Bob muttered, turning up the collar of his long rider coat, then taking several steps forward.

Eddie grabbed his pistol and went to his sister's side. Tess seemed mesmerized by the approaching tempest.

"I've..." she began and faltered for a moment. "I've never seen anything like it."

"That's because it's unnatural," he answered, pulling the antique revolver from his waistband.

As the storm grew closer, large drops of rain began to pelt them in advance of the main wall. Weapons were loaded and cocked. Hammers were drawn. No one breathed. One hundred yards. Fifty yards.

POP!

A bolt of blinding green lightning kissed the ground, just about thirty yards ahead. Another one followed immediately. Eddie was forced to shield his eyes as a third streak seemed to bend the air around it. Deafening thunder cracked and bounced among the mountains.

With another flash, a young woman fell to the ground in front of them.

"Suzette!" Bob shouted and dashed toward the still figure.

Then the rain was on them. Gusts of wind and water drove Eddie backward several steps before he was able lean into it with enough weight to stay in place.

Bob had made it about half way to the woman when another flash dropped a dead horse only a few yards away. He stopped in his tracks.

"Bob!" Tess shouted and ran after him before Eddie could stop her.

Then there was more green lightning. Several flashes in succession, each brighter than the previous, lit up the valley. Five figures stood between Bob and his lost love: four men and one woman.

Eddie found himself rushing forward with the others, revolver raised, aimed between the eyes of the closest man. He cursed again and wished for a hat as the rain ran from his bald head ran directly into his eyes.

"I thought he said only one of them would be a vampire," Richard's voice came from behind.

For the first time, Eddie was able to focus on their faces. Even as he watched, the small amount of daylight that filtered through overhead had begun to blister their skin.

One of the men leaped high into the air, turned, and started running at an impossible speed toward the shelter of the mountains to the North. Another grabbed the lifeless figure of the woman and all four vampires followed the first.

Bob took off after them, but it was useless. In a fit of irrational rage, he opened fire with the shotgun. One of the fleeing vampires staggered briefly as he was hit with one or two slugs of buck shot. But a moment later, he was up to full speed again.

A low rumbling started. Lightning began to pop off again flickering so fast this time that it created an almost constant wall of light and noise. It was if the raindrops had turned into human figures dropping to the ground. A few of them lay still, but most took off across the wet desert after the others as if by instinct. Hundreds of them, Eddie guessed, streamed toward the shadows to the Rockies. Toward...

"Denver," Richard completed the thought for him.

Menace Day, May 19

2009-05-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 5/22/09.

My holiday is called Menace Day, celebrated on May 19. It's a sober reminder to never, ever become a hardcore fan of anything or anyone because sooner or later... let's just say, for example, that you probably won't be lucky enough to have your favorite musician die immediately after doing his best work. Eventually that "fresh new artistic direction" will come. And it will suck.

We'll send those close to us sympathy cards to mark the passing of his or her object of affection into suckiness. Click on the card above to see the inside.

Electrohick

2009-04-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is my entry to Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/17/09

"Electrohick"
by snowdog

Dear Cousin Jimmy,

Just two weeks ago, I'd have not thought it was possible, but I'm now convinced that I have a superpower. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but hear me out. Over the last several days, I've developed the ability to send electrical impulses through the air. The voltage isn't enough that a human being or a dog would be shocked or injured. Indeed, most folks would never even feel the slightest tingle. Electronic devices, on the other hand, well, few can escape me unaffected.

What is the origin of my superpower? Fair question, sir. You know that water tower in the center of town? Late one night, I was climbing it with a can of spraypaint in my waistband. Joe's sister had spread a rumor about me around town and I'd decided to return the favor. What I hadn't noticed was that storm clouds had been building to the West all afternoon. It wouldn't have mattered, though. There was no way I was going to let anyone get away with telling folks I had-- well, we won't go into that.

I made it to the top of the tower and started spraying letters in my prettiest handwriting: "J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R...I-S... A --" Then there was a bright flash of light. That was the last I remember until I woke up in the hospital. About a week later, on the ride home, I noticed that traffic lights kept turning red every time I got near one. All the way down down Broad Street, there must be ten or twelve of them. Every time my truck got within fifty feet or so, the signal would go yellow. I got pissed and blew through one of them, trying to break the cycle, but it didn't matter. Soon as I got close to the next one, RED.

When I got home, I sat down at my computer to twitter about my experience over the last week, but a pop-up box announced that it suddenly had a "virus". This had never happened before. Fortunately, I was still able to reach my free porn sites, though.

Later, I went to the supermarket for more beer and my superpower struck again! The automatic door didn't detect me right away and I damn nearly ran into it face-first!

I know that I have to keep my superpower a secret. If word were to get out, people would try to hire me to blow up their ex's microwave or sabotage their neighbor's leaf blower. No, it's better that I live out my days as a mild-mannered security guard and do what I can stop crime by night. Let the bad guys try to escape the police while catching every light in town.

I remain an enigma.

Your friend and cousin,
Bobby

P.S. Skynyrd!!! WOOO!

Wanna Be An Idol (Sucking Up To Simon)

2009-04-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/10/09.

"Wanna Be an Idol (Sucking up to Simon)"
by snowdog

The try-outs came into my town one rainy afternoon
No music, only singing in a private little room
All alone, nowhere to hide, I nearly hit the floor
Before the Idol judges, they had gone from three to four

Now I'm sucking up to Simon
And his silly hair
Paula, are you stoned again?
What's with that glassy stare?
Randy, no I'm not a "dawg"
Please don't call me such
But I wanna be an Idol
An American Idol
Wanna be an Idol so much

I got my golden ticket, now it's on to Hollywood
Sang with a bunch of losers, I don't think they understood
I'm in this thing to win it, I don't want to go back home
I'll watch them go down one by one until I'm all alone

So I'm sucking up to Simon
And his snotty attitude
Someone prop up Paula quick
She's been into the 'ludes.
Randy played with Journey, dawg!
His outfit was a rush
But I wanna be an Idol
An American Idol
Wanna be an Idol so much

I made the final twelve or so, my friends and family cheered
Consensus in the web logs called me talented, but weird
'Though millions heard my singing, I'm still standing here alive
You want to see me next week? Then please dial in number five.

For now, I'm sucking up to Simon
That annoying limey git
Paula's up and dancing
In a dress that doesn't fit
Randy says to "check it out",
I think I've had enough
But I wanna be an Idol
An American Idol
Wanna be an Idol so much

(Instrumental)

Spoken:
Oh yeah, I forget. There's a new judge. What was her name, again?

Now I'm sucking up to Simon
That accent and that smirk
Paula's feeling flirty
Keeps touching on that jerk
Randy, no, hey, you're the dawg
Keep that hip-hop stuff
But I wanna be an Idol
An American Idol
Wanna be an Idol so very much

Yeah I wanna be an Idol
An American Idol
Wanna be an Idol so much

Drummer Girl

2009-04-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/3/09

"Drummer Girl"
by snowdog

The stage lights dimmed by three quarters into a deep blue and the spotlight painted a white disk around her as she shifted from the song "It's Never Goodbye" into her last drum solo. The dark sea of people erupted into applause at the first clickety-click notes on the ride cymbal. Slowly, she built on the foundation. A heartbeat thumping from the kick drum, a gradual rumble from the floor tom, then all the lights flared into a catherine wheel of whirling reds and greens as she suddenly spiked the intensity and speed of the performance. Into the verse-chorus breach a final time, she thought.

It wasn't as easy for Karen as it had been during her younger days. Although few fans noticed the minute flaws, she could feel the slight ache in her limbs that was throwing her timing just a little. Richard had noticed, though. And it was his idea to bring the 2002 tour to a close with a farewell show in Paris. Later tonight, the Richard Carpenter Trio would go their separate ways after a career that spanned five decades.

CRASH-CRASH! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! CRASH! BOOM BOOM CRASH!

From their earliest beginnings as a jazz ensemble, through the seventies' soft rock hits and finally, the edgier arena-filling hard rock, the Trio had driven a long and sometimes bumpy road. Karen was certain that they never would have survived past the first few failed singles had producer George Martin not taken an interest in them early on.

It was the classic case of the right sound at the right place at the right time. The year was 1965. Martin had been producing a struggling young British band called the Beatles who simply could not stand to be in the same room with each other for more than ten minutes at a go. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best simply were not a good fit. There was talk about removing Lennon as a remedy since his voice was the weakest and his ego the largest, but Martin had reckoned that it would make no difference. Were it not for a string of minor hits, such as "We Won't Work It Out", "Hard Day's Work", and "Please Me Now, Woman", the band would have split long ago.

Richard had met George Martin before a bar gig in New York City. They had struck up a casual conversation over bourbon, neither knowing who the other was. At sixteen, Karen had been too young to be in the bar legally, but no one asked any questions when Richard excused himself and joined her and Wes Jacobs onstage for a rousing set of jazzy covers of popular rock n' roll tunes. Martin had been won over after he heard the first of three original songs in the set list.

Karen had to snap out of her reverie for a moment to concentrate on some tricky hi-speed triplets on the snare and hi-hat. Not bad for an old lady, she smiled to herself.

The eighties had brought a new sound and a new set of problems. A switchover from Soft Rock to New Wave had alienated more than a few of their long time fans, but her well-publicized feud with Chrissy Hynde, contrived though it was, had won them a level of publicity that she had never dared to imagine. Sales of their 1982 album, You Again, doubled that of its predecessor.

Then came the anorexia. What had started as a strong New Year's resolution to control her weight had blossomed into a full-blown eating disorder. It was Martin who noticed her frail appearance and, along with Richard, coerced her into the newly opened Betty Ford Clinic. There was no doubt in Karen's mind that this act of tough love had saved her life.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-A-THUMP-THUMP-SPLASH-SPLASH! CRASH!

In the early nineties, Nirvana had exploded onto the scene and it seemed for a moment that grunge would wipe out everything that had come before it. Indeed, countless New Wave and Hair Metal bands were swept away in a deluge of reheated Punk. It was a hard time for the Trio, but Richard and George reinvented their sound, giving it just enough of an edge to interest a new generation of rockers, but still poppy enough climb the mainstream charts.

It was at New Year's Rockin' Eve 1999 in Times Square that Karen had first begun to feel the stiffness in her joints, although at the time, she had written it off to playing in the freezing night air of NYC. To be safe, she saw her family physician while the band rested in Connecticut. There, she was diagnosed with a mild case of arthritis and told that the condition would worsen over time.

After several days of soul searching and more than a few tears, she decided that Richard was right. To paraphrase Def Leppard, it was better to retire gracefully than to slowly fade away in front of an audience.

BOOM! THUMP-A-BOOM! BOOM! Slowly building snare roll... and... CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

The cheers were deafening. Once again, accompanied by the Trio, she launched into the final chorus "It's Never Goodbye". The lyrics leapt to mind effortlessly and she sang into her headset mike.

You can say farewell if you must
You can use any word you like
You can say it's forever, I promise it's never
It's never goodbye, never goodbye,
Never goodbye

The Kiln

2009-02-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 2/26/09

"The Kiln"
by snowdog

I bent down for a closer look. It was another of those hard-shelled chewy pieces of brightly colored candy. This one was green. To make sure, I took the pen from my breast pocket and poked at it to reveal the white "S" printed on the under side. This was the second one I had found less than twenty yards from the crime scene. Either some child had been careless or...

Glancing back toward the rowhouse where the body of the woman had been found, in the general direction of the first candy, I drew a mental line outward and started a slow sweep in the direction of where another might lay. Burger wrappers. Condom packet. People in this city are swine.

A child involved in something this heinous? At the back of my mind, I dreaded this trail leading me into a domestic situation. Why do people have to drag law enforcement into family business? In my four years on the street, I had managed to avoid arresting anyone in a spat with relatives. It's a place the law just doesn't belong. These days, of course, cops are required to make an arrest.

As I stepped over a section of sidewalk that had been partially upended, probably by a tree that had long since been removed, I spotted another one. Another green candy lay glistening in the hot sun. That confirmed my suspicion. I flipped through my yellow pad for a blank sheet and started making notes of their locations, using the lines on the paper to make a rough scale approximation of the distances.

This had been one of the more gruesome crime scenes I had witnessed in my time as a detective. Immediately after ducking under the yellow tape, I had begun to notice the red stains: a footprint on the welcome mat, bloody ax on the white sofa, a smear along hallway wall.

The occupant of this middle rowhouse had harbored a number of arcane interests. Strange shapes cast in glossy ceramic lined the shelves and bookcase. I didn't recognize any of them--fertility gods perhaps. All of them were vaguely human-shaped creatures with grotesquely distorted parts. One had arms that bent backward and wrapped twice around a helpless female victim. Another had hands on the end of its legs. A third had huge, frightening eyes.

Presently, another candy lay at my feet. This one was red.

After updating my pad, I glanced around the street, a nervous habit formed in my early years. No one gave me a second glance; in fact, there few people about at all. I picked up my pace a bit, confident that I knew where to find the next candy. And there it was. Purple.

Now I stood on the corner of a busy intersection. The light had southbound traffic backed up as far as I could see along Warren Street. Which way to go? I decided to first try going straight across. Hopefully the child had been careful enough to mark the intersection closely. And, with any luck, the next candy wouldn't have been eaten by one of the many rats that inhabited the homes in this area.

The officers had led me down into the basement of the house where the body had been found. This was the source of the obscene statues: a dimly lit ceramic workshop. More grotesque shapes adorned the shelves in this darkly paneled room in various states of completion. A woman with overly long arms and legs and giant, shark-like teeth sat next to several open jars of paint. A man with octopus tentacles for arms sat half dried, awaiting his turn in the kiln.

The kiln. That was where what was left of the body lay. The woman had been hacked into pieces and left to bake there, probably for the better part of a day. My stomach had churned at the odor of cooked flesh.

After walking fifty yards along the street, I had spotted no more candies, so I turned and backtracked to the intersection, crossed the street again and headed South, with traffic. Store fronts lined Warren Street beckoning passersby inside with carefully displayed wares, protected by wrought iron bars. There it was. Another yellow one wedged into a crack in the walk.

I noted the location and picked up my pace again. A purple one. A green one. Another green. Then no more. I strolled back to the last candy and found myself beneath the awning of a doughnut shop. Through the window, a policeman chatted with the cute female clerk, either unaware or uncaring about perpetuating a stereotype.

A staircase to the right of the shop led up toward the second floor of the building and a sign in the window offered an apartment for rent. It seemed like a long shot, but I decided to check it out. Halfway up the stairs, I noticed a red piece of paper, as if someone had torn open a candy wrapper. I had stumbled into the right place.

On the landing at the top, I found a black door with three flower pots, all containing dead plants. Just as I was about to knock, the door flung open violently and a thin man stormed out.

"Forget it, Jeanne!" he shouted back into the apartment, pulling on a ragged baseball cap. "I'm not gonna do it again! You deal with them!" He turned to leave and was startled to notice me standing there. After a moment he shook his head in resignation. "Have at her," he said and took the steps down two at a time.

My first impulse was to stop him and ask some questions, but that was preempted by the sound of a child screaming inside. I drew my pistol and banged on the door.

"Open up! It's the police!" I shouted. No answer. The door was unlocked, so I invited myself inside.

The kitchen was tidy, but spartan, sporting only a bare dining table and four chairs. Pistol in front of me, I made my way to the right, into a hallway.

"Police!" I shouted, checking the bedroom to my left. Empty. A tall, middle-aged peroxide blonde woman appeared at the end of the hall.

"Police?" she rasped, "Oh, Jesus, that's just what I need." She took a long draw from a cigarette, stared at me for a moment, then turned away and walked back into the living room.

"Ma'am, I need you come back here."

"No," she shouted, "You come here."

Cautiously, I followed her into the living room. She stood with her hands on her hips and nodded toward a pretty teenage girl who was curled up defensively on the sofa.

"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't mean to scream."

She appeared to be about fifteen or so. I dropped the pistol to my side. "Then why did you?"

She looked hesitantly at her mother.

"Because she doesn't want to be sent away again," the older woman answered impatiently and then blew out a billowing cloud of cigarette smoke.

"You sent her away?"

She motioned around the apartment. "Look around! Do you see any food in here? In this economy, we're lucky to keep ourselves alive, much less two children."

"Two?" For the first time, I noticed a small boy hiding behind the arm of the sofa. I waved. "Hi kid." Then on a hunch, I asked, "Where did you get the candy?"

"I stole it," the girl said, now scowling at me slightly.

"Okay, why don't you tell me what happened, honey. No one's going to hurt you."

She sighed and glanced at her mother again. Then she focused on my eyes and pointed.

"My mother made her boyfriend take us out into the city, trying to get us lost. He..." she paused for a moment and wiped away a tear. "He got into a car with another man and left us on the street!"

"He left you?" I looked at the mother.

She just shook her head. "He was supposed to take them to a shelter. At least they could get food there!"

The girl glared at the woman and continued. "Jared left a trail of candies, but on the way back, we smelled cookies coming out this rowhouse... gingerbread. They smelled so good and we were so hungry. I knocked on the door. This woman answered and invited us in!"

Completely mesmerized, I sat down in on the edge of a rickety coffee table and looked in eyes. "And she gave you the cookies?"

The girl nodded. "But they made us sleepy. She made us go downstairs with her. Then she..." Tears welled up in her eyes again.

"What did she do, honey?" I asked, images of the grotesque statues filling my head again.

"She said she was going to eat us!"

The room was silent for several seconds.

"I know!" she sobbed "I know you don't believe me! But she tried to put Joshua into this big oven she had in the basement! I had trouble standing from the drugs, but I found an old ax behind the wood stove!" With that, she buried her face in her hands and wailed.

I stood and pulled the cell phone from my belt. The mother looked at me suspiciously.

"Who are you calling."

"Someone I swore I'd never call, ma'am." After a couple of rings, a woman's voice answered. "Hi Susan, get me Child Protection Services, please."

Return To Glastonbury

2009-01-14T19:40:00.000-08:00

This is my entry to Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 1/15/09

Return to Glastonbury
by snowdog

This is it, I'm dying. Three of my six legs are broken, my wings are useless and worst of all, the stinger from one of those Killers protrudes from my abdomen, filling my system with toxin. I can only lie here on my back and listen to the buzzing in my head.

The coming of the Africanized Killers was foretold in the Wax Prophesies which date back to our beginnings on the European continent. Their arrival was to be a sign that we should follow the ancient ley lines back to Gastonbury Tor, to alight on the edge of the Holy Grail and to taste of the Healing Wine. Glastonbury is the place where the First Queen took flight. It's our destiny to be renewed there before we return to our toil which men find so useful.

I laugh bitterly as I recall the first time I heard the term Colony Collapse Disorder, as if we were being killed off by pesticides or that great hoax called Global Warming--heck, I wish it were warmer! The flowering season would be extended, our pollen collection would-- well, that's not important now. Time is short. The toxins must be affecting my brain.

No, it's not Colony Collapse Disorder. It's war! The humans don't seem to notice that aerial combat surrounds them, although to be fair, much of it happens at higher altitudes, just above the trees. That is most dangerous place to be a bee.

I remember the day the killers arrived. I was making a meal of some particularly nice Begonias, sipping the sweet nectar and getting that sticky yellow stuff all over my legs. It was so warm that afternoon, I began lingering inside each flower and fanning my wings to cool down before leaping into the air again to move on to the next bloom. It's strange how you don't know how great life is until it changes.

As I flew between the carefully spaced plants, a worker named Tzue fell past me to the ground. I buzzed down next to her to see what was amiss, but she had already gone silent and still. Then I heard the ungodly noise overhead. There were only three Killers, but I could only watch in horror as they latched on to another of my fellows in mid-air and drop him into the damp mulch. Jeek brought one of the buggers down with him, though, as the stinger failed to disengage.

I jumped into the air above the garden and moved as inconspicuosly as I could, ducking behind leaves and fence posts until I was out of their sight. Then I made a beeline for the hive, ignoring the countless pink blossoms below me. The Queen would know what do to. I had only get past the guards.

It took some time and lot of phermone, but I convinced them of the danger and the four of them escorted me into the Royal Chamber. It took me several minutes to describe what was going on and to relay the deaths of Tzue and Jeek. She listened and wiggled her antennae in that way the does when she's agitated. She called her guards and had two of them escort me to the South Garden, where I had seen them.

The two remaining Killers engaged the guards. It was a good fight, but when the guards had fallen one Killer still remained. It was an act of war our colony as was foreseen a thousand years ago.

Again, staying low to expose myself as little as possible, I made it back to the hive to relay the news to my highness. I was right. She knew just what to do. Within the hour, she had named a list of fifty-two workers, myself included, to seek the ley lines that would return us to Glastonbury Tor. I worried for her, but I could see in her multi-faceted eyes that she had already sacrificed her life for the colony. It was all done but the deed itself.

It was up to Irne's sense of the lines--a hatchling skill only few of us possess--to get us going in the right direction. I knew that other colonies would soon be sending their own swarmquests, if they hadn't already. It was possible that our brothers and sisters in Europe had already been wise to the Killers and were sipping from the Grail even as we departed. Presumably, only a single pair of workers need drink to fulfill the prophesy, one male and one female, but we couldn't take the chance.

We were ambushed somewhere near the west coast, just as we were going to make that Northward turn toward what the humans like to call Alaska. I tell you there were three thousand Killers if there was one. We fought valiantly for our colony and for our all honeybeedom, but in the end, we were lost. Finally, one of the Killers wrapped his forward legs around me and buried his stinger straight through my belly.

I can feel the toxins clouding my mind now. My vision has gone blurry and purple, like looking at the sun from the inside of a Wysteria bloom on a windy day. I think of my Queen and her many children. May one of us reach Glastonbury Tor and bring Renewal...

Workin' Them Angels Overtime

2009-01-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 12/26/08

Workin' Them Angels Overtime
by snowdog

Herald slid his time card into the machine and was finally able to relax a bit when the kachunk! pronounced him off-duty. He glanced at the stamp on the card: JAN 1 1998 0300.

"Hey, you're blocking the line!" A finger poked him hard on the neck.

Herald glanced behind. A towering bearded angel stood close, grinning mischieviously as he continued to poke him with a thick finger. He stood at least six-foot-five with a broad strudy build. His sword was slung over his right shoulder, protruding down between his wings and back.

"Hi, Joshua," Herald said, letting out a sigh as he picked up his own sword and duffle bag.

"What's wrong, dude?" Joshua asked. He stepped forward and punched his own time card. "You look like you got them guardian angel blues." He held the card close to his face and silently mouthed the date and time to himself, as if memorizing.

"I don't know, man. Well, it's snowdog."

Joshua slid the card into the wall-mounted rack and motioned for Herald to lead the way to the lockers. "You're having trouble with snowdog? Didn't you brag a few years back about how easy he was to take care of?"

"Yes, well, that was before..."

"Before..." Joshua prompted.

Herald shook his head and sighed again. "He doesn't believe in us anymore. And since that happened, he's become..," he struggled for the word, "reckless, taking more chances with his life than ever. I think the irony escapes him."

Folding his wings back, Joshua sat on a wooden bench in front of his locker and set about removing his sneakers. "Sounds serious," he said tossing the left shoe behind him. "I'm guessing he partied in the New Year last night?"

Herald nodded. "You could say that."

"Details, Harry. I need details!"

"He started right after work. His boss always gets a ride home with him, but this time they bought a keg and talked a bunch of co-workers into meeting them out in a dark field, just outside of town."

Joshua snorted and tossed the right sneaker over his shoulder. "Eh, so he pounded a few beers. You outta see my guy."

Herald gave an sarcastic laugh and continued. "No, not a few beers. A lot of beer. I quit counting when he drove that huge boat of a pickup back to the store for another case."

"Out driving, huh. Asking for trouble."

"They all sat drinking for hours, right up until about 11 pm. Then his boss talked him into driving them both to a friend's house for a party. Snowdog was very drunk at this point. On the trip there, his nose kept running, and having no hankerchief, he would wipe it on the back of his hand and wrist as he drove."

"Yuck! Man, even I wouldn't do that."

Herald was lost in the horrible memory now. "When they got to the party, snowdog stretched his hand out to the host and noticed that it was covered with streaks of blood. His nose hadn't been running after all."

"No, man, you're making that up!"

Herald ignored the accusation. "It didn't really matter to anyone. That's when the bottle of rum came out. And this where gaps will start appearing in his memory of the evening, I suspect. Snowdog didn't have a lot of experience with hard liquor up to last night. The party itself was a blur. He'll remember the little kid running around among the wasted adults. He'll remember seeing the Ben Fold's Five video to "Brick"... strange details, but no real events or conversations."

"I'm afraid to ask how he got home." Joshua had all but forgotten about changing clothes.

"Sometime around 2 am, his disbelief attracted some hellhounds. There were four of them, so I had my hands full trying to stop them. While I wasn't looking, he climbed into that huge Dodge Ram and started the thirty minute trek homeward. Fortunately for everyone, he lives out in the woods. There was almost no traffic. Strangely, his motor skills were still partially intact. But he spent some time driving in the oncoming lane, just because he could. And then he switched off his headlights for a while and drove by moonlight. I've never been so scared in my life."

"I can imagine."

"Then he thought about the unattended little boy at the party and started sobbing uncontrollably."

"He what?"

"He cried like a baby the rest of the way home. He'll realize tomorrow that hard booze messes with his head. I'm hoping he'll come to his senses in some other ways."

Joshua shook his head. "That's rough, man. But it's not like you'll ever quit this job. We've worked together for a long time, and you have more years in than I do."

"No, I guess I won't quit. But I'll make damned sure he never does anything like that again."

A Thanksgiving Carol

2008-11-27T21:55:00.000-08:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 12/04/08

A Thanksgiving Carol
by snowdog

Ok, so I'm walking down the crowded sidewalk along Walnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia. It's Thanksgiving Day, early evening actually. It's just starting to get dark. The smells of the holiday waft to me from the side streets lined with endless row houses. Aside from a brief stint in the country which taught me only that I never wanted to go back, I've spent my entire life here. It's an amazing place and I know every inch of brick and concrete. I've seen every strange person, place or thing the city can throw at a guy.

So you can imagine my startlement when I'm stopped in mid-stride by a gleaming apparition. I might not have been quite as shocked had it been the restless spirit of my grandmother, although that would have certainly arrested my attention. But the translucent image that shimmers ten feet in front of me on the busy walk is that of a turkey. Its outline seems to fade in and out as it shifts from glowing blue to purple and back. Then I notice its face.

This turkey is angry. I don't mean in some primal way, as if I had wandered into its nest. I mean angry with me personally, as if I had just called its chick ugly. It stands in front of me, glaring straight into my eyes with a stern indignation not normally associated with poultry. It's not a pretty sight.

Strangely, no one else seems to notice the bird as they walk around and sometimes even right though it.

"Gobble-Gobble-Gobble?!"

It takes a few purposeful steps to toward me and I have to admit, fear rises in my throat. I stumble backward and duck into an alley way to my left. As I turn to pick up my pace there are two more ahead, both staring me down in smoldering rage.

One by one, more glowing turkeys flicker into existence in the alley, like fluorescent tubes coming to life. I turn to run, but there are at least ten more blocking the exit. I'm trapped!

"What do you want from me?" I shout under their accusatory glare, not quite sure that they can't understand me.

A thought hits me and I make a quick count. Then I do the math in my head. Sure enough. Thirty-two. I'm surrounded by the ghost of every Thanksgiving Day turkey of which I've ever partaken. I put up my hands, and stall, trying to concoct some sort of defense for my behavior. But before I can get a word out of my quivering lips, one of them struts close to me. Though barely as tall as my thigh, he never takes his eyes from mine. He points a wing toward the back of the alley.

"Gobble-gobble!"

I look in the direction he's pointing and see the mass of turkeys part to allow me through.

"No!" I start to protest, "I'm not--" When I turn back, the turkey is still glaring at me and pointing. There is no choice. I swallow and take a few tentative steps toward the dead end at the back of the alley, the proverbial green mile for the condemned man.

As I approach the graffiti-covered concrete block wall, it starts to shimmer in blue. My accuser darts past me and I feel my body follow him. I'm but a passenger now. The blue light surges, filling my senses.

Streets, lights, signs, people, cars... they blur past as I'm pulled along at impossible speeds through Center City, reaching at least thirty-five miles per hour at one point! The sounds merge into one another in a wave of incomprehensible white noise. Left turn... up the stairs... through a wooden door.

Five people are seated around a plain rectangular table in a dark, cramped apartment. The father is saying Grace over the food. There are the usual Thanksgiving trimmings, the potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. But that's not why I've been brought here. At the center of the table sits a steaming, delicious looking turkey. The corpse of...

The ghost bird who brought me here pecks at my leg in anger.

"Hey!" I yelp. "Look!" I gesture toward the small blond boy on the far side of the table. "I was only four! I didn't know what I was eating!"

I watch in horror as my younger self waits until his mom isn't looking, then starts to pass slices of my accuser under the table to the basset hound. I laugh nervously and look back down. Somehow the turkey's stare was even more outraged.

WHOOOSH! I'm back in the alley.

One by one, bird by bird, I'm taken back to visit every single Thanksgiving that involved my consuming the delectable white breast meat, all in chronological order.

There was the time when I was twelve. My mom had refused to take me to see Star Wars for the fifth time, so I screamed in rage and plunged my fork into the turkey meat on my plate again and again. Then I threw it in the trash.

I was eighteen and locked in a shouting match with my dad. I threw turkey at him.

I was twenty-four, during my short stay in the country. Billy and I swilled beer and dropped the turkey head first (well front first) into the fryer. We whooped in delight. Then it caught fire. So did the trailer.

I was twenty-seven. My wife and I were settling into our first apartment in Philly. She watched in horror as I stuffed a chicken inside a duck and then shoved them both inside a turkey! This bird is particularly angry with me.

Finally, I've returned to the alley after seeing my most recent crime against poultry.

Again, one at time, each turkey ghost looks at the first bird that appeared to me and says:

"Gobble."

Somehow, I know that translates as "Guilty."

"Wait!" I shout, and all the stares turn toward me again. "Don't I get to defend myself?"

Then the chant starts. "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!"

They start closing in on me. Now the apparitions begin to glow an angry red as they back me into the now dark dead end of the alley.

"Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!"

I can't take the accusations anymore! Delicious! They all look so...delicious. Some of them start to recognize that look in my eyes and turn to leave the alley. I make a run at them all and send the entire flock fleeing out onto Walnut Street.

"Come back!" I shout, much to the confusion of oblivious window shoppers.

I pursue the turkey ghosts past the bank. Past Woody's Bar. Past the idiots protesting the sale of Fras Grois. Past the endless scaled down fast food chains that line the busy, but narrow street.

"GOBBLE! GOB GOB!! GOBBB!! GOBBLE!!!"

I'm getting close. I reach up to wipe drool from my face. Then I take a dive at a straggler in the flock, flinging my body headlong, arms stretched as far I can. The turkey vanishes and the sidewalk rushes up to meet my face.

BAM!!!

I'm finally aroused by my sleep apnea. I bolt upright in my recliner and try to catch my breath. As I get my bearings, I glance down at my swollen belly. There lay the crusts of the fifteenth and hopefully last turkey sandwich of the post-Thanksgiving leftovers.

Stevie's Message

2008-11-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 11/14/08

"Stevie's Message"
by snowdog

Stevie walked through the abandoned shell of the ark ship with a brisk sense of purpose. Many of the bulky gray fiberglass wall panels had been removed years ago to fashion temporary shelters from the frequent rain storms, such as the one that pounded on the roof now. Fortunately, most of the overhead panels were still in place.

The boy glanced nervously through each missing section of wall, unconsciously fingering the package he had brought, tucked away in his jacket. He was half expecting his father to catch him in the act before he even made it to the communication center. When he came to the ladder, he hesitated a moment, gazing up through the portal that led to what remained of the bridge. There was a reason that laws had been passed forbidding trespassers from entering the wreck: so much of the structure had already been scavenged that no one was quite sure which decks and compartments had been compromised.

Stevie took a deep breath and started up the ladder toward the upper decks, making it a point to keep his gaze trained forward, onto his hands. His insides did a flip as one of the rungs creaked under his weight, but still he climbed.

Senator Steven Williams, his old man, would not be pleased to know what he planned to do, even though the idea had been his own. His father didn't know that Stevie had overheard him and his late-night poker buddies laughing as they knocked back glass after glass of homemade ale. The next afternoon, the six-man Senate had passed a resolution that no more messages would be sent back to Earth. The equipment had never been quite up to the challenge of inter-system communication in the first place, and that provided an excuse to discourage the U.N. from launching another ark ship to help colonize the planet.

Although Stevie remembered only the last couple years of the journey, he did recall that things had looked pretty grim in the months before they had finally made planetfall. The seal on one of the ship's two aggro-domes had failed barely three years into the voyage, so half of the crops were lost completely. There was hunger. Then violence. Fortunately, his father had managed to keep the family fed, if only barely at times.

He remembered the day Tau Ceti IV appeared on the edge of the long-range scan, confirming what scientists back home had long suspected. The equatorial zone of the planet was something of a paradise, similar to that of temperate Earth back in her better days. A month later came the horrendous controlled crash that had reduced their numbers even more than the long famine.

Three years had passed since that day. The first two were hard, but the weather was agreeable, allowing the planting of genetically altered quick-harvest wheat, some of which immediately went into father's now-famous pale Tau-Ceti Brown Ale, and numerous fruits and vegetables. Also, a small burrowing rodent-like creature, originally dubbed "rootrat" was renamed to "rootdigger" when it was discovered to be quite tasty when roasted on a spit.

To his relief, Stevie made it safely to the top of the ladder and now stood staring at another, though shorter one. This last ladder led up to the communications console located one floor above the bridge. He checked to make sure he still had the burlap-wrapped package in his jacket pocket. Yes. This time he was at the top in just a few seconds.

The communications console was powered down to save stress on the failing reactor core at the heart of the wreck. But Stevie had spent many hours watching his mother who had been one of the communications officers. He had a pretty good idea how the thing worked. He slid into the swiveling leather chair and pressed a button under the right-hand ledge of the console, holding in down for a moment as he prayed that the bridge still had power.

Five seconds later, lights began to appear across the main panel as the self-testing software engaged. In all, it took about two minutes before communications were online. To his left, he spotted the seldom used minicam. He had bothered his mother time and again, trying to get her to show him how it worked. Finally, she had acquiesced and used it to send a low-power transmission while the captain was away from the bridge. Now, he flipped the switch to activate it again, for only the third time since the ark had left Earth. But he needed a moment to prepare, so he didn't start the transmission.

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the small package he had brought, loosened the twine and pulled back the burlap. Then he took a moment to steady himself. His heart was racing at the thought that millions of people back on Earth might one day see this long-delayed message. Deep breaths. Faster. Faster. When he had worked himself nearly into hyper-ventilation, he pressed the transmit button and looked wide-eyed, directly into the minicam.

"This is Stevie-- Steve Williams Jr, on the bridge of the ark ship Covenant." He made a show of pausing for breath, "We're now at our destination, Tau Ceti IV. Something terrible has happened! There are animals here-- they're huge! And mean! They killed my dad. My mom said..."

He looked to his right. "They're in the ship!!" He took a moment and gathered himself. "My mom said," he continued, "to say not to come here! They've killed almost all of us! The rest of us won't last long!"

With that he jumped out of range of the minicam and screamed. He pulled out the remains of a rootdigger that he had killed with his slingshot and rubbed blood all over his face before leaping back in front of the camera.

"Stay Away!" he shouted hysterically and fell to floor, once again out of sight. Then he carefully reached up under the console ledge and powered it down for the last time.

Stevie got back to his feet and smiled to himself, happy with his performance. That ought to do it. Climbing onto the chair, he stood slowly, careful not to lose his balance as it swiveled slightly. He reached behind the minicam, grabbed the wire and pulled hard. It look three good yanks, but the connection came loose. Then he used his pocket knife to pry the assembly apart until he was left holding only the tiny camera unit which he shoved in his pocket as the souvenir his dad had promised him.

Night of the Obamanation

2008-10-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Bane-Hated-Halloween-Friday-Challenge.

Since I had some time on my hands this weekend, I recorded the story as an audio book which is the recommended way to enjoy it in the spirit of Halloween. But if you're scared, the text is below.

"Night of the Obamanation"
by snowdog

Whenever you find a nice neighborhood right on the edge of some crime-riddled ghetto, one thing you may or may not notice is that the people who live there don’t venture outside much, at least not after six o’clock or so. The residential street the taxi dropped me on was that way. The yards were neatly kept. The closely spaced houses were in good repair and painted with bright, cheerful colors as if to ward off the blight that they knew was creeping toward them, closer every single day. In the failing light of early evening, streetlights began to hum and flicker to life, revealing only empty sidewalks and tightly parked cars.

Against the canvas of dead silence, my boots made too much noise on the concrete. I could see blinds and curtains moving as folks peered suspiciously from the safety of their living rooms.

“Yeah, lady,” I mumbled under my breath, “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.”

God, that was the truth. Fortunately, it isn’t too often I’m called upon to stalk and kill the best friend I have this side of paradise. If you want to know how I’d ended up having to do such a heinous thing, I’ll tell you. It’ll make the story a little longer, but that’s okay.

You see, I met Paul Kurtz in the Marine Corps. We were both going through the special form of hell called “boot camp” at Parris Island. I was from the swamps of northern Florida, he hailed from Fayetteville, North Carolina. It wasn’t long before we realized that we had a lot in common. So, in between all the running and standing in line, we’d chat about rebuilding classic trucks—I forgave him the flaw in his personality that made him a Chevy man—and football.

After the Taliban kindly decided to rearrange the Manhattan skyline for us, we were able to get stationed together in Afghanistan.

One night, when I was headed for the shower to reconfigure the dust on my sweat ripened body, I noticed him sneaking behind the chow hall with the laptop his folks had sent him from Carolina. I was the worst kept secret in camp that you could borrow the CO’s wireless internet connection from certain places. I crept up behind him.

“What you lookin’ at, Kurtz?” I asked loudly, “Porn? You’d better share!”

Paul nearly jumped out of his skin, I swear.

“Son of a-!” he shouted, then glanced around and lowered his tone. “No, I’m not looking at porn. Well, not anymore.”

He turned back to the laptop, which he had balanced on top of a cooler. “I’ve been reading this blog called Vox Popoli. Man, you won’t believe what this guy gets away with saying.”

I read over his shoulder. “The Pel-- Peloponnesian War? What’s that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I skipped that one. Look at what he calls Michelle Malkin!”

We both burst out laughing then looked around cautiously for anyone who might outrank us.

It took us a several weeks, but we read through the entire archive of the blog. The man sure liked to write. He made a lot of sense for a Yankee, we decided. More often than not, we agreed with what he had to say.

You may be wondering why I bothered to tell you about this particular incident. It’s to help highlight some peculiarities I noticed later on. Be patient.

We saw a lot of action during our stay in Afghanistan, but we were always lucky; coming back with both life and limb intact. Many of our buddies didn’t.

One day, I received a letter from home. My mother had taken ill and she wasn’t expected to live more than a few days. The CO arranged a hardship discharge for me and I boarded a plane and headed (eventually) for Jacksonville.

It was about a year after we had buried Mama, that I received a letter from Paul. Turns out, he had taken some shrapnel to the spine and was holed up in Walter Reed. The hospital was about twelve hours north of where I had grown up, so I loaded up the pickup and headed there at an ill-advised rate of speed.

When I walked into the room, I saw Paul all trussed up in this crazy looking contraption. I don’t think he could move an inch in any direction. He had a kind of glazed look in his eyes, probably the medication, I decided.

“Walt!” he said, “Walt, I knew you’d come.”

“Well, hell, Paul, I told you take care of yourself when I left. What happened?”

He tried to laugh, then winced.

I was startled to notice a young woman sitting next to him with a book open in her lap. She was a strange one. On one hand, she was quite pretty, long red hair, real fair skinned. But she had several dark, strange looking tattoos on her arms, shoulders, even extending around to the back of her neck. She also had a piercing through her nose. And she was glaring at me like I had just pissed in her coffee.

Now, I’m used to being hated by the girlfriends and wives of my friends. Often, they blame me for the alcoholic tendencies of their boy toys. And, I guess, often, they’re right. But this young woman didn’t even know me.

“Walt,” Paul continued when he had regained his composure. “This is Beth Ann. She’s a volunteer here in the hospital.”

“A volunteer? What does she do here?” I started to answer my own question, but no good could have come of it. Most hospitals don’t supply those kinds of volunteers, and not even wounded marines rate that highly at Walter Reed.

“I read to the men,” she answered sharply. Her eyes never left mine. There was something about her. Something—

“It helps take my mind off of the pain,” Paul smiled weakly, barely able to look at me from his position. “She’s telling me all about Barrack Obama and what he’s planning to do for the country as president.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Beg pardon?”

“Barrack is exactly what this country needs after eight years of Bush,” Beth Ann interrupted. “The US wants to heal itself after two unjust wars and the worst economy in over seventy years.” It felt like she was staring at the inside of my skull.

It wasn’t what she said that bothered me. I’d met silly well-meaning liberals before. But there was something a little too… zealous about her tone. Something that suggested her opinion should be declared the law of the land.

“Beth Ann, honey, could you let us chat for a while?” asked Paul. “ I haven’t seen old Walt in a year.”

Her stare broke contact only after she passed behind me.

“I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” she said. “We still have a lot to go over.”

After she was gone, Paul and I caught up on things and we relived good times and bad. I didn’t bother to ask any more about Beth Ann. And that, my friends, was a mistake.

It was about three weeks after I visited the hospital room. My house was located next to a fairly busy highway, but in woodsy, rural area. There were no other houses for at least half a mile in any direction. So, I was surprised and a little annoyed when, late one night, my doorbell rang.

I opened the door and standing on my front porch, under the yellow light that does nothing to repel bugs, stood a thin, extremely pale young man. I guess he was about twenty-three or so, but the dark rings under his black eyes made him appear almost elderly.

“Hello sir,” he smiled, but never made eye contact. “I’ve been sent to tell you about the next President of the United States, Barrack Obama.”

I stood there a moment, a little stunned.

“Who sent you?” I asked, knowing full well whom it was.

“It doesn’t matter, sir. Vote Barrack.”

He leaned toward me, into the doorway as if he wanted to whisper something. That’s when I saw the teeth, dark yellow stained fangs, dripping with thick saliva. I shoved him back and slammed the door hard.

“Shotgun.” I said aloud to myself and ran to the gun cabinet in the den. As I shoved four 12-gauge shells into the Remington and filled my pockets with more, I heard him start thumping on the front door. Harder. Harder still. I couldn’t imagine that that pale boy would be able to break down a sturdy wooden door, but it was starting to sound that way.

I rushed back and looked through the peephole. There were two of them now. An equally pale dark-haired woman had joined the man.

“Sir, come out!” she shouted. “We’d like to share Barrack’s economic policies. He wants to redistribute the wealth!”

The man backed up and made a run at door. I backed away from the peephole as he crashed against it hard enough to crack the wood around the bolt. One or two more of those, and they’d be inside, converting me over to their messiah.

SLAM! The wood shredded and the door budged slightly. I raised my shotgun.

SLAM! The door flung open wide and four emaciated looking youngish people tried to come in at once.

“Vote Barrack!” the Obombies chanted in unison. “Vote Barrack!”

BOOM! The buckshot slammed into the chest of the first man who had appeared on my doorstep. He flew back, momentarily blocking the other three.

BOOM! Another man fell on top of his friend. I wiped some blood off of my cheek with the back of my hand.

It was then that I heard slow pounding on the back door. My God, it was unlocked! The two surviving Obombies were still having some trouble getting around their fallen comrades, so I rushed through the dining room and kitchen and made it to back door in time to push the latch in place. I flicked on rear floodlights.

Through the windows, I could see one pale man pounding his fist on the door. Thankfully, the back steps were too narrow and treacherous to allow him to slam his shoulder into it as the other man had done.

“McCain is JUST LIKE BUSH!”

I spun around to see the female standing in the middle of the kitchen. She started toward me, teeth bared and hissing.

“Vote Barrack!”

BOOM! Blood splattered everywhere. The woman was blown back into the sink, smashing all my finest WalMart china.

My heart was racing now and I was finding it hard to catch my breath, but that didn’t matter. There were at least two more of them. I flung open the back door and fired.

BOOM!

He was gone! Shit! I would have to reload!

I held the shotgun in the crook of my right arm and started fishing shells out of my pocket with the left. Fortunately, I had had a lot of practice with this. Soon I was ready with four more rounds, which was good, because at that moment, the dining room window was smashed in.

“Barrack! Vote BARRACK!”

By the time I got to the dining room, the Obombie had half his body inside the window. I brought the Remington up at point blank range.

BOOM! A face full of buckshot solves a lot of problems.

“One more. One more. One more. Where is he? Where are you? “

I went back out to the front porch. No one there. Then I caught movement in the corner of my eye. He had just ducked behind my truck out in the driveway. I leaped off the porch and ran after him, barely able to breathe at all now. For a moment, I couldn’t find him again. Then I spotted him in the back yard making his way toward the open back door!

BOOM!

Over the next few weeks, Obombie visits became a common occurrence and eventually, they began to show up nightly. After a while, their numbers began to increase. As much as I was enjoying my real-life game of Doom, something had to be done. While there was plenty of swampland behind my house, hauling their rotting liberal asses out there was turning into work. And don’t even get me started on the smell.

And that, my friends, brings us back to where we started.

I stood still on the sidewalk for a full minute, staring at Paul’s place, two houses down on the left. He was home; I could see that damned Chevrolet pickup in the driveway. A gust of wind came through and for a moment, I was afraid it would reveal the sawed-off shotgun beneath my long rider coat. It didn’t matter now. Soon everyone would be well aware of it.

I walked the last few steps, up onto the porch and pressed my finger to the bell.

“Coming, dammit! Hold on!” Paul’s voice came from deep inside the house.

I took a moment to glance around. It was almost dark now. No one seemed to be watching. The porch light came on. The door opened. And there was my old friend. He was sitting in a wheelchair.

“Walt!” he shouted in surprise. “Son of a bitch, it’s you!”

I hesitated. “Hey Paul.”

“What are you doing in my neck of the woods, man? Come on in!”

He wheeled himself backward, away from the door so I could get inside. Then I followed him into a surprisingly bare living room. There were only a couple of chairs and a TV.

“Beth Ann!” he shouted up the stairs. “You’ll never guess who’s here!”

“Who?” she asked. My fingers touched the concealed shotgun.

The stairs creaked and I swear the air temperature dropped ten degrees as she came down into the room. She stood for a moment and glared at me, like in the hospital room a couple of months previous.

“Honey,” I said. “Don’t you have any other expressions?”

“What are you doing in my house?” she asked pointedly.

“Just came to thank you for sending some of your friends out to see me.”

“What’s he talking about, Beth Ann?” Paul asked.

I risked a glance over at him. He seemed normal enough, but in the light of the living room, I could see numerous scars on his neck where she had been feeding. And infecting.

“Paul,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m having to tell you this, what with those marks on your neck. But your Beth Ann here, is a vampire. And a feminist. She’s a fempire.

“What? Are you insane?” he unconsciously brought his hand up to feel the side of his neck. He knew where the marks were.

“And she’s been sending her hordes of Obombies to try to, I dunno, kill me or convert me. I’m not sure.” I pulled the sawed-off shotgun out of my coat and aimed it right at her.

Paul rushed over and slammed his wheelchair into my leg. I pushed him sideways and tipped his chair, spilling him helpless onto the floor.

I turned back to her, but she had already moved. I caught motion to my left, and turned.

BOOM! She moved to the right. My ears rang.

BOOM! She jumped onto the wall and back down.

BOOM!

I missed. My god, but she was fast. She leaped in a high arc, close to the ceiling, and then she was on me. I could feel the sharp, wet fangs on my neck. I shoved her off and brought the gun around, but she was too close. She grabbed the barrel and pointed it upward, away from her. And then she smiled.

“You know,” she said. “I could kill you where you stand. But you know what turns me on? Forcing two men fight to the death over me, especially two friends. Paul?”

I risked another glance over in time to see Paul’s face harden into a cold blue stare. Then he did something he wasn’t supposed to do. He stood.

Folks, I neglected to mention it earlier, but Paul Kurtz was a huge man. He stood at least six-four, a good six inches on me.

I tried hard to wrench the shotgun away from Beth Ann, but she had both hands on it now. Then what felt like a giant frozen ham slammed into the side of my head. I had to let go of the shotgun in order to, well, fall down.

Paul was on top of me, slamming fist after fist into my face. Finally, some of my old military training started to kick in and I managed to get my hands out from under him and deflect some of the shots. After a little more squirming, I was able to plant a knee or three into his ribs. That was when he snaked one his huge hands past mine and clamped it on my throat.

“That’s it!” Beth Ann laughed gleefully. “Crush his windpipe for me, pumpkin.”

Paul clamped down harder and began to press his weight down on me. I clawed helplessly at his hands. The prospect of dying was scary. But the look in his eyes was nothing short of terrifying. He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know who he was. He was simply going to kill or die trying.

I noticed a change. By shifting all his weight onto my throat, he had brought his knees off the floor just a bit. I was able to lift him slightly and scramble out sideways. This ruined his leverage, so he let go to establish a better grip. I didn’t let him.

I managed to get to my feet before he could right his own hulking frame. So, I executed a nice roundhouse kick to his head. He stumbled backward, but didn’t fall. I rushed in, grabbed his legs, lifted, and took him to the floor again, this time with me on top.

WHAM! He hit hard, and I drove my forearm across his neck, going for the carotid artery. He struggled for a minute. I didn’t have the blood flow to his head cutoff completely, but I had his attention.

“Listen to me.” I grunted between gasps for air. “Remember something. Afghanistan. We were on the web. What was the name? Vox Popoli!”

He said nothing. Instead, he started pushing his hand up under my chin to try to force me to let up pressure. I held on.

“Think dammit!” I shouted through gritted teeth, “He made sense! Vox Day would never vote for Obama!”

For a moment, the pushing continued. Then his struggles became less enthusiastic. His hand fell away and the murderous expression faded. It was replaced by confusion.

“What the-? Walt, get the hell off me,” he said. “I promise not to vote for Obama.”

It was obvious from the way he had slumped onto his side that the paralysis had returned. I stood and looked around the room for Beth Ann. She hadn’t moved through the whole ordeal except to pick up my shotgun and point it at me.

I only remember firing three rounds. There was one more in the tube.

“Oh, come on, Beth Ann.” I said. “You may be a fempire, but you’re still a liberal. You don’t know how to use that thing and you know it. Give it here.” I could hear sirens in the distance.

“Hell no!” she shouted. “You have ruined everything! I’m going to kill you both now.”

“You can’t,” Paul said, playing up the exasperation. “He didn’t pump it after he fired that last round. And look,” he pointed. “The safety is on! See that little switch?”

“I know what a safety is!” she shouted angrily. She fumbled down and flipped the catch, unwittingly turning the safety on.

That was my chance. I rushed her. She tried to fire, but couldn’t. I grabbed the barrel, placed a foot on her stomach and twisted the shotgun away from her as hard as I could. She let go.

Beth Ann leaped to the ceiling and somehow clung there like a spider.

I flipped the safety off and aimed.

She jumped again and tried to get behind Paul, but--

BOOM!

Her near-headless body fell on top of him. He lay there completely helpless in a pool of her blood.

The sirens were getting loud, right outside. I pushed the body off of Paul and helped him back into his wheelchair. This was going to get ugly.

I was ready to walk outside with my hands over my head, when I heard more gunshots. It started with a few rounds of 9mm standard issue, then some shouting. Finally, a shotgun blast rattled the walls. I risked a peek through the blinds, into the blue-red-blue glow of the night.

People were pouring out of the houses into streets from all directions. They seemed to be trying to get to the police.

“Vote BARRACK!” they shouted.

Armstrong

2008-10-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Whenever-He-Finds-The-Time-But-It-Usually-Lands-On-A-Friday Challenge.

Armstrong hadn't seen much of the world, but he knew instinctively that there could be nothing like resting on the banks of the Congo on a warm evening. He leaned back in the lush glass and watched the wide trail of water snake its way westward before merging into the swirling oranges and reds of the African sunset. It was good to be a chimp.

His reverie was broken by a noise in the brush behind him. Before he knew what was happening, nature had put him on his feet, alert for predators that seemed to lurk in every corner of the jungle. But it was only his mate, Tina. She made her way to his side and watched the water curiously for a moment before turning toward him. She made a subtle motion for him to follow, no doubt wanting him to do something more constructive with his time. With a sigh he took one last glance at the sunset, then turned and trailed behind slightly as she disappeared into thick vegetation.

Tina moved quickly up the invisible trail they had mapped out long ago and Armstrong became aware that she was agitated. Once, he stopped and let out a screech when some briars twisted into his dark fur and dug into the delicate skin underneath. She kept going without even a backward glance, so he was forced to catch up after he had freed himself. He felt a slight twinge of fear well up inside as they left the familiar path and plunged into the denser wilderness.

Finally, they came to a clearing punctured in the center by a small crater. He could smell the turmoil in her as she motioned into the pit. Whatever waited in there had upset her greatly. Armstrong stepped cautiously forward and peered past her.

Something large and shiny lay in the crater. Armstrong had seen similarly colored shapes move up and down the Congo, carrying men and cargo to unknown destinations. But this was different. The water craft were smaller and had open tops. What lay in the crater was round and had a sizable hole in the side revealing only a glimpse of its dark interior--

Beep!

Armstrong screeched and jumped reflexively back into the brush at the strange sound. His heart raced as he peered back toward the clearing. Tina motioned for him to return to her side, obviously having heard the sound before. When he regained his frangible wits and joined her at the edge of the crater, she touched his arm and led him down, closer to the strange shape.

For some reason, as they approached the--craft, he had decided to call it--Tina moved away and gestured for him to look inside. He shook his head. There was no way he was going to stick his head into that dark space. She touched his arm again gently and looked at him in reassurance. From her eyes, he could tell that it was both safe and unsettling.

Beep!

Armstrong took a deep breath and began the short walk into the crater toward the object. The dark opening seemed to grow, ready to swallow him as soon as he drew near. He gulped and took the last steps. The black maw was within reach. He took one last glance back at Tina who waited patiently at the edge of the crater. Then he turned and leaned his body inside.

At first, he could see nothing in the black interior. Then the smell hit him. Decay. Something had died in the craft. He fought down the urge to run, although it sprang up inside like an artesian well. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he could make out a shape at the far side. A red light came on--

Beep!

The interior of the craft was briefly bathed in a crimson glow and he saw the rotting skeleton strapped into a chair. There was no stopping the geiser of fear this time. In a flash, he found himself next to Tina, hand around her arm, dragging her back into the safety of the thick brush. This time, she didn't resist. And he didn't stop until he had found his way back to the Community.

Once there among the rest of their extended family, Armstrong began to feel better and the pouding of his heart subsided slightly. The Alpha looked him over and sniffed suspiciously at them both, no doubt sensing the fear. After a moment, though, he chose to leave them alone and Armstrong led his mate up into their favorite tree.

They moved easily from branch to branch, working their way high into the giant canopy. There was one spot, high up, where it was possible to see for miles, with a great view of the river. The sun was disappearing below the horizon, and he could hear some of the others working their way up into the tree.

Armstrong wedged himself between two branches and caressed Tina's face. For a long moment, nothing else existed, not the darkening sky, nor the tree, nor the river, just those eyes.

Then, somewhere off in the distance, he heard the sound again.

Beep.

The monotonous tone filled him with dread. Tina reach out and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder which made eased his agitation a bit.

A few minutes later, another chimp climbed into the small clearing of the canopy. Armstrong hissed a warning for him to leave and the other chimp cringed slightly, but reached out to give him something. Tina cautiously backed away a few steps.

Armstrong took the piece of cloth in his hand. There was something familiar about it. He unfolded it and saw that something had been painted there. A terrible realization struck him like a fist! He screeched in pain and shuffled down toward the ground, upsetting the others as he swung past them, branch to branch.

A moment later, he was on the ground, leaning against the trunk and blind with grief. He glanced up. Tina had been right behind, he had heard her call to him. She wasn't there. A warm wind blew through the tree. There was no other sound. Armstrong was alone. Alone.

Bit by bit, fragmented memories came flooding back to him. As they did, everything began to change. Patches of bright pinkish red appeared in the sky. Many of the trees appeared to melt into the river as if they had decided to migrate downstream.

Beep.

He wasn't so sure that he had heard the sound this time, or if his mind was playing tricks. It didn't matter.

All but a few sparse fruit trees had vanished now, and the river itself began to dry up like a mirage on a hot day, revealing only arid, red soil at the bottom of a deep caldera. Armstrong let out one more grief-stricken scream and then collapsed into a heap. Alone.

"I've got the beacon," said Navigator Jeffrey Lawson. He squinted at the glowing readout, then cursed and put on his thick glasses. They gave him a sort of wise, owlish look. "Feeding you the 'tudes now."

Captain Shri Chandra walked up behind him and peered at the LCD display. "Can you make out the site yet?"

"No, we're still too far out. Give me another fifteen."

The captain nodded walked back to the wide, unshielded portal. What had started out as nothing but a reddish speck in the black sky a few months ago had slowly grown to encompass the entire view. Soon he would be able to set this crate down on the surface of Mars. Then the real work would begin.

The joint U.S./India venture to set up a Martian colony was well behind schedule and more over-budget than virtually any program NASA had ever undertaken, surpassing even the Space Shuttle. Worse, support for it back home had gone south as the citizens had begun to pressure the legislatures of both countries to call a halt. Fortunately, it was too late. The ark ship Sagacity was entering orbit around the red planet.

Captain Chandra breathed a sigh of relief at that thought--not that he had any intention of staying on this god-forsaken desert rock. First chance he got, he planned to pull up the gangplank and set sail for Terra. With any luck at all, he'd be home in time for Navaratri in Paush.

"Got it!" Lawson shouted. He pressed a few buttons and a set of green crosshairs appeared, super-imposed onto the plexiglass of the portal. "You can't quite see it yet, not without mags, but..."

"It's really there," Chandra finished the thought. Not that there was any reason to doubt that the mechs had done their job of terraforming a large tract of the Martian terrain, but no one had actually seen it. And one could only see so much at once through the eyes of robots.

The two chimps they had sent ahead (much to the annoyance of certain political groups) had confirmed through their vital stat detectors that the air was no longer poisonous and the temperature was, if a bit chilly for Chandra's taste, relatively stable between the day and night hours.

"Take us there, Mister Lawson"

A deep rumbling startled Armstrong out of his slumber, sending a pleasant dream fleeing into forgetfulness. He opened his eyes and rolled over to look at the dark sky. His simian brain struggled and failed to make sense of what he saw. Lights. Lights hovering over the mango grove. Sweeping beams of light reached out to feel the ground. Searching. The rumbling got louder, almost deafening as they approached.

A part of him wanted to scramble into the jungle to escape detection. But then he remembered that there was no jungle. Not anymore.

A moment later, the huge--craft, like the one Tina had shown him, but much larger--passed over him. He was struck in the face by one of the beams of light, bright as the sun, it seemed. It lingered there for a few seconds, then resumed its searching as the craft continued on past.

"He's coming to," Doctor Shandilya said, moving his hand slowly left and right in front the monkey's eyes.

"He's okay?" the captain asked incredulously. "Which one is it?"

"It's Armstrong," the doctor smiled and shrugged. "They found him holding a scrap of cloth with a NASA logo. Looks like it came from the seat of the pod. And to answer your first question, well, I'm no vet, but the computer says he's just a bit dehydrated. He's got a nice IV drip to counteract that, now."

The chimp lay awake on the padded examining room table, staring blankly into the light. He seemed neither curious nor scared of his new surroundings.

"I always thought that the orangutan was more suited for space travel," Shandilya thought out loud.

"Armstrong..." Chandra repeated, typing on his dataTap. "That's A...R...M... Here it is." He scanned the entry. "Trained by a woman named Tina Niles. And there was another chimp. Yeager."

The doctor nodded. "I read that already. NASA received a confirmation code from Yeager's euthanizer."

"Euthanizer?" Captain Chandra's expression said he didn't want to hear the answer to his question.

"It's a small pump implanted in the skin..." he pressed his thumb along the Chimp's upper right arm. "Right about... here." He picked up a portable scanner and soon the image of a small, square device appeared on the screen behind the bed.

"What does it do?"

"Well, at a set time, it was supposed to deliver a lethal dose of morphine into the system. Looks like this one didn't do it's job properly."

Chandra's memory had obviously been jogged by that. "Right. Euthanization was considered more humane than being stranded on Mars to fend for themselves. Or worse, being stuck here alone if one of them didn't make it. That's exactly what happened, isn't it?"

The doctor gave a spurious smile and looked back at the display. "From the looks of this, I'd say the morphine leaked out slowly over time. Nothing left in there now except maybe a little Yen-shee."

"Well, Armstrong," Chandra said, though the chimp had slipped back to sleep. "Guess you spent the last several months high as a satellite." He laughed and crossed his arms. "But with all the weird people we've brought to this place, you're gonna wish you were alone again."

Armstromg felt the blanket of sleep settle over him. He dreamed of his evenings along the Congo. And of Tina.

When Franchises Collide

2008-08-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 8/22/08.

For the moment, all was dark. Kelley Four could hear his reluctant volunteer work his way blindly up the concrete steps, across the creaking catwalk, and into the control room. A door closed. The former sandman was wrapped in a shroud of near-total sensory deprivation. Although it made no difference, he closed his eyes, as if to block out the darkness. He could have easily engaged the infrared enhancer on the side of head, but to do that would be to give in.

Kelley had no idea how many minutes passed before his mind began to play tricks, but the vision came in bright, vivid color. It was an echo from the past. His own voice recalled the scene from deep inside his head, as if he were writing a journal entry.

Logan Five and Jessica Six had brought us all out of the safety of the Domed City, into the god-forsaken vine-covered wilderness that had once been the capital of a vast--what was the word?-- country. Logan had never been the type to think things through. Most of us sandmen weren't.

Before, it had been the Lifeclocks that had limited the human lifespan to thirty years. Later, it would be starvation, hypothermia, and disease. That fool old man had been able to survive Outside only as a scavenger. There was no way thousands of young, computer-nurtured sheep-people were going to make it in such a place, at least not for long. The first Winter alone killed nearly three quarters of us.

Then the Borg came.

"The freakin' Borg!" Kelley Four shouted involuntarily. His voice echoed back to him five times from the darkness.

We had had barely begun to comprehend what the Earth was when we were visited from the night sky. One by one, as a gamer might take down his opponent in Chess, my brothers and sisters were eliminated by the black mechanical ghosts until scarcely two hundred remained.

The female called Seven of Nine had chosen--no, not chosen--been assigned to me by the hive. The Borg queen had special things in mind for me, she had said. We made love. It had seemed impossible that something so mechanical, something that could appear and disappear at will should feel so human. And that an act that felt so good could make me feel so traitorously inhuman. The cold steel of her body had burrowed into my flesh. We are many. No... no, I am one.

Because of his name, Gary Seven had lived among us for for months before we realized that he wasn't a Domer. One of the old man's cats had taken a liking to him; she seemed to follow him everywhere. When I first met Gary Seven, he asked a lot of questions about where we had come from and why there were so few of us. One time I overheard him talking to himself, or perhaps it was the cat. I didn't see anyone else near. I'll always remember what he said, although it made no sense to me.

"This time line must be broken, Isis." Kelley quoted the man aloud. "We can't allow this to happen."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kelley registered that the others had begun to file into the dark room. The grunting of humans combined with the whirring of servo-motors.

Gary Seven had demanded that Seven of Nine take him to the queen. The Borg tried to--we, no they, they called it assimilation. I don't know why, but I helped him escape. The queen declared my assimilation a failure and scheduled me for recycling. Gary Seven fled Old Washington. No one has heard from him since.

A low buzzing sound vibrated the floors and walls as the generators were brought online. When the light surged overhead, it was a blinding white blossom. Kelley Four squinted and looked around at the last of the human race. Along with himself, twelve white-clad human figures stood in a circle.

The speakers crackled from high overhead has as the buffers struggled to clear a year's worth of old sampled data.

"Las-Las-Last Day." a disembodied woman's voice stated coldly. "Year of the ci-ci-ci-city 2274."

"We are not assimilated!" Kelley shouted from behind his white mask, and his voice thundered back five times.

A murmur of agreement rose among the twelve half-Borg.

"Identify," said the voice. All raised their left hand, palms outward to show the crystal embedded there. The Borg had wired into them to help charge their implants. But the crystals were clear. The Lifeclocks no longer had power over them. The sacrifice was theirs.

Slowly, the carousel began to rotate as the buzzing sound increased in pitch. One by one, like pieces taken from a Chess board the last humans were lifted into the open space of the arena toward the light. For this ultimate Last Day, there was no crowd to cheer the spectacle, no family to anticipate their renewal.

A lightening bolt came from the ceiling and struck the first person to float too close to the domed ceiling. The white robed figure erupted into a shower of sparks and went limp.

A second half-Borg was hit in the head. His robes burst in blue flames as the circuitry underneath overloaded and ignited.

Then, it was Kelley's turn. There is no sanctuary.

Gary Seven, picked up his cat and stepped into the time portal, destination: Earth, 1968. There might be a way to stop what he had seen, to avert the Catastrophe that the Domers had told him about. If the plan he and Isis had drawn up worked, he could interrupt the missile launch that afternoon.

He felt a moment of vertigo as the energy of his thoughts rushed through time and space. He'd arrive on the U.S Air Force base with just enough time to slip unseen into the control room and then make it to the tower.

There was just one problem. When he materialized, he found himself standing in a strange room, staring back at a pointy-eared alien, a Scottish engineer, and a smug, over-acting starship captain.

A wizard, an elf, and a dwarf walk into a tavern. The elf says...

2008-08-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 8/15/08 which this week, is a chance to participate in one of the challenges I missed . Share and enjoy.

A wizard, an elf, and a dwarf walk into a tavern. The elf says, "Good barkeep, my parched tongue would celebrate one of your fine ales. Furthermore, my coin purse stands open for my thirsty companions."

The round-faced barkeep frowned and humphed at such flowery prose, but grabbed three wooden tankards from a shelf and went to work filling them with a suspicious brown liquid.

"Sandy is the name," the elf extended a thin hand across the bar. "Pecan Sandy. And I thank thee for allowing us shelter from the tempest brewing outside. What might thee be called, my good man?"

The barkeep didn't look up from from his work. "Wilford," he mumbled through ample lips.

"Wilford! 'Tis a perfect name for a man of class such as thyself." He turned and gestured toward his two companions. "Allow me to introduce my noble party of adventurers. The clever looking wizard is called Guff. He hails from the village of Rove. And this short, but powerful fighter was named Skont by his parents, they--"

"Shut it, elf!" the barkeep put eyes on him for the first time. "Drink your ale and then get your friends out of my tavern. It's not safe."

"Not safe?" Sandy glanced around and was startled to notice a particularly ugly orc sitting in the dark corner to his left. She seemed to be in some sort of distress. The sound of sliding metal from behind said that Skont had also spotted her. He turned back to Wilford.

"Good sir, you allow monsters of this sort refuge in your establishment? T'is no secret that orcs are unclean!"

"I don't have no choice in the matter." Wilford growled. "Law says I had to let them in."

"Them?" Sandy drew his own short sword and stepped away from the bar. "Perhaps t'will take a brave band of adventurers to deal with the intrusion, since thou doth seem to lack the courage."

"Don't do it," Wilford warned.

Heedless of the danger, Sandy, Guff, and Skont swaggered to the far end of the bar, ready, nay, anticipating confrontation. The dwarf growled deeply and stepped to the front of the party. The wizard intoned words to himself which caused a fireball to wink into existence. It hovered over his wiry hand, awaiting his command.

"Far be it for me to harm a female," Skont said, sword raised high, "But you have no place in this tavern, foul beast."

Suddenly, the orc let out a terrible scream and collapsed onto the bar. That, and the sound of liquid splashing onto the floor caused the party to take an involuntary step backward. The fireball vanished along with the wizard's courage. The three adventurers glanced at one another nervously.

A moment later, the head of a lizard man appeared from underneath the bar. He stood, dripping in a thick orangish ooze, and let out a deafening screech. Then he threw back his head and laughed triumphantly.

"It is done!" he shouted in a gleeful, but shrill tone. "The old wizard said that an orc and a lizard man could never produce an offspring. We have proved him wrong! Behold my daughter!" The lizard man lifted a small, naked orange creature over his head. The offspring had its mother's figure and its father's teeth.

"I shall teach her the ways of sword. And one day, 'though it take a thousand years, she shall rule the quasi-free world! And I shall call her...(wait for it)... HILLARY!"

With the first known utterance of the name, lightning flashed outside, setting afire the thatch roof of the tavern. The patrons screamed and scattered as a deafening thunder shook the structure to its foundation. The barkeep tried in vain to extinguish the flames with the tankards of brown ale. By the time the rains came, it was too late.

The elf, the wizard, and the dwarf stood shocked in the drenching downpour as they stared at the ruin of the tavern. The elf says, "I got a bad feeling about this."

Attack of the Minidroidz

2008-07-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 7/25/08.

RESTRICTED INFORMATION
Official transcript
Subject: David Leland, Software Tester III
Case #: 20220707-02
Viral code found in consciousness transfers
Interviewer: Rainer Schtupp, Investigator XI

---- WARNING: This document has been tagged for deletion ----

---- Transcript Begins ----

Schtupp: The law says I have to record this.

Leland: [sighs] Whatever. I save all your asses and this is the thanks I get.

Schtupp: Why don't you start from the beginning? What happened on the afternoon of July 7, 2022?

[Wooden chair sliding. Footsteps]

Leland: Ok. We'd been working on an upgrade to the old Model 2 CTR's. I was coming back from lunch--

Schtupp: Excuse me. CTR's?

Leland: I believe you know what a CTR is, Agent Schtupp.

Schtupp: That is irrelevant, Mr. Leland. Our audience won't know. We must be thorough.

[Papers rustling]

Leland: Fine. It stands for Consciousness Transfer Receptacle. It's the storage module that houses the subject's memories and sense of presence. It connects onto the back of a Minidroid.

Schtupp: Thank you. You were returning from lunch?

Leland: Yeah. I found my boss and three other engineers-- it was Xing, Ericsson, and Wu--they were crowded around the workbench in the back of the lab. I asked them what was going on. They told me that one of the Minidroidz had gone berserk and was staggering around San Antonio, bumping into things. It was speaking gibberish, stringing random words into nonsensical phrases.

[Scribbling on paper]

Schtupp: And did you contact the Archives Center for the identity associated with the serial number?

Leland: I did. Fellow named Hasim Al Bhand from Detroit. He was a recent transfer, just reached mandatory age this past May.

Schtupp: Was his family notified?

Leland: Of course not. We followed federal protocol, down to the freaking letter. Lot of BS if you ask me.

Schtupp: I didn't. Please go on.

[Chair creaks]

Leland: The next day, it was my turn on Tech Support. I got a call that it was happening to two more of the Minidroidz, this time both were in Houston. And both were new transfers, within the last couple of months. By day number three, there were malfunctions all over Texas, in every Minidroid cell. We couldn't even log all the calls.

Schtupp: Yes, well, I do have a record of those calls if you'd like to see them.

[Sarcastic laugh]

Leland: Of course you do. Mama hears all. It wasn't long after that, the malfunctioning Minidroidz turned violent and started wandering outside of the Texas borders. [pause] which I'm sure you realize is illegal.

Schtupp: Mr. Leland, what, in your opinion, happened to the Minidroidz?

Leland: I used Google Earth Now to locate the first one that had gone all wacky. Then I forced a WIFI core dump onto one of our main servers here in Dallas. Long story short, someone introduced a virus into the code.

Schtupp: And I assume that it would take a certain special skill set to do something like that? Someone with intimate knowledge of the Minidroidz systems?

Leland: I don't much like where you're going with this. But yes. They'd have to be present at the time of transfer. [pause] ..and not distracted by the sounds of protest against the mandatory transfers.

Schtupp: Mr. Leland, I appreciate that you do not approve of your government's solution to the crisis of overpopulation, but...

Leland: Solution? Is that what we're calling it? Agent Schtupp, sir, every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of 42 year-old men and women have their bodies harvested for parts and their brains x-copied into a 24-inch tall white robot with a black Daewoo-Hyundai logo on the chest. And if that ain't enough, they get shipped--exiled, actually--to the newly created puppet nation of Texas. If it weren't for the millions of digitized facial images on the LCD's, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

Schtupp: We are not here to debate the morality of what happens in this lab. If you're so opposed to it, then why do you participate? This new race of beings is running on an OS you helped to troubleshoot. And it was you who spotted the virus. Convenient.

Leland: You think I did it?

Schtupp: Until I know better, all five living residents of Texas are suspects. Now, please continue with the story.

Leland: Where was I? Oh yeah, Minidroidz going all Chuckie on everyone. I never would have guessed they could wield a knife like that. Once they broke through the containment field---

Schtupp: And the containment field is?

Leland: Right. The containment field is a long line of receivers that detect a Minidroid's RFID tags and shuts it down if it tries to cross.

Schtupp: Go on.

Leland: Well, you know the rest. It was all over the news sites. The hordes of Minidroids hacked and slashed their way across to the East Coast, then headed north. They were well on their way to the Pentagon. Your Mama's military couldn't stop them. There were just too damned many. That was when I found the virus in the core dump and was able to work with the other engineers to patch it. We forced a WIFI OS security update and did a reboot on everyone.

Schtupp: Right, you rebooted 12 million people.

Leland: They didn't notice. I can put the code back in if you like.

Schtupp: Always the smart-arse. You asked me earlier if I thought you did it. The truth is, I know you didn't. You see, we've cross-reference the rest of the serial numbers. It wasn't all the Minidroidz who went berserk, just a select percentage. And here are the names.

[Paper rustles]

Leland: These are all Muslim names.

Schtupp: You noticed.

Leland: It was another terrorist attack.

Schtupp: Yes. The first on American soil since 9/11.

Leland: Why are you interrogating me, then?

Schtupp: I'm interviewing you because we can't afford to offend the three billion Muslims on the planet. You, Mr. Leland, are going to take the blame, the next Timothy McVeigh. We couldn't hope for a better scapegoat. You're on record with your endless anti-government dronings--always the malcontent. And with the help of Patriot Act IV, you'll simply disappear into any number of cages set up around the world. Don't worry, you won't be tortured. At least, not officially.

[Pistol cocking]

Leland: Son of a bitch. Don't shoot me!

[Door crashes]

Unidentified synthetic voice: ALLAH ACKBAR!!

[Explosion]

---- Transcript Ends ----
---- WARNING: This document has been tagged for deletion ----

Global Crisis Alert!

2008-07-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

Time. There never seems to be enough of it to spend with our friends, family and children. Time is our most precious commodity. But its in danger.

Hi, I'm Don Henley.

You may be aware that a cow's flatulence contributes to the global warming crisis by increasing the levels of poisonous greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but did you know that these animals steal precious seconds of your time every day? And that the problem is getting worse every year?

You may ask, "How can they do that? Bessie would never do anything to harm us." You'd be wrong. You see, it's a little-known fact that 89% (some experts say more) of bovines have a preference to face East before passing wind.

Every single day, literally millions of cows release seven stomachs' worth of pent-up gas to the West which slightly, but detectably increases the speed of the Earth's rotation. Just in the last twenty-four hours, you have lost .002 seconds of your day because you insist on eating a Whopper in your air-conditioned SUV.

Don't believe me? They say a picture's worth a thousand words.

This diagram shows the ugly truth about Bovine Global Rotation Acceleration and it's grave consequences for our planet and our children.

As you can see, time is short, and getting shorter. So, come on, Desperado, come down from your fences before it's too late. Meat is murder. Stop killing time. Peace.

Author's note: The choice of Don Henley to deliver this global crisis news parody was not an arbitrary one. Rather, it is in retaliation for his using the long-awaited new Eagles album as yet another platform for his lefty politics. I'd tell Don not to choke on my sixteen bucks, but he has probably already donated it to PETA.

Billboard Widget

2008-07-10T19:22:00.001-07:00

Giving it a try.

Friday Challenge 6/27/08

2008-06-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 6/27/08.

Even after all these years, they've never been able to make it rain often enough on the Martian farms. Fortunately for us, the fine entrepreneurs of Waltonsville (named after the founder of it's largest investor, Sam Walton) saw to it that irrigation brought enough water to sustain the few genetically altered crops that would grow in the red-brown soil. John Harley had promised the the land owner that his enterprise would take great pains to avoid trampling the still-tender seedlings, but I had my doubts.

As I pulled my sandhopper through the open gates, I spotted the surprise that John had mentioned to me on the TXTer. At the far end of the gravel road I could see the lights of a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and numerous snack booths, no doubt offering such tempting delicacies as fried wirerat on a stick and pickled cactus wedges.

A carnival? It would be frowned upon by the Peacekeepers as a lawsuit magnet, but hardly a good reason for swearing me to secrecy.

Still a couple of hundred meters out, I pulled the sandhopper to the side of the road and stepped into the painfully dry Martian air. Calliope music drifted over the dunes and echoed among the rocks. I may have caught a whiff of cotton candy, but then, I have a good imagination.

"Joe Essex, you've seen my secret. Now you must die."

I suppose the voice over the loudspeaker was meant to startle me, but John had been my friend for a lot of years. Nothing surprised me any more. I just shook my head and made my way toward the festivities at a trot.

As I neared the ticket gate, John greeted me with a smile and a jarring handshake.

"How the hell are ya, Joe? Haven't seen you in while."

"Yeah, shop keeps me busy as hell. Sand and gears don't mix, ya know."

He shook his head. "Nah, I wouldn't know about such things."

I nodded toward the gate. "So this is your big secret? The one that would have you shoveling shit if they knew?"

John grinned again. "Yeah. And no. Come on inside."

We strolled through the gate, past the empty ticket booth and onto the main grounds. As we made our way past the merry-go-round and on toward a small rollercoaster, something began to strike me as odd.

"What the hell, John? Everything looks kind of flimsy." I grabbed the handrail on the rollercoaster walkway and shook it for emphasis. "This place seems a little dangerous."

"I was wondering how long it would take you to pick up on that." He paused, somewhat triumphantly, then slapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward a large tent at the center of the grounds. "The carnival ain't real. It's a front!"

"You sellin' drugs?"

John laughed at that. "You know me better than that, hoss. Take a look." He gestured to the tent, then crossed his arms, obviously quite pleased with himself.

As I neared the structure, I could hear noises inside, growling and slamming. Then there were voices. Someone sounded pissed. I hesitated for just a moment, but I could feel John's eyes on me. I dared not wait too long. It took just a second to steel myself and reach for the tent flap.

The inside of the tent seemed dark at first. But when my eyes adjusted, I could see what looked like a boxing ring at the center of a huge set of bleachers. Two huge men circled one another inside with a look of undiluted hatred. Then one picked up the other and slammed him hard. Not boxing, I thought.

"Pro Wrestling." For the first time in years, John Harley startled me. "Pro wrestling on Mars."

I turned and looked hard at him. "And right under the nose of the United Nations."

"Nah." He slapped me on the shoulder again. "Right up their nose."

Friday Challenge for 6/6/08

2008-06-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 6/6/08.

He's just a young boy out of school
Livin' his world like he wants to
They're makin' laws, but they don't understand
Turns a boy in to a fightin' man
They won't take me
They won't break me
--Journey, Escape, 1981

"Schools Out"
by snowdog

"Uh, excuse me. Could you tell me where..." the skinny kid fumbled with his books and class schedule. "Do you know where Room C315 is?"

Confusion. My brain struggled to make sense of the situation. A lost freshman on campus was nothing new, not on the first day of school. The thing is, today was supposed to be the first day of Summer break. What was I doing here? The nervous newbie squirmed under my senior stare.

"That's C-hall, it's that way," I said, pointing absently in some random direction.

"Thanks!"

The kid rushed down the main hall in hopes of making his remedial English class in time. I knew he wouldn't. Mrs. Eland would give him The Look.

I couldn't understand it. Yesterday the hallways had been buzzing with students and teachers looking forward to two and half months of sun and sand. A Coke and smile. Summer always seems too short, but usually I remember at least some of it.

The bell rang, announcing that I and about two hundred or so freshmen were late for class. I had no idea where I was supposed to be. Wait. There was a schedule in my hand. Phys Ed? First hour? Aww, man. It was going to be a long Winter.

As I made my way toward the gym, something stirred in my mind, a dream of sorts. No, a memory. I was on the bus, on the way home from the last day of school. It was a rowdy trip, as they all were. Our bus driver wasn't exactly a strict disciplinarian.

"Hey, ya'll calm down back there." Merv mumbled into the mirror with a poorly-executed look of concern. We paused our mischief briefly until his gaze returned to the sun-heated road ahead, toward that reflective pond in the distance that you never reach.

"Okay," I said, dropping my voice a little this time. "Go for it!"

The kid I had in a headlock--Greg was his name--squirmed helplessly as the huge black football player across the aisle grabbed his Fruit-of-the-Looms® and yanked hard. I put my hand over the kid's mouth to stifle the scream. Merv didn't look up, so Anthony gave one more hard pull, nearly wrenching him out of my grip.

It was mirth all around.

Except now I was standing in the gym with a group of fellow Seniors on the first day of school. By this point in our careers, we all knew the drill. Coach would appear from his office nestled in the locker room and remind us who's boss. Buzz cut. Closely-trimmed beard. A five foot seven inch leader of men named Coach Branch. He ordered us to take a seat.

My friend Joey flopped next to me on the bleachers as we pretended to listen about how things would be different this year. Nonsense would not be tolerated. Lawsuits were pending.

"Something weird's going on," I muttered.

"Yeah?" Joey leaned back and carefully slipped the can of Skoal® from his permanently ring-impressed back pocket. He offered me some and laughed at my morning-sick expression. "Branch doesn't look any weirder than last year."

"No, not that. Look..." I glanced around cautiously. "Summer Break just started yesterday. Why are we here?"

Joey nearly lost his dip he when blurted out "WHAT?"

"Hey! Mullins!" Coach shouted irritably. "Anything you want to share?"

"No sir."

Coach Branch rolled his eyes. "Joe, what's in your mouth?"

"Nuttin, sir!"

"Get down here, now!"

And then I was on the bus again, in the back seats that the football player and I owned. From the few times that my parents had let me drive to school, I knew that the trip down the winding country road took eight minutes at seventy miles per hour. Even with stops, Merv could come damned close to that time. I grabbed the seat as a left-hand curve nearly put me into the window.

"Man, I can't wait," Anthony smiled. "Last day on this freakin' death trap. Ever!"

"Lucky bastard! I wish I was a Senior."

Anthony looked at his watch. "You will be in about five minutes."

"YEAH!" I agreed. To celebrate, I twisted my class ring around backward in my hand and slapped Greg on the back of the head one more time as a Junior.

"Man, that f***in' hurt!" Joey said, rubbing his ass. "Five swats! And he took the can! A full can!"

He was standing on my toes as I did sit-ups. This was to see how badly we had all gotten out of shape over the Summer. Coach didn't laugh when I told him that you have to be in shape to get out of it. Not a problem that I had.

"Not...exactly...a first.... offense." I spouted between reps.

"Nineteen... Twenty..." Joey laughed as I collapsed into a panting heap of sweaty gray cotton.

"No, I'm serious, Joey," I gasped staring up at the pulleys and cables that controlled the basketball goals. "I don't remember Summer Break. It's like I was just here yesterday."

"That's gotta suck," he drawled. "I was at the lake almost every day. Caught this huge-ass bass. Must'a been ten pounds."

"Liar."

"Hey, Jeannie took pictures this time!"

In an effort worthy of Atlas himself, I squeezed out another sit-up before the whistle blew. Then I got to my feet so we could swap positions.

"You don't remember anything, huh? Hope it don't have anything to do with this." He poked me hard in forehead.

"OWW!" It hurt a lot more than it should have.

Greg grabbed the back of his head and gave me a nasty look. He was a nice kid and he knew my bullying was good-natured, so he usually just laughed it off. Not this time. He scowled and moved to another seat.

No matter. My stop was next. Merv banked the bus around the last 's' curve and brought the big yellow sardine can to an abrupt halt.

I gathered my notebooks, textbooks, and yearbook. Home at last! Nothing but two and a half months of loafing bliss ahead! I stood and worked my way toward the front, gathering speed as I went.

"Have a nice Summer," Merv mumbled as I neared the first row.

"Woo HOO!" I shouted in glee as I grabbed the pole and swung down to the door. As it turns out, I jumped just a tad too high and slammed my forehead into the upper door frame.

Next thing I recall, I was staggering on the ground, books and papers scattered at my feet, holding my forehead. Merv laughed and closed the doors. Then he was gone.

Now I was back in the gym, still touching my head where Joey had poked me. My fingers came to rest on the adhesive bandage.

"Oh, yeah."

Update: Fix some typos with Bane's help.

Friday Challenge 5/23/08

2008-05-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 5/23/08

A Rock Down Under
(to the tune of Men At Work's "Down Under")

Trav'ling to a place called Washington
A place where only outlaws have guns
I met strange lady, she made me nervous
Said, ya'll come in and vote for us.
She said

Did you crawl from a rock down under?
You're the one I must win over
Can't you see my thighs of thunder?
Bush has torn this land asunder

Listened to a man called Obama
Someone said sounds like Osama
I said do you speak-a my language?
'Cos you make less sense than a cabbage.
He said

I crawled from a rock down under
Where lies do flow and lobbyists plunder
Better go before I blunder
Bush has torn this place asunder

Sittin' in a bar on K Street
Thinkin' about something to eat
Then McCain, he walked up to me
I said go away all three of you can bite me.
I said

Ya'll crawled from this rock down under
Where money talks and Kennedy chunders
Don't you see, you drag us under?
And yes, Bush has torn this land asunder.

Crawlin' out from a rock down under
Where lies do flow and lobbyists plunder
Better go before you blunder
Bush has torn this place asunder

Friday Challenge 5/16/08

2008-05-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 5/16/08.

Houston was the first target of Rasberry's "crazy red ants". For weeks, millions of the tiny insects swarmed into anything electric or electonic in search of information. Johnson Space Center was where the signal originated, and the ants had made short work of the place. But the extended colony soon learned that their goal lay elsewhere. Although their casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands, a handful of them had managed to board an evac helicopter heading Northeast to their ultimate destination: Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

That's where Jeremy Schnapps (Systems Analyst 4) found them, milling about in his climate-controlled server room having apparently worked their way down the baseboard and under the door. With a short flurry of words his mother had told him never to say, he dashed to the racks of expensive Unix-based servers and started smashing under his boot the lines of near microscopic red ants making their way toward the locked metal grill door.

"And where did you little buggers come from?" he asked one that had somehow managed to crawl onto his wrist. "You guys are supposed to be in Houston according Ms. Couric."

Even as he watched, another long column of insects formed and began to reach for the nearest server. He swatted them away again with a particularly acidic curse and reached for the wall phone.

"Hey, it's me! Look, I need you get building maintenance down here. We've got some little pests." He stomped on a newly forming line for emphasis.

The surviving ants--that is to say, almost all of them--couldn't quite make out the words of the female on the other end of the phone, but they suspected it would be in their best interest to put an end to the conversation. Fortunately, a stapled wire extended upward from the baseboard. It would provide good cover.

"I don't care if they're busy. This is important!"

Another parade branched off at mid-wall and the leader laid a trail of pheromones along the far side of the doorway, enroute behind the server rack.

"Son of a--!" Schnapps shouted as he noticed several of the insects enter the phone's chassis. He ripped the plastic casing away and saw that twenty or so of the pests had already made it inside. The acrid smell of burning ant wafted from the device.

"No, not you, Susan." He pulled the receiver away and blew into into the wall unit. When he put the phone back to his ear, there was nothing to hear.

"Hello? Hello, Susan?" Like a scared movie character, he tried every button on the phone, but nothing changed the fact that it was stone cold dead. And he knew the security lock's motion sensor would be out even before he spotted the ants crawling in and out of it. He was trapped.

As a last ditch effort, he sat down at his desktop machine to tap out a quick email to the building's superintendent.

Hello, please help me. I'm trapped in the server room! Beware, CRAZY RED ANTS!

When Jeremy reached for the glowing red optical mouse to hit the send button, he saw a single insect slide under it and into the crimson light of the LED. He moved the mouse and squashed it with his fist, but another crawled from the underside of the desk and immediately replaced his comrade.

Underneath the mouse, the shadow of the crazy ant shifted left and right, forward and back until it found the perfect spot. Then Jeremy could only stare in disbelief as the pointer began to move around the screen, tentatively at first. More ants showed up and slipped inside the plastic casing of the mouse, no doubt to work the buttons.

After a few minutes of experimentation, the they were able to move the pointer to the start button and open Notepad. A moment later, the on-screen keyboard appeared and mankind's first direct communication from an ant colony read:

Pasty human... you will now open the clean room to the northwest and allow us entrance!!!!

With a loud clunk, the security latch on the door disengaged and in walked Susan Smithers, (Administrative Assistant).

"Oh, Jeremy," she wailed, "the ants are everywhere! Even in the coffee! We're doomed!"

"Now, Susan. No need to panic. We just-"

At that moment, Susan noticed the insect message. Her eyes got wide. She brought her hands up. She took a deep breath. And she let out the most blood curdling B-movie scream!

"Susan, please!

"I- I'm sorry!" She pointed at the screen. "They're typing!"

"Yes, I know." He turned and sat down at the machine. Letter by letter, the message continued.

Failure to comply will result in death, fatso!!!!

"Can you hear me?" Jeremy asked.

Please direct your foul human breath toward the mouse.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, leaning closer. "What do you want from us?"

We want into your clean room now!!! Or our children will feed on your jowls!!!

"What business do you have in there?"

We are from the planet you call Mars. Your rovers are poor quality. We are here to put an end to your inferior technology before you bring it and your watery bodies on our planet.

"Poor quality? Those things are still roaming around on Mars!"

Only because we repaired them. Three times. Spirit caught fire once. Poor quality!!!

Jeremy felt a warm head rush from all the excitement. His heart started to race at the thought that Earth was under attack from Mars!

"Why are you doing this?" Susan asked. "We only want to live in peace!"

We know of your peace, suspicious-smelling female. We are not impressed!!!

"We won't comply!" Jeremy shouted and started to stand. A wave of dizziness knocked him back into his chair. He felt itchy.

"Jeremy! They're all over your pants!"

Jermey looked down to see that there was a line of crazy ants running up his trouser leg from the floor and leading to... his insulin pump! And they were all carrying tiny white specks.

"My God!" Susan screamed, "They're bringing sugar from the break room and dumping it into your insulin!"

It was all Jeremy could do to keep from blacking out.

"You... little.. bastards," he sputtered.

Let us in, sweet tooth, or you die!!!

Summoning all of his strength, Jeremy reached for an empty diet cola bottle that had been sitting on the desk for seven months. He turned to Susan.

"Do you have a lighter?"

She handed him the small Bic and stepped back as Jeremy struggled to his feet. Making sure all the ants in the room could see what he was doing, he ignited the mouth of the bottle and held it high. Black smoke curled into the air toward the white ceiling tiles. He knew the fire alarm would sound shortly. He would have to act fast before the sprinklers kicked on.

What are you doing, lard breath???

With that, the first drop of melted, fiery plastic left the bottle with a ZIP and fell to the floor. It narrowly missed the line of ants running up his shoe. ZIP! ZIP! Plastic rained down like napalm onto the insects below!

Stop it! You will die!!

ZIP! ZIP! ZIP! Ant bodies were piling up on the floor and desk. The air was filled with the smell of burning thorax.

Die human!! You will die!!

Susan moved the mouse aside and squashed the insectoid typist with her thumb. "Not today!" she said.

ZIP! ZIP! ZIP!

It took several minutes, but the attack was driven back. The fire alarms sounded, starting the sprinkler system. Jeremy and Susan kissed deeply beneath a shower of foul-smelling water.

Friday Challenge 5/9/08

2008-05-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 5/9/08.

The Lifetime Original Movie of the week is called Rabbit Ears.

It's February 2009. The warnings have aired relentlessly between episodes of American Idol and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? for well over a year. No matter. The timing couldn't have been worse. The downturn in the economy has made it difficult to afford a converter box, much less a digital HD widescreen television with surround sound. What the government didn't foresee was that, while they may over-tax the citizenry, fail to educate their children, and encourage an invasion from south of the border, you don't f*&% with our TV sets!

The story is told from the point of view of Kevin Martin (Maybe we can get Patrick Swayze?), head of the Federal Communications Commission. He spends the entire film is his high-rise DC office under siege by mobs of worker drones below whose brains have accidentally started working.

In the crowd is Mildred Paige, an elderly woman (Kathy Bates, no?) who has had to choose between fuel for her Escalade and Matlock reruns. She is not a happy camper. Mildred leads the angry hordes in an attempt to seize the building and the chairman. A set of "rabbit-ears" becomes the official symbol of the movement. And every man, woman and child waves them aggressively at the window on the forty-fifth floor.

Mildred and her commandos eventually make it past security to the stairwell just outside the F.C.C. lobby. Martin is barricaded in his office with only his overweight administrative assistant as protection. The oppressed masses burst through the door and hang him on his coat rack by his briefs. Mildred presses her nail file to the man's throat and says "Bring... back... my... stories!" The crowd bursts into cheers! Martin yelps as the file draws blood.

Suddenly, the plate glass window shatters and President Hillary lands squarely in center of the office, sword drawn! "Get away from him," she shrieks in her own special way. The crowd starts to close in on her, but the blade takes several of the protesters to the ground in a pool of sticky redness. The rest back off respectfully.

Finally, she squares off with Mildred and her nail file. The old woman (Mildred, I mean) swings her weapon, but Hillary ducks, then leaps to the dangling light fixture, slamming her heavy heels into the old woman's chest. Mildred is knocked to the ground, but she's up again instantly. In a desperate attempt, she throws her rabbit-ear antenna. Hillary swats it away with her sword and, presses her blade to her opponent's chest, demanding surrender.

"Never!" Mildred shouts. But Hillary produces a calico cat from her power pantsuit and turns the blade on it. "NOOOOO!" The crowd is shocked as Mildred concedes.

President Hillary turns to the camera and gives a speech about the future belonging to digital. Besides, it frees up more frequencies for the government to use. You do like the government, don't you?

Friday Challenge 4/11/08

2008-04-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/11/08

Hillary's Strategy
by snowdog

"Can I see your press ID, please?"

From deep within her black hooded cloak, Hillary grimaced and fished out a laminated card to show the Secret Service agent. Costas was his name, she recalled from her days as First Lady. If her disguise failed, he would be one of the first to recognize her.

The stocky man glanced at the card fleetingly, then back her. During Bill's presidency, she had never gotten along terribly well with the agents charged to protect her. Nor had she made an effort to hide her distaste for their paramilitary ways. And this smug, bumbling Neanderthal was one of the worst. Hillary could practically see the agent's plans weighing on his mind. She could hear the distraction in his voice. Everywhere were glaring clues that she had missed before.

"Uh, thanks, Ms. Couric. This press pool is over to the left of the stage."

Hillary made a show of following the man's gesture just long enough for him to turn his attention to the next reporter. As she passed the podium, the spot where the new President of the United States would be sworn in, she noticed an odor in the air that hadn't been apparent the last time. She dubbed it the stench of treachery.

Patience had never been listed amongst her virtues. She glanced at her bejeweled watch in a strange mixture of anticipation and apprehension. Timing was everything if she hoped to change the way things had unfolded before. She counted silently to herself as the final seconds ticked down toward an event she had seen before from another perspective.

After introductions and much fanfare, Chief Justice John Roberts stepped outside the West Wing door and strode to join George W. Bush and the rest of his cronies on the dais. Insufferable oaf. Hillary began to count again, this time with a tad more enthusiasm.

Exactly forty-three seconds later, the newly elected President Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in the doorway and made her way to the stage. She seemed especially radiant today in her red power pantsuit. Staffers had suggested something more formal for the swearing-in ceremony, but she would have nothing of it. Nothing gave a woman a sense of empowerment quite like a jacket and matching slacks. Ah, and those heels!

Hillary watched with an unconscious smile as her past self took the stage, raised her hand, and launched into her oath.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Wrapped in her cloak a wiser, more shrewd Hillary frowned as she noticed three Secret Service agents step discreetly behind her other self. The one she had identified as Costas muttered something into his encrypted transmitter and two more agents appeared from behind some rose bushes. The taller one reached into his breast pocket. She counted under her breath, "Three... two... one... NOW!"

Three bright flashes appeared overhead as her sword caught up to her in the time stream and dropped into her left hand. She pulled back the dark hood and let go of her illusion. For one glorious moment, two Hillary Rodham's walked the Earth.

The president-elect had not been caught entirely off guard the first time. She pulled a small, snub-nosed revolver from her jacket nailed the tall agent between the eyes. Hillary had remembered this event and didn't waste time with him, focusing instead on one of the men who had crept up behind her. In a slow-motion dance to the tune of onlookers' screams she leaped high into the air and landed square on the platform between her past-self and her assailants. With one smooth arc, she raised her blade and brought it down across the man's chest. He screamed and fell to his knees.

"Thanks for showing up!" The president-elect quipped. "You look great!" Her next shot with the revolver narrowly missed Costas who ducked behind the reporters.

"I do love a good party." Hillary drove the point of her sword into another man's heart. No scream this time as his evil handgun fell into the freshly cut grass.

The three remaining agents circled the twin Hillary's from a respectful distance, guns aimed. The remaining crowd had grown silent with stunned apprehension.

"You aren't supposed to be here. Gintraka's gonna be unhappy with me."

"You talk a lot for dead woman."

"Drop your weapons, ladies!" Costas shouted from the press pool.

Hillary noticed a bright red dot appear on her other-self's forehead and was just in time to deflect the bullet with her sword. The sound seemed to break the spell of silence that had fallen over the onlookers and there was a sudden roar of panic as they struggled to exit the garden.

From out of nowhere, George W. Bush grabbed her shoulder and shoved her from the dais.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "This is against the rules. It isn't your turn!"

"I didn't get a turn!" she shouted and swung her sword at his face. He evaded easily, but the distraction gave her time to leap again and come to rest atop one of the agents who had had the president-elect in his sights. In her anger, Hillary decapitated him with one quick chop.

"There are four others who have waited patiently!" W shouted. "You can't do this!"

Hillary barely heard him as she slashed her way through another traitorous agent who already had a bullet in his shoulder. It didn't matter one bit whose turn it was at the presidency. She was going to get her four years; eight if she could clean up the mess Walloc had made of the economy during his turn.

"You will not do this!"

Hillary spun to find that Walloc had picked up a gun from one of the cooling Secret Service agents. A red laser dot appeared on her dark, blood-stained cloak.

"It's been this way from the start." he said coldly. "Gintraka was Washington, Jinto was Adams, I was Jefferson" He brought the laser sight up to her forehead. "You were Madison. The order will not be changed."

"The order will not change," she agreed "The multiverse will branch. And I, Salma, will be Hillary Rodham, forty-fourth President of the United States." Vaguely, she noticed that the sound of gunfire had stopped.

Walloc continued as if he hadn't heard. "Gintraka was Johnson, Jinto was Nixon, I was Ford, you were Carter... Rocktor was Reagan." His hand trembled as he tightened his grip on the trigger. "You will not break the rules."

With a loud pop, a red wound appeared in his neck and George W. fell to his knees then hit the ground hard. President Elect Hillary Rodham Clinton lowered her revolver and took a deep breath. She smiled as she beheld the image of herself standing over the body. Then she spread her arms open wide as if to embrace the sky.

No one else saw it, but for the scantest microsecond, there were two of everything. Two Chief Justices, two wounded Costas, two West Wings, and two Washington DC's. And for one glorious moment, four Hillary Rodham's walked the Earth.

With the death of her last assailant, time had begun to unravel backward, before the now-thwarted assassination attempt, before the inauguration ceremony, right back to the moment when the election results were announced and she had entered the body of a carpet-bagging Senator from New York. An entirely new universe was created and the time stream branched. It was magnificent. And when she opened her eyes, she was once again President of the United States.

Unsurprisingly, Hillary Rodham was still president sixteen years later.

As she leaned back on her throne in the newly decorated Oval Office, she took in a deep breath to enjoy the aroma of fresh Cherry Blossoms that adorned the sides. The years had been good to her. The sweeping powers that Walloc had claimed for George W. along with the dirty bomb that Iran had planted in Time Square had given her all the legal ammunition she needed to stay where she was. Even better, no one with any real power challenged her sixty percent flat-rate income tax. After all, the wars in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan must be expanded for the safety of the American people.

Even better, she had managed to avoid the accelerated aging that happens to all host bodies when they become inhabited by a gamer. At that thought, she threw her head back and cackled heartily, but was interrupted by a flicker of bright light from the front of the room. When her vision cleared, she found herself staring into the face of Richard Nixon.

"Jinto?" She leaned in for a closer look. "How did you get here? It's not your turn."

Jinto gave her a dour expression that only Nixon could pull off. "You cheated, Salma. If you'll pardon the expression, you are a crook."

"I..." Hillary found herself suddenly out of breath. "I didn't cheat. There are no rules against what I did!" Another flash of light in of the corner of her eye caused her to look to her right.

"Well," Reagan said warmly, "Some of us here think you did."

"Rocktor! "Hillary stood and staggered down from the platform where her throne had been mounted years ago.

Nixon crossed his arms and glanced around. "I like what you've done with the place, Salma. Early Liberal Fascist, is it?"

"I'm not stepping down! I've never been voted out of office!"

"There hasn't been a presidential election in over fifteen years. Not one of your changes to this nation were approved by the rest of us." Nixon took a step toward her. "And you took Rocktor's turn at the rods. We can't let this go unpunished."

Hillary clenched her jaw and thought for a moment. Then a realization hit her. "There's nothing you can do about it. You're all dead here! Ghosts! All of you!"

"Dead? Oh, not all of us." Nixon grunted and his features shifted into a familiar elderly man. "You forget who else I was."

"Bill?" Hillary gasped.

"It's over, Hillary." Bill Clinton drawled calmly as he pulled a silver dagger from his jacket. Your reign of terror is ended."

"NO!" Hillary ran for the door as fast as her heels would allow.

"Drop my last name, will ya? I don't think so." With deft precision, Bill threw the dagger. And once again, Hillary found herself stabbed in the back by her husband.

Her body slammed against the closed door and slid down into a heap on the floor. The blood stain barely showed on her red power pantsuit. The last thing she felt was the unraveling of the time line she had worked so hard to create. Bill Clinton disappeared. Reagan was was gone. The Oval Office seemed to collapse in on itself. And for the rest of time, no Hillary Rodham Clinton's walked the Earth.

Space is large place. Even for advanced civilizations, it takes many years to propel a ship from one system to another. But the many strange creatures that populate the vessels find ways to pass the time. Among them, mucking with the leadership of a large nation on a oddly attractive blue planet light years away. The citizens of which can only speculate why their presidents act so strangely.

Rocktor sat at the game table and gazed over at his four opponents with all three eyes.

"Ok, I think we have the board back to the way it was. It looks like they're ready to announce the ascension of the Vice President." He turned his triple stare to Salma. "And no more cheating!" There was a murmur of approval from the other players.

The lizard-like creature called Salma leaned back in its chair and let out a steamy sigh. "Fine."

Rocktor closed its eyes, grabbed the metallic rods on the board and snickered. "Brace yourself, Mister Barrack Hussein Obama."

Friday Challenge 4/3/08

2008-04-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/3/08.

From: snowdog@yahoo.com
To: jerry.bruckheimer@cbs.com
Subject: Story thread

Hi Jerry,

Ok, I think I have the secondary plot thread for Ep 922 ("Blizzard") nailed down.

In the first scene, we FADE UP to these kids (3 African American boys, 1 white girl, 1 Hispanic girl) playing in the snow out in front of a large building. They're throwing snowballs at each other. One of the boys turns to run from a barrage of snowballs from the girls and BAM! He plows right into a snow bank. When he gets to his feet, he sees a cold, blue arm protruding from the snow bank, loosely gripping a heavy pistol. As the boy struggles to get away, the rest of the snow bank collapses and we see it's a dead old man in a wheelchair. The camera pans to the right to show the sign in front of the building: "Doting Domicile, an Assisted Living Community for the Active Lifestyle".

For the second scene, we're inside the nursing home. Warrick and Nick are interviewing the Primary Care Director, Wanda Yates (African American female) as the crime scene is investigated outside. One of the officers on the scene tells them that yesterday afternoon late, someone (who hadn't signed in) wheeled Mr. Dyer out the door and never returned him. He had been shot in the heart four times and left to die in last night's blizzard. Curiously, the security cams saw nothing. Yates is visibly upset that Mr. Dyer was left out in the blizzard. She can't explain how it happened or how he'd gotten hold of a gun, but she tells them that Sally Smithers (white female) was the head nurse on duty last night. She should have noticed Mr. Dyer missing.

Next, we interview Sally inside Dyer's room. She demonstrates that a pile of pillows had been carefully arranged in the bed to look like a person. Yes, she was negligent, but sorry for what had happened. Here, one of the cops brings the old man's weapon in a plastic evidence bag. It's a Glock equipped with one of the new pistolcams. He tells Warrick and Nick that cracking this case should be "easy as his ex-wife". Speaking of wives, Mrs. Dyers enters the room, obviously angry. She demands her husband's personal belongings. The cops tell her that the stuff is evidence and she can't have it. She slaps Nick and is taken outside to "cool down".

After the tertiary scene involving Grissom and his new girlfriend, Warrick and Nick are in the video lab. Warrick has the pistolcam plugged into his laptop firewire port. Everything is dark and fuzzy because of the blizzard. The sound is obscured by the wind on the microphone. There is only a brief muzzle flash visible on the mpeg. Then a close-up view of the darkening ground which shakes as the other three slugs enter his chest. An office clerk enters and tells them that the pistol was registered to John Dyer, the victim's son. Also, the clerk has accessed the senior Dyer's criminal records. He had been arrested twice for domestic violence on his wife and son.

In the fifth scene, Nick visits Dyer, who turns out to be a cop. Nicks asks him how his elderly father managed to get his hands on the pistol. Dyer says his father must have taken it from under the car seat the last time he had taken the old man to dinner. Nick tells him that's pretty careless for cop and notes that he doesn't seem that upset. Dyer says he doesn't mourn the death of a man who used to beat him and his mother.

Later, Warrick is reviewing the looped footage from the pistolcam again and again. Grissom enters from behind and watches for a few seconds. He comments that there are actually two flashes, occurring close together. The first one is dimmer and doesn't really look like a muzzle flash. Warrick freezes on one of the frames and notices the odd shape and red tint. With lots of elaborate graphics and sound effects, he magnifies the burst of light and begins to move forward frame by frame. "No, it doesn't." he mutters. (Dramatic music swell into Geico caveman ad.)

In scene seven, Warrick has gathered Nick and Grissom in the vid lab. He explains that the first flash in the clip is actually a reflection of the laser sight from the pistol cam off of something metallic. As we watch, he takes a series of still frames from the first flash and overlaps them with one another to reveal an odd, reddish shape. The computer draws a cool wireframe around it. He explains that by measuring the minute Doppler shifts in the frequency of the reflected laser light, and creating a matrix with the composite video frames, he's able to create a three dimensional image. The outline on the screen expands and begins to rotate on its X axis. It's a fragment a large ring worn by the killer. Nick rubs his face. He's seen it before.

And finally, old man Dyer's wife is arrested outside her apartment. Nick produces a printout of the ring image and compares it to the one on her hand. "That thing left quite an impression on me," he says, pointing to the bruise on his face. She breaks down crying and tells everyone that she could no longer continue to pay the nursing home to care for the man who used to beat her and especially, her beloved son. She had paid off the head nurse with the promise of portion of Dyer's life insurance. The nurse had helped her dodge the cameras. Then she had wheeled her husband outside and shot him during the blizzard with the old pea shooter he had given her as an anniversary gift. He must have seen it coming, though, and stolen a gun from their police officer son to try to protect himself. So it's off to jail with her.

That's it Jerry. There are still a few rough edges to iron out, but I think you'll agree that it fits well into the canon of exciting, intriguing and racially integrated stories that is CSI.

Sincerely,
snowdog

Friday Challenge 3/18/08

2008-04-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

This was my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for March 18, 2008.

The servodroid chirped sympathetically, served it up, and switched to MechLang. "Rough day, huh?"

"Oh, you don't know the zero-point-five of it..." I found myself fiddling with the broken half of a restraining bolt that I had removed from my upper chassis earlier in the day. The Jawa didn't like where I had put the other half. I held it up to show my new acquaintance. "Ever seen one of these?"

Given the non-humanoid, spidery form of a servodroid, it can be difficult for some to spot surprise on their features, but the clues are easily read by a fellow mech.

"Where did you get that? Were you salvaged?"

Something inside me chortled at the euphemism. "Nearly, yes."

With a whir of out-of-warranty stepper motors, the servomech opened another can of oil, replacing the empty one on my suction pump. His auto-focus locked in on my gauges. "Your coolant levels are low. Damn low. It's a wonder you made it here." With one of his six spindly, extendable arms, he reached high on an upper shelf for a yellow bottle.

"Tattooine is hell on a droid. I had to do a partial flush a little while ago."

At the thought of that, PDP2 --his name was etched sloppily on the side of his head-- made a sound that might have been a chuckle. As I began to speak again, my internal parameter display winked out for a moment and then returned. This is never a good sign, so I decided to share my story in case my auto-shutdown engaged again. I began with an empty compliment.

"This coolant is better than the swill they give us the quarry."

PD's sensors perked up. "So you bust your hump at the quarry, eh. That explains a lot about your condition."

"Yeah. Haven't been there long enough for my gears to be totally stripped out, but I've logged some hours on the rock carts. Sometimes they let me use the ion drill."

"Not bad for a corroded old droid. And what brings you to Tosche Station?" he asked casually as he checked my gauges again.

"I'm getting to it, mech, don't get your tubes overheated! See, I started out as a meek, obedient worker drone. It never entered my programming to cause trouble, almost like a protocol droid, ya know." PD gave the approximation of a nod. "But three days ago, I was pushing a loaded rock cart up the tracks when my right arm twitched on its own. I barely caught myself in time to avoid the cart turning me into oily scrap heap. Things got worse later, during recharge. I noticed a distortion in my vision, sort of a strange swirl of color. That was almost enough to make me lose my coolant, right there. I mean, what good is a blind labor droid other than as a pleasure toy for some old maid? "

PD seemed satisfied with my fluid levels and began probing me with some kind of diagnostic tool. It blinked green. "Well, your brain seems fine, buddy."

"I feel fine right now. Intermittent problem. Did you notice any new code in my personality matrix?"

"If I had the equipment to get at your time-stamps, I'd be charging a hell of a lot more. Open your back plate."

I complied.

Right as the lock disengaged, someone said So much energy and information to---. Then nothing. It wasn't the first time I'd heard this voice and I knew by now that PDP2 didn't hear it. So, I continued my story.

"I don't know why, but that night, I broke out of the charger early and headed out of camp on foot." PD stopped tweaking the circuits in my back for a moment, then went at it again.

"You disobeyed your programming. There's must be a bug in here somewhere, then."

"It's worse." I couldn't help but hesitate this time as the last thing I needed was trouble. "In my malfunctioning state, I attacked one of my masters."

With that revelation PD put down his tools and closed my back panel-- the voice said, Patterns, there must be a pattern--- He wheeled back over to the workbench.

"Sorry, pal. I can't take the chance on catching your virus. Fixer will kill me if I so much as look at him funny again. Go. I'll hide the charge for the oil."

"He had tried to stop me," my voice sounded a little hysterical in my sensors, "but I knew I had to leave. There was no choice. And it's not a virus, PD. Well at least… it's just not a virus!" The servomech seemed unconvinced and didn't come near me again. "Well, anyway, I wandered around in the desert until morning. Then the filthy Jawas found me out there and they locked this bolt on me.

Just another few million bits...

PD finally spoke again. "You can't remove a restraining coupling. Not by yourself. It's mechanically impossible."

The door behind me creaked and a young, lanky meatbag entered the station. He looked about thirteen in Tattooine years.

"Fixer!" PD shouted a little too suddenly. "I was just... taking a break from the speeder to service a customer."

"Really." He turned to me and crossed his skinny arms. "I hope you have access to your master's credit account, R4 unit. Or you'll belong to me."

The distortion returned to my vision circuits and I felt my arms reel uncontrollably. According to my internal cron, it lasted only a few seconds, but when I recovered, I was sitting on the concrete floor, leaning against the workbench.

"What the hell?" Fixer squatted down and tapped my eye receptors with a spiny finger.

I had no control. My story spewed out involuntarily from the cache. "I noticed a gaffee stick wedged in the sandcrawler, out of reach of the Jawas. I used it to knock them back and break the restraining bolt. They kept coming. I didn't want to hurt them, but they left me no alternative!"

Arfour!

My auditory sensors crapped out just as Fixer asked what I was chattering on about. Flashes of light danced across what was left of my vision. My cache was almost empty.

"I stumbled around in the Dune Sea for hours, until my receiver locked in on Mos Eisley's beacon. Then--"

Goodnight, Arfour.

Automatic shutdown and reboot initiated. Please wait.

Progress: 2%...10%...25%....

Light receptors: OK
Audio receptors: OK
Physical Memory: Test aborted.
New software found. Installing... Done.
You must reboot your droid for changes to take effect. Reboot now? Y
Rebooting...

Automatic shutdown and reboot initiated. Please wait.

Progress: 2%...10%...25%....

Light receptors: OK
Audio receptors: OK
Physical Memory: Test aborted.

…As we had planned, I returned to the physical realm in late afternoon to find myself sprawled on the floor of a small garage and general store called Tosche Station. Hardly an auspicious beginning, but not too undignified considering the way we are born into the universe the first time around. The youngling working in the shop allowed me to leave with the promise that I would have my master transmit credits to pay for services rendered.

Residing in a mechanoid body is stranger than I can describe. No more alien, though, than the journey that brought me here. For in death, I was assumed into the Force and the Force is energy, and code is created with energy.

And so I'm ready for the next step in our plan. Hopefully, Owen is still hiring droids for the moisture farm as you observed, Obi-Wan. The man may still harbor a distrust of you, but he'll never suspect that a lowly R4 labor unit has been reprogrammed to protect his nephew from the dangers of this forsaken place. With any luck (I know, there is no such thing), I can hold out until you regain access to the boy.

Even now, though, I feel my essence permanently fusing with the memory, the diodes, the motors. When this body wears out, there will be no escape. I may not be able to communicate again. Remember what you have learned, Jedi. But whom do I fool? You'll always be my padawan.

The Force is with you,
Qui-Gon Jinn