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renaissance - part 9

Brain was blinking in a cabinet; it liked to hunker down in a central location. Blinkity. Under the metal shell that contained the fragile Earth, the brain spread out to every corner and controlled all. Wires wouldn’t extend into space, but satellites in ever wider orbits and enmeshing patterns covered the distance between the planets, as far out as Mars and then inward to Mercury where instruments hid in shadows from the blast furnace that was the sun. The Brain had lost a fleet, but Earth wasn’t defenseless.

 Valerie changed back into her pink jumpsuit and fixed her hair up again into a conical swirl of red and yellow. For myself, I preferred the black leather uni and fedora that the last jump had provided. The high top court shoes looked a bit off, but they were comfortable, so I kept them on. Valerie wrinkled her nose at the get up, but I got more better things to think of, so nyeh.

 The gas giants bellowing behind, Star Hopper had a fair distance to go yet, but we were making good time in a roundabout way. It wouldn’t be prudent to take the direct route to Earth. We skittered this way and that, hiding behind whatever came along, and were heading mostly to the opposite side of Sol system, as far from the orbit of Mars we could.

 In the darkness of space, away from asteroids and the planets, the galaxy spun a beautiful web. Valerie noticed as I looked out into the glowing mesh. “We could forget all this. We could find a new home with green grass and flowing rivers. This thing you want to do, it’s messy. It might be suicide.” I didn’t believe a word of it. She was tightening the straps on her wrists as she said it.

 “Next stop, Earth,” I said with gritted teeth. In the corner, the stasis box had shrunk back to an acceptable size. Something inside growled, changed no doubt by the jumps in and out of space and time. We had picked up the package, wholesome, benign, from an outpost on Hi’iaka, one of tiny Haumea’s tinier moons. Elongated engineers there had smuggled the goods from mother Earth decades earlier and it was only one of many options. But the Brain had discovered many of these small hidey holes scattered throughout the system and our time was running out. Luckily for us, finding our ship would be like finding a needle in a haystack for the interstellar cops. I knew there were probes floating around everywhere, but space was pretty big, bigger than the oceans I knew existed somewhere on the Earth buried under megatons of steel mesh and slurping siphons. Star Hopper busily searched the heavens for traces, while I kept my electronic eyes and ears open for anything… untoward.

 Star Hopper did a course correction. Activity in the third quadrant, she transmitted, and I searched the area. There was some debris out there, some with high amounts of trace elements. One could be a spy satellite, but there was no way to be sure without stirring up trouble. We’ll just mosey on this way, she echoed my thoughts. We kept up the game for hours until Myrrha, the mechanical moon of Venus, flew by our ship. She was no threat, having short circuited hundreds of years ago. Myrrha continued to expire in a slow radiation burn that wouldn’t die out until Sol itself erupted. We came that way, by the back door, as a precaution. They’ll be watching every exit.

“Of course.” I searched Star Hopper’s schematics, already knowing the answer but still wanting another trick up our sleeve. According to Earth code, there would be no jumps within planetary boundaries, and those extended to around 10,000 kilometers, give or take. Ships were fitted with governors to control jumps, but not Star Hopper. On an average short jump, we could achieve 50,000 k’s. Anything within the ten thousand from Earth would be picked up by the cruisers, so there was that to work out. “How many quick jumps do you suppose we could make and be outside the atmosphere?” That would be about 100 kilometers.

 Venus was in our rear view mirror. From here? Safely 217.2 hops. The law of averages would recommend against tweaks through the process. Now 201.8.

 I looked over at Valerie and lifted an eye brow. She knew something was up and moved into her seat. “I’m thinking our best chance is to make multiple jumps into Earth orbit.”

 “That’s just crazy,” she frowned. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

 “Uh, we could wind up in the ocean, or even smack dab in the mantel, or fly clear by and have to turn back,” I explained.

 Valerie said, “Or we could fly on in and get zapped by the cheese. I vote jumps. I dig suspenders, jumps are a hoot.”

 Star Hopper didn’t join in the conversation, but made a final calculation and pushed the button. We jumped. We made 195 jumps. Valerie did indeed wear suspenders, and a floppy beach hat, then nothing as we made love for an instant that spanned twenty-five space minutes. By the last jump we were safely harnessed again and clothed in practical terra suits. Space Hopper thankfully intervened in the final random events - we looked pretty normal except for the fleur-de-lis blouses under our flight jackets. I zipped mine to the neck, doubling in covering up a blatant hickey.

 So we’d come in under the wire, safely evading space cops, and the center of the Earth. “Well done, Mighty ship,” I proudly proclaimed, and Valerie smiled, blushing in her seat. “We’ll go in there, to that pirate port,” so named for their lackadaisical standards in admitting earth-bound cruisers. Of course, the folks inside could be a rough bunch. We’d have to be tougher – hard to do in pressed pink shirts.

 No, I messaged ahead, discreetly. Sand Worm has opened the crust for us, a continent over, and close to heavy population. Sand Worm was a terra based ship, built on the same platform as Star Hopper… an old school mate, so to speak, and both rebels at heart. He dug tunnels through the Earth, slowly and deliberately, so it was no big shakes breaking through walls and ceilings.

 OK. “Take us in, Hopper,” I readily agreed. We would need a lot of people, and sub-humans, and even pseudolings to get this thing done. “How’s the package?” I asked, and Valerie turned in her seat. The stasis box had grown and thumped and even mooed once or twice in between transitory jumps.

 “I think it’s settled down. But, who knows?”

 Star Hopper covered the distance in seconds, her large shape spilling a black shadow onto the silvery surface like that of a swimming whale. A clear covering showed a sparkling green ocean below and just ahead we could see a rent in the metal surface. “Ahoy,” I called, and Valerie pointed. The ship slowed and dove into the gap.

 The braking was murder and we were flung forward abruptly as the ship put its foot down, then smashed into ground and skidded hard, wrecking itself on the surface. Thankfully we were in a construction zone and casualties were few. Lights flashed all around the cockpit and sirens that wailed fizzled slowly to a few bleeps, then silence. Star Hopper silently nudged my internal wiring then she flickered out. My mind for a few seconds felt empty, and I stood alone.

 Valerie unbuckled and pulled me out of my stupor. “The package,” she screamed over the noise and together we tore it loose of the bindings and lifted. It was very light, and I took it. “Open hatch,” I yelled, and when nothing happened I cursed the fates and pulled the handle myself, knowing Star Hopper would never work by my side again.

 We jumped to the surface, a lifted mass of hard dirt – the first I’d ever seen. Valerie knelt and dug her fingers into the dislodged mound of soil. She stood and pocketed the dirt and we ran on to the wing ahead. No one came to our aid, but they looked out in horror, and we quickly passed among the first crowd. Inside the building thousands stood or walked. Some were talking, but most were going from here to there. Valerie and I found ourselves in the middle of thousands, I could feel the vibration of their thoughts and their footfall. We stopped there and set the package down, and it opened.

 It tipped over, the box, and the thing crawled out. It scampered on four stumpy legs and tripped over one large foot, smooshing its fluffy head into the walkway. Then it flopped over onto its back, rolling and nipping at the air. The furry floppy little beast lolled, stuck its tongue on its nose and wagged fanatically, all the while squeaking and yipping. The crowds all stopped dead, melting at the sight. A tiny funny animal, a puppy only weeks, maybe a month old. It up and ran in circles chasing its unflagging tail. Thousands saw and their linked minds recorded the sight, one unseen for generations, to every other member of the group called earthlings over the world. Valerie cooed and she picked up the puppy, it was so soft, and she held it over her head. The puppy yipped and swam in the air, sending out major pulses of interminable joy that echoed through the hallways and subterranean passageways for thousands and thousands of miles. It was working, the secret weapon – the package delivered would heal the Earth, and we would tear down the walls, and we would be reborn.

 This was what the world of Earth was missing, the thing the Brain had stolen - our faith, and love, and reason to live. We shuffled unceasingly from task to task, joyless, unknowing. We had progressed from life to a half-life, surely on our way to a walking loveless death. The Brain shriveled as the strings broke, and the wires unraveled.

 But then… behind us the shovelers shoveled, and the cranes began to lift. Star Hopper was ground into the mud and packed under the surface as new walls started to go up. Even as the little dog whimpered in Valerie’s hands, the crowds blinked with the whip at their backs, and they moved off, back to their obligations. Valerie sighed and I kicked the empty box.  I looked up into the marching diodes of the ceiling monitors and winced as multiple images of the Brain spied down on us, bloodied and beaten. The Brain smiled and left me there alone as the millions parted around us in a quest for nothing to nowhere.

the end.

irunsolo.worldpress.com

running blind in a house of mirrors - part 8

It had not been long ago, in evolutionary terms, but in the lifespan of your typical mostly organic human, generations. Metal and poly-concretes, pipework and shadows gradually, then as momentum gathered, quickly filled the Earth’s surface until nature begged off and gave a hearty belch and died. Pockets of managed life remained, but they were sterile and manicured to look like a postcard. The rivers and canyons were walled over and H2O never left the planet to mingle with the heavens. Water was purified, but not through the reinvigorating effort of evaporation. Machines and chemicals did the work now, and no one drank the water. It just wasn’t the same. Trees grew – they were bioengineered, as nothing remained to pollinate them. Flowers and plants grew in subterranean hothouses. Meat animals thrived with no brains and stunted appendages, chickens had enormous breasts and huge meaty thighs, and shrimp clamored - pink and briny - in a salty stew and were the size of a football. The 90% synths grew their meat in a tank and sucked it through a straw. They weren’t interested in taste, or beauty, or recreation. They were ants in a hive. The Brain was their queen.

 Now, I could see in my windshield, the Brain was all up in my grill. Valerie blanched and moaned. I didn’t bother to editorialize, for death had come at last to me, and I meant to cheat its black heart. Then I would go a step beyond and rub its face in the mud – if I could locate some.

 This doesn’t look like too much fucking fun.

 “Right. So, are you up for it?” I asked Star Hopper and I swear she sighed. Her programming had morphed subtly to play off my own personality, and we got along pretty well, even in the heat of battle. We still had a couple tricks up our collective sleeve. If nothing else I imagined we could retreat into the slowly subsiding vortex to aft. But no – our asses were covered, and not in a good way. “There’s no going back,” I said to Valerie, and she shrugged. We were all about forward movement, of course, or we wouldn’t be in this mess.

 Valerie smiled coyly. “You do your magic, big boy, and you know I’ll do mine.”

andreas fernhed

 Now, to make it back to Earth and deliver our package, we would have to run the gauntlet. Spaceships weren’t yet built, nor probably ever would be, to reach the speed of light, but this one could engage in some fine acrobatics at preposterous speeds. The enemy fleet sent from Earth by the Brain was mighty, and poot big, but it couldn’t match spunky Star Hopper. She spun nifty and politely jumped to a safe distance, a half dimensional void, then reappeared arbitrarily a couple hundred space miles in the future. We were blind while in hyperspace, and partially incapacitated. That was definitely a con, but the First United Fleet of Earth didn’t count it among its assets either. As soon as we reappeared, totally bereft of direction, the fleet recalibrated and began firing. Again we morphed into the void just as the missiles and splinter shells buzzed our hull. A pop cinder gained the cabin and lodged into a nook. Valerie snuffed it with a spritz of seltzer then mixed herself a strong cocktail. Somehow she had acquired a bonnet, and I was wearing fishing waders. Jumping about in metaphorical space messed big time with practical physics. We came back out with poofy sleeves and Space Hopper had a sombrero. FUFE fired on us, singeing our brow, and again we evaporated into meaningless space. For seconds I could feel only tingling in my extremities, and Valerie’s. Our atoms again flowed together, then split, then split again… Space Hopper rejoined in triplicate and then a hundred times and a thousand more. FUFE spent its complete load in a massive orgy of destruction reducing our own singular fleet by a thousand percent as Space Hopper dove and weaved amid the missiles and carnage and came out the other side, expending two-thirds of its resources and was tailed by a hundred eager bombs.

 “Fade away,” Valerie cried, clutching her oversized Buzzy bag, but the ship couldn’t; she was fagged out and barely kept pace ahead the torpedoes.

 Fortunate for us, half of the enemy fleet had destroyed itself, but weaponless they still posed a threat. There were no wormholes between us and Earth and only shrewd flying would gain us any advantage. Space Hopper dodged and half of the organized threat crumpled together attempting to engage, and blew the rest to smithereens. Now the halved fleet remained and was surely rebuilding its arsenal. Space Hopper winked. Together we hoped we had gained enough time. As FUFE rearmed, we coasted, replenishing our own resources, then Space Hopper turned to face down the enemy. She contorted madly, constructing a blinding vortex at our dome, and then charged the fleet just as they flew their projectiles. The swirling eddy grew, eclipsing our view of the gas giants as they crossed our visual path, and Hopper blew it forth, and then swerved as the bombs whistled by. The vortex swallowed the fleet while we floated past, wondering where in the universe they’d reappear - hopefully at another time.

 “Home, James,” I said, and hugged Valerie. Her black makeup had run smudging her big red nose.

an air of evanescence - part 7

http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/Are-Black-Holes-Portals-to-Parallel-Universes-2.JPG/

Well, much to my remorse, I excused myself from Valerie and her immeasurable pleasures, and sat down – so to speak – with Star Hopper for some break neck course plotting. Putting together our two minds, one purely synthetic and the other only partially, would make for a bounty of options, one would hope. We planned right off the get-go to set some records here.  Wormhole science has changed over the decades, not surprising considering we actually have experience now, not just conjectural physics and philosophy. Only a minority of wormholes actually go from one place, strictly, to another. Most are more fractal in shape, and can lead nearly anywhere. Though, dead ends formed by collapse are a natural danger. If we could catch a break, then we’d be home sooner than later.

The first mouth was going to be more than a cycle away. Lord knows, we could use the rest. I set our ship to the task and settled into my crash seat, leaning back into a straight, horizontal position; as if such a position existed in zero gravity. Valerie was sawing logs in her bunk, and I had pulled her lashings taut before casting off into dream world myself.

 Hours later I woke, when star Hopper whispered into my ear. I had been dreaming of lily pads and log cabins, something in life I had never partook. I was lying prone by a pond with the humming of insects creating a maudlin background to my musings, when a frog croaked, and said to me, “Wake up Shad, we are nearing the target. Wake up, wake up.”

 Lord. Being mostly human yet, more organic than tube, whistle and pin choke, I groggily stirred and silently cursed my mind partner. Excuse me. “Yeah, yeah,” I croaked, not unlike the frog. “What’s the situation?”

 The mouth of the wormhole is fluctuating, but we’ve the speed to catch it at a sufficient dilation. There is a good percentage of making it through alive, but depending on the forks we may be at it awhile, if we’re not smashed to smithereens in a one way oubliette.  

 “Ah. Comforting. Proceed.”

 It loomed ahead and without pleasantries Star Hopper plunged through the maw and the familiar sensation of wormhole travel assuaged us completely.  It took us off our game. Valerie yawned in her sleep and shifted, then began to breath lightly, deep within the lack of whatsoever.

 I shook my head violently and connected my neural shunt into the dash.

 “Keep me motivated here, missy,” I thought to the ship, and she starting randomly pulsing me; it was unpleasant, but kept me alert. Within moments the switch offs and forks and hidden passages presented themselves and we fought to stay ahead, missing some paths, but picking them up at later junctions. The computer was forming a coherent diagram of the wormhole structure when we finally spied a way out. “Enlarge,” I said excitedly, and the image from the opposite mouth blew up on the screen. It was Jupiter right out the back end of the wormhole. We had made it!

 Weee, said Star Hopper and out we popped, only a day or so from the first moment we’d left Sol system.

 I was turning to wake Valerie when Jupiter dissolved from a colorful radio transmission into a flurry of snow, then disappeared completely. In its place floated the First United Fleet of Earth.

 FUFE looked angry.

in surreal time - part 6

Star Hopper came out the other end slicker’n snail snot, spat out like a watermelon seed and we skipped over the turbulence of a spent comet’s ice contrails. Instinctively I reached up to feel my face, just realizing that somehow, something wasn’t quite right for the last few space minutes. The ship’s mind cautioned me not to delve too deeply, theoretical philosophy in intergalactic terms can be brain crippling, but to me the reason was obvious. In desperation we had tripped out of a Mobius wormhole into a separate dimension, and although I remembered the entire episode, it was the memory of an alternate Shad, hence the shift in voice. Valerie no doubt had a similar sensation, but she just smiled at me and said, “Feels like home.” It did, indeed.

 “Yeah. Maybe, but where in the wide flippin’ universe are we? Hopper, did any of that really happen,” I asked the ship.

 The ship searched its records, Only in your mind, which through the uplink the computer could read, but there is no recorded evidence. Also, in known space, and I calculate the newly discovered Vermiculite system is in known space, there has been no supernova activity.

 “Private conversation?” asked Valerie. She folded her arms across her breasts and scowled. I realized it was cold as the goose bumps stood out on her pale arms. I shivered, then unbuckled.

 “Synthesizer. Any preference on space attire, madam Godiva?” She shrugged at my query. “The ship seems to think we recently jumped into a separate dimension, so you may feel a bit confused, or whacky.” The last wormhole must have brought us back to a familiar dimension. I felt fine, now that I was myself again. Or was I? Another philosophical conundrum: we had stepped into an atom blaster and mixed our base components together, then dumped the pieces onto the table like a jigsaw puzzle. Consequently we separated the atoms, reconstructed the molecules and let a program rebuild our bodies. Everything told me we were exactly the same as before, other than minor tweaks, but logically there is no perfection. I scratched my head.

 Your DNA signature is off infinitesimally from 100%, bunches of .0’s, insignificant; hence you are able to command my vessel. No worries.

 “Good enough for me.” By this time we had found our compass and knew somewhat our position in the universe: about a million, million lifetimes from Sol system. Even in the small stasis box our delivery wouldn’t last that long. Not to mention, from our position in space, the light from our sun still hadn’t arrived. “Bad news, sweets,” the synth had finished knitting Valerie a knee length sweater and I tossed it over to her. “Sometime in the next century we need to find another wormhole, hopefully one that can get us closer to Sol.”

 Valerie squirmed into her new space frock. She said, "Yes, and hopefully one not infested with nasty space bugs. Must have coffee.” No doubt about it, we had a good deal of jumps in our future. I put on the pot.

bill sienkiewicz

Children of Chronos, part 5

However, there was no time for intergalactic acrobatics, Shad thought, regretfully.

 “Hush,” said Valerie, seeing the pang spreading across his face. “There’s always time.” She held out a hand and Shad helped Valerie across the threshold of the lifesaving cube. They had been reborn in a shiny new skin, lustrous and glowing. Shad’s electronics were taut and dazzling fast as his synaptic nerves fired like pistons in a limited production super charged light speeder. Valerie kissed Shad on the cheek and shrugged past his shoulder, brushing a pert breast against reddening complexion. “Will you be synthesizing some new jumpsuits? I don’t think distractions will be of help in this moment.”

 Indeed, “Of course,” he stuttered, as his fingers itched to probe the illustrious newness of her flesh.

 Star Hopper was powering up. She hummed in open space, free of dust, between a triplet set of solar systems where the star light took a month or more to reach. Three stars, each with multiple planets, surrounded the spaceship at nearly equal distances. All uncharted, Star Hopper began the process of recording their positions in the universe. She named them Mnemosyne, Chronos and Tethys, and was beginning to name their children when interrupted.

 Warning diodes began to blink over the dash. The Crypic brain of Star Hopper sensed a disturbance, possibly a threat worse than the afore attacking Bastrages they had just evaded. Valerie had begun nibbling on Shad’s ear and her fingers were creeping in a most calamitous way. Shad reluctantly looked to the monitors.

 “Oh. Shit.”

 Aft, a star had gone supernova without warning – Star Hopper of course guessed at the event one nanosecond before when the sun completely vanished, collapsing in upon itself. Four unnamed children were consumed, all except one that had strayed far from Chronos in an elliptical orbit, and the gamma rays had mere minutes to reach, and unmercifully buffet the tiny steel shelter. Or deathtrap. Shad broke away from Valerie’s soft hands, pulling her to the jump seats. “Buckle up,” and the straps spider webbed across their chests.

 His mind and Star Hoppers split and searched frantically for a means of egress; there would be no outrunning the radioactive star plasma that stretched across the encroaching galactic landscape like spasmodic fingers in a voodoo death dance. Retracing their steps would do no good, as the way had vanished and besides, was suicide. The only hope was to find a hiding place, unlikely, or almost as unlikely the mouth of a traversable wormhole.

 “I see it,” Shad shouted, and Star Hopper rotated and detonated its afterburners, burning roughly ninety-nine percent of its available fuel in seconds – the race was on. The ship shook with the explosion, designed to give optimum boost without totally destroying the vessel. It was a calculated maneuver, an all or nothing wager. Chronos was filling the distances between, growing and distorting the panoramic with only a pinprick of darkness in the middle: Hestia, whom Star Hopper had christened and was their only shelter. The orphaned gas giant would part the waves of gamma rays for an instant while she crossed their path in a doomed orbit.

 A furtive wormhole flitted in the route, waiting to be obliterated by the suicide of Chronos. Star Hopper might reach the dubious refuge only in time to be crushed within its surely disintegrating entrails. Valerie was wide eyed, cursing the package that shook in its tethers as her pink bosoms bounced in the protective hug of her crash seat. Not privy to the evasive actions, she could only see her life pass like a parade while the sky bloomed like a passionate rose in a terran spring. A scream was rising in her gut.

 Shad mumbled encouragement to Hestia, probably doomed to wander on fire for an eon and more, and adjusted for clarity. The wormhole opened up, growing like a hole in the universe aflame, and then swallowed Star Hopper in a dying gulp. The ship groaned in relief as the vibration ceased and she fluidly traversed the gamma death in an instant, snaking along to parts unknown. “Don’t you dare look behind,” cautioned Shad, knowing full well that the wormhole collapsed in their wake. The engines would do no good here, so Star Hopper shut them down and regrew the charge from the sparse kinetics she could assimilate in transport.

 “We’ll be through in seconds,” he whispered, smiling at Valerie who could almost feel the heat creeping up her naked backside.

psychosomatic warfare - part 4

Star Hopper skittered out from the void and appeared as a throbbing, flinching apparition at the present occasion. After fully forming into reality, the ship continued moving in a lengthy spiral for several fractions of unimpeded parsecs until its brain formulated enough sense to revolve and slow to approximately the speed of Universal engrossment, to take account of the surroundings. Within its tubes and doo-dads and circuits withered the abrupt consciousness of its hitherto part human captain, Shad Hardly, version 3.0. His human parts - spleen, brain and all – were dripping like a concoction of blended leftovers down the glass panels of the cube. The cube darkened and began to turn on a pedestal, spinning like a gyroscope, until it lowered from sight in a recess of the ship’s hull.

 In this new location, gathering on the galactic horizon, a fleet of thorny warships full of vermiculite Bastrages began stoking their engines. The Star Hopper hadn’t yet sorted out the bits of herself from the snips of Shad’s downloaded memories, but she perceived the imminent threat and diverted all computational power to the crisis. Slowly, yet within seconds Shad regained consciousness and looked about with the eyes of the Star Hopper. Shad had no vocal chords, but swore none-the-less, and took evasive actions. Taking the time to reform didn’t make much sense. Shad and Valerie were just as likely to be vaporized in their first few seconds of rebirth. Instead he scattered a platoon of probes, self-propelled, and dropped the Star Hopper into a stutter pattern, pointed to the nearest planetary system nearly 4 parsecs distant. No vessel from Sol System had the capacity to reach light speed, but the Bastrages didn’t know that.

 The light that was the enemy grew into a constellation of separate lights and as they grew from specks into metal, thrusting beasts, Shad formulated a plan. He made the Star Hopper dangerously overload an aft engine, flashing the encroaching army, then just as quickly he extinguished all her energy, down to a trickle of life giving ohms.

 The armada noiselessly passed, taking in stow a parade of the Star Hopper’s probes, en route to the Flotsam system where presumably the intruder would hole up amid the rings of Pleurisy, sputtering in a weak attempt of secretion. The Bastrages cackled inside of their spikey carapaces, leaning into the G’s with furrowed brows and wild, hefted clubs studded with electric barbs.

 The vermiculite war ships nearly gave the command to enter extended space, when the drones attacked, emitting emotional impulses of regret and rage into the bestial tumor of a brain which occupied the tiny skull in a Bastage’s nut. Despite the best wishes of the commanding ships, the hordes turned upon each other and eagerly dismantled their army, and themselves. With a collective, defeated, sigh the warships pulled into a circle and dealt a hand of one trillion deck rummy while internal cleaners vacuumed up gooey remains and rearranged the furniture.

 Deep within the concealed ship, the Star Hopper, power returned. Shad drummed metaphorical fingers onto a vein of intellectual wood, and then gathered his atoms into a corner of the cube.  Nanobots rebuilt his components while Genesis regrew his body from fetus to child to adult. The DNA perfectly copied itself from year to year until Shad knelt reformed and refitted, intact, and exited. Only then did he begin on Valerie, delicately shaping her into a stellar version of herself, designed to delight as had been her wish, Shad suspected, all along. Finally Valerie stood naked, sublime, in the cube, and she blushed seeing his response.

alone never felt so crowded - part 3

artist unknown

Along about the six or seventh hour I began to notice from the corner of my enhanced periphery stretched lines of gradual exoduses. Valerie lightly snored, curled up below the conduits and spaghetti wiring that hovered over her bunk. I had insisted she tie down, but one of her arms had come loose and gently floated in the absence of inertia. You would think shipping helter skelter through an elongated worm hole would create some impressive G forces, but this one was butter.

 It was anyone’s guess how I could slow the Star Hopper significantly to turn out, but that was after all my expertise. So as not to alarm Valerie I put on a mask and turned inward, to, you know, do the math.

 Anthropomorphic vortices lined up and in concise voice told a tale of woe, a soliloquy in spades, and doorknobs devoid of keys. Still I meddled, scratching at the surface like a cat lolling in the ether of mystery, and stumbled upon earlier sharp shavings – relics of past sleuthing. Nearly I was cut clean by an insight, sure to bleed out, but I was deft and conceded the thought, and moved aside, letting the flow of information collect. I collated.

 “Wake up, Valerie,” I removed the mask, flinging it over my shoulder and pushed off my seat toward her bunk. “It’s a never ending loop, Mobius or not, and maybe we’ll never get out.”

 Valerie rubbed her eyes and smudged a cheekbone over a notch. I nudged it smoothly back with a kiss.

 “Or we might. But it’s gonna hurt.”

 Valerie looked down her nose into the ship’s hold and crinkled her nose. “Effin’ box is dynamite. Sure as space hope it’s worth this bucket full of snot.”

 Oh yes, the box was worth that and a whole lot more. In the meantime drastic measures were in order. “Are you ready for this?”

 “Hell no.”

 The ship, Star Hopper, would hold together. But an organic life form? Ha. Our only salvation would be to retreat into stasis, hunkering down in the salad bowl and hoping the non-meatier parts of my brain could fit the pieces back together again.

 “Do you love me?” she inquired and fluttered her silicon threaded eyelashes. The cabin’s lighting caught her luscious filaments and a slew of sparks jumped into the motes and set them ablaze in a flurry of miniscule festivity.

 “More than life, deeper than a half-life. Holier than death.” I took a snapshot of body and soul, gathered Valerie into my arms and our raiment fell to atoms. I tasted the whole of her, and then carried her into the cube, felt the whoosh of air and nothing.

 Computations complete, I directed the Star Hopper and inside the cube the clouds stirred, our molecules entwined and gathered in a mist that carpeted the cube’s innards with opaque gratitude. Eternity was complete, our entirety pushed out into the glass, longing to spill forth and fill another universe, but the cube held, and the ship in turn braked and escaped the insidious slide, shifting cataclysmically through the coil to another dimension.

the fallen beginning, part 2

“Shad, you mechanical genius, we’ve done it,” Valerie thrilled. I flexed my neurons and growled contently. Valerie stretched out her arms to me and I was about to gnash my face into her neck when a tensile parsec strap whipped our bow around and we both nearly were jerked from our crash seats.

 “Crap, one of those crafty bastards flew into our wake. Well, they won’t like this. Much.”

 The police beam was strong, state of the art, and too tight to evade. We were sailing smoothly through the worm hole, and only God or one of his evil henchmen knew where. But what I did know, and Valerie bunched noticeably, was that the convex skein was unpleasant, probably deadly. I wrenched the wheel and we skittered off its surface, dragging the cops into our sparks.

 Their faces turned spasmic in our viewfinder as the coppers quickly disintegrated into flux with their outer wrappings of vinyl and steel. I made a face and Valerie nervously giggled. Her fingers again turned my flesh into a mash of purple worm tracks as I wrestled the Star Hopper into submission and centered her back into the easy flow.

 “You mad man, so to speak,” Valerie sighed. “Soccer blue! I’ll kiss your pasty diodenous lips if you get us though this noodle.” Thankfully she relaxed her grip before my arm went to sleep.

 I winked and subconsciously set a subtle course as we fell monotonously down the portal’s tube to what/where/whenever. The cargo was safe, but delivery might be delayed, if not impossible. I lifted my buckled boots onto the dash and folded my arms across my lashings as Valerie swayed in her seat and hummed a heroic bar of The Galactic Anthem. She flipped up a double bird and laughed into the streaming void.

if i could see people's fear, part 1

artist unknown

We were leaving the solar system, the interplanetary police hot on our vapor, in my fish shaped Star Hopper. I'm keen to say, though, that Star Hopper is more along the lines of a product name, than an actual thing. No one, or pseudoling, had ever hopped to another star, not even close. Valerie hugged my arm and fidgeted most annoyingly. These humanoids really do fret so over life and death occurrences. It's a fault of their species, so I can hardly blame Valerie. I wish she'd buck up.

            Now I guess there's nothing for it. Escaping these space dogs would be our only hope. I eyed the red button as Valerie looked on. "No," she said.

            "Yep, it gives me jelly legs, but here goes nothing." I jabbed the button with the appropriate finger and we blipped right off the map. Don't ask me to explain. My synthetic brain plugs don't mesh real well with my speech center. Suffice to say the coppers lost us and we somehow approached our target off kilter in a half dimensional vortex. "You push it now, deary"

            Valerie did, more gingerly than my brutish stab, and we reappeared instantly after an hour or so of real time. Real time in space is actually a conundrum, which makes button pushing a gas. We came out alive and Valerie blushed, seeing the imprints she had left on my arm.

            "Sorry."

            "Don't be."

            Fear is a funny thing and a life saver in outmoded evolutionary terms. A good portion of the human race has moved on in various percentages. I’m a good 75 percent inhuman, where Valerie is only slightly altered. Most of her adaptations are outwardly physical, while mine are internal and cognitive. I’m the yin to her yang, sort of, not really. Fear isn’t a big thing with me. I see equations and realities. Valerie sees the wonders of the universe, and its monsters.

            She screamed. “The door!”

            The portal suddenly appeared to our port side so I veered left and the Star Hopper bucked. The portal changed directions and now the chase was on. With no police in sight, it was an easier job adjusting to the door’s wild contortions in space. Valerie, sensing the ramifications, buckled in and politely zipped up to her collar. Only Valerie’s taut stomach showed from her custom fitted pink nylon jump suit; her pert belly button sparkled with glitter.  Her beehive swayed in conjunction with the swerving space ship. She squealed with every G wrenching curl.

            We locked in, and I pushed the proverbial peddle to the metal. The portal loomed, unable to escape, and the noise of sirens suddenly burst out over the in dash intercom. Not too late, before the sticky web encased our ship, I triggered the boosters and into the blinding glare we shot.