Great Hites # 56

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This week have stories by:

Norval Joe
Mick Bordet <---- this weeks winner
And Jeff Hite

A Death in the Family
By: Norval Joe

"Hi, Mom. What's for dinner?" Charlie said. He walked past his mother, sat down, and rubbed his feet. When he realized that she hadn't answered he stopped and looked up . She stood with her hands planted on her hips.
"What?" he said, withering in the heat of his mothers glare.
She shook her head and sat at the table where she had been preparing roots for dinner. When she spoke he clearly heard an undertone anger in her voice.
"The dinner is where it always is. Right under your nose. You can see for yourself what it is."
She held a reddish knobby tuber in her hand. Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked away.
Chagrinned, Charlie picked at the dirt between his toes.
She got up from the table and stepped away, her back to her son. He could hear her quiet sobs.
He stood and walked to her. She had one hand to her mouth, the knuckles pressed to her lips. In the other hand, she held the tuber. Her shoulders shook.
"Mom, what's wrong?" This wasn't like her. He felt disoriented and off balance.
She turned, holding out the root in her hand that she hand been cleaning. She squeezed it as she spoke. "Your father has been gone for weeks. I don't know if he is ever coming back. And Now my sister, Ida, is sick. She has a fever that won't break. The doctor has tried his best herbs, and still, she is so hot." As she spoke she waved the root in the air in a senseless, and futile way, that matched the desolation in her voice.
Charlie felt empty watching his mother behave this way. When she suddenly sat, again at the dinner table, he crouched behind her. "I love you Mom. Just wait, everything will be all right," he said, and ran his fingers through her short hair. He picked here and there, as if he found a louse. There were none there, but the action had the desired response. His mothers shoulders relaxed. She closed her eyes and cried.
He sat behind her for more than an hour picking though the hair on her head, neck and shoulders.
She wearily got to her feet. "Come, Charlie," She said, "we should go see her before it gets too late." The sun was already close to the horizon, and it wouldn't be safe to travel after dark; Not even the short distance they needed to go.
They approached the clearing where Ida lived and could smell something on the air that told them that things were not right.
Charlie had never experience the death of a family member, but he did know the smell of an animal when it was killed. The air had a similar odor, but also reeked with an an unfamiliar sourness.
Ida lay on her side, unmoving, eyes and mouth, partially open.
Charlie and his mother squatted close to her lifeless form, but did not touch her. His mother quietly wept.
They sat together through the night, watching the inert form. By morning the sourness had dissipated from the air and was replace by the normal scent of decaying flesh.
"Charlie, dear. You must do something for me." She said when she turned and looked him in the eyes. "Please take her away and put her where the animals won't get her. I can't do it. I don't have the heart. Please, son, do this for me."
Without hesitation, he bent forward to pick her up. Ida wasn't heavy, but she was too awkward a shape for him to lift.
His mother watched, expressionless, as Charlie took his aunt by the foot and dragged her from the clearing. Once out of his mothers sight, he stopped, to take a moment, and decide where to put her.
'Where will animals not be able to reach her?' He thought. 'I can hardly lift her, I can't put her in a tree. Maybe I could put her in a hole and cover her up. But where is a hole large enough for her?' The only holes that he knew of, close by, were the lairs of burrowing animals. That didn't seem like the right thing to do.
Then it came to him. The place was far, but he could make it, if he really hurried. He ran back to the clearing. "Mom. I know what to do. Go home and wait for me there. I will be most of the day. Don't worry. I'll be fine." He didn't wait for a reply. He ran back to his aunt's body and dragged it away, through the forest.
He could smell his destination long before he got there. The smell was unlike any around his home. By the time he reached the opening in the ground, the fumes were so strong that his eyes ran with tears and he coughed continuously.
The ground was barren of plants for yards around the pit. He eased up to the edge and peered over. He looked at the wet, liquid, clay, ten feet below. A rainbow sheen glimmered where the sun reached its oily surface.
He didn't think about it for a long time. He pushed his aunt over the small dirt mound and into the pit.
The clay was thin, but had some resistance. Ida didn't sink immediately. She light, frail, body floated in the oily, cold, bath in much the same position as when they had found her the night before. On her side, with her back toward him, she slowly disappeared below the surface.
Charlie waited at the edge of the barren area for a short time, before returning to the pit to verify that she had gone, completely.
Satisfied that no trace of her remained, he headed for home



Signal
By: Mick Bordet

Maart felt a moment of panic when the noise started, a faint pulse that seemed familiar, yet long forgotten. He traced it to the bracelet on his left wrist. It had been little more than a decoration for years, but now was glowing and emitting the noise that had caught his attention. A puzzled look spread across his face as he realised what it was telling him: Maeala was back.

That was impossible, he thought, yet the last time the bracelet had made such a signal was the last time he had seen her, almost thirty years ago. When the device had first changed from the almost imperceptible ticking he was used to, the sound that told him she was safe, to this same slow pulse, he had jumped into action. The tracking system led him to the side of the lake where he found only a small child crying. Her tears were for the kind girl who had rescued her ball, but fallen into the dark water in the process.

He had sat by the shore for days on end, gazing out across the calm, black surface, knowing that she was gone, but hoping against all logic that perhaps her bracelet had just fallen off and she would appear by his side, telling him not to be so silly. After three weeks his own bracelet had gone quiet. Wherever she was, somewhere down there, where the search teams could not reach, she was out of sight of the Sun's rays and the charge on her bracelet had run out.

"So why," he asked himself, "is it active again after all these years?"

After the accident, he had signed up for the airforce tests that would see him given an aircraft that could travel in space at close to the speed of light. He was told to leave Earth and return with details of new planets that could be colonised if the extreme volcanic activity on Earth worsened. There were already worries that the atmosphere was becoming poisoned by the rapidly changing climate, so action was needed now if the people were to survive. A year earlier nothing would have dragged him away from his idyllic lifestyle in the village where he lived, but with his only love lost he wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

Space had been his home for years now and he had found two planets worthy of habitation. One was so beautiful that he hadn't wanted to leave its brightly-coloured forests, dark purple moors and twinkling golden deserts, whilst the other was less hospitable, with unending rain showers and strong winds detracting from an otherwise fertile and verdant land. He had noticed on his approach to his home planet that it seemed greener and bluer than he had remembered, but had put this down to his memory reflecting his emotions about leaving, rather than what he had actually seen. Those had been dark times and he had been quite happy to see the planet disappear into the distance as he left.

Now that he was down within the atmosphere again, he could see that it was not just his imagination, but the planet had indeed changed; the sky was clearer, for a start. He wondered if the scientists had found a way to reverse the global warming and reduce the poisonous gas emissions, but then he saw the cities. All over the planet were huge stone outcrops, buildings not made of wood and natural materials, but of synthetic compounds that glared against the sky. Coming closer to the ground he could make out the inhabitants; tall, almost-bald, tail-less creatures roamed everywhere. They were clearly of a similar species to himself and yet a world removed. He knew this was not a change that could have happened in thirty years, but had no explanation for where his own people were. Had he not been daydreaming through his lessons on the theory of spaceflight, he might well have realised that he was experiencing time dilation first hand. All that distance he had crossed at near-light speed had seemed a long thirty years to him, but to Earth, millenia had passed and his people had died out millions of years ago.

Passing from night into day as he sped towards the source of the signal, Maart stared all around the landscape surrounding his little ship, noticing that, despite the differences between his people and these new inhabitants, the latest tenants of Earth looked like they were making a lot of the same mistakes. Light and noise pollution were everywhere, something his people had not suffered from, as well as massive plumes of near-luminous white smoke rising into the night sky.

Finally he reached the building from which the signal was emanating. It was open, though there were very few people around, which meant he could easily sneak inside without being seen. As he crept along the echoing stone corridors, the range of weapons, skeletons, monuments and old artifacts led him to the conclusion that this was a museum, though his focus was fixed on the bracelet on his wrist which registered his proximity to his goal with an accelerating pulse. Eventually the corridor came to an end and he stood facing a wall.

He looked up. There she was.

The fossil, attached to the wall facing him, could have belonged to any one of his people, but for one thing. On the wrist of one of the figure's outstreached arms was a faint, but rapid, pulsing glow of pale green light, perfectly synchronised with the frequency of the pulse illuminating his own wrist. He stepped forward and touched the delicate skeletal structure where it was lit, his finger lingering for a moment before tracing the arm bones back to the body and stroking the skull. Her mother had died in childbirth and he had raised her on his own until that dreadful day.

"Good night, my darling daughter," he said, for the first time in 47 million years.


Bones
By: Jeff Hite

Sara hated the environmental suit she was wearing. It didn't fit properly and the air recycling system smelled as if they last person who wore the suit was a long dead whale. But since her suit had been damaged the day before, this suit was the only one that she had access to, and this find was way too important to wait until her suit was repaired.
Three days ago they had found the remains of a village that was probably the oldest thing they had found yet. They had yet to find any remains but the team knew that If was not a custom to bury their dead near their dwellings, and so far that is all the scans had found. The dwellings went from nearly the size of the transport ship, to smaller than the landing craft. It was in one of these smaller buildings that her suit had been damaged, when an ancient piece of equipment, proved to be still sharp enough to slice her suit from wrist to elbow. It was a surprising find to be sure, but it had cut her day short.
"Sara, what were you thinking?" Doctor March, the team lead, had asked.
"I could not imagine that it was still sharp."
"Did you check it? You know that these people were known for their use of tempered tools."
"Yes but I could not imagine that after all this time it would still have an edge."
"Well you were lucky. If you had leaned against it and cut your suit in a place that could not have been so easily sealed off."
"Yes, yes I know. But what do you think of the find? Do you know what this could prove?"
"You mean that they were a truly integrated society?"
"Yes."
"Personally I don't think we have found anything that would prove that. And, I am leaning more toward Johnathan's theory."
"But what about the proximity of the buildings?"
"As Johnathan has said, they were storage. which is why you found tools there."
"But Doctor, that makes no sense, why would dwellings so large need additional storage? The site we found yesterday show huge open spaces in the larger dwelling, that would be prefect to store anything they could possibly need. And they it would make more sense that we would find tools of the crafts of labors in the smaller dwellings?"
"Did you get a look at the tool that you cut your suit on?"
"No not really, it cut my suit and I left."
"Kelly went back in there, and found no evidence of a dwelling but he found many more tools."
"What if it that was only the lower level and they lived above."
"The foundation does not look like it would support a second level."
"But it still makes no sense, the larger dwellings had so much extra space, they would have no need for extra storage. The smaller dwellings have to be for the poor. And it makes sense because there is one or more per larger structure. It makes sense that each of the well off groups would take under their wing a poorer one."
"There is your problem. Once again you are projecting what you know about our society on these peoples. You are taking what you know about us an assuming that they did the same things."
"But."
"But, nothing. They were known to be particularly savage. Did you know that that they used the skins of animals to cover themselves, or ever worse they eat animals."
At that thought of this she felt violently ill and almost lost control. When she had regained control she said, "But we have no evidence of them eating their own kind. Do we?"
"Nothing solid, but it is never that far of a leap for these primitives."
"But, they had made into space, they had a rocketry program, in the southern part of this continent, and they had released the power of the atom."
"Yes, and then they used it to destroy one another. The records that we have been able to recover show that the people that discovered and harnessed the power of the atom were the first to use it against others on the planet."
"I read that was well."
"There is much more evidence to that they were horrible wasters of space, and those out buildings you found where just for storage."
"But we have nothing hard on that. And what about the one that we found genetic Material from someone not belonging to the group that lived in the main dwelling."
"First of all, in that area it is not clear which smaller building is associated with which larger building, and just because we found remains there does not mean that they lived there. They could have been hiding or they could have died their unexpectedly. One of the side effects of a diet that consists of animal, um, is sudden heart failure. I think that you are reading too much into this, this is your first planet side expedition."
"I would like to continue to collect evidence on my theory."
"Very well, but I highly doubt you will be able to support it, no matter what you find."
"Thank you, but I think you are wrong."

Great Hites 52

This week we have stories by:
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Anima Zabaleta
Mick Bordet
Guy David
Norval Joe,
Justin Lowmaster
Scott Roche
and
Jeff Hite

This week's winner was "To The Clouds" By: Mick Bordet


Promo for: Nina Kimberly
Link to Podiobooks - Podiobooks pro
Editing service By: Shawna Noble



This week is sponsored by RMSComputerSystems.com where I go when I need computer help.

NARY A DROP TO DRINK
By:
Anima Zabaleta

“Man it’s hot, Jeff… Hold up, I need a break, and this pool looks like a good spot. I need to refill my Nalagene. Funny, its not marked on the trail map. I thought all the water sources were marked on the trails here in Grand Canyon…”

“Don’t look a gift horse, or rather spring in the mouth, Linda. Just enjoy your good luck and pass me that bottle before you finish it all, will ya?”

“Whadja find there?”

“Not quite sure… I’ve never seen anything quite like this…”

“Whoa!”

Log date 2020.5.6 2700 cycles

If you are hearing this, it means I was not successful. I have spent the last 20 megacycles searching the outer planets for a culture, any life form really, that hasn’t been infected with Lleweraf virus. The known universes as I know them have turned into water.

It took the scientists too long to identify the plague. The best hypothesis they were able to come up with is that water supplies were infected in the Xenab district, and from there it spread across the galaxies, creature by creature, one planet at a time.

They think that once ingested, the virus lies dormant in the body for an unknown number of megacycles, until the virons have integrated throughout the host. The body then turns to hydrogen oxide, splits the skin and pools on the ground. Cities have turned to lakes, planets into continuous oceans, marred only by the occasional empty landmass. I have found only pockets of civilizations, and they are slowly leaking away.

My crew and I were thought to be uninfected, having been on a 7 microcycle journey at the time of contagion; we tried our best to not consume any water outside of what our body fluid reclamation systems could provide. However, the temptation for a long cool drink proved too much for Caine, the first crewmember to “puddle out”. After a few megacycles, it became evident that I was the last one to resist. Maybe resistance is futile. All I know is that I long to swim in the ocean, and that is no longer an option.

It has been 3 megacycles since my last landing. Interstellar communications died out around that time also. My resources are running out, and I am forced to make one final landing on this nonconfederation planet, 3rd from the local yellow star… As I have not noticed the illness in myself yet, maybe there is hope…

“What are we going to do, Jeff?”




"To The Clouds"
By: Mick Bordet

I threw the door open with such force that a cup jumped off the kitchen shelf, but the damage didn't even register with me at the time. Before my father could even get his mouth open to shout at my misdemeanour, I was already spilling my news out in between breathless gasps for air. I had been accepted back into the Air Force and wanted to tell everyone that I would be flying in an airship. They nearly all shared in my delight; my sister Brenda hugged me and squealed with joy, Mum grinned and ruffled my hair as she tried and almost succeeded in covering up a hint of worry. The dog ran around my feet in tighter and tighter circles that would surely have toppled me had I not stopped him with a rub of his head to acknowledge his excitement. Only Father sat, unmoved by the whole scene playing out in front of him, waiting for his moment.

"It'll never last," he said, with not a glimmer of emotion. "Aeroplanes are faster and they don't burst when they get shot at."

That was the typical response he gave to just about everything. He was never the most animated or emotional man before the Great War, but by its end he had grown a layer of cynicism thicker than the shell of an armoured tank. It was quite pitiful, the way he seemed to be so unsatisfied with his own misery that he could do no more than drag the rest of us down. Not this time, though. I was too happy to be affected by the touch of his despair.

It was a rare event to be accepted back into the forces, but these were unusual times. Only a few months earlier, the war had ended just days after I completed my basic flight training. Fresh-faced and naive, I had rushed to sign up as soon as I was of age, despite the protestations from my parents. I wanted to fight for my country, but more than that; I wanted to be off the ground, speeding through the clouds, chasing the Red Baron with the wind on my face. The Air Force didn't know what to do with their sudden excess of eager, but inexperienced, young pilots and I found myself back home in Edinburgh before I had time to realise that my dreams had come crashing back to Earth.

Wings clipped, I shelved my ambitions of flight and resigned myself to a more sedate life working on the buses. Not even as a driver, mind you, I had to start as a lowly clippy. Nothing wrong with that, but I thought I was destined for loftier pursuits; rattling up and down Princes Street on a daily basis had never been part of the plan. I knew there were plenty of people who would have been thrilled to do the job, in many ways I enjoyed the more sociable aspects of it, but the worst thing about my situation had almost nothing to do with the job itself. There were a couple of occasions when I could have sworn that I saw my father smirk on my return from a day's work, as though he was actually glad that I was stuck in a more mundane and down-to-earth job than he was. It was only visible for a fleeting moment, of course, but his disapproval acted like a magnifying glass on my own dissatisfaction, making me feel worse than I had any reason to.

It was my sister who changed my life and set me back on the course I had once dreamt of. She was going out with a lad who's father worked in the Air Ministry and he put in a good word for me. Within a week I had a letter calling me for interview, and the next thing I knew I was back on course as apprentice rigger on the newly completed His Majesty's Airship R34. That was a job I was made for. I knew it before they even had the chance to explain what it entailed; it simply sounded wonderful and that was enough for me.

I worked at the East Fortune airship base, about an hour East of Edinburgh, starting off by learning the ropes on the older R29, before travelling with the rest of the crew to Glasgow to familiarise ourselves with the R34 in all her magnificent glory. Taking her out on her initial trials was my first real experience of flight, after which there was no going back for me. My father referred to my job as being "a glorified patch repair man", which at its most basic level was not too far from the truth. What he missed from his snide observation was the breathtaking wonder of looking down at the beauty of the World in miniature below, the freedom of sliding out of view of the ground into a cloud and the camaraderie of the riggers and engineers working together in defiance of nature. All of this alone would have made my life worthwhile, as far as I was concerned, but even on my first day at the aerodrome, there were rumours and hushed whispers of greater things.

Word had it that the R34 was to be the first craft to cross the Atlantic by air. Excitement grew at the thought of meeting such a challenge, but unfortunately it was to be a prize won by an aeroplane, rather than an airship. Our girl sustained some minor damage during a test flight which laid her up for repairs and delayed our departure. At least it was two British lads, Alcock and Brown, who made the non-stop crossing successfully a couple of weeks before we finally set off. An American crew had made the crossing about a month before them, but they had several stops on the way, so we all overlooked that. We were the first to attempt it from East to West, though, against the prevailing Atlantic winds, and ours was to be a return journey.

The whole family came to see me off on that dreich July morning at the aerodrome, dressed as though for church and filled with a heady mixture of pride and trepidation at the thought of waving me off into the sky, possibly never to return. We said our goodbyes, with me promising to return safe with souvenirs from New York whilst they fussed over details, "have you got your toothbrush?", "make sure you eat your vegetables" and a dozen other queries that served to distract them from the fact that I was about to embark on a unique journey. This was to be an epic ocean crossing of a crew held aloft by an inflammable gas that presented only one of hundreds of ways we could meet our maker before reaching our destination.

As I joined my crew-mates and boarded the airship towering in the dark above us, I saw my parents hug in a way I hadn't seen before. Mum was holding Father like she used to when comforting us as children, following a fall or some other minor accident. I don't think I had ever seen him need her support before.

The voyage was hard work, but mercifully free of major incident. We had to repair one engine with chewing gum and lost another due to over-revving, there was only enough fuel for another two hours of flight when we finally arrived and some of the meals were pretty poor, but those all paled into insignificance as we approached our destination. I'd seen pictures of New York, of course, but nothing could have prepared me for the size of it. We filled the sky wherever we went, but in New York it seemed like the ground was reaching up to try and touch us. Our welcoming American hosts told us the tallest of the skyscrapers was the Woolworth Building at over fifty floors, which explains why they are so impressive as I don't know of any building over five floors in Edinburgh. We were treated like royalty for our short stay to refuel and prepare for the return trip, meeting everyone from local dignitaries to President Wilson himself, tasting strange new foods and making many new friends so far from home.

Heading back East was faster with the weather behind us and, just over three days after setting off from the States, we arrived back to a heroes' welcome. The papers were full of the story of our success for several days, though things have been a little more quiet over the last couple of weeks as the ship gets a refit. We're all hoping our journey will open up the airways to a whole fleet of long distance airships like our "Tiny", maybe even bigger and better.

For this time-served rigger, it's been the most incredible year of my life. My dreams didn't work out as expected, but I could never even have imagined the spectacle of my reality. Strangely enough though, the most important moment of it all was that fleeting glimpse of my father overcome with pride. That image is etched forever in my mind alongside the skyscrapers and those vast Atlantic clouds.

The Widget
By: Guy David

I got the replicator in January. It was a present from my girlfriend. The day after that I gave my resignation letter to my former boss. With the replicator being able to use precise blueprints downloaded from the internet to create just about anything, no job salary was necessary. That was a year ago. It started out nice, nothing but loafing around, doing nothing, but after about a month and a half I got bored. Sure, hanging around with my girlfriend all day had it's charm of endless conversations about anything in the world and we where getting to know each other in a whole new way, but there's just so much you can do together until you start getting on each other's nerves. I needed something to occupy my time, some hobby.

It was in mid February that I decided to pursue this old dream of mine. I was a teenager when computers and the internet became so important that it started changing the human race into something new. People became nodes in a communication hub. It was during that period that skilled programmers came and programmed little entertainment widgets and games into websites such as FaceBook. For a short period I dreamt about programing such a widget, but I was too young, too lazy. Now I had all the time in the world.

I opened a connection with my mind, using the in-head interface and connected to eBay. Searching, I found a vintage computer, a 2012 MacBook Touch. A few minutes later the computer materialized in my replicator. I connected it and reached again through my in-head interface, searching for the necessary skills. Waves of code washed through my head. In about an hour I was fluent in PHP. Now came the fun part. I had a vogue idea of what I wanted to do, but as I started writing things on a blank virtual page and storing it in the in-head interface, things became much clearer. What I was aiming for was the creation of a new world in two dimensions. A world based on surreal drawings and old fashioned web connections.

I wanted to do this the old fashioned way. I used the replicator again to materialize an old scroll and a calligraphic pen, then I started experimenting, drawing line after line of a strange and surreal land. I used the replicator to materialize a scanner and scanned the images into the old computer. As I did that, all the years of my younger self came back floating from my memory. I remembered a life of endless office hours in front of the computer with my coffee in one hand and the keyboard under my other hand. I remembered coming home to an empty house but never being alone, always a node in the endless sea of social connections. I met my girlfriend that way, in one of those early virtual worlds that I frequented, worlds that are so much a part of our life now that we sometimes forget what is real and what is simulated.

As I switched on the computer a wave of nostalgia washed over me. I started planting lines of code, building my little virtual two dimensional country from scratch. I didn't connect to any data base to learn how to do this. All the knowledge I needed was already in my head. All I had to do was to put the code together. It took me about a year of challenging work. It was amazing to see this come together. It was the most fulfilling year I had in my life since I left work. I was exhausted when I finished, but I knew the interesting part of my life was only beginning. All the paths of a bright future where open to me. I rested.

A Slice of Life
By: Norval Joe


Veronica raised her 32 oz cup of Cherry Cola, and he his Dr. Pepper, in a toast to the future. Still holding her cup in the air, she asked, "Does this mean we're not newlyweds anymore?"
MIke looked into her dark, almost black eyes. Her face was framed by long, straight, hair, that fell to the middle of her back like a glistening obsidian veil; equally as black as her eyes. He was as awed by her beauty, this evening in the pizza parlor, as he had been a year before. However, he felt like he knew her even less, now, after a year of marriage, than he had when he proposed. If knowing about your spouse was a sign of no longer being considered, 'newly wed', then they would likely carry the title for quite a while longer. "I guess we can call ourselves newly weds as long as we want, it's not like you love a person less, after a year." He was rambling and stammering. Typically, their conversations were light, and somewhat shallow, but tonight there had been something in her tone that unbalanced him.
She picked up her slice of pizza and nibbled off the tiniest bit at the end, which she mashed between her top and bottom front teeth. She had done the same on the night that he had proposed, one year previously, in this very booth. At the time, he thought it was cute, endearing, but watching her picking at the pizza now, he wondered if she ever ate more than one tiny bite. He tired to picture her taking a big bite, filling her whole mouth, or even eating the crust, but such a memory couldn't be found.
"It's been a whole year. Look at how far we have come." She said in a misty romantic way. Mike was glad that he hadn't been drinking his Dr. Pepper when she had said it, and that it was noisy enough in the pizzeria to disguise his inadvertent snort.
He couldn't think of any comment that was more diametrically opposed to how he was feeling right then.
They had dated on and off for just a few months, until one night when he found himself staring into those deep black mysterious eyes. He could almost see himself reflected in them. He heard himself say to her, as if he was in a dream, or like thoughts spoken out loud, without breath, or without moving his lips, "Let's get married." He had barely murmured it, then as if suddenly becoming aware of what he had said, and recognizing the true depth of his love and commitment to her, he declared with more animation, "Veronica, marry me!"
"Oh, Mike," she cried, her enthusiasm, sudden, overwhelming, and contagious. "Yes," she said, taking his hands in hers and tipping her head to the side and down, so that she looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, and smiled coyly. His heart nearly stopped as she smiled the demure smile, that had an almost magical hold on him. She leaned across the table and kissed him.
"Let's go," she laughed and got up from the table, pulling him to his feet as well. He followed her, laughing, his heart lighter and more at ease than any time he could remember in his life. As they approached the door to the parking lot, he paused, "Where are we going?" he asked.
"To get married," she said, her brow furrowing slightly, and just the slightest hint of annoyance in her voice, though maintaining a winning smile throughout. She shook her head, slightly, as if clearing it, and said, "Come on, I'll drive."
Before he knew it, they were in her black 280ZX, on the fastest trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to South Lake Tahoe, he would ever take. At times he squeezed his eyes shut to ease the vertigo from the blur of pine trees flying past his window. He gripped his knees as she sped the little car around the sharp turns of the two lane highway through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
They were married, and they lived together in an East Bay apartment. That was almost the extent of their relationship; that, pizza, and soda.
On the rare evenings that she wasn't working late, she was apathetic about cooking anything in their tiny kitchen. With their entry level jobs they had barely enough to pay their rent and the transportation costs to get them to their jobs across the bay in The City.
If he complained that they didn't have the cash to eat out, she would magically produce a $20 bill. Not enough to eat at a fancy restaurant, but always enough for pizza and a soda. If Mike would reply with, as he did several times in the first few months of their marriage, "We have pizza all the time, let's have a burger, or something," she would tilt her head to the side, in her endearing way, smile a small smile and say, "No, I really want pizza tonight." He couldn't help, but give in.
Her phone pinged indicating a text message. She put down her pizza to thumb the buttons on her phone in reply. "Jenny," she said, rolling her eyes, but smiling as she replied to her friend. Mike had never met the only friend that Veronica ever spoke of, but was well accustomed to the text message interruptions. An evening never went by, if they were actually together, that their short conversations, or more likely, the ubiquitous silence, wasn't regularly interrupted by the 'ping' of Jenny's text messages.
She set the phone down on the table, next to her soda, and was picking up her pizza when the phone pinged again. She did a double take when she looked as the short bit of text on the phone. Mike had to look closely at her face to see it, but she was surprised. Not once during their year together had Mike seen Veronica appear the least surprised. She spent every moment of the day with an expression of confident understanding that the world was turning just as she had expected it should. Though she appeared happy, there was something about the message that had caught her completely off guard.
"Ronnie, what," Mike began, but stopped abruptly as she stood and said, "I have to go to the bathroom." She walked off with out further comment or waiting for a reply. He watched her walk, her long silky hair flowing from side to side, opposite the sway of her slender hips. He watched as she disappeared into the women's room, and thought that tonight they should celebrate their anniversary in a more physically romantic way.
He thought about the many times that they had made love, the memories of their passion, and of times when they quietly held one another in their arms. As he thought about these times, a feeling of unease grew within him. He had these memories of their love making, but couldn't place from this memories when the specific events had occurred; not within the last month, or, for that matter, the month before.
When she did come home from work before he was in bed, there was always the pizza parlor, and afterwards she would walk straight from the front door to the bedroom, declaring, "What a day! I'm worn out. Make sure I don't oversleep." By the time Mike would catch up to her, she would be settled into bed and, apparently, asleep. No matter how he teased and cajoled, prodded and pushed, she was no more responsive than the mattress itself.
He picked up his slice of pizza, never taking his eyes from the door through which she had disappeared, and took a bite. He was surprised that his pizza was cold. He looked at his watch; it was half past eight; Veronica must have been in the bathroom for more than a half hour. He was sure that he hadn't taken his eyes from the bathroom door and hadn't seen anyone enter or leave.
A slice of life.
He quickly approached the counter and spoke to the woman behind the till, "Excuse me, Ma'am, but my wife went into the women's room a half hour ago, and hasn't come out. Could you go in and see if she is alright?" She said, "OK," but looked at him like he was a pervert, in the way that only the truly self absorbed teenagers can. She leaned in through the door to the women's room, then stepped inside. Before the door could close completely, she was coming back out and shaking her head. "Sorry, but there is nobody in there. Are you sure she didn't leave?"
Mike had a sudden overwhelming feeling of bewilderment, his head spun and if was difficult to breath. He felt like he really couldn't be sure of anything. He could see the ZX through the window, parked along the curb so she hadn't slipped out and driven off. He sat back down at their table; her phone was there, where she had put it down.
A thought occurred to him; her text messages would show the times that they were sent. Maybe that would give him a clue about how long she had really been gone.
The first message from Jenny was at 7:46 PM. He went ahead and read the message that followed, more out of habit than out of a desire to pry. It said, 'Checking in for status report.'
Veronica's reply followed two minutes later. Mike read the baffling message several times, trying to fit its meaning into his stuttering mind. She had sent, 'Status same as yesterday and everyday. It's been a year, look what I've done with myself. Get me out of here!'
The final text was sent from Jenny at 7:49 PM. 'Boss says, Good Work. Come home. Transcendsion shift in 5 minutes. See you soon.'
Mike finished off the last of his Dr. Pepper, and stared sadly at her phone, an aching sence of loss gradually gowing in his chest. She was gone from his life even more suddenly than she had entered it. All he had left of her was her phone, the ZX, and a years worth of memories of their times together, that probably didn't even happen.

The Asylum
By: Justin Lowmaster

Dr. Danson has signed my release papers. I have been declared sane. I'm holding an envelope of some cash. The asylum's crafting program allowed me to learn trade skills. The profits made from the cabinetry building are mine to keep. In my pocket is a list of places of employment and residence that are friendly to the asylum. My old life forgotten, my hopes are high that I can begin life anew.

---

I'm walking among all the regular people on the sidewalks of Chicago. I shade my eyes. I don't want to look up for some reason. A Model T drives by. The bright sun glints off of the metal spokes and into my eyes. My eyes track it as the bright ball of light dissipates as the car moves on. I pitch forward a bit.

"Hey, watch it!"

"Sorry"

I realize I had stopped walking.

The man has already walked off. That bright light, it reminds me of something. If I could just remember ... no, I should not try to remember. When the doctors tried to get me to remember I got worse. I should let my hidden memories stay in the shadows of my mind. Both my life before the incident, the event that drove me insane, and after are hidden in secret places in my mind. I begin walking again. I must keep my mind away from the past. I need a job, something to occupy me.

---

The cheerful bell jingles as I walk into Ben's Groceries. I have Dr. Danson's card in my hand. I'm fidgeting with it in my pocket. I pull it out to look at it. The corners are bent. I push it back into my pocket and keep my hands in the open. A young redheaded boy is totaling the price of a customer's goods and a middle-aged woman is arranging cans on a shelf. I don't think either of them is Ben. I walk deeper into the store. The soft smell of fresh fruits calm my nerves. I walk down an aisle of pasta and sauces towards the back of the store. Perhaps Ben's office is there.

I spot a door marked 'manager'. I make my way towards it. It opens. A tall man with light brown skin steps out. Long black hair hangs behind him in a braid. He turns to me and smiles.

"Welcome! I haven't seen you in my store before, how are you?"

I freeze and stare. On his left cheek is a tattoo of the sun. He looks at me quizzically.

"Is everything alright?"

"I, I, I shouldn't be here."

"Can I help you with something, are you in need?"

I turn and rush out of the store.

---

I unlock the door to my basement apartment. The door opens, revealing darkness. I hesitate a moment then dart my hand into the blackness and strike at the light switch. The lights turn on and I exhale a breath I didn't know had been locked up in my lungs. Inside I take off my jumpsuit from the warehouse I work at. Thankfully it is well lit but has few windows. I shove the jumpsuit into the sink and fill it with water. I have a memory of making music with washboard, but it just isn't in me anymore. Perhaps I need to spend a night out. Not in the dark, though, somewhere well lit. Maybe I'll go see a show.

---

The curtains are lifting. The set is a backdrop of trees. Dancing fairies adorn the stage. They whirl and twirl. A man wearing green walks onto the stage. He is standing in the middle. A brilliant light beams down from above and envelops the man in green. I squeeze my eyes shut. I enjoy some of the dialog and the music, but the memory of that light, it reminds of of the sun, but of something more. At the applause, I open my eyes. I make for the exit right away. As I walk home I am trying to stay on the edge of streetlight and shadow. I unlock and open my door and dart my hand for the switch. Terror overfills my stomach when nothing happens. My fingertips talk through the screaming fear in my mind. I can barely hear what they are saying. I missed the switch. I try again. The lights turn on. I nearly faint with relief.

---

I haven't left my apartment for days. My sleep is fitful. I dream of huge lights and of vast darkness. But, the darkness is not empty, there is something inside it, something terrible. I need food, I need to work, my mind is cracking again. Gathering up as much resolve as I can, I stand up and walk out the front door. I will go to the asylum. It is early evening. The sun is sinking over the edge of the horizon. I ignore it as best I can, but I feel it there, peering at me. This is the worst part of the day, light and darkness mixing together. I shiver but move steadily onward.

Just like when I left the asylum, the streets are busy. Crowds of people adorn the sides walks in the fading evening light. They ignore me and I them. I just want my mind to work again, I want it to be like ... before what? What made me this way? Why does my own mind plague me with terrors that are just beyond conscious thought? What are these things that ...

"Hey, watch out!"

I stop, but realize the shout was not directed at me. Two men are carrying a large mirror from a truck towards an alleyway. Someone had nearly run into them. The alleyway is dark, dark like, a cave? Why does that ... The men turn and the orange sunlight strikes the mirror and a beam of light shines into the alleyway. In a flash, I remember.

---

In the darkness it sleeps. If the light of the sun ever reaches it, it will awaken. When it rises from the deep black of the earth it would remove the taint from the earth, remove those who do not understand. Those who do not understand that everything else is meaningless. The sun hangs in the sky at the right time only once a year. I realize that in the next few days the sun will be right in the sky. How do I know this? I studied it. I was a professor of astronomy. I found a book on worshipers of the Sun. More study led me to a group that searched for an ancient being, a sun god, who was deep below the earth. They wanted to wake it. In my studies I found them. I spent time with them. I found it all entertain and fun. I didn't believe in there traditions superstitions. I really wanted to know what they would do when no great event occurred after their ritual.

Something happened, something went wrong. The day had come, the sun was right. Mirrors were installed in the caves and the light would shine deep into the earth, and it would waken. Someone had stopped it, broken the mirrors. Shots were fired, many dead. But, not before a brief flash of light had shone on it, on the sleeping ... thing. It had opened its eye for just a moment before it went dark, and in that moment before something knocked me unconscious ... that thing, its eye. In the briefest moment it had seen, it had looked, right at me, and then ...

I'm running right for it. I crash headfirst into the mirror. The thing looked at me then I heard it, not with my ears, but, I know what is whispered to me. People yell and scream but I hear them from far away. It told me my name, and it told me my fate, and the fate of the earth. I fall to the sidewalk cut and bleeding, my life pouring out onto the ground amidst broken glass and sunlight fading to darkness. It told me, everything. When I awoke, I had forgot, but, like me, one day, it will wake, and it will remember.

Magic Quadrant Part 7
By: Scott Roche

The whole conversation between the Captain and the aliens played itself out in the nearly invisible ear piece that the saboteur wore constantly. It allowed him to monitor any internal or external communications merely by focusing his thoughts. Section 31agents had all manner of fun toys that average Starfleet personnel knew nothing about. Sometimes he wondered what things were out there that were mysteries even to him. There was no way his bosses told him everything.



The conversation was a good example. He knew only the part he was to play in this and what contingencies he should be ready to bring to bear. He didn’t know if there were any other agents on board this ship or what the nature of the aliens on the enemy vessel was. Even those things he felt he knew for sure were suspect.



It was crucial to just keep his head down and perform his cover job with the professionalism expected of anyone in the Fleet. He was to neither excel nor under perform. Either action could result in him being brought up before his superiors and scrutinized. His identity was nearly impenetrable, but it was that word ‘nearly’ that kept him sharp. If he were captured then he might be neutralized by another agent or called upon to eliminate himself. As much as he was willing to die, doing so because he had failed his mission by blowing his identity was no way to go out.



Spending a year as a low level member of the security force on board the Kongo had hardly been his first choice of assignment though. In that entire time he felt he had accomplished practically nothing. Here he was, a man trained in espionage and infiltration, one of the tops in his field and he was a glorified security guard. Those were dangerous thoughts though. To combat them, he sank further and further into the layers of the person who had been created out of whole cloth by the geniuses at HQ, exploring complexities and nuances of the person he had become.



His name, at least the only name he would answer to these days was John Wilkerson. The lieutenant had graduated from the Academy with little distinction and had served on a remote Starbase for six months before being assigned to the Kongo. There were no pesky siblings or living parents to worry with. He had been a loaner all his life, not so much as to interfere with a clean psych eval, but enough to make a lack of close friends not all that unusual. The first few months on board had been lonely because of that.



He dealt with it well enough. In his life before all this he hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly. There were people in his past that he missed though and like anyone else, he needed an outlet. Over the last few months he started hanging out with people off duty and went so far as to get into a regular poker game. A few co-workers and people form other departments considered him a good friend and he was beginning to think of them the same way.



Thankfully he had avoided any romantic entanglements. The cute redhead that worked in engineering had been making eyes at him recently, but so far though that was it. Maintaining that discipline became more difficult with every passing day, though. Fortunately, the mission was upon him now and it appeared that he wouldn’t need to keep up the charade much longer. Based on what he knew, once the ship returned to Federation space there would be some event that called him away and no one would ever hear from Lieutenant Wilkerson again.



He broke his reverie to return to the matter at hand. Once they entered the unknown quadrant the Security Chief decided that all of her people needed to be out on shipboard patrol. She figured that given the circumstances, seeing some red shirts around would help calm everyone’s nerves. That was why Wilkerson found himself patrolling the decks with Lieutenant Avilla and thinking on the past year. He liked working with her. She was a bit chatty, but that let him mull things over. There was never much pressure on him to keep up his end of the conversation.



She was in mid-sentence when they both heard the tell tale sound of transporter beams. Someone was materializing in the hall just around the corner from the sound of things. That was alarming mostly because as far as he knew, the shields were still up. That meant that either someone was transporting within the confines of the vessel or someone was able to go through their shields. Neither option meant anything good.



Chatty though Avilla was, she was still a professional security officer. Both red-shirts had their Type II phasers out and ready in an eyeblink. Almost in unison they checked and ensured that the power settings were set to maximum stun and wide dispersion. Between the two the beams would cover the whole hallway and would put even the largest known humaoids down for a half hour at least.



Wilkerson crouched low as did his partner, each hugging a bulkhead for support. The noise of the transporter beam had been replaced by a quiet chittering sound. The volume was just below what would be normal conversation for most humans , but he couldn’t make out any words.



A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Avilla gestured at a communications wall panel. He shook his head. Calling in reinforcements would be nice, but using that or the communicators at their belts would make enough noise to alert whoever it was up ahead. It was good to know that there was one close though, just in case.



He thrust his chin up ahead and they continued the crouch walk towards the intruders. Once around the bend the Wilkerson and Avila saw the creatures that had boarded the Kongo. Neither of them had seen the interaction Captain Thornton had had. So they weren’t prepared for what awaited them. The creatures were somewhat spider like from the waist up, Sean had got that right. From there down though, they were more like centipedes.



A segmented body at least two meters long with legs sprouting off every decimeter or so, flowed out form the bristly torso. Thee three creatures wore no clothes and were hard to tell apart, due to the subtle differences in color and the alien nature of their bodies. With time their individual characteristics would be plain enough. Right now all the two could focus on was the notion that the Kongo had been invaded.



The high pitched whine of phaser fire echoed off of the walls. Their training served them both well when it came to the timing and coverage of their shots. The energy did overlap as desired and all three targets were bathed in the brief flash. Instead of falling over as expected though, the trio turned, each clasping what were unmistakably weapons in one pair of segmented arms.



What have I Done
By Jeff Hite

It has been along time since I wrote something down by hand, but it seems appropriate now. In the last year since I started as captain of the Columbia a great many things have changed. Although it is not the case, it feels like the galaxy is changing around me as I stand perfectly still. Standing still is something that I cannot do. Even if I wanted to, the ship moves all the time, even when we are parked around a planet, we are moving faster than most people who are earth bound will ever travel. But, it is not the physical standing still that I fear, but the inability to change, and that inability that might cloud my judgment and prevent me from acting in the way that best protects this ship and her crew.
Ten days ago we encountered a ship from Earth's past. A relic of the past that I thought we had left behind. The captain of that ship could not see past their need for urgency because of dwindling supplies, to prevent the deaths of most of his crew. I hope that at least I have not become that inflexible.
When we found the Molly Brown, she was in an unstable orbit around a mostly ice covered planet, and her orbit was decaying. Had we gotten here two or maybe three weeks later, we would not have found her. As it was we used the transporter device to send a team over and recover what they could before she burned up in the atmosphere. They found one survivor in suspended animation and were able to recover most of the computers records before the orbit became too unstable to safely have people on board.
The one survivor has still not communicated anything coherent to us, but from the records it appears that most of the crew was lost when they were hit by massive storm on the ice planet's sister's surface. The two planets are tidally locked and cause not only surface quakes, but also large storms that can cover a hemisphere at a time. It was one of these storms that killed most of the crew and stranded the rest as their shuttle craft was damaged and crashed.
If we have pieced that data together correctly, it looks as though they made a decision about which planet to land on before they had all the data they needed and it turned out to be fatal to all but a very few of them. We believe that it is possible though unlikely that there are survivors on the more arid of the two planets. If they are there, they would be the grandchildren, maybe even the great grand children of those who first landed there. To that end we are scanning the planet below, but it might be a slow process with large number of caves and tunnels.
I wonder what choices drove these people to this point, what things happened in their last year of life, that drove them to steal a ship, and take a desperate leap across two the stars, with no sure destination. Then to make a decision about where they would settle with little or no data, that ended in a fatal error. What things would have to happen in my life that would drive me to do that.
Captain Hernandez put her pen down, and looked around her cabin. What had driven her to this point. What had brought them to this place in the galaxy, that they might discover this failure of the human endeavor. She looked at her screen again and at the slowly scrolling data that was being pulled from the ancient data tapes. She smiled at the memory of the look on the engineers face when he saw them, and then the frustration that he had trying to rig something up to read them. The data they had gotten so far had been only the most basic. She was hopping that eventually they would get to the personal logs, the messages home, or even some personnel information so they could know more about who these people were. What she did not want to do is leave these people with no history, with no record of their passing. That their sacrifice, their lives would come to nothing seemed unfair. Then she remembered a quote that she had read, in one of the early academy classes, "A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.'"
She would make sure that since chance had brought them to this point in the universe, these people would not be forgotten, even if the universe felt no obligation to them. She stood and walked to the bridge then. Her life over the last year, had one effect that would change the way that she looked at life forever. Every life, though it may feel small and insignificant at the time, means something, and deserves to be remember by the universe. The Crew of the molly brown, may all be dead by now, but they would not be forgotten. She could only hope that every star ship captain that came after her would take this lesson with them. Never forget those whose lives come before you. You never know when one of those lives will effect you in the future.

Great Hites # 47

This Week we have Stories by

This weeks winner was Norval Joe!

Scott Roche
Norval Joe
And
Jeff Hite

Hear Feed back and learn about submitting your own prompt.





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Magic Quadrant Part 3
By
Scott Roche

The mysterious figure hunched over and crawled into the Jefferies tube, pulling the access door shut, behind him. He was certain that he hadn’t been followed. This deck level was largely empty during even a normal duty cycle. In addition, thanks to the Red Alert status which relegated everyone not on duty to their quarters, it was even less likely that he would be discovered. Still if someone in security did catch him there would be hard questions.



Once he was securely in place, he slid the small device out from its hiding place and slapped it on a conduit. Unless you knew exactly where to look there was no way anyone would spot it. Satisfied with that he spoke into the micro-recorder he had in his bag of tricks. “Log number forty-seven, Agent Alpha Three dash Zero Zero Seven recording. We have arrived at the agreed upon coordinates. I have necessary access to all of the ship’s subsystems as required by my mission. If I run into any problems I will avail myself of whatever options I can find, though I want to state for the record that I find none of the potential answers is very savory."



Stating it for the record would do little good if the recorder never made it back into his overseer’s hands, but it made him feel better. “I will initiate self destruct or make the necessary adjustments to the power structure to assume command only if I am forced to do so. Otherwise I shall let things proceed as planned.”



Working for Section 31 often meant that he had to do things that most people would find not only unsavory but perhaps even outright treasonous. If it meant keeping the Federation safe though, no agent worth his salt counted the personal cost. The only problem was, this particular agent had let his guard down and started to get to know this crew. He was friends with some of them.



That didn’t mean he would shirk his sacred duty. Friendship meant little if they were thrust into a disaster, the proportions of which made their involvement necessary. It still made the whole matter stickier than he liked. “The science officer has yet to detect the modifications that were made to the sensor package. I await the transmission from our operatives on the other side. Agent Alpha Three dash Zero Zero Seven out.” He replaced the micro-recorder into the slit pocket in his red tunic’s sleeve. Only the most advanced sensors would detect it and even then it would have to be turned on.



He turned in the cramped space and opened the hatch. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he crawled out and dogged the hatch behind him again. He had three minutes to return to his quarters before he was missed. That was plenty of time.

Family Matters
By: Norval Joe


The king stood in the passage just outside the open door to his daughters ante chamber, and watched the ladies-in-waiting hover and fuss like a swarm of helpful bees attending to a single flower. "She is beautiful', he thought as the ladies primped and preened her in preparation for the betrothal feast, just a few hours away.
A son-in-law that would be the most beneficial alliance for the kingdom was not the foremost factor in the kings mind as he negotiated with the eligible men of the surrounding kingdoms, but it was high on the list. He wanted his only daughter to be happy, that was foremost. Ten kingdoms touched the boundaries of his own, or were within a days ride of it. All had varying degrees of hostility or cooperation with his land. Should he choose the son of his most trusted alliance and cement a relationship that was already strong, or pursue the son of his most heated rival and build a bridge to cooperation that had been difficult to achieve in the past? Would allying with this rival, then, offend his trusted friend, and thus shake a fundamental and valued relationship? Should he choose the dim witted, but handsome, youth of one king over the intelligent, but middle aged brother of another? None of the choices had been simple; all had potential repercussions that might prove to be undesirable.
He had made his decision and forged an alliance with one of the more distant kingdoms that produced much of the grain that his kingdom used; It had seaports and was strong in trade with distant, exotic countries. In addition to fields of grain and sailing ships, the kingdom had a prince, the heir to the thrown, a few years older than his daughter. The princess had accompanied the king and her older brother each autumn, since she was eight years old, as the king traveled to the foreign land to secure treaties and trade agreements. It would seem that the princess had been concealing an interest in the young prince for many years; when he presented the idea to the princess of marriage to this young man, she reacted with indifference, and replied, "My desire is to serve the kingdom. If this is what is expected of me, I can do nothing but comply with your wish."
'She will be a beautiful queen,' the king thought, proudly, as he heard her reply, her shining eyes putting the lie to her affected indifference.
The king turned from the door and walked toward the banquet room, where his trusted advisors and ministers were preparing to receive the prince and his envoy, in preparation for the official betrothal.
A scribe, red faced and perspiring sped down the passage and threw himself at the kings feet. "My Lord, I bring the gravest of news. The princes envoy was attacked as it passed through the eastern forests, and the prince was taken hostage. The rest of the entire party were killed, save a single squire. He reached our gates only this very hour. He said that there is a large contingent moving this way. He brought this emblem from a dead solder of the attacking party."
Mechanically, the king took the emblem form the messengers outstretched hand. He recognized it immediately and wanted to cast it down in disgust. The kings face paled then reddened in turns, as the implications of the attack clarified in his mind. "Rise, good servant." The king said gruffly. "Send word that all are to gather in the banquet hall within the hour. I must, now, speak to my daughter."
His son stood and all discussion ceased in the hall when the king entered. He was composed, but it was evident from his demeanor that the news was not easily received by his daughter. Emotionally drained and feeling all of his five and a half decades, he dropped into the large cushioned seat in the middle of the long banquet table; with a wave of his hand, he indicated that all who stood in attendance, should sit. "Father, will she be alright", the prince leaned in and whispered? He nodded an abbreviated half-nod to reassure his son.
All the choices were before the king, and he knew that a decision would need to be made quickly.
He looked, first, down the table to his left. There sat his minister of finance, the deep sense of unease clearly readable in her eyes. She saw his contemplative stare and quickly glanced down to the sheets of parchment on the table before her. She shuffled them about and acted as if she was reading them, hoping that this would divert the Kings attention elsewhere. Her lead accountant sat to her right, careful not to look up from his own notes. To her left sat her chief economist, blissfully unaware of the tension.
He then looked down the table to his right. His minister of trade sat between two of his long time friends, the guild masters of the bakeries and the blacksmiths.
Between these two groups were arrayed the various other ministers and advisors.
The king signalled to his steward who rang the dinner chime and the room was suddenly filled with servants rushing about to get the various platters and tureens onto the long banquet table within three of the kings deep, steadied breaths; they knew that he was counting, and were too familiar with the results, if the count was too long. The food on the table, the servants disappeared as quickly as they had come.
"Eat", the king declared when the last of the servants had left the banquet hall, "This was to be a celebration banquet, after all." He looked at the steaming entrées, a look of dismay growing on his face; sweet and sour soups, candied yams, and chocolate fondues. He looked at his ever expanding waist and at the dinner service again. 'All sweets', he thought, ' not a savory choice on the table. No wonder I'm getting so fat!'
He looked up from his evaluation of the table to see his dinner guests; The entire entourage sat, motionless, waiting for the king to be the first to eat; someone's stomach groaned loud enough for half the table to hear.
The noise startled the king from his contemplative stasis. With a heat he hadn't expected, he growled at his advisors, "Make your selections and eat. With an invading army approaching our lands, we've many decisions to make this evening, and none of them are savory." He slammed the table for emphasis and picked up a honey coated date ball to throw, sullenly, into his mouth. The dates were crunchy and sweet, yet difficult to swallow.
They all began to eat cautiously pondering the steps that must be taken to prepare for war.


Merideth Introduction
By Jeff Hite


The Sound of his phone Ringing was like a nail being driven into his skull. The headache was back, and the high trill of his phone was almost more than he could handle this morning. He thought about ignoring it but, both ignoring it and answering it had consequences that he didn't really want to face that this point. It rang one more time before he made his decision and picked it up.
"Rob, this is Mary." Rob did the best not to roll his eyes. Mary was the best receptionists the company had, but her voice had a quality that could strip paint of walls in any direction she choose to point it.
"Yes, Mary."
"Rob, you have a guest up here, and your conference call with marketing is in five minutes." It was completely odd for a guest to be visiting him. Mary was very good about not letting any sales people in, and he didn't have any planned guests from the other departments.
"Who is it Mary?"
"I don't know Rob, he would not give me his name, and when I tried to get rid of him, he said he was an old friend and that you would make time for him."
"An old friend huh?" If this job had one cost it was his social life. He had not been home before nine thirty in over a month, and had mostly spend his weekends just trying to recover from the weeks. That was of course the weekends that he didn't end up working. "Alright Mary, I will be but shortly. When the conference call comes in, can you stall them for a few minutes?"
"Alright Rob, but they won't buy it for long."
"Thanks Mary." He hung up the phone and took a quick look at the train wreck that was his schedule today, then he made his way to the front lobby. There was a man sitting in the chair facing away from him, and a woman in the chair opposite him that he could not take his eyes off of. When she meet his eyes he felt like the room had just lit up.
"Rob, look at you," the voice was unmistakable, and it was probably the one thing that forced him to take his eyes off the woman, now standing up in front of him.
"Larry, what? but where have you."
"Larry?" Mary's voice removed the last spot of stubble he'd missed this morning.
"Surprised to see me again?"
"That is an under statement." Rob said when he finally was able to speak again.
"Yea well things happen in funny ways."
"The last time I saw you was on the top."
"Lets not talk about that now," he said holding up his hands. "Rob, I would you like you to meet my friend Meredith." The woman at Larry's side held out her, hand and for the first time in his life, Rob felt like maybe he should kiss it and not shake it.
"It is nice to meet you Meredith. Did you meet Larry in Greece?"
"You could say that," She said with a smile and voice that made him feel warm. "It is very nice to meet you, Larry has spoken a lot about you."
"Rob, your meeting is waiting."
"Thanks Mary. Listen Larry," Rob started.
"It is alright Rob, I understand I just wanted to let you know that we were back in town. Can you meet us for a late dinner. We can celebrate your promotion. Mary told me you got Dave's job."
"Alright, but."
"No buts tonight at the steakhouse on the west side of Broadway at nine-ish alright?" Rob nodded dumbly. "Great, we will see you there. Get to that marketing call."
Rob watched the two of them go and could almost feel the room getting colder as they stepped from the lobby to the streets beyond. Larry had been one of his only friends for years. Mostly because they both worked for Unitide, but Larry had been gone for years since they had lost sight of each other while looking for what Larry thought was the was entrance into the home of the gods. And what about the woman with him. Larry had never, as far as Rob knew, been very good with women, and Meredith was certainly the most beautiful woman that Rob had ever seen him with. He didn't have time to think about this now. He needed to have his thoughts together for this call, or the marketing team would walk all over his department again.

Great Hites # 46

This week hear stories by:
Anima Zabaleta
Ashley Redden
Norval Joe
and
Scott Roche





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THE RAINMAKER
By:
Anima Zabaleta

I store my feelings and memories in the clouds. There, my ideas are free to float around in the atmosphere, allowing me to deal with more mundane tasks. Like what to fix for dinner. For most of my life, this system has worked fine. My happy thoughts were cumulus clouds, tall and billowing, filled with light and air, frolicking like sheep in cerulean pastures. Daydreams drifted high in the atmosphere, settling in as cirrus clouds, wispy and far away.

And morning… morning was my favorite time. My thoughts swirled like ground fog, obscuring the hard edges of day, until I slowly got organized over a cup of tea and the early news.

Then things took a turn for the worse. I lost my job, and dark nimbostratus loomed overhead for weeks. I started to drink and distance myself from my family. I drank more, and the summer I spent in Florida was unusually cold and overcast. That was noted in all the papers. It occurred to me that I might be influencing the weather patterns, so I started checking channel 13. They were blaming El Nino, but I knew the truth. Hurricane Katrina? Hmm, I was in New Orleans when I heard my parents died in the car accident.

It’s been hard, trying to shake the depression. I shouldn’t feel so lonely, being orphaned at age 36. I’m afraid of whom else I might hurt, with my dark weather disposition.

I am testing the theory that cloud memory storage works both ways… If I go to a place where there are no clouds, I should be happy, right? And be able to dissipate this ominous thunderhead that has lingered since 2005. So I am headed to the Atacama in Chile, where the annual rainfall averages a millimeter a year. If that doesn’t work, it can still be a win/win situation, I think. If my mood doesn’t lift, I will market my talents as a rainmaker. Got to look for that silver lining somewhere…



Magic and the Sword Do Not Mix
By: Ashley Redden


Gianni stumbled again, but managed to catch a bush before she fell. How many times she had stumbled and fallen, she no longer knew. She stood silent for a moment and closed her eyes. A wave of fatigue mixed with anguish washed over her. Gianni was very tired, but the emotional ache was almost too much to bear. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
After a moments rest, she opened her eyes and stole a glance down the glade, back the way she’d just come. He was still coming. A slight gasp escaped at the thought. She could not see nor hear him, but knew that he was still coming none the less. Nor was it necessary for her to elicit a finding spell. She simply knew. That flight or fight response that was so deeply embedded to be beyond conscious understanding, but there nonetheless, told her every nerve that something harmful was steadily approaching.
After a deep breath, Gianni turned and resumed her retreat up the pass. She had been moving in and out of sparse clearings in various stages of growth for the better part of the morning. There were few mature trees scattered here and there, but saplings and brush were aplenty. Gianni knew that the upper passes of the mountains, really misnamed huge hillocks that bordered her home lands, were prone to huge and destructive lightning storms. The resulting fires were ignited enough to keep the land here burned shaping the local flora.
As she continued her retreat through bramble and bush, she couldn’t help but wonder how things had come to this. Oh, her parents would cluck their tongues and say for the thousandth time that magic and the sword do not mix. But she was determined to prove them wrong. After all, Laven had been so different in the beginning. But things had changed after he and Gianni were officially joined. He had steadily become more and more violent and less interested in her as a person, but more as an object, lately it seemed more often than not, an object of scorn. Gianni had some small talent at magical healing, so she was always able to heal herself and hide the evidence from prying eyes.
The last fight had been the worst yet. Laven had worked himself to such a rage, all the while smashing their house and cursing Gianni that she had retreated to the corner and hid her face in fear. All the while Laven had blamed everything he could think of on magic folk. It seemed to go on and on.
Finally the screaming and destruction stopped and Laven seemed to regain his composure. He had turned on her then and calmly drawn his short sword. She knew that he most preferred this sword for close personal battle. Gianni shuddered. Her husband hissed between clenched teeth, “You and your kind are an evil pox upon the world. The disease must be removed. I shall begin with you”
He had smiled a killer’s smile then and crouching into a loose fighting stance advanced upon his cowering wife. He wore an almost euphoric look upon his face, but determination and death danced in his eyes. Gianni had thrown up her hands and clapping them together speaking by wrote a defensive version of the elder spell. A blinding white light had flowed from her clapped hands and engulfed the advancing Laven. She then fled as his curses followed her out of the house and beyond.
The worst part of the fight was that Gianni was still unsure as to what she had done wrong.
Magic and the sword do not mix.
Gianni remembered those fateful words as she bypassed a particularly thick swath of bramble. After she had introduced Laven to her family, her father had pulled her aside and spoken sternly, “swordsmen don’t have to think. They don’t need a brain to hack each other up, so it’s been my experience that they generally act as if they don’t have one. A lifetime of behavior as such can leave a person mentally deficient.”
He had sighed and looked at her stricken with worry, taken a deep breath and continued, “Mages, on the other hand, have to use their brains at all times. I tell you Gianni this will not work.”
She had snatched her hand away and stormed out of her parent’s home, her father’s words chasing her out the door, “magic and the sword do not mix.” Later, she was mortified that she could act like such a petulant child. Apparently love could do that to a person. Love. Who would invent such a despicable thing?
But she had been in love. She still was. That’s what made the hurt so intense, the wounds go so deep. All hurts sting, but let the one you love inflict the pain and it goes straight to the bone.
Gianni came to an open area and skirting the edge made her way to the small immature wood beyond. Though really not wood at all, but overambitious shrubs, the thicket would be sufficient for the coming conflict.
Scanning the sky, Gianni found the thunderhead almost directly above. She had become aware that she was tracking the cloud without thinking. Apparently her subconscious had gone to a place that she hadn’t allowed her thinking self to go, self preservation catalyzing a subconscious plan for survival. She knew that such clouds could build up and store tremendous electric energy under the right conditions.
Gianni fell to her knees; both hands in front upon the ground palm-up. She sighed. She just wanted to sit here and weep. Though wracked with anguish, she found that she could not cry. Gianni wanted to live.
Again she closed her eyes and wished upon any distant star that things would not be so. But after a moment, she opened them again only to see that nothing had changed.
A rugged sigh filled the thicket as Gianni concentrated and began chanting aeromancy.
As she had been taught from her earliest memory, she compartmentalized the emotions and thoughts foreign to her current task. She focused on the words, thinking of nothing but the chant. Soon, the rhythmic words were her world. Her conscious thought and will became one with the great cloud.
Within the great Gianni/thunderhead, winds began to rush downward from above and upward from below hastening the creation of the desired conditions. The air within also began to cool condensing water vapor to ice. Soon, the great Gianni/thunderhead began to bristle with restless static energy. She carefully caressed the energy, feeling and shaping the charge, harnessing and controlling the maelstrom.
With the thunderhead in check, Gianni allowed her consciousness to settle back into her corporeal body. She sat waiting patiently, eyes fixed on the far side of the small clearing. She did not have long to wait. Emerging from the brush quietly like a wraith, Laven stepped out. He stooped looking left and right casting for her spoor. Laven had always been a superior woodsman.
“Laven,” she called out. His head snapped up and their eyes locked. Both stares carried fierce determination.
“I shall run no more. Come my husband. Here, in this open place, let our haranguing be forever silenced,” spoke Gianni clearly from across the clearing not moving except for a slight quiver of her lower lip.
Laven cast a lecherous grin and answered, “Oh yes wife let us again embrace. I too would wish an end to our troubles.” Laven gazed out at the clearing as if looking upon a field of play.
“Here in this place, let us make things again right.” And saying this he swung his sword in a powerful figure eight before him and laughed aloud.
Gianni belatedly realized that he had probably not resheathed the sword, but had carried it in anticipation all the morning during his dogged pursuit. Unsolicited, a single tear left the corner of her eye and began its lonely journey down her cheek. As with most tears, this one would soon be followed by many.
Laven took a step. Time seemed to slow; Gianni reached out and touched the ambient energy within the ground and plants surrounding the clearing.
Laven took another step, then another his eyes fixed on his target. Gianni began to sort and coalesce the ambient energy with an opposite charge of that surging within the thunderhead.
Laven took another step. He was now in the center of the clearing. Gianni pushed the ambient energy she had been gathering into the advancing man with a desperate cry of force.
Laven paused and cocked his head slightly, a quizzical look upon his face. He stood stock still for just a moment, his long mane of hair rising like a wisp from his shoulders and head. Laven was battered down as a great white bolt of lightning slammed into and through his body.
Gianni screamed, “No, no, no, no, noooooo.” Still on her knees, one hand open and beckoning outstretched as the other sank into the cold dirt. She screamed and screamed as she watched her husband be beaten down by one pulsing lightning strike after the other. The assault went on for what seemed like an eternity.
Eventually the lightning barrage stopped. Amid great shuddering sobs, Gianni wept herself to sleep. The thunderhead, now depleted of magic and energy quietly drifted away.
Later, she awoke and made her way around the clearing to where she first entered. The center of the clearing now had a sizable crater that the lightning had blasted there. Gianni looked one more time upon the killing field where her doomed marriage had ended. No more tears came.
She reached a hand out and said, “goodbye my love.”
A great tired sigh escaped her as she turned and began her journey home. She idly wondered if she would ever love again. Probably she thought mechanically placing one foot in front of the other.
But one thing was for certain she vowed to herself. Forever more would she heed the words of her father.
Magic and the sword do not mix. This was a mistake she would not make again.


The Shaman
By: Norval Joe

The old man was as grey and immobile as the granite on which he sat. His eyes were a shocking blue that matched the sky on clear winter days; clear and piercing like the icy crystal pools in high mountain streams. His skin hung loosely on him, as a robe many sizes too large.
Ancient. The oldest man's grandfather spoke of him as old. So old now, that he could not speak. Too old to raise his own hand to feed himself. Young men and women were sent from the villages to feed and care for him, and to hold his arms for him.
Every day, from spring equinox to that in the autumn, two young men came for the villages to place the staff in his weak and gnarled hands, and raise the old mans hands above his head, and hold them there.
Proud parents raised their boys to be strong and patient and prepared to raise the old mans hands. Boys and young men of all ages could be found as they walked from place to place, with their hands above their heads, holding a staff, increasing in strength and endurance, hoping to one day be selected to raise the old man's hands.
He sat on the granite ridge one thousand feet above the villages of the fertile plain. As he sat, hands folded neatly in his lap, he scanned the summer sky. As always, it remained clear and blue and still.
Young women, pure and chaste, fed him each morning, he didn't require much to sit and watch the sky. They brought him water and washed and trimmed his hair. They brought blankets for him when it was cold, and shaded him from the heat of the summer.
And each day, two young men; young, though physically mature; knelt at each side. Supporting elbow and wrist, they raised the old mans hands and staff over his head.
And held them there. Sometimes, they needed only hold them mans arms for a short period, but more often the task reached an hour or more.
As the arms were raised, the wind would rise in concert. The young men would lean into the wind to maintain their hold on the old man and his staff. With the wind, as it crossed the broad plain below, came clouds, boiling up to block out the sun and cast the earth into darkness; and rain.
The deluge was sudden and complete, creeks and rivers swelling and overflowing their banks. The old man with his attendants holding fast, chilled by the sudden downpour, searched the distant horizon, for the sign. Finding a break in the clouds, the afternoon sun peaked though, and the old man sighed; the cue to his young assistants that the days task was complete and they may relax.
Lowering arms and staff, the young men got to their feet, the clouds thinning suddenly and blowing away, leaving in its wake as sodden stillness, pristine and new. The young women came out to assist the young men. They worked together to dry the old man and help him into a clean robe.


Magic Quadrant Part II
By: Scott Roche

Lisor gripped the arms of the captain’s chair tightly. While not as strong as Vulcans, his people did possess more strength and agility than humans. He was able to keep his seat in spite of the pitching and yawing. His emotions ran high, but he reined them in.

“Status report Mr. Singh.” He had put the ship on red alert as soon as the odd readings were picked up by the sensor package, so their shields were up and all weapons were online. Unfortunately almost as soon as he did so, they temporarily lost helm control.

The helmsman regained her seat quickly and rain one fine boned hand through her blue-black hair. “Control has been restored. All systems are within normal parameters. What was that sir?”

The small readout on the arm of the chair wasn’t as good as the viewfinder at his station, but until he felt sure that there would be no more unusual movement he elected to stay put. He consulted it closely. “That’s not clear yet. Mr. Travis what do you have to tell me?”

Travis checked the navigation console. “Readings are... odd sir.” There was a slight twang in his voice, accentuated by tension. “The star field doesn’t conform to our last known position. Trying to get a fix on where we are.” His fingers flew over the buttons.

There had been no word from the captain since the incident. Lisor triggered a button near his hand. It brought up a status report echoing what Singh had to say. The hull was intact. Medical reported no current injuries, though they were still waiting on certain non-critical areas to report in. All duty stations were manned and functional. Life support was online. Satisfied that nothing was going to blow up in the next minute, he got up and walked over to the science station. “Lieutenant Banks, contact the captain. Pipe all reports to the readout in his quarters.”

The communications officer nodded. “Yes sir.”

Bluish-white light from his viewfinder played over Lisor’s skin. Data streams confirmed that they weren’t in the same sector that they had been in only moments before. There was still no clear information on where they were exactly. He played back the sensor readings from just before the incident. All of the input from hundreds of sensitive instruments flowed into the holographic memory banks at the core of the ship. Far superior to the “cloud storage” used hundreds of years ago, these databanks could take that and feed it back to him massaged to his liking in what might as well have been real time. The computing power at his command dwarfed that of what was available to some star systems. Still nothing in front of him could tell him what happened. There was so much they didn't know.

He banged his fist on the console in frustration. With a huff, he stood and looked over at Banks. “Any word from the captain?”

The big human shook his head, short blond dreadlocks dancing. “No sir. I’ve sent a security team to check on him. Sir?”

Lisor ran his hand over his smooth scalp, relishing the sensation and using that pleasure to calm himself. “Yes lieutenant?”

“I’ve been trying to reach the nearest subspace relay to help Mr. Travis in getting a fix on our location and I’m not getting anything back.” Concern etched his features. “We’re lost, aren’t we sir?”

The science officer couldn’t help but feel the eyes of the entire bridge crew on him. Most of these men and women hadn’t been in service more than a standard year. They were understandably nervous. He stood and exuded warmth and confidence. “I won’t lie to you. We are lost, but I have confidence that we will find out where we are. This is a good crew and we have a great captain. Now let’s get to work making that happen.” His words and the affect that his race had on most sentient species worked together and in moments everyone returned to their work with renewed vigor.

Great Hites # 45

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This week we have stories from:
Scott Roche
Guy David
Norval Joe
and
Jeff Hite

Magic Quadrant
By Scott Roche

The first officer spoke in hushed tones "We are now in the Magic Quadrant, Captain."

Captain Sean Thornton nodded sharply to his Deltan science officer. “Thanks Lisor.” The knowledge both amused and terrified the young captain. It was amusing because this area in space was neither magic, nor a quadrant. It was frightening because much like the Bermuda Triangle back on Earth, it was a place where many a ship disappeared without a trace. Of course much like the Triangle a good number of those disappearances where overstated, misattributed, or otherwise explainable. Still, he had been fed horror stories since his first day in the Academy.

He stood and tugged at his uniform tunic, noting not for the first time that it was amazing, given how far technology had come since humans first breached the troposphere, that military clothing still never seemed to fit quite right. He walked up to the con and stood behind his helmsmen. “Mr. Singh, be sure to let me know the second your readouts show any anomalies.”

“Aye, Captain.” The young lady nodded.

“Take us ahead one quarter impulse.” He imagined that he experienced the sensation of the NCC-1710 Kongo slowing down. The Constitution class starship was in tip top shape though, having just left space dock after an extensive overhaul and the addition of some unusual sensor packages. So there was no way that the inertial dampers would be out of whack enough for that to be the case. They were to be the first ship in Starfleet to really give this area a good going over.

Thornton suspected that someone in the upper ranks wanted them to fail. Why else send such a green crew out into this god-forsaken piece of space with bleeding edge technology and so close to the Neutral Zone? Well he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

He made a fist, without realizing it and turned to face the strikingly handsome bald man at the science station. “Anything to report Lisor?”

Lisor smiled, but not too much. “No, Captain. Everything is within normal parameters. Mr. Trangh reported some fluctuation in the warp core, but it too is not unusual.” He bent to his viewfinder again.

Thornton was tempted to be annoyed at the Engineer for not reporting to him, but then he realized he was micro-managing. That was a sign that he needed to talk a walk, maybe get some grub. “Lisor, you have the con. I’ll be in my quarters for a bit.”

“Aye, Captain.” He nodded and slaved his read outs to the captain’s chair. It would alert him of anything needing his attention.

The elevator doors whooshed open at his approach. He grabbed the handrail and called for the deck that held officer’s country, such as it was. Once the door was closed, he ran one hand shakily through tightly curled auburn hair. Off the bridge he acknowledged that he wasn’t only hungry, but indeed famished. He hadn’t eaten since, what had he even taken breakfast? A strong cup of tea with a splash of milk had been it, or as near as the fabricators could come.

The doors opened and he stalked to his cabin, the temper turned on himself for not attending to his bodily needs. Too little food or sleep, even with the intense training and discipline that Starship captains underwent, could lead to disaster. For want of a nail and all that. Once in the cool dark of his room, he was able to fully relax and sprawl on his bed. His rangy form nearly took up the whole thing. It was good that he didn’t have occasion to entertain female visitors as some did, since there simply wouldn’t be room for anyone else.

“Computer, fix me a roast beef sandwich and a side of home fries.” A series of beeps sounded from the console and a small door opened. The odor of the synthesized food was tremendous, even knowing it hadn’t come near a real cow in light years. With great difficulty he moved off of the bed and towards his lunch.

The tray was in his hand and he was walking to the table when the deck dipped forty-five degrees, sending food, captain, and anything not nailed down into the deck plates. Red alerts flashed and sirens screamed all over the ship.



When the Mages Came
By Guy David

Someone once said that when technology is advanced enough, it might seem like magic to those who don't have it yet. The Mages knew this, as they have been studying us for centuries, so when we got to their quadrant, they appeared as magical beings to us. They had the ability to shape-shift. We also had this ability to a limited degree, but they where obviously more technologically advanced. They had space-time travel when we only had space travel. We could learn from them, but they didn't trust us. They have seen the possible future. They had no idea they created it.

They told us the future can be shaped. The universe is magical and modular in a way. You can travel to alternate universes and you can even create them. The key is time travel. You travel to the past, then you change something and suddenly the universe itself is changed, split into two separate universes. The Mages have learned how to harness this ability, to choose their universal destination and to travel through all of alternity.

They told us that throughout the universe, there where only three species capable of doing that. We where one of them, and the scientist that invented our own version of time travel existed on our time. They where there to destroy him, but they only succeeded in splitting the universe again. In one alternate universe, the scientist was destroyed, while in another he was successful in inventing time travel. Now, alternity is shared. That was why they came and told us. They hope they can prevent a possible future, where we have achieved mastery of the universe. They didn't tell us that. We just knew. We are wondering what the third species is. We think we can use them to help us rule over the universe. We will find out. We have time on our side.

The Subway.
By Norval Joe

This was their station. Anyone that wanted to do business here; hookers, drug dealers, pickpockets; would first need to check in with the street gang's representative. There was at least one around the platform, anytime of day or night, and usually there were more. You probably didn't know that they were there, unless you needed to know it. They kept a close eye on all the action, and were quick to rally enough of a presence if some unknown player tried to leave the platform without paying the 'tax'. You could do business here, but running a business always had expenses.
The weekly meeting was about to begin as the 12:05 was pulling away. An unusual number of 'inconspicuous' men had gotten off the subway car just as it pulled away. One of them shouted, "Get your hands in the air!" as they all drew their guns. The new chief of police had declared that he would make the subways 'safe and family friendly' again, but no one expected that the crackdown on gang activities would begin this soon.
The invasion was a surprise, but the gang was not unprepared. Whenever they gathered for official business, and a number of the group would be together and thus at risk, they held an open phone line to one of the boys a few blocks away at a power relay station. He was standing ready to cut the power to the lights, in the event of an emergency, such as this one.
The cop had barely barked his command and the lights were out.
There was a large enough wave of gang members surging up the stairway to the street that the few officers at the top were bowled over, unwilling to shoot into the suddenly dark platform below, the youth and young adults melted into the crowd on the street.
Blocked from escape up the stairway, a group of youth jumped down to the tracks and ran along the rails hoping to find a ladder to the street or some other alcove or utility room where they could hide. Small blue lights placed along one wall every twenty yards generated a faint silver light that gleamed on the steel rails to guide them. The tunnel filled with the shrill whine of an electric rail car that they could not yet see. The four boys raced forward in a desperate effort to find safety from the rapidly approaching inevitable death.
A burst of wind lifted them from the ground and hurtled them forward ahead of the subway car, battering the young men against the walls of the tunnel and rolling them across the ground. The rail car was upon them. They should be torn apart, their bodies mangled between the rail car and the walls of the tunnel, their limbs and torsos severed by the heavy steel wheels as they were drawn beneath the train.
But they weren't.
They got to their feet, dusted themselves off, and looked around. They could hear the subway car fading into the distant tunnel. The blue lights were gone and someone was missing, but they couldn't figure out who it was. They limped along through the dark, following the fading sound of the train.
The sound of the train didn't fade completely away, but stopped suddenly and left only the a ringing silence in their ears. They stood panting not knowing which way to go, with out light or sound to guide them. Very far off, and very faint, came the sound of a single hammer on a bell. But not a bell, and not a hammer, only similar. They stumbled forward in the direction of that single sound, stumbling over unseen rubble, bumping into unexpected turns in the walls. Then the sound again, still distant, and still faint, but not quite as much, so. They increased their pace for a time, but finding their route impeded more frequently with blocks of stone, and twisted pieces of metal, they slowed, and proceeded with a sliding shuffling gait, hands gripping one another's shirts or belts.
They inched along slowly, the temperature increasing in the tunnel with every step. Eventually, in the distance they could make out a dim light, glowing faintly as if from around a corner. Creeping forward they began to make out the objects they had been stumbling over; blocks of stone and broken and rusting rails. The increasing light allowed them to move forward much faster. The sound came again, much louder this time, not nearby, but much closer than before. The sound came again and again in rapid succession; like a tap, tap, tapping, on a metal pipe; and then stopped.
Red light glowed far down the tunnel and they moved toward it with determination, their path increasingly more visible as they traveled. The ringing sounds came more often and were joined by similar sounds, some distant, some close.
They reached the opening in the side of the tunnel where brilliant red light lit up the tunnel. Carefully they peered into the opening, shading their eyes from the intense light. The walls of the room were covered with rubies, each facet reflecting and multiplying the lanterns of the men that worked in the room. The hairy men were short, but wide and had massively muscled arms and shoulders. They were shirtless and wore either leather breaches, or knee length tartan kilts. They hammered metal spikes into the wall of rubies with heavy sledge hammers.
The men stopped to look at the three interlopers, who stood, dumbfounded. The leader of the miners grinned, "You three there!" He boomed with at deep broagh, "You've a choice to make. The dragon will be coming down that tunnel where you stand, in just a few moments. She'll eat you before you've felt her rotten breath on your scrawny necks." It was true, they could hear the pounding of great footfalls echoing down the tunnel, increasing in volume as the creature rapidly approached.
Calmly the squat giant continued, "You can remain where you are and die soon, or enter, here and help us mine fresh rubies for the dragons bed; at which time she will most likely eat you. Quickly boys, you're in the magic quadrant now, and decisions must be made with out delay."
The youth were baffled, the situation was too far outside their understanding and experience; their confusion made their choice for them.
The speaker turned back to his mates, "Well, men, that wont hold her for very long. Let's get back to work and see if we can get enough rubies to satisfy her."

The End
By Jeff Hite

With a spectacular blast that would have made any story teller proud the mountain sized piece of hydrogen ignited as it passed through the super hot jets, of oxygenated fuel from the admirals ship. And in that instant, the war was over.

"That is how the story ends right. The Battle is over, the evil over lord is dead, the universe is saved right?"
"Mark, that's how stories end. this is real life. Yes, the battle is over. Yes, Admiral Weston is dead, or at least we think he is. And, yes the war is pretty much over. But, the story does not end. I mean it does not end there for us. We are still on the outskirts of the Kuiper belt. I would like to get home some time, There are millions dead, the rover colonies are in tatters. There are years of work left to do."
"Wow you are a kill joy."
"Mark."
"I guess this is what happens when you don't really expect to make it out of some place so you through everything into it."
"You mean you don't have a plan?"
"No, I really don't."
"Guys," Lee leaned our of the control seat so he could look at them. "I hate to interrupt this stimulating conversation, but um we do have a couple of problems here."
"Alright lets have it."
"Well you know all those incredible maneuvers we did to draw Weston's ships in here?"
"Yeah."
"Well they were very expensive, fuel wise. We don't have a lot of fuel left, and we have a very long trip home."
"How expensive?"
"We are all going to be in stasis for a long time."
"How long a few months?"
"More like a few years, unless they send some one out to get us."
"They who? Earth never acknowledged our claims from the beginning, and crazy or not, Weston was the commander of the Martian fleet. So who exactly do you think they are?"
"Mark."
"He has a point Lee. But, jeez you called me a kill joy."
"Well if we are going to face reality, lets face it. Lee, give us a full ships status."
"Right give me a minute or so." He turned to the console in front of him and flipped through several screens. "Right, if we can believe everything here, and we all know that we will have to make a visual inspection of more than a few systems, we have enough fuel, for one good long burn. It should get us going fast enough that we can reach he inner solar system with in five years, the power for the stasis tubes should have no problem, as there appears to have been little or no damage to the solar array or the reactor. Again we need to check those things. If we can use the solar sail even a little, we might be able to cut as much as 6 months of that time. The problem comes in that, that gets us into the inner solar system, not by anything, like a planet."
"I can't believe that we made it all the way out here, and" he trailed off.
"There is more," Sharron had moved back to her station.
"More?"
"Yeah, let's say we do this burn that Lee suggests. What planet, or object do we head to. As you pointed out, no one is really going to be happy to see us, and most of the rover colonies were destroyed, it maybe that even if we aimed at one of them, it four and a half or five years there might not be a colony there for us to come home to, they might have abandoned it depending on how badly it was damaged."
"So, do either of you have a plan?"
"I thought you were the brilliant leader," Lee shot back.
"I know strategy, I dreamed up this wild idea on how to draw Weston out here to the magic quadrant. But it was, as I said, supposed to be a suicide run, that is why there were only three of us."
"So we win but we lose? That is sad."
"Wait, a minute, you just said that we had enough fuel and power to make it back to the inner solar system, it will take us a long time, but we can send out a beacon when we get closer and someone will pick it up."
"But like you said, who is going to want to pick us up?"
"Yeah, we will be like the trash that no one wants to take out. They will have plenty of time to see us coming, they could either blow us out of the sky or, just more likely, just let us coast on by, become a long period comet or something."
"We don't have enough water on board to be a comet. We might have a tale for about three or four hours and then we would be like every other dark body in the solar system."
"Alright you too, enough gloom and doom. There has to be a good side to this. I mean we won the war, or at least we ended it. Someone would want to take us in. Even if it is to lock us up for killing their commander."
"I don't know about you, but I would rather take my chances with becoming a short lived comet that be locked up for the rest of whatever."
"I have to agree with Lee on that one Mark."
"So how long can we wait until we have to make a decision?"
"I would say we have three days until we all need to be in hibernation."
"Ok then here is the plan, we start making some calls, we call some of the rover colonies, and the moons of Jupiter, and Earth and see who would be willing to take us in. We see who gets back to us and make a decision based on what sounds like the best answer."
"That is going to be cutting it close. Round trip messages from the inner solar system and then we have to agree on a decision."
"I know but do you have a better suggestion. If we just shoot for the middle, we will be trusting to luck that some one will pick us up, but if we plan to go somewhere."
"We are trusting to luck that whoever answers us is telling us the truth."
"It is better than your comet idea."
"Alright I can accept that."
"So much for the happy endings."