Jurassic Cow Park

9 Smoking Doodles

My Resume for Detroit

passed the wind tunnel simulation 

 beep beep

 Sunday Driving

Avoid all those traffic jams

Crash Test Dummy!

 King Tut Cruising!

Stomp Mobile

 

more flying cars!

In the Bleak of an Eye

 

 

A borer
A hole borer
In a bit of a twist
Lacquered up
Tuckered out
Sunday ways to six.
A blight of shaves
The metal shaves
Gum the works.
Auger build up
Smoke and silt
A little borer
Bored to bits.

*files revisited

 

Where the Girls go, Goeth I

Part 4

There is a lot to remember, but remember this: some things are not as they seem. There are realities within realities. Many dimensions run parallel, many others at tangents so far removed you might not recognize yourself. In fact, in more than a few even while you might exist, your parents may never have met or in fact been born at all. Would you have me, at this time, explain the particulars? Be ready to adapt and if that isn’t possible, hope for a reset to another reality, but never wish for a sure thing… the further in you go, the more abstract you’ll become:

                She finished her coffee, she still had the leather bound book. Nessay flipped through pages, thinking there might be knowledge to be gleaned, but the chapters were long and arcane. It contained diagrams akin to geometry, but not the kind she’d learned of in her studies. Nessay knew of igneous, in situ, cro-magnon, debitage… but math and its relation to grid mechanics and alternate dimensions was perpendicular to her… her everything. Even the room, with all its finery, was foreign, even disconcerting. Nessay wanted real answers, and she wanted out.

     
     She thought about the doors.
    
     She wondered, had been wondering, if anyone, or thing, would come through one of them. And instantly she stood before the doors, there were several, and her many hands wavered at their knobs, pulls, and levers. Nessay decided she would have a race; whichever hand reached a handle first would win.

     So…

Nessay rode the electric animal over the dark, sandy road back to her village. The city lights warmed beyond it, casting shadows from the mounded habitats. The shadows faded into the dark and there was a gulf of inky blackness between that and her illuminating headlight. A desert lizard, one of the big ones, flew before her galloping monoride. It seemed familiar, the same old déjà vu, but Nessay was only just merging into being with this new dimension. She was a ghost becoming something real in this parallel universe. They became one, and Nessay reached for her pocket. The little ball, had it brought her here?, was still gone. Would she need another?

     She thought the reunion might cause conflict, perhaps incite dementia or dissociation, but nothing of the sort occurred. Nessay had perfect recollection of the last few episodes, including the strange room and the events leading up to her appearing there.  “I was murdered,” she said. I don’t want to be again. She pulled off the road before entering the village, and stealthily crept toward her home. She stopped though, not wanting to risk getting any closer. She didn’t have the ball in her pocket; it had dissolved as the life fled her body that first time. Nessay rechecked her pocket, but it still wasn’t there. She retraced her steps and climbed back atop the electric animal and headed back the way she came, toward her office. The road was only getting darker, but she left the headlamp off until she rounded a bend, then revved off furiously into the desert.

      The office building, sheltered beyond the trees and down below grade, was dark and lifeless, or so it seemed. Nessay rode the lane, between the trees, and something went wonky, even a tad pixelated, for a split second. The scene jumped from first person to bird’s eye view, then back again. Nessay found she could shift perspective from front to back to far back and then pull down a map browser complete with a detailed tally of surrounding lifeforms. There were eight green-tinted humans beyond the trees. It looked like they were loaded for bear. Nessay stomped on the brakes, pushing a plume of dust into the road, and laid down the animal, diving into the concealing foliage.

        She was lying on her back, with her knees drawn up, when Nessay heard the click and hum of bolts charged for release. “We’re friendlies, come out now. There’s no time to waste.”

       This was different, Nessay thought. She crawled out on all fours, squinting up through the beams leveled at her face. “Okay, I’m not armed. Coming out.” She stood, patting sand and leaves from her arms and legs. “What’s all this?”

                He was dressed in desert camouflage, strung like a frigate, and lugging a low-slung rail gun. It looked impossibly heavy for a mere man. A corporal loaded down with battery packs brought up his rear, attached by black clad cables. He made up the first unit of four, all identically equipped, but their scars were random. “The RBT has been compromised, we need your permission to proceed, Lieutenant.”

     “Great whacking rats, this is really different.” Over her shoulder, Nessay heard the metallic rattle of coins dropping through a pachinko machine and a few musical pinball-like bing boings.

                “You’ve leveled up, choose your gear,” said the Sergeant.

      She chose a personal firebolt handgun and a lightweight flashbang rifle to sling over her back. “What’s going on at the RBT?” Nessay asked as she adjusted some snaps on her fatigues. She was shorter than the troops, and peeked up under her bangs at the Sergeant. He was hard chiseled, and buff. Thought bubbles coalesced above their helmets and nestled together, coupling in the dim lighting. “Stand down, Sergeant, I outrank you!”

                He embarrassingly straightened to attention. “Yes sir, Sir!” Duly composed he continued, “The Really Big Thing has fallen. Desert rats have waylaid a shipment of supplies and better halves at the crossroads, and are holding them in the tunnels. Many good men have died, or are captured.”

               Nessay scratched her forehead under the helmet. “What can I do?” she asked genuinely. This is weird, she thought.

      “Sir. You know the site inside and out.” He gestured to the troop transport, a high wheeled platform with open metal ribs and leather straps. “Your chariot awaits.”

                They rapidly loaded onto the transport and fairly flew across the dunes to the RBT. In the dark, only their mapping function gave them direction to the site, but unless an undocumented obstruction crossed their path, little light was needed. Nessay in full gear stood close to the Sergeant. Her harness was clipped into a rib and she bounced along with the machine’s spinning treads. She turned and yelled loudly to the Sergeant. The wind was furious, “Better halves?”

                He grinned down at her. “Wives, playthings, girlfriends.”

                Nessay wasn’t sure she approved, but subtleties were progressing swiftly. The monument appeared over the dune, and the transport slowed. “By foot,” someone hissed as they quickly disembarked and moved into the expanse. They had looped around and were coming up from the site’s rear. Medium height hillocks of sand dotted the landscape, they had pooled and mounded over discarded equipment and crates outside the twelve foot perimeter fence, and the troop snaked their way behind their cover toward the objective.

                At the fence, Nessay produced a pair of wire snips from a zippered leg pocket and silently cut a good sized entry. A pocketful of coins tinkled overhead and she chose exploding Chinese bolts for her firearm.  She grinned, secured the snips and waved them through.

                “Sir, you follow the Third, I’ll bring up the rear,” the Sergeant said. He put a hand on her shoulder as she turned to duck through. “Take this,” he dropped a small metallic ball into her gloved palm. Nessay gawked at it, and then made to zip it into a pocket. “No time, swallow it… this might go down bad! Safeties off, go!”

                Ground fire was almost immediate, and they crouched, returning fire. Maneuvering and body armor got them to the outer defenses and they dug in. The Sergeant lost his corporal and ditched the rail gun, drawing his gap shotgun like a saber over his back while Nessay dove to her elbows amid the gunners, who lobbed a heavy barrage of volleys into the enemy line. Suddenly they were sprinting over the sand, between the outbuildings – shacks, mostly – and converged upon the monument. Sergeant and Lieutenant bent low along the face of the RBT, and One to Three spun and crouched and decimated the surviving foe in a static crackle of electric conflagration. “We have to get around, to the tunnel doors,” cried Nessay, and she sprung forward recklessly along the base of the monument. “Follow me!”

                The Sergeant overtook her, and together they sprinted around the monument, leveling their weapons at the entrance and indiscriminately firing, running blindly through the ion charged smoke clouds their guns tossed off. Nessay took a round in her shoulder and staggered, fell across the wall, but the gunners had ditched their mules and came up behind, steadying her and loping to the arched door. The enemy lay smoldering all around.  

                “There’s only the tunnel and at the end a chamber. Only a small contingent could possibly fit in there,” said Nessay. She noticed the Sergeant had half his helmet blown away and his face was blackened, with bloody hair plastered over the left cheek and eye. “Gross,” she said.

                “And you’re a sweaty mess,” he countered. He waved the gunners into position and they charged through the entrance behind a full on spread of angry death, and the fire they laid down got their superiors through, but One, Two, and Three fell in succession to exploding charges pitched like missiles into their armors and bodies. Nessay was spitting and screaming as she and the sergeant punched through the carnage into the chamber. Not a soul stood in the room; it was strewn with the bloody, ripped corpses of uniformed soldiers.

                “What the fuck,” said the Sergeant. “Where are the girls?” Now half his body armor was blown away too, but his good arm – the one that wasn’t dangling amid spurting arteries and sinew – still held a fully charged shotgun crooked in his elbow.

               “Your dirty mouth,” said Nessay. Then, from nowhere, a shot rang out, dropped the half missing Sergeant to the dirt. A wild eyed officer rose from the dead, pointing his weapon at Nessay.

                Her nemesis was dressed like a disheveled Nazi, but his armaments worked fine. “Aha, they’re safe beyond the chamber, in a secret tunnel you obviously knew nothing about.”

                Nessay gasped, the tendons in her forearm twitched and her fist tightened around the gun’s grip. “Devil’s spawn,” she spat, and raised her arm to shoot.

                More blood, she noticed.
goto part 5

Of Silver Cruets and Little Spoons

Part 3

This was a dicey thing, Nessay thought, as she wormed her way around the domes. Then she said it aloud, a whisper just to hear her voice, just to know mere breath was not a phantom reflex. “Dicey.” A gripping fear took her then, and Nessay leaned tight against one of the homes, hidden by shadows. Something was different about her surroundings. It was slight, but noticeable, now that she was still. The air felt odd, perhaps it was the smell. She sniffed, and that wasn’t enough so she inhaled deeply, then stifled a cough. Stupid, stupid. Be careful, she thought. “Why,” she mumbled. Why am I doing this? But she was, and slowly Nessay proceeded.

 Getting back to where you once were is the first obstacle, but once achieved is the most mundane. Going beyond, well, that’s the real trick. Learning that the game is constantly changing is another big leap, a hurtle sometimes insurmountable when your timing is in flux… always. And, that thing about Pie in the Sky? Not everything true is also believable:

                Mercifully, her demise was not a traumatic one. She didn’t linger on her death plane in agony, or awaken in a blank, indiscernible cloud bank with the sharp intake of antiseptic miasma. Nessay blinked twice, the international signal for “hello, this is new”, and looked both right and left. Her body seemed whole, she felt alive, and she flexed her fingers. Her joints didn’t creak and there was no dirt beneath her fingernails. Blood. There was no blood! Nessay nibbled tentatively on her lip. Her surroundings were somewhat hazy, if not colorful and chaotic, but the air began to clear and Nessay saw she was in a formal living room, sitting straight backed on a Victorian divan, with a silver service laid out on the ornately carved coffee table at her knees.

                There seemed to be no one else around. The room was rather larger than her entire dwelling space, back… wherever.  Large and square, the room was all wood and cloth and leather, and a whole lot of books lined the oaken bookcases from floor to ceiling. There were oil paintings on the walls and shelves, of faces and dogs and places Nessay didn’t know of. She tipped a book out from a waist high location, and wondered remotely how she had come to be standing here, and not sitting there. Now, sitting back there, and with a ‘make yourself at home’ sensibility, Nessey lifted the decanter, she felt the warmth of the hot liquid through the shiny handle, and poured pitch black coffee into her cup. She lifted the pearly white cup to her lips, but the drink was too black, so black it seemed empty and just the thought of drinking sent her a tremor of loss. The starless, shadowless void in the cup clouded her soul and Nessay feared the liquid would fill her veins like hot lead, or priceless fluid gold that would leave her desirable, but otherwise lifeless.

                Nessay drank it instead with cream that she poured from a cruet, and she stirred it in with a little spoon while her finger traced the raised letters on the leather covered book she had retrieved from the bookcase. Jumping from one feeling to the next, being here then there, Nessay felt somewhat in control, but her steps were out of joint with this new, strange existence. She reasoned, reasonably, she must be in a waystation, awaiting transport to the next reality. In the meantime, she was here in a room taken from an image in her head. Her body was the same. Her clothing was no different, and bloodless. Nessay again found herself standing, on a rug in the room, and she unzipped then reached into her pocket. The little, hard ball was not there. All was not the same.

goto Part 4

A little Death, is good for the Soul

Part 2

There was blood. Blood! For a little while, but it seemed longer - relatively speaking it was probably seconds - she heard nothing. She saw nothing but the blood that rapidly pooled beneath her left elbow, on the tarmac. Then, a tapping noise and something hard clattered on the hard walkway. Footsteps falling away and fading out….

 One thing begets another, clouds batter the sky like a threat; the people and the world remain unaffected for the most part. There is no pie in the sky all-knowing righteous starship fairy king that dispenses karma like ice cream sprinkles to the wronged, or inflicts lemon imbued hemorrhoids on the wicked. It seems a person makes her own fortune, or lives on the whim of another’s:

                After the long ride back from the monument, the RBT, Nessay spent time in her office. It was a shared space, her part being an old metal desk that wobbled, with two drawers that couldn’t close flush, and didn’t come remotely close to locking. There being no key, that was moot. She sat on a wooden chair for a few moments and fiddled with the various rock samples she had stored on a tray, collecting her thoughts. Then she scribbled a dozen notes onto a pad of paper and ripped off the sheet. Nessay was the field supervisor for the RBT, but not the region boss. This was her way of keeping the boss duly informed.

                She looked at her watch. Daylight would be done over soon enough. Still time for a bit of wall ball, just to clear her mind. Technically this was her day off.  The door was open, but nobody was around, so Nessay rummaged through the bag she had stored in the office and pulled out some shorts and a t-shirt. She pulled off her shoes, and her office cloths, then redressed quickly, looking over her shoulder the whole time. There was a small wall court behind the field headquarters and she could be out hitting a ball in minutes, just needed a water bottle her equipment. Stepping out the door she rubbed her shoe on the metal threshold and felt a curious scraping. Nessay leaned on the jamb and bent her knee, grabbing an ankle to scope the sole of her shoe. Her eyes widened as she spied something small and round lodged into the treads of her sneaker: one of those damned metally balls, she thought. “Feathers and duck beaks,” she swore out loud. “Oh Gods of Thunder, cook me with a Cuban. This day’s amuck!” Nessay felt a pinge of guilt for the business she’d given Jocu’le.

                Too many mucks in a row, Nessay had had it. She undressed and redressed, not giving a flip if anyone was around or not, and packed up. The little ball, made of what she didn’t know, Nessay dropped into her pocket and zipped it in. She rubbed her pants and felt the hard pill snugged in, safe

and tight. Better than in a rickety metal desk with no locks, she thought.  “A drink!” she said, and headed out, dropping the note in the box by her boss’s door. She knocked in case he was there, and then skipped out into the dust, sipping on her bottle contently.

                Getting from here to there was easier, and quicker, then the trip out to the site. The field office was in a small row of low buildings that was cut into a rock shelf in a sea of sand. It was a small compound just a mile beyond the city of Willowy. The dust stroked the sheltering poplars and whistled through the antennae and sand etched dishes spoking up from the offices. Nessay straddled her electric animal and trotted out of the hollow toward home. Her room was in one of many little houses that bubbled up like puffy white fungi, encircling the outskirts of the Willowy storm wall. The ever present gales of sand and grit mostly slipped around the clay drenched mounds, of course transporting bits of the structures down the way to settle on someone else’s porches and window sills. Nessay thought about things like the dust and porches and even pianos, though she’d never seen one except in pictures. But if there was one around here, somewhere, there would surely be dust on it, wouldn’t there?

                Just down the road she turned off and moved down a slight slope. There was a rock abutment a hundred yards out, and it looked West over the dunes and a mostly unobstructed view. Well, no wall ball, but no reason not to watch the sunset. Nessay got down from her beast and dropped over the wall, shrugging down and splayed out comfortably to enjoy the show. She was just in time. The golden orb was dipping into the dissipating dust cover and sinking through the shifting dunes. Colors crept up and spread out over the horizon, twinkling off the wind whipped sand prisms. Nessay loved that most about this place, the desert. She stayed there until the night sky covered the dunes like a blanket. A thick, cotton spread of stars and galaxies. Maybe a planet two, but Nessay didn’t know which little bright pinpricks were their closest neighbors. That star was a little blue, that one a bit red… oh never mind.

                It was plenty dark as she got back to home. The roads became harder and freer of sand closer to town, and she braked a little as her animal winded among the habitats. Metal on metal squealed, the rotating hooves clattered on the bricks, and her white home popped into view. She cozied up the electric animal to its stall and swung down, pulling her bag smoothly off the pommel. Her room was an open space, nearly 500 square feet divided between a bedroom and living space, in a shared dome house.

                Nessay walked around the curved dome to the second door, her sneakers kicking up silent dust from the concrete pad when she heard a sound, a click, then nothing but night. She wondered, she thought about it, but not too much. Is that blood? What would become of the little round ball, she remembered, in her pocket? Her one arm was bent, the other seemed to be under her leg?, and she could just brush her pant pocket, feeling the mysterious little thing there, but it seemed to dissolve beneath her touch. Then Nessay died.

goto Part 3

Covering the Ground, with Big Intentions

Part One

When she walked through that door the first time, and merged with her doppelganger, the surprise was palpable. Nessay, though she momentarily forgot the specifics concerning herself, encountered a barrage of senses, like a backhand across her stunned faced, and seized up. Luckily, in this space, it was just the cat she had to impress. It just stared, and then preened, having seen weirder things. Cats live in all dimensions at once, or so they say. Now whatever surprises lie beyond the doors were related merely to the disruptions of time and space. Still, Nessay always carried a personal sized air mask, just in case. And a spare space ball or two.

 In the beforehand, in this particular dimension, how it all started, in a circle with no beginning and with no end: 

      The platform rumbled along, a wheeled thingy with many levels suspended between its high walled discs, over the desert. Nessay wasn’t dressed for a dig, not this day, but for a quick look at the site. She’d gotten a communique, an urgent request, and chose not to throw off the comfortable office smock or stylish sneakers she wore for a round of wall-ball on her lunch hour. Meanwhile, she mused. The trip out to the monument was not a short one. The natives were protective of the lands Inbetween, but like most indigenous, the Nopies had no real control over the important stuff. The monument was sacred, it was all everything, it harbored the creation story, the beginning, maybe their end. That was all hokum, everyone knew it – didn’t make it fair. These were some of the things Nessay mused over. And she hummed a little along with the rumblings of the great wheel and the crushed gravel and the swirling dust. She hummed and the monument began to rise over the dune crests. Then she whistled. Even now it was a sight, the really big thing (RBT) that may or may not be an ancient construction. For all they knew it was celestial. A spaceship, a gift from the gods, an enormous space hog excavation. The Nopies held vigil at its base, once. Now it belonged to the world, and the world, as it tended to do, dug its little holes for, you know, science’s sake.

      The ID badge swung from a cord around her neck, bounced off her smock, and whipped with the wind. The dust stung her cheeks, tried to swirl under the airtight goggles. Nessay dug the badge out, as it had dived into her smock and nestled into the fleshy bits, and swiped it, gaining access to the adit. A guard was sleeping just inside the door, but stirred when the pressure changed. “’Lo there, Ma’am. Jocu’le said you’d be along.”

      “Go back to sleep, Jimms,” she said, stomped her feet on the vacuum mat, then pushed through the remaining airlock. The long walk into the heart of the RBT was straight; it was one hundred and fifteen Nessay steps. The smooth bored walls gleamed with pearly, atmospheric striations of many, many known minerals. Nessay stopped at one point and touched the curve above her head. The silvery vein peered down on her pate like an eyeball. “I see you, too,” she said, smiled up into its seeming gaze for a moment, and went on. Jocu’le waited at the end, in a hollowed out chamber about the size of a vaulted living space in a standard outlying desert single family stone dome. It was spacious, enough so that air currents moved about, deposited errant bits of dust and sand on anything that lay still for more than half a day. Jocu’le picked up a ream of coordinate pages and blew a miniature storm off its surface.

     “Aha,” he said, seeing his superior. “We uncovered a wee chamber. Over there,” he nodded over his shoulder to the right. “Watch your step, Jimms just a bit ago dropped a jar and little balls spilled out, covered the ground. Went all over saint’s hallowed ground.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a little ball about the size of a marble.

      Nessay took the ball. It was cold, like steel, or vermiculite, but she couldn’t see exactly what it might be made of. “Langauge,” Nessay said, her teeth clicked. “Did you get them all?” Jocu’le nodded, then shrugged, raised an eyebrow. “Check the corners, check your cuffs and trousers. Look in your shoes, too. I’ll pat down Jimms on the way out.” She looked around at the floor and stepped over to the new chamber. The shards of jar were gathered into a small pile. A wood bowl held its prior contents. “Was the jar full? Yes? Run a diagnostic then, so we can get a semi-accurate count of the balls. Do assume maximum settling.” Nessay breathed out and folded her arms across her chest.

      “Well, that’s all I wanted,” said Jocu’le sheepishly. “Sorry about the mess. You’re in the field tomorrow, then?”

     “Tomorrow, yeah,” Nessay said. She didn’t mince words, much, in the field. Her eyes always worked overtime in the field, her eyes held court over her tongue here. “Here, don’t miss this one,” she handed the little ball back to Jocu’le, who stepped over and dropped it onto the pile in the bowl.  

goto part 2

New horror themed doodles!

Dad, and some doodlethings

found grocery list.click on pics,

                                                                                      for extrava-enormahugeness.

dad

another found grocery list

dad in space

new! Sunday toons and doodles

Sunday, Overdue doodles

of course, click on pics to hugify