The wind off the somber Atlantic sang steadily through the bamboo scaffold as Michelle crouched painfully under the tarp. The last of the guards had long gone but she stayed hidden because she was scared shitless of getting caught on the sphere after dark. The penalty was death by overwork. She’d seen the bodies they missed on her morning ascent. Criminals and other miscreants gone afoul of thousands of random rules, worked without food until they collapsed and plummeted over the side to their death thousands of feet below… Sprawled like broken snakes on the rocks stained black from their blood.

Finally she crept like a feral cat up to the smooth flat surface at the very top, as big and clean as the sky. Oily ropes looped across from one side to the other. The smudged white chalk was washed away from the markings indicating long removed tiles. The Sphere seemed warm to the touch as she inched her way beyond the rough boards and held fast to the ropes.  Hand over hand, she could have stood up except for the wind and the fear.

She pushed herself further and hesitated, stopping, and listening, her ear to the soft silver surface of the warm metal. “Will it say anything now?” She asked herself and the sphere. “Will it want me to find the tile as I did in the dreams?”.

A gust of wind blew like an animal across her brow and she closed her eyes and felt like sleeping. The wind was soothing. It was not cold. If she feel asleep on the very top, would she be visible from the ground? From the workers in the morning? Panic jumped into her heart like a black spider. What if she didn’t find it? What if she had to climb down without her mother’s tile. They would all die then… All of them.

Miles

Miles was the only human captive the Hellians had left. He was strapped to a wooden frame mounted on the front of a battered technical– face to the wind as the troop marauded throughout the Zone. They shot everything that moved until their ammo ran out and then they switched to the long machete. As remote and sparse as the population was, they fled like before a deadly plague. The rogue Hellian troop had failed to penetrate the defenses of a small sphere on Kilimanjaro, taking many casualties and limping down the mountain without thought or reason…

Miles watched the departing Hellian ships trace faint sliver lines across the setting sun as they stopped for the night. Knowing he had little time left, knowing they would kill him soon. Without any direction from command, they were like headless chickens, tripping and falling in their own blood. The simian fighters sat like rocks around the fire glaring at the flames, their minds as gone as their ammunition. One lone remote, his broken leg chained to a log, watched Miles with wild desperate hope, his eyes wide in the darkening night.The Great Ascension

Window Rock Arizona

Willie Petarde sent a coded message to his father to meet him at certain coordinates in Navajo country. As soon as he had sent the message, he called the members of his unit and gave them instructions. Just before dawn they set out from the small command post in western Kansas. They told no one that they were leaving or where they were going.
Willie had no idea what he was doing. He had had a dream, that’s all.
On the other hand, this particular dream had more of a feeling of reality to it than any experience he had ever had before. It felt as if it were the first truly authentic experience of his life. There was an absolute serenity about the dream. The Indians seemed to him to be old friends and Zero himself, like an older brother. Everything looked and felt real, super-real, in fact. There was a depth and clarity to every color, every sound and word and, in the end, the coordinates checked out. They existed. It made sense that Zero might be there.
“ This had better be right.” Willie said to himself as he and his men raced across the flatlands.
“ What, sir?’ a lieutenant responded.
“ Keep the hammer down.” Willie said.

When General Petarde got the message from Willie in Washington, he walked out of his office, took a staff car to the air base and proceeded to salute and bull shit his way past all the startled airmen. He then climbed into an Assault Eagle prototype which he had inspected some weeks earlier, told the tower he wanted to check something out he might have missed in the inspection, and flew off to the west at a brisk but not suspiciously fast mach 2.
The General had also had a dream. The only problem was that there was nothing in the dream about landing this rocket in the high dessert.

The Great Ascension

Zero had wandered for a couple of days after the seventh cave failed to manifest at the end of the sixth cave and Leo had disappeared again, along with any sign of the long underground adventure.
He was hungry and dehydrated when he finally followed a thin line of smoke to its origins, and found Sean Blackburn, Monkey Mike and Spiderbush cooking some dinner where they had made camp for the night.
Charlie was playing guitar and singing a lullaby as a full moon rose behind him.
“ No more werewolfin’ for you then?” Zero said loudly before they had a chance to see him. Then all four men danced a crazy jig as they slapped each other on the back and took turns embracing Zero.
“ I guess I’m cured.” Spiderbush said.” Hell I feel like a man of eighty or so. Best I’ve felt in years.” He now looked no more than fifty, and his skin was now as smooth as a Hellion turd.
“ Sorry I couldn’t go all the way with you but it looks like you made out all right.” Mike chimed in.
“ So, what’s it like, being enlightened and all?” Sean had to ask.
“ Nothin to it.” Zero responded and it occurred to him that he was going to have to come up with a more satisfying answer eventually, but for now he simply said:” I’m parched , boys, and starving too. Let’s eat.”
So the men dug into the jack rabbit stew and fry bread. They had a little hot grape juice for dessert.
“ Ho, like Mama used to make.” Charlie said when he was done.
“ So what’s it going to be then, Zero?” Mike asked after a time.” The Hellions have got the president under house arrest. Almost the entire armed forces has gone rogue. The Red Hands control enough nukes to baste us all. Greenland’s gone dark along with ninety percent of Africa and southern Asia and the most persistent intell I can pick up on is that some kind of Spheres, nobody knows who they are with, are rising above the earth every few hundred miles and have got people surrendering to them, camping by them and they seem to be impervious to anything conventional, Hellion, or Dark Black Covert that anybody has tried on them so far.”
“ That’s the good news?” Zero said and laughed.
“ Look, the short version is that the braincup here” Zero  now pointed at his left ear,” and the Spheres are made from the same stuff. This is very high end bioengineering. One step further and it would be you and me or something that makes you and me completely redundant.”
“ There is a something behind it called the Manti. They are along the lines of a being so advanced that trying to comprehend them from here would be like trying to explain algorithms to the jackrabbit fellow in the stew there.”
“ Is it God?” Sean asked.
“ That’s a whole other magnitude of consideration.” Zero told him,” Let’s just say that they are as good as god on any battle field we are ever going to see.”
“ So its all over then?” Mike asked .” They just straighten everything out and its happily ever after for us?”
“Well, no, it doesn’t work that way.” Zero said and took a deep breath.” They will not interfere in the course of evolution. But they will offer advice, technical help, like giving me the braincup, if they really don’t like the way things are tipping. Bottom line is they will do everything they can, in the interest of higher consciousness, to help things along, but if a species dooms themselves with bad choices or just cannot adapt, then they just back off and let natural law have sway. The braincup itself has no idea how this is going to play out.”
Just then the entire canyon floor moved a few inches with the sound of a hundred trains leaving a station at once.
“ Hold on boys,” Zero shouted. “ It has begun..”

Zero and Blue Platoon were registering out of the bunker complex at Rockford Illinois Harpsparr Medical and Argonne Nuclear Laboratories 82 miles West of New Chicago. The MATTV, mobile air and terrain TOX vehicles were supplied and ready to deploy. Zero and his crew were numb from intensive training, briefings and little sleep. Their unit had control over the wide midwestern region designated E672, encompassing the easternmost area devastated by the Hellian attack and were tasked to sweep and report on operational status of military and medical installations throughout the affected region. Blue Unit was directed to limit their operation to status reporting only, and were expected to ignore human resource conditions resulting from the destruction and to refrain from any investigation of Hellian action beyond the initial attack. They were equipped with the latest communications and nuclear reaction technology but didn’t carry any material or equipment for resupply of facilities that they may find underprepared for sustained existence inside the affected area. They were heavily armed but weren’t supposed to initiate independent action beyond self protection.

The small convoy of four vehicles drove out of the sprawling Harpsparr compound and headed southwest. Clouds hung heavy over the midwest laden with residual radiation that hadn’t been dispersed by the initial vortex. A greenish pall discolored the distance as the tracks made their way south crossing old I-80. They stopped at the empty interstate and looked up and down its deserted length. A lone pickup truck was slowly heading their way, it swerved slightly then turned and drove off the road and came to a silent stop against the berm of a dying cornfield. The Blue unit crossed the highway and continued south into central Illinois.

“Looki at the cars, they all seem to got off the roads man,” said Duane.

“Yeah, that’s some slow death.” answered Mike, “People just pulling over as they get sick.”

Louis was driving as they came upon a group of trucks that had come to a stop in the center of the highway. Bodies were laying in a rumpled line across the pavement and Louis slowed to a crawl as the steel treads lumbered over them, churning the  poor bastards to a wet pulp that rode up the treads and dropped back onto the pavement behind them.

“The radio crackled as Zero came over from the following track, “I think I’d rather you push the trucks outa the way next time, guys, We only got a short supply of puke bags back here.”

Louis said, “This is nose candy compared to St. Louis man, wait till we hit Missouri.”
“That inside the blast area?” interrupted Dave.
“I think St Louis is on the ragged edge, guys, said Zero, “We’re still in contact with what’s left of Red Team, under Graham.”
“From Springfield south to OK is official BA.” Louis said.

A broad column of dark smoke ahead seemed to agree as they began to see blackened vehicles, burnt to shells and still smoldering littering the road for miles ahead.

Riverfront 2053

Zero’s tour through the Eastern Sector of the Blast Region, as it come to be known, before it abruptly disappeared and returned to normal, was a dreary affair. His small convoy of four tracked vehicles, completely decked out in all the latest nuclear survival equipment were pulled up onto a curb in downtown St Louis. When they arrived in the city it was a nightmarish scene of utter destruction. The tallest buildings were gone, torn down to rubble filling the streets. The interstate had collapsed and the fiver was clogged with twisted bridges. The main I-70 from East St Louis was down and all manner of capsized boats and demolished buildings were jammed together in a mass of twisted metal and trash and broken trees.

They spent three days hacking their way across the river, mostly driving on top of the debris and at one point wench cabling a long barge perpendicular to the river to use as a final debarkation onto dry land. The Arch was down and the city oozed a sickly green smoke from everywhere. The whole scene was more than the guys could take. They strained to see outside through the dirty glass of the windshield. Everything was shades of grey, no color anywhere, and everything was smoking. The smell was intense enough to seep through the filters on the track’s rebreathing equipment, and the men felt both trapped inside the cramped confines of the vehicles, and glad they couldn’t go outside to experience the nightmare close up. They couldn’t see any dead but they could smell them. They must be everywhere. Zero’s track took the lead up a steep embankment through what used to be the Riverfront section of St Louis 3 blocks north of the downed bridge. A row of restored river boats from the old days were upended burned out hulks. The old narrow cobblestoned streets that used to feature sea food restaurants, nightclubs and the high life of the city were a mishmash of grey smoking rubble. In the short time they had been crawling up towards the downtown it started to dawn on everyone peering out the small windows that the destructive force had turned everything into the same thing, easily described with the same three words; Grey smoking rubble. There was nothing left in this world that hadn’t been reduced to a steaming grey mass of undistinguished twisted metal and crap that all looked the same.

“This is gonna be a short hop, guys.” Zero came over the intercom, “I’ll try Red team once, if they don’t respond, we’re outa here!”
“This is Blue ought six– Come back Red team.” Zero sat looking at his shoes as the tracks idled by what used to be a main drag of the city. “Redteamredteam, come in, over” Nothing came back on the radio, a low steady cracking humm… “Okay guys, Let’s set up for the night. I’ll be Central pos. 4 hour patrols, you know the drill…” As an afterthought, Zero said into the mike, Louie, you take first…” Then Zero leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Louie pulled his track out of the rough line and rumbled down the street. Riverfront Park was nearly four square miles of open area and the fallen city had not thrown its broken buildings far enough to cover the broad expanse. All Louie had to avoid was the bottom legs of the arch. It had collapsed toward the river and broken in several places big enough to drive the track through. The idea was for one vehicle to make a rough circle every three hours or so, all night long. The other three tracks in the center would activate their external armament and try to sleep.

At about three in the morning, Swindell was coming in after his round and was driving very slow over a particularly rough patch behind a crushed overpass. Ahead was a deep ravine that he had every intention of avoiding, but it was dark as hell, and he was very tired. He felt a strange humming in his headset, He thought about punching the response key, But wasn’t sure it was a call. It sounded more like a small bee in his helmet. He braked to a stop and put the track in neutral. Straight ahead was what looked like a figure walking toward him. His headlights were full on this guy, and Ricky Swindell could not believe his eyes. He rubbed them and looked again and this guy just walked right up to the track and looked inside at Rick. Then he rapped his knuckles on the window, as if he expected Rick to roll it down…

“Hey Sammy boy! Rick yelled, “Wake your ass up and get up here!” Rick stared out the window at this guy standing there completely alive and just couldn’t believe it. The guy had a normal set of clothes on and seemed pretty normal for a regular guy. He wasn’t smiling or talking or anything, He just stared at Rick through the foggy glass, and waited for Rick to roll down the window. Which of course was impossible because the window was triple glazed thermonuclear protective Schott glass cold fuzzed into the opening and wasn’t ever intended to be “rolled down.” Sammy finally rolled his sleepy carcass into the other front seat and looked at the guy through the window. “What in the hell is this guy, a Zombie?” Sammy said, “Zombies can’t live in this shit!”  Then Sammy seemed to slump forward in his seat and his head hit the dash just as the guy knocked on the window again. “What the Fuck!” cried Louie, and he suddenly started coughing. His chest hurt and he grabbed the wheel And closed his eyes real tight and coughed his brains out. “Damn!” He said When he finally stopped.

Then he looked down and he was holding an open letter from CO in his hands. He was sitting on the couch in his girlfriend’s apartment in Pittsburgh. It was Tuesday, a fairly warm summer day and he wasn’t anywhere near St louis.

Downtown 2053

The low whurrr of the track seemed almost organic as it sat in silent alert mode, fully aware of it’s environment to a range of eighteen miles on the horizontal axis, and indefinite anywhere above that. It also deployed a sort of ground based radar that detected and recorded consistent echo down to to 300 feet. It was protected by a heavy plasma Speiker shield that would deflect any projectile fired at it, and was armed to electrocute any warm blooded creature that came with 12 feet. All these actions would of course trigger an alarm to awaken whatever occupants might be soundly sleeping inside. The leadership of the Blue Crew did sleep soundly. As team leader Zero and his right hand, Willie Conners didn’t have to do night patrols, ostensibly so they’d be well rested come morning, when they were scheduled for a hasty and cursory reconnoiter of two hospitals and and the government bunker system. Red Team had not reported in to either Blue crew or headquarters, so it was assumed they were lost and not worth the trouble to investigate. The front seats of the Track reclined to a near horizontal and Zero and Willie had been sleeping for six hours when the atmosphere outside the convoy started to clear. The sunlight seemed to appear a little brighter and an unnatural mist settled on the ruined city.

Zero was disturbed by a loud noise. He jerked awake realizing it was the exit hatch opening. This couldn’t be happening. He opened his eyes and saw bright sunlight through the windshield. The image of St. Louis was standing there in full color. Willie was calling to him from out back somewhere and the hatch was wide open. Zero saw cars and trucks moving on the street. As he hastily struggled through the back and out the hatch he saw people walking around. “Willie!” Zero yelled as he ran around the track to the front, and stood dumfounded. Willie was standing there and Rick and Louie and the others, all staring at the city and looking at each other and laughing. The crew spent the rest of the day walking around the city, going into bars, buying drinks, joking with everyone they saw. There was a lot of crazy hilarity. But it quickly became apparent that there were a great many more very traumatized people in St. louis.

All the people who had survived the Hellion onslaught, all the people who had nearly died, but managed to live, all these people knew something miraculous had happened. They had seen the end of the world and they died or survived depending on random luck. The trauma of war is absolute when it instantly kills millions of people leaving nothing but scorched earth from Phoenix to St. Louis. The people who walk away from that– those who somehow manage to avoid dropping dead from fallout well after all is destroyed, those souls who somehow survived to see the aftermath, the terrifying nightmare, the endless bloated bodies, wrecked vehicles, broken buildings, these people had to make a rapid mental adjustment to maintain their sanity. They had to block much of this horrible reality from their comprehension. Even those who died were suddenly faced with a ruthless reversal of their history. They remembered dying. They remembered fighting for life and watching their loved ones die. They remembered it all. And then…

Somehow it didn’t happen. All those people who had suffered and died through a horrendous nightmare we’re suddenly confronted with the visual and physical proof that none of it happened. Their city was whole, their people weren’t dead. Everything remained as it always had. they had just experienced a very real and very terrible nightmare. Many people could not cope with this strange event. The conflict between what their memory told them, and what their new reality said, was too much for many people. They went mad. They wandered the street wailing, completely disassociated from whatever reality was– whatever it used to be.

Zero sat in an Irish bar on 3rd and Mississippi, and pondered these same issues. He was not a happy man. The effort to try to assemble all the parts of the puzzle while they were flying apart seemed impossible. From where he sat in the bar, he could plainly see the four tracks lined up across the street, illegally parked along the park ramp. Didn’t they prove it happened? What was memory if it could so easily be shaken… What was history, what was reality if it didn’t stay put….

And another part of his mind said forget it, that ultimately it didn’t matter what he did. He drank and listened to conversations around him. There were as many opinions as there were people in the bar. And their various reactions to the event convinced him that whatever happened it didn’t really matter. He was glad that the world was back to normal, but he had absolutely no confidence that it would stay that way. Everyone was watching the TV over the bar, The news was the same all around the country, nobody could figure out what happened, and confusion over whether anything really happened became bigger than the thing itself. Then the bodies started turning up. Stuff that somehow missed the return trip. A guy in Oklahoma found a shed full of dead stinking bodies that hadn’t come back to life. They just stayed dead. There was a reported cover up of a crashed spaceship near Springfield Missouri with one of those robot octopuses. It had been secured by the military and only added to the general confusion.  Zero overheard Willie on the phone to his wife, telling her to sell the house. He didn’t want to pay for something that might disappear tomorrow. He was yelling at the phone to be heard over the noise in the bar, “Bess, get as much as you can and convert it all to gold!”

Royce and Danny 2020

“ Thank you for letting me see into Buckminster Fuller’s brain,” Royce said to the being called  Manti, “that was a trip.”
Manti chose to be invisible, just now, or visible only as a very subtle light, or perhaps you could say as a quality of light, but  Royce could still hear a vigorous stream of verbiage, alternating with rapid fire computations and then, translations into multiple languages, if he held the braincup to his left ear. “Everything is Everywhere.”  Manti was saying,  “Energy is Everything, Everything is Energy…  Man can listen. Manti can teach.”

Royce was certainly willing to endure a little sloganeering in exchange for having total access to a clear and astonishingly quick mind, if only for the moment, and if only as part of some Manti experiment.

Royce had given his geodesic dome a lot of thought. It was fairly spacious, considering. First he laid out a bunch of plastic bags in the clearing of a little dogwood jungle, not far from the river and close enough to the railroad yard, too. It was as good a place as any, he had decided, and enough distance from the tourist main stem  that the law wouldn’t care about  anybody squatting down here, especially in this weather. He had grabbed almost a shopping cart full of the bags from the recycle bins at Kroger. They were perfect material for his project: light, waterproof and easily twisted into tight, strong rope that he then could stitch to hold the larger bags together with some old towels, tarp fragments and blankets that he had scavenged. He then straightened some coat hangers and stripped some thin tree branches to shape the infrastructure. Finally, he tied the thing off in Chinese knots, close to the ground. Absolutely everything had been done with two hands and a pocket knife. In the end, the tent resembled a big plastic quilt, billowing in the winter rain and ingeniously fastened to the back of an abandoned propane tank and some shrubs. Royce wondered idly if Buckminster himself could have done any better on this spot in this cold. It had taken all day to complete the structure and then to find some wood that was dry enough for a campfire. Just as long as he kept the small, metal colored organ near his head, Royce could spot a useful item a quarter mile away and instantly knew where it fit into the plan. Manti called it a braincup and Royce was certainly in no position to argue about that. It seemed to be a new invention for the Manti and they were using Royce to test it, evidently. They said it was made for someone in particular but could theoretically be used by any intelligent life form, to some extent. They made it sound like Royce wasn’t really supposed to be  in on this deal and he was just in the right place at the right time. But he was proud of his own work, even if it took the guidance of invisible  space aliens and the channeling of a dead pop-science icon to get his shelter assembled. He knew that he was only to keep the braincup for a matter of hours, and then he would forget it ever existed, this much he had been told. “ Then things will go back to bullshit normal.” He said to himself . “ But at least I’ll have the dome.” He then started to hear another voice, a more familiar one.

‘It’s too light for any big wind’, Danny would probably say, or, ‘It’ll never hold up.’
‘ Go and sleep in a ditch, then,  or go on back to jail,’ Royce would just as likely answer.
It was easy enough to argue with Danny when he was still in jail and Royce was out here laying in his sleeping bag. Later on, it might not be so easy. Danny could be a cold piece of work sometimes and he was sure to be cantankerous  mess tonight, fresh out of stir and all. Even now,   in his sixties, he  seemed as strong as moonshine and just as dangerous.  Danny would usually bounce back from his wild benders like a man half his age. Royce, however, had pretty much lost his bounce. He walked with a limp. He spoke slowly or not at all. His guts hurt and his eye still bled a little at night. The cops had been pretty nice about the whole thing, considering they had plenty of evidence for about a dozen more charges besides drunk and disorderly, what with the little bits of dope in Danny’s pockets, and the big shiner he had inadvertently planted on Royce’s eye  when he stepped into a roundhouse.
The punch had been intended for some kid who had nothing to do with anything except that he was in the proximity of Danny’s rage at that moment, in an alley crowded with men looking for a days’ work, down at the Able Body labor office. But now, after seventy two hours to dry out and clean up, Royce hoped that maybe Danny would be mellowed a bit, it was hard to say. “ As long as you ain’t too agitated, you can stay in here.” Royce rehearsed telling the mercurial  Danny Moore. “ Crazy old alley bat.” he added.

So that was the plan: locate Danny and bring him back to the tent, get some stew in him, just a little whisky, and hold up here until the weather got better. But his plans, Royce had long since concluded, were usually just something to do until whatever was going to happen;  happened.
Something to do was the hell of it out here on the streets. Royce was not so able bodied any more and even when he felt right, there wasn’t any work, lately. The economic depression went from bad to worse and now there was talk of a new war in the Philippines, as if another war was going to settle anything. So Royce spent a lot of time talking to himself and the Manti about glory days and hopeful plans, about the items that he tried to make use of in the trash he found, about the universe and distant planets, about girls who were still vivacious  in his daydreams, but who were, on this particular planet, white haired grandmas by now. But mostly, Royce looked after Danny, who could still knock out a good days’ labor, when he was sober.
Royce skinned and cut an onion with his pocket knife and added it to the stew he was cooking in a 64 oz. tomato paste can that he had picked up a while back. It was burned black and nasty looking, but it got the job done, if you paid attention to the fire. .Ketchup packets, salt and pepper, meat from restaurant dumpsters, all that Royce could get for free, but a good, sweet onion and fresh carrots, you had to buy. Danny wouldn’t notice, most likely.
“You sure are a handful.” Royce spoke boldly as if he were having a conversation with someone who was actually present. “ A damn blowed in the glass psycho, half the time.” He was never quite so brave when speaking to the real Danny, unless they were both drunk and he could tell that no particular inventory was being taken of his words, anyway.

It didn’t matter all that much with Danny, if he was loaded. While he was happy, no amount of abuse would rattle him, and if he was not, there was no telling what was going to set him off, but something usually did.
“Could be something simple as the weather.” Royce muttered and turned toward the fire. Then he heard brush rustling close by and  voices approaching.  He picked up a two by four that he had found in a dumpster and struggled to his feet.
“Who in the hell is it?” he demanded.
“Relax, Bro. It’s just me and my friends here.” Danny said. “Up at Little Johns’ they said you was down this way, probably, and here you are.”

Somehow Danny and his new buddies seemed already half drunk, and the sun had not even set yet. So Royce hid his half a bottle of whisky under the sleeping bag, where he also kept the braincup, out of sight, when people came around. Then he pulled back the wet burlap  flap of his little improvised homestead and motioned his guests inside.

“Well, if this ain’t a science project.” Danny said as he entered. “ Pretty dry ,too.” This was rare praise. “Almost makes me sorry I folded your ass… but you were askin for it , right?’
It was a real question, as Danny could not remember any of the incident that had landed him in jail.
“ As if you could ever beat my butt, you worn out old fool…Naw, you tangled with that big Mexican , I never got his name.” Royce brought Danny up to speed on his recent street fighting career, not that it mattered to either of them. It was just a way to avoid apologies and explanations until they stumbled onto something they could stand to talk about.

“ They kicked me a little early.” Danny said. “ Crowded as hell in that jail. But I seen a lot worse.” He said and left it at that.
“ So who’s your  company, then?” Royce eyed the two kids who followed Danny into the recycled dome. It was crowded inside, now.
“ Name’s Lindy, Bro.” the boy said and extended his hand, to no reciprocation.
“I ain’t your Bro, Bro.” Royce always blew a kid some flak, just to get the feel of him. Some of them were a lot meaner than they used to be, it seemed, and anybody might be a thief, nowadays. Lindy looked, maybe, at most, eighteen and the girl about the same.
“ No offense, sir.” Lindy said. Royce usually did not like to be called sir. He figured it was just a phony way of saying that you were an old guy. But Royce read that the kid was ok by his straightforward apology, even if he and his girl friend were wholly coated with road dirt, and almost certainly runaways.
“ Aw, don’t worry about it,” Royce said.” if you had a Bro like this mud duck here,” He flipped his thumb, indicating Danny. “you’d be touchy, too.”
“Are you two brothers?” the girl asked, relieved to have found a way into the conversation.
“ Only since I was born.” Royce answered. “ He’s my older, baby brother, ain’t you, Dan?”

“ Only since you was born” Danny allowed. “but I only beat you by two minutes.”
“ You’re twins?” The girl began to see the resemblance, despite Royces’  long, grey disorder of hair and beard, and the stubble of Dannys’ fairly recently shaved face and bald head.

“Yeah.” Danny answered.” I-dent-ti-cal. Can’t you tell?”
“ I see it now.” Lindy offered.
“ So, then, you two have ,like , been together all your lives?” the girl wondered and you could see in Danny’s  scowl that the girl had  gone one question too far now. He didn’t like for people to be too familiar, and too familiar usually meant anything nearer than his bulging arms length.
Danny walked out of the tent. Nobody followed him. After a few seconds, Royce answered the girl.

.“ Naw, honey, we ain’t Siamese twins, for crissake. We spent a lot time apart…years…Vietnam….the stretch after we got married to the Ficus sisters, hell,  the only reason we hang together now is cause nobody else can stand us.” Royce laughed and coughed a deep, wet cough, absentmindedly rubbing his side.
“ We’re  as alike as oil and water, as they say. I’m an old hippie and Danny’s the big war hero.” He explained . He then he asked the two if they were hungry.
“ Yeah,” Lindy said. “We had a bogus trip all the way from Tallahassee. Some very faulty dudes out there, man. Tryin to take us off, every way you can guess.” The girl looked like she was going to cry and Lindy put his arm around her.
“ You’re putting too much on it, baby,’ he said. “We’re ok, now. We’ve met some nice folks here.” He added, hopefully. Danny then opened the tent flap and reentered as suddenly as he had walked out.

“Starting to get real cold, now.” he said.. “We might want to think about staying at the Mission tonight, Bro.”
“Naw, It’ll  be snug in here once we get it closed up a while.” Royce didn’t want to say anything about it but he could barely walk, yesterday,  and he had a lot of pain in his right side all last night. He had no intention of going anywhere any time soon, now that Danny was accounted for and his dome was built.
“I’m one toe up from the ground, Dan.” Royce admitted. “ Well, it’s already spitting sleet and bitter windy out there” Danny reported. “ I don’t see this thing  standing up to a big wind.”
Royce did not respond to the critique. “ Then you better go  get yourself some booze, before you get snowed in.”he said finally, “ I ain’t got  enough of anything for four people, except maybe trouble.” Royce was pouring some of the stew into plastic cups,  pilfered from Little Johns convenience store, which he now gave to the young couple who nodded their appreciation.

“ I’m all set.” Danny said. “ My boy Willie hit a Jumbo Bucks while I was at Little Johns and he spotted me ten bucks, till I can get a check.” Danny’s eyes lit up at his good fortune.
“Party Time, Par-tie Time.”.he crowed and pulled a bottle of Nite Train wine from his incongruously upscale,  herringbone overcoat, which had cost five dollars at a Goodwill tag sale.
From a distance, it made him look like the successful contractor he had  once been.  Danny snapped the bottle cap, took a long pull and passed the bottle around .
“I ain’t got nothing for you to sleep on.” Royce told his guests “but you’re welcome to stay in here if you want.”
Danny passed the bottle again and he almost instantly began to feel his buzz. It seemed like that familiar  burn had barely touched the dry kindling of his tongue when, like magic, his imagination was  ablaze with something that would once have been anticipation of a really big night, a first rate celebration.
‘ Things are going to be alright in just a few minutes,’ the taste at the back  of his throat  said. And it was a profoundly seductive argument, every time.
Then , hours later, when some woozy, fitful madness set in, or he was barfing bile in the weeds, he would once again find,  that first, hopeful taste was , for him, just another rip off in a life that had seen too much of  thieves and scams.

Still, an entertaining liar seems better than no companion at all, if you are lonely enough, and for a long time now, Danny had been more than lonely enough.
“So, I don’t mean to pry, but didn’t you say you guys were married to some sisters once? We’re they twins too?” the girl, Annie, asked after everyone else took another drink. She pressed the bottle to her lips, just to be sociable, but then passed it on, without really taking any, the idea of drinking worried her too much right now.
“I’m outta this tent two seconds and you told your life story?” Danny wondered disapprovingly.

Then the red wine said,’ what the hell, Danny, tell the kids the story.’ “ My god, ”he marveled.” Those Ficus sisters, Jenny and Sandra. Crazy and beautiful, if you can believe a couple of old bums like us once had beautiful wives.”
In fact, it was a little hard for the young couple to picture. These guys did not look like they had ever been young.
“They were really fun girls.” Danny went on.” One looked like Marylyn Monroe and the other looked like a red headed Marylyn Monroe. Whatever happened to them , Royce?”
‘You know damn well.”
“ Yes, I know, but our guests don’t” Danny protested.
“ Ok ,whatever.” Royce continued the story  “ So I wanted to go out with Jenny the first time I ever saw her. It was  at some big party, somebody’s birthday, I think.”
“Danny was with me and he was just back from the service and he had smuggled in about ten pounds of the best Vietnamese smoke anybody had ever seen, back then. So I ask Jenny if she wants to try some and she says yes, but, she wants to turn her sister on, cause her sister had never tried any dope before, and she was real uptight about it. That was back in the days when all the hippies thought, if we could just get everybody turned on and relaxed, that it would save the world, I guess.”
“ What was so wrong with that idea?” the girl asked.
“ It didn’t work!’ Danny laughed. “ Aside from that, it was a hell of a plan.”

Danny continued the family history.
“ So, just to get in good with Jenny, Royce decides to roll this monster joint and show Sandra  how to smoke the stuff right, you know, inhale and hold it, cause , back then, it was a really new, secret, hip thing   and you sure didn’t get any pointers from TV, movies, internet or any of that crap. But meanwhile, me and Jenny had split out the side door and are just getting blazed ourselves, and really hitting it off, too. So, the next thing you know, we’re all back at the girl’s place , making out, laughing and believe it or don’t, we just stayed there then for, what? the next three years? It was heaven on earth, I swear it was. And we were like this happy, little bubble of love, all to ourselves……Forgot the war, forgot the world….. So one day Jenny says, ‘you know, we forgot to get married’ so we went right out and did it..”
Royce pulled out his whiskey now and raised it in a toast. “ To the Ficus sisters.” he said, and passed the serious liquor around.

“ Sorry to be so nosy, but didn’t you just say you two brothers spent a lot of time apart, then, after you married the Ficus sisters?” the girl wondered. This talk of love and women comforted Annie a little in this odd, shoddy tent full of rough men, even if it was talk about women she had never met and were probably her grandmothers’ age.

“ Hell, I was only outside about a minute, how much of  my life story did you tell?.” Danny razzed Royce again.
“ It’s all water under the bridge” Royce had hoped to end this business with the toast, as he had  now lost his enthusiasm for story telling,  knowing what came next.
“ No, inquiring minds want to know, dammit.” The wine had opened Danny’s mouth  for business, now, and business was brisk.
“ Well, after a while we all realized we had married the wrong sister or brother, whatever, and that we each really wanted to be with the other one, so it started to make for a lot of  tension around the house, at bed time, especially.”
“ Plus they both really wanted me.” Royce interjected, just for a laugh, which he got, and then Danny continued.
“ So that weirdness , more than anything, really  got to Jenny, who was naturally  sweet and shy . So one day she just up and decided to go join some spiritual commune she read about in the hippie papers.” The term hippie papers, he could see, did not register with his guests, so he further explained, “ alternative papers, punk bands, personal ads, drugs and  stuff.”
“ The commune she went off to was run by this big guru named Bhaktinanda.  But all Jenny really needed to was a break from the stress mess we had going on, that’s what I always thought.”  Danny looked to his  brother for confirmation, but none came.
“Yeah, I heard of that Ananda guy, I read one of his books” Lindy finally chimed in, lying. “Heavy stuff.” He judged. Danny shot the kid a ‘ what do you know?’ look, and went on.
“ So anyway, Royce joined her up there at the commune after a few weeks, completely mixing up who was supposed to be married to who, now, and Sandra and I just kept on living  back here, but we never all got divorced or anything.”
“So what finally happened, then?” a bored Lindy asked, his mind being pretty much
inquired out, on the subject of ancient hippie romances.
“ Well, I always hated Bhaktinanda, cause he was a fake.” Danny said flatly.
“ No , he was not.” Royce answered emphatically. “ He was the only great man I ever
met.”
Danny paused, exhaled, decided not to get mad just yet, and then went on. “We all didn’t see each other at all for the next few years and then one night Sandra was driving home from her waitress job downtown when she was T-boned by a truck and got killed.”
The little group drank in silence as the bottle went around again.
“ That’s when Royce came back home to help me out cause I went crazy as hell, no doubt,  but Jenny only came back for the funeral and then flew right back to California. Royce stayed with me and by the time he got back to the commune, Jenny had took up with Bhaktinanda,  his own holy self. She is still one of his wives, or girlfriends, I guess …the asshole.”
“ Give it a rest, Danny, they fell in love, that’s all. I was gone almost a year. I’m fine with it.”
“You look like you’re fine with it.”
“ Oh, for god’s sake it was twenty years ago.”
“ More than twenty.” Danny thought for a second. “ Yeah, we bought the house when I was working for Lojack, running the blasting on the I-40 overpass , I remember it was the same year that they announced that aliens were probably real, and Israel and Iran went to war….   and then that Obama girl married the Trump kid…..and,  yeah ,that was when a guy got killed on our job and they shut down our crew… So, I lost the house after that, twenty one, twenty two years ago, a long time, anyway.” As he said this he finally noticed how disinterested his tiny audience had become with the old man’s  narrative. He didn’t blame them. They were here for the free food, booze and shelter. They were busy with their own, still under construction, life story,. They had no time for ruins and regrets, he reckoned, and shut up.

But without the distraction  of the chatter, you could now really hear  the storm which had been escalating  outside for some time. Suddenly a gust of wind split the seam  of a big section of the dome and the bone chilling blast sent a swirl of sparks around the tent and nearly blew out the fire, leaving the four a little shaken by the raw power of the storm.
“ Man, it wasn’t supposed to get this cold.” Royce complained. He grabbed a piece of  flapping tarp and began to repair it with some grocery bag rope from his pocket. That took a few minutes, during which time what little heat had collected inside disappeared into the night.
Royce had put the braincup in his pocket while no one was looking and stepped outside. Danny laid the rest of the wood on the fire and the young couple, looking scared, whispered into the others’ ears.
“ Annie says she heard on the radio that there might be a bad cold snap tonight,.” Lindy
said after a few minutes “I think we’re gonna try the Mission.”
“ It’s prably too late for the Mission. They close it up at seven.” Danny said.
“ Well, we got a couple bucks. We can get a bus ticket to somewhere that’s leaving in the morning, so they’ll let us stay inside the terminal tonight, and then we can pretend we changed  our minds and cash it in, when it warms up tomorrow. But it just feels like it might get too cold out here tonight, so we’re gonna go.”
The kid had a nice calm confidence to him, Danny had decided.
“ That ain’t a bad plan, Lindy, but be careful if you’re underage, cause that bus station is where they’ll bust ya.” he said. “ Then its off to the army for your ass.”
“ Nice to talk to you , sir. Thanks for everything.” Lindy said and shook Danny’s hand as he picked up his duffle bag. The couple then ducked out into the wind.
Royce looked like he was listening to a cell phone, as he stood in the sleet and conversed with the Manti.
He dropped his hand to his side as the couple came outside and looked  Lindy in the eye. He then held out the braincup to Lindy and said: “ It’s for you.”
“ Its designed to attach to the brain, but only to the one it fits.” He said.. “ But you can still use it by holding it up to your ear and listening.”
“Like a seashell?” Annie asked, as if she knew what was going on.
“Yeah, hold it up to your ear, and you can hear the Milky Way.” Royce answered and laughed.  “ Good luck in the Philippines, kid.” He said and stepped back inside.
Lindy wanted to ask what the hell about the warm little steel doohickey in his hand but it was just too nasty out to linger any longer.
“ You should have some soup” Royce advised his brother, as he sat back down on his sleeping bag.
“If it’s still hot, go ahead and pour me some, then.” Danny had forgotten to be mad about that Bhaktinanda stuff now. He was loaded.

When the young pair made it to the bus station after about an hour of walking and slipping on the ice that now covered everything in middle Tennessee, they heard that all the busses had been cancelled due to an ice storm across the state. They then listened to the weatherman on the TV above the ticket counter, whose dulcet baritone was calling the disaster, perhaps too enthusiastically, play by play. His reports continuously broke into the regularly scheduled television  programming with new road closures and pinpointing power outages and especially harrowing incidents all around the state. He eventually said that the temperature drop since sundown was the biggest on record and that it was expected that the overnight low in Nashville could be the coldest ever recorded, too.

“ Maybe I should go back and tell those old guys how bad it looks.” Lindy said. “ They know what they’re doing.” Annie figured “ Anyway , you are not leaving me alone in here with all these creeps and if I spend any more time out in this weather, it could hurt the baby.”
She was right. There were  more scary looking refugees in the bus station tonight than usual, and Lindy knew he had  to start thinking about their baby more ,too, although the details of this new, daunting, obligation were completely mysterious to him, even if he would never admit it to Annie. So the couple sat down on the little plastic seats to wait out the night. They split a coffee and a candy bar from the vending machines by the restrooms, watched TV, and occasionally stole a kiss as they talked about their love and their future.
“ What if its twins?” Annie gasped, at one point.
“ Yeah, what if those old dudes were contagious?” Lindy said and they laughed.

In fact, Royce had been the first person to ever call someone ‘dude’ instead of ‘man’ or the now passé ‘ babe’. It is the kind of accomplishment that, like the geometric perfection of his dome, would pass without notice, except by the Manti, who , in addition to trying to help humanity with the improbable task of avoiding extinction, were also charged with keeping an accurate intellectual and spiritual history of the earth’s inhabitants.
After Annie went to sleep, Lindy went into a stall in the men’s room and held the braincup to his ear, when he came back out, he knew why he was going to the Philippines and he felt perhaps a light year older than he was when he went into the bathroom.

After they had slurped up all the soup, the Moore brothers drained all of the rest of the Nite Train, too ,and had another large gulp of whiskey.
“ What in the hell did you ever see in that Bhaktinanda?” Danny asked Royce after a time
“ I don’t want to argue with you, Danny.” Royce exhaled wearily.
“ I had all the arguing I can use for a long time, Bro… I’m just askin.”
Royce had never told anyone much about this before as he had always felt, if there were words for it, he was probably not qualified to speak them. But that was before the visit from the Manti, and anyway, it felt so good to be having a regular conversation with Danny tonight, one that wasn’t all rambling and ranting.
“ Well, Jenny took me down to Bhakti’s lecture when I first got to California and I kind of liked it, I guess. I liked him. He was happy. Then he passed out some fruit and at the end, everybody bowed down to him, but that part made me sick, the idea of bowing down to another man… And I actually thought about you right then, dude, and that it was a good thing you weren’t there, cause you would probably kick somebody’s ass.”
“ But then  I thought about Jenny and how she wanted me to give this spirituality of hers a try, so I did it. Then I thought, you know, that’s not such a big deal, a sign of respect that people do all over the world, who cares?”
Royce was trying hard to get his words right, so his brother would understand.
“ So now everybody is walking out of the hall and Bhaktinanda jumps down off his seat and practically runs over to me and grabs me by the arm and shakes my hand, like I’m his long lost brother, all the while lookin me right in the eye, but, I mean, deep in the eye.”
“ Well, I can’t really explain what happened next. You know I’ve done it all in my time LSD, STP, X, Crank , Crack, Heroin, Peyote and all, but for the longest time after that hand shake I felt like I was as high as I ever could be, but crystal clear at the same time,   more peaceful than I can tell you.”
“ It was pure energy, and Bhaktinanda was just the wire it came running through, or something like that. I started laughing and I felt like I knew what life was for, for the first time. It was the most beautiful moment in my life. And I could see that everything was really a lot brighter than we usually see it and I saw that I , also, some way I can’t explain, at that moment, was just that same happy,
bright energy as everything else and that part could never die”
“ And Danny, don’t start with me about how I’ve always been the crazy one, or I was just high, cause I stayed just like that for a real long time, weeks at least, so now, whatever else happens, I’ll always know that it was true.”
“  I just felt this guy had something from god in him, after that.” Royce had to pause now, his lungs were tired. He coughed again, spat into the fire and went on.
“ But when Sandra died, so crazy and sudden,  I came back here cause I knew you’d kill yourself if I didn’t, and then that time was over and gone.”
“ I really can’t explain it any better, especially to somebody who doesn’t believe anything, anyway.” Royce was glad he said all that,   after all these years, but he was not very hopeful that his eloquence was up to the task.

“ I can hear what you’re telling me better than you think, Bro” Danny told him. “and I do believe in something too,  I just don’t know what to call it.”
Danny sat with his head hung and his eyes closed for a few minutes and then he began to speak, slowly and softly in a way that his own twin brother could not recall hearing before, or maybe, only long ago, when they were kids.
“ In the Kam Phong Delta” he began, “ we got in a bad firefight one day at a little  village nobody even knew was there, and the VC were dug in deep at the center of this village. We stumbled on them and they saw us about the same time we saw them, and all hell broke loose before you could even think about it.
And every one of those villagers got killed in a few seconds. Babies, old women, dogs and cute little kids, all torn to shreds.”
“ When the shooting was over some of our guys beat some of the VC to death with their riffle butts and I took a few of them and made them carry all the villagers and bury them up on this little hillside meadow. Our CO had lost his mind at that point, and guys just did whatever they thought they wanted to do and some of it was way bad stuff.” He paused and rubbed his eyes, but he still saw everything, as he always had and always would.
“When the last of the people from the village was carried up and buried on this hill I just sort of turned with my gun pointed down and walked down the hill and let those VC run off into the jungle”

“I didn’t have the heart for any more killing that day, and its getting dark so I figured, nobody’s watching anyway, so I just let them go.”
“ Later on somebody asked me what I did with those guys and so I put my M-16 to his forehead and I yell at him at the top of my lungs: ‘What the fuck do you think I did with them?’ and after that I had a reputation as coldblooded  badass for the rest of my tour. The rest of my life, really…”
“ That’s a hell of a war story, Danny, and I think you told some of that before. But it ain’t any kind of way the same thing, if you get me.” Royce said quietly.
“ Well, that’s not the end of it, Bro…About a year later we had to go by that same spot on recon to see if Charlie had come back or what, and when we got there it was deserted and fairly late in the day so we just set up a perimeter and went to sleep.”
“ In the morning, I was  washing my face in this little stream and I looked up toward that hill where everybody was buried and I saw that right on that burial spot was the most  beautiful field of flowers you can imagine, and covered with thousands of butterflies, too. No where else, just where the people were buried , where the soil had been dug up. I walked up there and sat down and just started to ball when I realized that all those dead people were in those flowers there, now, and also, maybe, flying off on all those fragile little wings.”
“ So I did just like you did, I bowed down like the Buddhists do at a shrine. And my heart moved out of me to all the people who ever died like that, it really did, and then I just cried till I couldn’t cry anymore.”
“And when I stood back up, just like you said it, man, I was just more at peace and full of love than I could ever explain, and everything suddenly had that true brightness, like it wasn’t of this world.” Danny hit his fist hard on the ground below him. “.not this god damned world… but, at the same time, I knew it was what this world should be.”
So you see, Bro,  I do know a little about it, even if I never could seem to talk about it before, or ever could get it back…. Just like I can’t ever get back what I had with Sandra…. And those early days with both our girls, wasn’t that pretty close, Bro?”
“ Real close.” Royce smiled at his brother for the first time in a long time.
“  Go ahead and kill this whisky, I’m done.” Royce handed his older baby brother the
only thing he had to give him, and they looked hard down into the fire so as not to have to see the others tears.
“ That fire ain’t gonna burn till morning,” Danny observed, after he had taken the last pull and tossed the bottle in in the flames.
“ I know. We could try and make it downtown and hit a heat vent or something, I guess.”
“ Naw, I ain’t going anywhere, I’m tired.” Danny admitted.
“ Yeah, we’ll tough this out.” Royce hoped. “ Hell, I could barely walk even before the streets turned into  a fucking skating rink. I’d be a sight trying to go anywhere now.”
He turned on his side, grunted from the pain and laughed at himself. “ This old man shit ain’t for whusies.” he said.
In the morning the police received an anonymous tip about some bums living in the woods by the railroad tracks. By the time somebody got down to the place, it was a warmer winter day and Royces’ little tent now shone in the sunlight like some post- modern arctic sculpture,  encased as it was in a bright dome of shining, melting ice. The fire had gone out not long after the Moores went to sleep.
“ I wonder why these guys didn’t just go down to the Mission.” a younger cop asked
the older one when they found the twins’ bodies inside.
“ Who knows why these bums do anything?’ the older one answered.
“ Go ahead and call the coroner, kid.” He rubbed his hands and said. “ It’s colder out here than it looks.”

The Creed 2160

Chabeni stood in the entrance of the temple. His men shuffled up behind him and hesitated, fearful of his mercurial temper and aware that he was overwrought with anger over his defeat at the hands of Ros Netalli the warlord of Basin City. Their flight across the bay had been costly and their remaining force had not the strength to defend itself against whatever inhabitants they might encounter on the island.

Nun Chu was accustomed to these awkward moments when he would take control of the situation without seeming to, and to maneuver the leader towards forward movement by cleverness and a subtle sense of timing. He spoke softly to Chabeni in their native tongue and drew him into the entrance parlor of the temple. To Lay Winh he directed the men to claim the building. To remove the rubble of the destroyed tower and set up rooms for the leader. As evening fell and the sky turned a deep red towards the west, Chabeni was settled with his pipe and cushions and Nun Chu walked through the main hall of the temple. A double row of stone columns was open to the sea and a warm wind ruffled the detritus on the cracked granite floor. The men were butchering a starving white ox they’d found wandering the ruins and were anxious to eat meat regardless of the risk of poisoning themselves.

Nut Loi approached in silence and held his hand out to Nun Chu. “Mandu found this in the wall, Sun.” In his hand was a tarnished fragment of metal in the shape of a full crescent. “It was stuffed into a garnash in the wall near the door, Sun.” Nut Loi held it out and Nun nodded acknowledgment as he took it into his hands with mounting interest. “Thanku Loi, sun. Carry on.” Nun Chu turned back and walked out the back of the temple onto a broad patio area strewn with rocks and broken bits of the building. He sat on a low wall and looked at the thing in his hand. The failing light glistened on the dull metal, and he was moved to sniff it for a scent. Raising it to his nose he thought he heard the wind inside the hollow concavity of the cup. He held it to his ear, and it spoke to him.

History 2068

The Professor stood behind the ornate podium and looked out over the audience. Over three hundred people were crowded into the grand auditorium and their faces were expectantly upturned and attentive as they waited for the professor to speak. He began by thanking the university provost and the Internuclear Science Department for their support and the several corporate sponsors who helped underwrite the presentation. Then he launched into a brief introduction of the history as it has been pieced together from many differing accounts dating back to 2042.

“Ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests from the Federation, Not many of us are old enough to remember the time before the arrival on our planet of the Delegation of Maniutius Ministerium. But we all know too well the many benefits and advantages their presence has brought. No doubt we would not have easily survived the Hellian occupation without the guidance and assistance of Manti and the intervention of Manitius Militaire on our behalf. This discussion today concerns itself with the origins of Manti influence on earth and the beginnings of popular reliance upon their Religare Evolvere and the Spirare Spiritus or Breath of the Spirit.  It seems like the remote past when we were a free species with our future in our own hands. We were an innocent race then, only 6000 years since our ancestors learned to walk upright, all the while monitored from the center of the galaxy by a race of beings far older, and far more advanced than we ever imagined. But I get ahead of myself ladies and gentlemen. Let me take you back just over 200 years, to a cold November evening in new Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States of America. A man found an object laying on the ground, lightly covered with snow. It was a dull metal and a cup-like crescent in shape. It all began with this strange object.”

Many years ago, years after the last world war, there was an illiterate goatherd on an abandoned island in the Philippines. He lived in extreme poverty among a small tribe of primitives who managed to avoid the destruction of the war by hiding in caves and drinking from subterranean springs. The goatherd lived alone on the barren land and learned to feed himself by watching what his goats ate. In return he protected his goats from the wolves, and cared for them when they suffered a minor injury. Then one day he had the opportunity to fix the broken arm of one of his fellow tribesmen after he had fallen off a steep cliff. The goatherd used the same simple methods he’d learned on his goats and the arm of his tribesman had healed. the man was grateful hand so anxious to repay this debt that he told many others of the great deed. In time, word spread across the islands of a goat man who could work healing upon animals and men, and his reputation grew far beyond his talents.

During this period, the sea was the primary means of travel and trade among survivors of the war. Many people lived on crude boats and traveled the waters up and down the coast cultivating small plots on shore to which they would return later for harvest. In this way the story of a healer spread throughout lands that had not been as devastated by the wars. Along the northern parts of Africa, throughout the former Algerian and Libyan nations a group of desert dwellers had faired better than some during the war’s aftermath. Their traditional ways had adapted them to the harsh conditions of the desert and their land was distant from the conflicts and upwind of the toxic storms. These people had grown strong in numbers but their culture remained primitive. The leaders of these men had heard the stories about the healer and were ruthless in their desire and sent a band of armed men to bring the healer back to their capital. A great feast was prepared and the healer was required to work miracles to prove his power. The healer failed the tests and the leaders with deep anger and disappointment had him beaten and thrown into a pit of vipers. The poor old goatherd lay in the bottom of the pit with the serpents for many days. He suffered sickness and injury and dreamed he was dying.

But among his former tribe was the man with the mended arm. He had witnessed his friend’s abduction and had been powerless to stop it, but he was determined somehow to help him escape. This man was poor and had no way to buy a boat, but eventually he bartered his labor for passage to the far shores where he’d heard his friend had been taken. The man made his way to the distant capital and asked discreetly about the fate of the healer and was told that he was thrown into a pit and left for dead. The friend waited for nightfall and with a willow rope he scaled the steep walls of the hole and knelt beside the poor goatherd and listened carefully for the beat of his weakened heart. The old man was still alive and with much courage and fortitude the friend pulled his body from the pit, carried him in a stolen cart to a hiding place near the wharf where he hoped to smuggle him aboard a ship for China. The friend knew that the great country of China was a wonderland of freedom and plenty. He dreamed that if he could somehow get there, he could get his friend repaired. They lived for three weeks under the docks of the squalid wharf and finally the friend was able to smuggle the old man aboard an ancient vessel for the fabled country of Hong Kong. They hid in the hold of the old ship among Ethiopian and Somali slaves on their way to be sold in Manilla and Old Macau. The goatherd’s health deteriorated, one arm turned black and an old witch doctor from Mogadishu took it off with a big knife one dark night as the ship rode the high tides into the teaming bays of the city.

Hong Kong in 2068 is a frightening city. The war had taken its wealth and most of the original population had died or fled, but in the years after the war it had become a center for all manner of survivors seeking the illusive promise of freedom. The once grand skyscrapers had been striped of their glass and transformed into tall gray skeletons emptied of the business of the world and converted to brutal towers for wild and unruly immigrants from everywhere and nowhere. Violence and disease clogged the streets as the rats ran among footsteps of millions of people from all over the world. For six days the friend desperately searched for a safe place to stop, and help for the injured goatherd. One dark night of cold drizzling rain, they sought shelter under the awning of a shop of a wily old necromancer. He sat watching them from the shadows under a pale haze of smoke from a long pipe. Like a ghost, he said in a low voice, “Step inside my friends, rest your wet bones on the couch.” As the friend painfully guided the goatherd to a rough sitting position. The old man could plainly see that he was very ill. He rose from his rattan chair and stood looking down at the poor goatherd. He saw the blackened shoulder where the arm had been taken and the wound burnt off, he saw the pale face, drawn and sickly, he saw a deep gash on his skull where he had been viciously beaten, and he looked carefully at his broken and bloody hands.

“This is a very special man”, The old necromancer rubbed his chin and brought out a cell phone, “I knew this was an important day when I woke up this morning,” he said to himself, even though it was night, then he punched some buttons and talked in a foreign language to the phone. The friend didn’t know what a phone was, and although he was confused, he was very tired and lost in a strange place and he had done all he could to help the poor goatherd. Somehow, he knew his job was done, and he felt great relief.

Sabeni Chaldera was the old man’s name. He had practiced the Black Arts since his father, now long dead, had taught him to conjure the Demons of Etemmu and the ancient methods of control over spirits of the dead. He was delighted to learn the story of the healer, for it seemed to fit precisely with his quest. He rambled on for an hour about the profound significance of the Chosen One and the Sacrifice Horizon, While he talked he drank great draughts of blood wine and ate from a huge crust of black bread. He pushed bread into the old man’s hands and urged him to tell more of the healer, but there was nothing more to tell, and soon the friend of the goatherd fell fast asleep.

The old necromancer arranged for the goatherd to be taken to an island far out in the bay. It was here that his people began the rudimentary restoration that would mend the sickness and injury the goatherd had suffered. Life is a fleeting thing, and if the the soul of this poor man had feet, one of them would be in heaven, and the other would be on earth. Several nights passed while numerous underground experts tried their best with whatever they had. The beatings had inflicted severe damage: His jaw had been broken, his remaining arm was shattered in three places. His skull was split in the back. and both legs were as rotten as the arm that had been removed on the old ship. His surgeons were ingenious and their choice of materials was both clever and imaginative, for the junkyards and supply houses were in much disarray after a brutal war. But from what was available, his doctors fashioned substitute implements that provided limited mobility and a rudimentary function of speech. Although his teeth were made of iron and his chest was open to the air, the most significant addition was a small metallic crescent shaped device that had held a high place of importance in the liturgy of the Creed for many years. It had been found in an abandoned temple that the cult had taken as their headquarters after the war. And Sabeni Chaldera believed that the device was a magical amulet that was cast down from the heavens to deliver guidance and validation to the Creed of the cult. Sabeni had a leather pouch for the device and wore it himself for many years. He believed the device talked to him and told him what to do. He knew that he must watch for a particular person and that when this person emerged he was to cultivate and restore him to high esteem. Late one night Sabeni was sure he had found the Chosen One when the voice instructed him to have the cup itself installed as an integral part of the sheepherder’s mortal corpus. He was afraid and tried to deny the metallic voice but he grew weak and as resistance deserted him, he stole silently into the room where the old man lay on a steel table and he took the leather strap and gently tied it around the old man’s neck with the pouch centered over the collarbone. He stared down at the figure before him, his mind a confusion of conflicting motivations. He then turned and withdrew striving to remain focused on his nefarious plans.

Sabeni had already contacted others with whom he had been plotting since the end of the war. They gathered in subterranean vaults below the crumbling island temple and planned their challenge to the current cabal of war lords and tribal leaders that had regained power to govern the region after the war. The plan of the necromancer and his cohorts was one of truly evil intent. He had visions of a great army made up of the shattered souls left aimless after the war. Millions of these people wandered the cities and countryside, starving and hungry for food and direction. Many of these people were deeply mutated into a transient zombie state from the effects of the nuclear winter that had persisted over much of the globe for years after the war. Their minds were gone but their bodies would stay animate as long as they were fed a steady diet of hyperbolic drugs. With this army, Sabeni would create an unstoppable force that would sweep out the small minded governors and retake the southern China coast and rule the great city of Hong Kong and all the riches of the world would return to his control. In Sabeni’s unbalanced mind the lowly healer would become the Central Messiah of this new religion. Now with the magic crescent tied securely about his neck, the Chosen One would come alive to help him carry out his great plan. To celebrate the final consummation of the Sacred Creed, Sabeni went out into the dark night to find a special innocent, one of similar height and weight as he, and with a reasonable set of clothes. On the main thoroughfare under a streetlight, he saw a tall man exiting a carriage. Sabeni approached the man from behind and with a long razor, he deftly slit his throat. He then stripped himself nude and took the clothes off the dead man and put them on himself. Then, with a flippant gesture, he strode back to his shop with his deviate purpose satisfied.

In 2070 the official Messianic campaign to take over Hong Kong started in earnest. The humble goatherd was presented to the world as a genuine  God on Earth, with a strange inverted denial as proof of his profound humility and as thus, provided further undisputed proof of his Divine Nature. His birth was touted as much earlier than it actually was, his handlers claiming he was over 200 years old, He was carefully groomed and dressed in God-like clothing to form the centerpiece of a new religion based loosely on the Prophecies of the Pascha Elders. with the dark faces of the Vengence of the Inquisitor as internal security. The Creed grew quickly in influence throughout the far east and the great army of the stoned zombies successfully stormed one government institution after another killing all resistance and in some cases actually eating the vanquished.

During these hard years the goatherd was drugged and held in brutal captivity. His physical body was all the Elders needed to illustrate their twisted proclamations. His manufactured utterances were held as sacred and published far and wide. For six years the Elders spread a message of confusion and fear, and amassed a great fortune. But the bigger the movement became, the more unwieldy and difficult it was to manage, and as they lost control, the Elders tasted panic. During their ambitious push into Africa the end became manifest. Deep in central Sudan, in Wadi Madan, the old necromancer himself conceived a desperate plan to save the movement, they would actually crucify the Messiah, and by this momentous event they would regain valuable credibility and enough time by which they could resurrect their failing empire. Having no better solutions themselves, the Elders agreed with Sabeni, and in profound ignorance they carried out their plan.

High on a barren hill, carefully chosen for it’s impressive dominance over the windswept desert. The Elders set out to stage their last performance. A rude wooden cross was planted in the stony ground.  They sent runners to the four directions of the compass to call for the faithful of the world to bear witness to a final act of divine justice. As a Betrayer of the Creed the Messiah was transformed into the Beast.  As a symbol of Evil, they claimed that had now brought them to such extreme measures, the heroic Messiah had fallen and must be crucified.  Before the narrowed eyes of many thousands on the vast empty desert, as the wind turned cold and the sky darkened, the goatherd was brought forth in chains. His body was raised aloft and the sharp metallic sound of hammers driving iron nails rang through the dry air. The thin wrists tore loose and ropes finally tied his slack form to the black body of the cross. The healer was left to die as the faithful abandoned their faith and wandered off aimlessly into the wilderness. The Elders of the Creed stood too, blankly watching the spectacle’s final moment, and becoming dimly aware that they were finally alone, that they had bet everything on a false idea, that all they had left was a deep regret.

And among the last to leave was an old man, standing a respectful distance from the foot of the cross… waiting for nightfall. The old man was the last friend of the crucified healer and he had one more task to do. He had to take the old man and his cross, and secure it in a cave a hundred and forty meters down the mountain from this place of dying.

The dry wind of the vultures winging by the cave entrance brought the man awake. His eyes were full of dust and his clothes were torn. He was starving. The days and nights had passed without counting as he lay inside the cave with the dead Messiah. The stink of his friend’s body was calling to the birds. He would have to leave or stay here and die. The little man crawled to the cross and looked into the dead man’s face. He closed his eyes to pray. And as he mumbled his words, he heard a soft voice. He thought the Messiah had come alive and he started and looked at the deep shrunken eyes, the black iron teeth and then he realized the voice was coming from the leather pouch around his neck. Hesitantly he untied the strap and looked inside the pouch. A rude metal crescent lay within and beckoned to him in a low murmur. The little old man solemnly listened and then tied the strap around his own neck, and made his way out of the cave and down the mountain.

The little fellow had nothing. He was poor and hungry and as he walked into the dusty town he knew he should be afraid. He knew a poor person was not welcome anywhere in the world. But he was not afraid. He had a secret power. He had the magic amulet of the Creed and it had spoken to him. It had told him that he must not die, that he had a sacred mission to deliver the crescent to a special person, and that if he failed the world would end. This knowledge gave the little man a strength he’d never experienced. And while he looked the same as before, a poor man with nothing, he walked with a sure step and firm conviction. On his journey to the village he hadn’t met any of the Creed and for that he was thankful. He longed for his home, but knew he was too far away. But he also knew that to accomplish his new task, he had to regain his strength, to find food and make his way to the coast.

Lindy in the Philippines 2021

Lindy had processed into one of the most notorious divisions in the Pacific. He’d just halfheartedly posted a letter to Annie that he wouldn’t be back in January like he’d thought. The Hinges of Hell had split and his section was bound for the Philippines. From the air, the islands were breathtaking but down on the ground the picture was different altogether. The smell hit him first. Cordite and burning flesh, then the heat, 116 degrees in the shade if you could find any. The men he could see were stripped to the waist and their skin was burnt to a deep bronze. The natives were black, sweat shining in the sun as they humped the gear off the flight line. The most surprising thing he noticed was that nobody was wearing a rebreather. Sometimes he’d see one hanging by a strap across a tawny back but nobody used them. Was the air actually clean over here? Or did they just not give a shit if they lived or died.

Lindy spent three weeks in-country training and tried to learn how to eat dirt and breathe under water, then he finally gave up and spent the last week sneaking into village bars and drinking poudo wine. Then he was shipped to action station and his little war escalated to actual fighting. After a month dragging his tired ass through the jungle and dodging fire from holdout throat slitters, his unit was shortened and sent to island duty. Clean them off, Any means, was the notice stapled to the air drop. His CO was completely insane by then and the ersatz objective of every man in the unit was to avoid death by whatever form it took. The large island of Du Son cultivated a death of great imagination. Their supply chain broke down immediately and the little troop found itself abandoned on a spit of land populated by killers of all stripes and capabilities. Initially they were dropped in a clearing roughly in the center of a thirty mile long island. They moved toward the coast nearest the bay and way from the open sea, but were attacked at night by unknown assailants and fled back toward the sea. The heat of the day forced most combatants to hide in the shade, except for the native insurgents of the Black Flag. The best trained men of the Hinge were no match for these animal bastards.

“Gimmie that fruit punch man.” said Sack grumpily.
“Fuck you and yer mother.” replied Norman.
Lindy slid over through the weeds and said, “you two shut the hell up, Scuds are crawling all over out there!”
“Fuck you and Your Mother too,” stated Norman as a matter of fact.

Then a loud screaming stutter ripped through the air and Sack and Norman disappeared in a dark cloud of dirt and blood. Lindy flattened himself knowing he was hit and hoping he would die soon and not be wounded enough to watch them eat him alive. But the hoofs of the scuds ran thudding over him like he was dead and down the hill and away. He heard sporadic gunfire and yelling as the  troop scattered into the woods. Then six final thumps as concussion bombs took the rest out. He felt alone again. Lindy raised his head and looked around. Everything was smoking and silent. Not even an animal, no scurrying mice like the last time he thought he was dead. He crawled over to a smoldering tree stump and pulled himself up to a sitting position and scanned the field. Everyone was dead or gone. He wiped blood out of his eyes and quickly examined himself for wounds.. he was covered in blood, but it wasn’t his. He picked off a clump of bloody brain matter stuck to his web gear and asked, “That you Sack? or are you Norman? He chuckled to himself and flicked the messy clump into the weeds and wiped his fingers on his pants. Then he struggled to his feet and trudged toward the broken ruins of an old temple. “I’ll hide out there,” he thought. “Bastards’ll never find me.” He limped as soon as he stood up, and looked down to see a jagged chunk of metal sticking out of his leg. “Dammit fuck!” he said, and reached down and tenderly tried to move it. “Ouhhh!” as soon as he touched it– a sharp pain shot up his legs and he fell to his knees. “Oh shit, here we go now.” Lindy lay face down in the weeds till nightfall, the pain didn’t go away, it just lowered to a low hum, warning him that it could take him out any time. Then he heard voices about a fifty yards or so, wondering if they’re his men… Didn’t sound right, not English. Fuckin Mandarin or some shit. “Gotta get the fuck out of here, They’ll check my body for weapons and find out I’m not dead…” Lindy crawled through the weeds toward the towering black silhouette of the temple, the pain driving into his brain like a truck. He froze as a figure walked slowly by his position, then he pulled himself up three broken stone steps and behind a low wall and lay there panting hard into his sleeve. “This is the End, My only friend, the end…” he sang silently to himself trying vainly to add drama to his final moments.

The voices drifted off into the far treeline and he slept for an hour or so, his head hard on the warm rough stone of the broken temple. In his dream, he woke up and stood painlessly on his leg and the metal fragment fell out with a ring on the stone steps. He walked up into the temple and turned around and surveyed the battlefield below him. His pitiful comrades lay in contorted positions all stiff and cooked in the brutal sunlight. Their blood dried and crusty and their eyes wide open. He counted fourteen bodies. They were all dead. Everyone but him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the magic cup to ask it what to do. “What should I do now?” He asked the magic cup, he held it to his ear and it said nothing. He absently stuck it into a crevice in the wall, a fracture just big enough to accept the small metallic cup. Then a sudden thump against Lindy’s chest knocked him back as he heard the crack of an assault rifle from the trees below. Even in his dream he knew he was dying, or maybe he had died last night, he wasn’t sure. But somehow it didn’t seem to matter.

The Artifact 2202

The laboratory was cold, and darkened– except for the center of the room where a broad metal table sat under a bank of the purest white LEDs. Two men stood looking down at an object that was finally, firmly in their possession, or rather in the possession of the BBFR, the Institute of British BioFuture Research. They were Dr. Soren Lischentoff and his assistant, Richard Davis. They had been relentlessly pursuing this object for over six years, ever since it had surfaced in the Netherlander black market masquerading as an ancient Zoroastrian religious artifact.

“I know we need to record this guy on a matrix, doctor, but where to begin?” said Dick as he pulled on a new pair of white cotton gloves. The doctor seemed mildly amused as he looked carefully at the strange contraption in the form of a figure on a cross laying on the table in front of him.

“We will refrain from overreaching opinion at this point Richard,” he said, “Our procedure will be to catalog all material and whatever method we can deduce without adversely affecting the object, with special care to isolate human remains and any earth based artificial technology.”

“I could divide this chart with one vertical line, and label one column Human, and the other synthetic.” Richard glanced expectantly at the doctor.

“Four columns, I think,” said the doctor rubbing his whiskered chin and gazing at part of an old African Loom that formed the left hip of the figure.”The first should be “natural’, with subheads to include human remains, animal bones and anything thing else that isn’t manmade. Then the remaining two can be Technology broadly defined as old and new. If we can keep this fellow on one matrix, all the better.” The doctor seemed to relax with this decision, as if he were making this up on the fly– which he certainly was.

Richard had one more question. “What about the light doctor?” he asked looking into one of the empty eye sockets on the ancient polished skull. Richard had been thinking about the “light” for weeks, anxious to begin experiments that would discover the origin, mechanical or otherwise that was responsible for the barely perceptible signal that had indicated on their most sensitive instruments. According to their electroneuronograph “something” was still alive inside the figure lying on the table, after how much time… four hundred years… or a thousand? who could tell?

Richard was not the only one who wanted to know the answer to that question.

Greenland 2048

The sun was low on the horizon as the old KC-135 skidded to a landing on the short concrete runway. The passenger ramp was at the plane’s side door in seconds, the stumbling passengers were escorted to a waiting truck within a minute. Professor Salvador Goya was in the front passenger seat, waving for the two members of the Indigo team to hurry. A huge soldier, wearing standard Arctic camo, was driving, apparently from the security division of the Blue team. Tuddweiler and Spiderbush threw their duffels in the back of the convoy truck, then climbed up the tailgate carefully, as if disoriented in their new surroundings. Members of Indigo were known for their occasional disorientation, whether hard liquor or pharms or homebrew coyote juice were to blame, those were all part of the required toolkit of a Precog.

“We have some interesting finds at the dig. Perhaps the two of you could examine the artifacts we’ve uncovered, they predate anything from the Euphrates or Nile valleys by about twenty thousand years. And the temple foundations are remarkably well preserved, considering they’ve been buried under a mile of ice. Very precise layout to the temple …” said the Professor loudly through the sliding rear window of the cab. “But what would two addle brained psychics know about mathematics and architecture?”

“Plenty, Professor. I could tell you how many times you’ll bounce down the stairs in that high rise you live in. But that’s in three years. Only if you marry that Cuban woman. Take the elevator instead,” yelled Tuddweiler.

The driver’s steely glance in the rear view mirror was caught by the glance of Spiderbush. “Lakota, you drive well. Yes, I’m Apache, so feel free to distrust me. Distrust is good sometimes. And no, I’m no frikkin skinwalker.” The driver never said a word in response, but relaxed his grip slightly on the steering wheel.

The glacier-scrubbed mountains glistened in the low sun for the first time in thousands of years. Greenland had become the most valuable chip in the global/political poker game. The mile thick layer of ice was diminishing at 5% per year, much faster than had been anticipated, revealing vast surface deposits of mineral ores and coal, much greater than could have been imagined. Fresh water gathering in huge inland lakes would easily satisfy any demands for hundreds of years. Warm tropic waters flowing through the navigable Arctic Ocean was changing the climate for the better this far north, regardless of the devastating weather conditions in the temperate and tropical zones.

The truck drove into the sunset for nearly an hour. The archeological dig was surrounded by a two mile circle of tents bearing a dozen different flags. The Treaty of Greenland allowed neighboring nations to participate in the excavation for a nominal fee of currency, equipment, and infrastucture donated to this blossoming island nation. Also, twenty five thousand year old ruins were boosting revenues associated with the tourism trade. However, the problem of private collectors pilfering undocumented sites was difficult to curtail, even with elite military teams policing the area.

Broken Mirrors 2049

The whole thing scares me to death. The house is a nightmare. The smell gets you first, even outside in front on the sidewalk, it smells so strong your lungs stop breathing before you realize why, a pungent stench of dead animal. The front door is broken old wood with boards nailed over it. The only way in is through the back. You have to walk around through weeds and trash piled up against the house, stumbling and tripping over old tin cans long rusted through, rubber tires with green stagnate water inside, dead squirrels, broken branches fallen from the dead trees all around. Then the back of the house is a mess. You have to actually crawl over the busted boards that used to be steps and framing of a long broken back porch. The back door is gone. You can look right into the house through a hole framed in old shingle siding and a warped door frame. Just inside the back of the house is a large gaping hole in the floor leading presumably down to a dirt crawl space. There’s just enough room to squeeze into the door and a narrow track around the hole into the kitchen.

The old lady spits in the sink. I don’t know what they use for a toilet. It smells like they pee out the door. The bathroom is full of old newspapers stacked to the ceiling. You can’t even go into the room. There are cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other everywhere, sagging and crumbling with mold and time. The windows have old grey blankets hanging over them, torn and soiled. There’s no refrigerator and a filthy stove has broken through the floor and sits on the dirt below. The floor slants at a steep angle falling off towards the back of the house, so you have to walk uphill to get into the living room. That’s where my grandfather sits. He looks like a bad dream. He sits in a disgustingly ancient old stuffed chair that’s all busted and dirty, with stuffing coming out. There’s an antique standup ashtry beside his chair that is a piece of sculpture, dried up cigar butts sticking out at odd angles, old bits of food hanging off. The old man sits and stares at an old pot belly stove, constantly feeding trash and parts of the house into it. All around
the chair is a black sticky substance, I don’t know what it is. I can barely breathe in there. I think he’s blind, and deaf and I know he doesn’t talk. I’ve never even seen him move, but I know he eats cause I can see the remains of food all around his chair. Old black loaves of bread, baloney that looks like leather, old empty jars of mustard all dried and cakey. Then there’s the bedroom. I guess that’s where old Mom hangs out. It’s the room of broken mirrors. Like some kind of crazy hobby. For years she has glued broken pieces of glass and busted fragments of old mirrors onto the walls, all over the floor and the ceiling too. It’s the only room in the house that isn’t full of junk. It’s completely empty, except for the broken glass. It’s a masterpiece of insanity. The most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen. It would be sudden death to walk in there barefoot. You can’t touch the walls. The sharp glass edges stick out everywhere. Last winter I stopped by to check on them, it had been several years since I was last there. Snow had drifted into the back door and into the kitchen. I could see the front room where Gramps sat was cold and the stove was dark. Snow had blown into the glass room too. There were footprints in the snow, frozen now, and it looked like a little blood mixed with the snow. I gently called out her name, and ventured a step or two further. I could hear a window rattle in the wind, but nothing else.

XYZ 2050

Bud struggled to his feet and held his shoulder as he climbed back through the broken down porch. The sound of two old school Raptors roared overhead. They were very low and he squinted his eyes against the sound, cause he couldn’t squint his ears. Zero was coming down off the roof and he rushed over to Bud, “what the hell IS this shit? he yelled. Bud hollered to GIT DOWN, HIDE!! Just as the bombs started rumbling in the near distance, a troupe of VTVs came hauling through the neighborhood firing off sporadic bursts at random intervals. Zero dived into a pile of brush and Bud hunkered down behind a busted oil drum as they flew by. “Jesus Christ! This is too fuked up! growled Zero, “Bud, I’m going to the truck for the FAK, This black shit burns.” They ran crouched low around the house and jumped into the beat-to-shit pickup and jerked it to about forty through the rubble filled streets. ” LEFT! yelled Bud as Zero yanked the wheel just in time to dive down a side street off the main drag where the patrol had just gone by. “They’re turnin around! Bud yelled, Head for the bunker! “Fuck the bunker we gotta get outa town! Zero pulled a hard right onto the on ramp to the blasted freeway and floored it. The Raptors were high in a screaming arc looking like they meant to come back through and Zero was silently glad he’d painted a red cross on the roof of the battered Toyota. They were flying, sparks crackling from under the dash. Zero cursed, ” wish I knew what they expected us to do about any of this shit!” Bud said, You know, I think they did leave a message. Its really weird. But now that I think about it, that roof was about the tallest visible surface handy. I think they crawled up on the roof and spelled out a thing with their bodies. What would XYZ mean? Or maybe XYS, I don know– that last guy was burnt bad, maybe screwed up his letter. Zero stared ahead through the dirty windscreen as they approached a checkpoint. BUD! git out your brothers stuff man, we got to get through this– probably the last one. The guards seemed distracted and jumpy, but they looked at the papers Bud held against the window and waved them by. Bud slumped back against the seat and carefully pulled his shirt back to look at where he had fallen against one of the burnt bodies on the roof. His wrist was swollen and smelled real bad. “where the fukin FAK dammit!” he snapped, “XYZ MY ASS!”

South Dakota 2050

Indigo clouds invaded the tangerine sky of sunset, the rough road stretched to the the black horizon. Bud pushed buttons on the radio but couldn’t get anything but country music on the Government stations. He then reached into the glovebox, pulling out a small bottle of whiskey. “Short snort for the road?” he asked between grimaces of pain.

“Yeah, why not …” said Zero slowly. “I gotta stop thinking about XYZ. I mean, nobody can make an omega with their body, but XYZ is easy. End times, that must be it.”
“But there wasn’t a single EndTimes Babtist icon on the house, it was clean, Zero, don’t worry that any of your family sold out to those bastards,” grunted Bud. He took a drink and sighed.
“I don’t believe in that mutant zombie space alien shit … people did this to themselves, plain and simple,” said Zero.
“You’re preaching to the choir, I have yet to see any mutant zombies for myself … here, have some of this communion whiskey, get yourself sanctified.” Bud passed the bottle, then reached for a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the dash. “I say we go to Tildy’s Cantina. It’s far enough into the DMZ. And I could use some better pharms for my shoulder. And maybe the Willow sisters still work there.”

“Gas, ammo, pharms, poontang … sounds okay to me,” said Zero distantly, keeping his focus on the darkening horizon. “And they should have a secure line out, I have a few questions for the Old Professor. Do you like Weeping Willow or Pussy Willow better?” “Hell, I’d settle for a Swedish Sexbot if I get enough beer in me,” said Bud painfully.

Jeremiah Shane 2050

Master Sergeant Jeremiah Shane couldn’t help but laugh at his stupid ass, which just further ingrained the incessant smirk on his face……”Jesus!” he thought, “I should of listened to Zero”.  “Hell, I’d be making all that money,” he half heartily lamented.  “Who’d of thought America’s meltdown and this martial law shit would actually mean more job security for that inbred brother of mine”, he snickered.  “Hell, I ain’t doing so bad either,” he thought.  “What the hell, this is still better than burning shit at those FEMA camps in cornhole Indiana.  I’ll do my time here, ain’t gotta worry ’bout wearing that damn chemical suit all the goddam’ time like I did back there.” MSG Shane couldn’t help but notice the sunset on this particular evening in the Mojave.  Not that he never noticed sunsets, but the smoke from the crematorium wafting through the crimson rays of that desert sunset reminded him of southern Iraq and the smoke from the oil fires.  He remembered thinking back, how that apocalyptic landscape almost gave him a hard on.  MSG Shane was feeling anxious again, it was percolating within his cortex like a toxic stew, urges he struggled to contain.  The smell of cremation from nearby Fort Irwin only fomented these urges, stoking the flames that lay dormant. The distant sound of an approaching HUMV alighted MSG Shane from his meanderings into further distracting thoughts and urges.  “Shift change!  Miller time!” he shouted. The echo from his spontaneous eruption of exuberance was quickly muffled by the  sudden blast of sirens from Fort Irwin.  “Aw Shit!”, he snarled as he stared intently at the orange cloud of dust highlighted by the distant flares hovering over Camp Hotel.  He noticed the HUMV approaching more urgently than usual, and it didn’t appear to be Sergeant Jennings.

“What are you doing here Sergeant Major?”, Jeremiah inquired.  SGM Oscar Dellray lumbered out of the HUMV as urgently as he could with a bum leg and limped toward MSG Shane.  “Hell, I thought maybe you could use some company out here instead of jackin’ off by yourself.  Don’t worry about the alert, just a stray mortar.  Drug cartels most likely just lettin’ us know they’re in the neighborhood again.  Get your shit and report to Colonel Honeycutt at the ISOFAC. He’s putting a team together again.  Seems your brother stirred up some shit in the midwest sector, near Gary fuckin’ Indiana.  How did he end up in that shithole I wonder.  You’ll be given all the details once your guys are isolated.  So the fun continues.  Hey, look on the bright side, at least there’s pussy back there.  Anything to eat around here?”

“So that’s why I haven’t heard from Zero?” Jeremiah thought to himself. “So I guess you won’t be joining us, eh’ Sergeant Major?”, Jeremiah asked.  “Shit no, Colonel’s still pissed at me over that incident at the regional governors’ ass kiss-a-thon last week.  I mean, fuck, his wife hit on me first.  Colonel’s just pissed cause he ain’t gettin’ any.  I might join ya’ all after my leg heals.  They still want you to take your MOPP gear.  There’s still residue from that bomb blast hanging around.  Even with the inoculations I think that shit still fucks up your central nervous system or something.”  Jeremiah laughed, “Well hell, that shit didn’t stop you from getting a hard on for the governor’s wife.  I’m outa’ here sergeant major.  There’s some diet sodas in the fridge.  Help yourself to the cheese dip in the drawer there.  Those are Sergeant Jenning’s fuck books.  Try not to jizz all over yourself.  I’ll catch you on the flip flop.”

Jeremiah threw his gear into the HUMV as Sergeant Major Dellray grabbed a diet coke, a fuck book and sat his ass on an old gray metal swivel chair, propping his bum leg on an old gray metal desk.  “Hey, dick breath,” shouted SGM Dellray, “is this fuckin’ radio working?”
“Yeah, sergeant major,” Jeremiah smirked, “Armed Forces Network comes in okay….that’s about it.”  “Sergeant Shane,” said SGM Dellray in a somewhat somber voice, “good luck, and don’t catch anything you can’t get rid of….and, oh yeah, wipe that fucking smirk off your face cheese dick!”

Jeremiah drove away, his senses merging with the noise from random thoughts straying in and out of his not so lucid mental state.  “Dang, I was sure lookin’ forward to a cold one” he mumbled to himself.  SGM Dellray had already tuned in AFN on the radio.  As the distant flares faded with the sirens, Jeremiah could hear the faded whining of a familiar George Jones song contrasted with the howling of the coyotes usual repertoire.

Redhands 2050

“Oh God, look at these guys” Zero whispered under his breath. Dan leaned forward and struggled to peer through the shattered windscreen as they slowly inched over the rise. Ahead of them was a cluster of irregular technicals, small 4×4 pickups with Browning M2 50 Cal machine guns mounted in the beds. Most of their attention was directed into the tree line to the south, but Zero knew that would soon change. There were four trucks parked in a line on the ridge and as soon as Zero crested the hill, they were spotted and the rear truck veered off and rushed down the ridge in a cloud of red dust. Zero slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel as he shifted in reverse, trying to do that thing like on TV where you go the other way real fast. But on TV they have good cars with good brakes and they know how to drive.

Zero just slammed through a busted guard rail and rolled down a steep embankment backwards. All the gear in the cab was dancing around as they jostled violently over bumpy ground, and Bud woke up grabbing the door handle and the dash yelling, “what the hell?” The truck came to a stop in a shallow creek at the bottom of the hill. The blue technical peeked over the edge and Zero could see the gun barrel swivel down and hit the truck cab in a futile effort to aim down the hill. A plume of dust told zero the scumbag was trying to maneuver around for a better position. “Dan!, See if you can get a bead on that dude!” Zero carefully put the truck in low and tried to drive down the creek in the direction of a clump of wilted Aspen. The trees vanished as soon as he got there, shorn off to the hilt by a fusillade of 50 Cal fire. Water and rock fragments sprayed into the air and just as suddenly it stopped. Zero strained to see up the hill and saw the truck back up and disappear. “Where’d they go?’ Dan said, as Zero was trundling down the creek bed looking for a way out. The water was getting deeper and the rocky creek side was getting steeper. The floor of the truck was sloshing with water as they rounded a slight bend and spied a landing ahead. “There!” Dan yelled, and Zero gunned the water-logged pickup out of the creek and up a rough incline. “Go, Go, Go!” yelled Dan.

Zero turned down a barely perceptible track and looked ahead intently. “Look you know where we’re going don’tcha?” Dan stares ahead while he talked, “Do we have to stay off the highway through the whole damn sector?” Zero said, “I think the camps other side of the mountains man, don’t worry.” But Dan worried. “We’re in trouble man, Headwaters is right south of those damn mountains, I know it. “Bite my ass”, Zero snapped, “we’re good for a hundred miles maybe”. Dan said, “Man, we gotta get back on the road man! “Distances play tricks on yer head man, plus it’s getting dark. We gotta be by those bastards by now”. Dan was sweating and rummaging around behind the seat for more guns. “The biggest baddest immigrant prison west of the Mississippi man! Over six million sick souls of mixed species, the worst of the worst, and your driving right into they hood man.” Dan jostled back in his seat with a handfull of hardware, ammo boxes, the frak gun and the Mystik 40 cal automatic.

As a cold brown globe lingered over the distant peaks, Zero wondered why a sunset seemed so different out here. The darkening mountains shifted to the north and the track leveled out. The truck hummed along and Zero mulled over the same concerns Dan was fretting about. But if he could get south around the mountains and back to the goddamn highway they’d be okay, he hoped.

Zero and Dan had traveled for 156 miles into the Deadlands, vainly looking and hoping for a track that would take them north, cross country, back to SA80, the only navigable highway from coast to coast. They would have stuck out across the desert but that would have been as futile as their current situation. They’d used one whole can of gas, and were traveling in an uneasy silence. Zero had done most of the driving and he was falling asleep at the wheel. Dan was drunk and slept soundly with a coat thrown over his head.

If Zero had been 200 feet up in the airspace above his truck he could have seen the camp straight ahead about 65 miles. Sprawling to the horizon, Headwaters was a dismal sight. smoke drifted up from a thousand fires. Some from cooking and some of the bigger ones pointed out fire fights, turf battles and burning buildings. The place was like a constant smoldering war right out of the 14th century. The general layout encompassed thousands and thousands of square miles within the wire, and thousands more on the outside, although there wasn’t much difference between the two. Everything was a concentrated confusion of milling people, rough shacks made from trash, tent cities, winding pathways, gunfire and chaos.

The smell was what alerted Zero to his mistake. He slowed the truck to a crawl and leaned out the open window sniffing the cold air like a coyote. They were still 30 miles away but a change in the wind had given him one small chance to make a critical correction in his route. The pickup stopped and Zero stood up on the running board and scanned the horizon to the west. Not seeing a rise or any kind of hill from which to get a better view. A mild sense of dread made him decide to head north. To drive off the beaten down track and head into the desert and hope for the best. He wasn’t scared, but he knew they must be too close if he could smell the place. His GPS had been jammed a week ago by the Red Hand merks. But he knew the highway was north, and the sun still set in the west. Fortunately the sand was hard packed and few rocks marked in his way. He picked it up to about forty and cruised along starting to let his eyes go out of focus. An hour passed. He traveled on, Dan still slept.

Zero was sound asleep when he ran straight into a thirty foot fence. The truck happened to hit between upright steel posts planted a hundred feet apart. The galvanized metal mesh between was old and rusty and ripped apart as the truck drove through scratching the hell out of the sides. Concertina wire that had been lasily installed on the top edge of the fence dropped down and embraced the pickup like a metal spider web. Dan and Zero were shaken awake by the sound and the sudden stop, and sat frozen, staring out the windows at their predicament.

“What in the Hell is This?” Dan said. “Well, you sleep all the time, so anything must be a surprise to YOU!” growled Zero.

Conroe and Emily 2050

The bus arrived in Phoenix about 24 hours after it left Denver. A broken fan belt meant a longer stop in Albuqueque, a blown tire added an hour in Winslow, and a heart attack in row seven resulted in extra time laid over in Flagstaff. Winds were gusting from the west, keeping the mid morning sky free from the city’s usual brown haze. Conroe said a brief farewell to Emily as they departed from the bus, and Emily smiled her typical ‘I’ll never see you again’ smile. She had used that same smile everytime she enabled a patient, it seemed to make them feel better for a moment or two.

An unmarked white van was waiting for Emily at the end of the parking lot. She heaved her luggage in the side door and introduced herself to the three women inside who wore similar pastel jumpsuit uniforms. “Hi there, Emily. I’m Trish, and this is Sarah and Becca. Welcome to Phoenix, from all of the Sisters of Death.” The women were laughing as they left the bus station.

-busy schedule today, seven busloads this afternoon … -we got 400 extra beds last month, so we’re at 2700 beds …

-are you sure you don’t want to stop for breakfast?… -and then the rabies cases were up 40% from last season …

-but the encephalitis is stable now, till mosquito season … -and an upsurge in rose pox, same genetic strain …
-and resistent carriers wear greasepaint to hide the scars … -we’re on ‘shoot first’ orders when dealing with those clowns … -you do have a gun, don’t you … oh, good … -and your first uniform is free, and a free one every month …
-better take a right, police roadblock on 35th and Camelback … -I have a bottle of wine that says it’s a methlab …
-you’re on, I say it’s infected prostitutes … again … -yeah, after you enable your first thousand, you lose count …
-the four solar dehydrators can hold 4000 bodies … -yeah, cuts cremation time in half …
-and Redhand BioPharm is testing in Compound #4 … -hey, I think biogeeks are cute, and you know they’re clean …
-look at that, she got the rose on her arm … -really? innoculated with a rose thorn from India? cool scar, Emily …
-yeah, and the terminals love that symbolic stuff … -well, every camp has Healer stories …
-like, I don’t go for any story involving spittle … -urban legend, that’s all, how can every camp have a Healer? …
-people need their faith … we hold services … -like that ever does any good, I haven’t seen an angel yet …
-a priest, rabbi, and cleric were in the same bed at a camp … -heard it, their nurse was an atheist …
-oh, ice cream stand, who wants ice cream? …
-me me me …
-you know, it’s easier deciding which bed to empty than which flavor of ice cream to get …

Conroe had waited patiently for a half hour before an old pickup truck rattled into the parking lot. He found a good spot for his guitar case in the tangle of firewood filling the truck bed. Buck Spiderbush was at the wheel. “Hey Conroe, sorry I’m late, had a problem with my fuel pump this morning, and my dad had to have a few words with it.”
“Hey Bucko, you trying to grow some facial hair? Good to see ya. How’s the old man doing nowadays, is he still as fiesty as ever?”
“Oh, Dad is Dad, same as always. He’s spending more time in the wilderness, and that drives Mom crazy. She never knows how much supper to make. And Mom, she’s making some kickass weavings, all over the house, real cool. But Dad has really been working on evening rituals more than morning rituals, he says something is going on to the west.”

“Here’s one for ya, Bucko. I sat next to an Enabler all the way from Denver. Nice enough manners, all hi-techy, and I could smell gun oil.”
“Was she all wicked inside? Did she play up the Sister of Death routine? Or didn’t she show? Was she going to Wickenburg, you think? That place is getting busier every month. We had a couple cases of enhanced rabies on the Rez last year, an old man and his nephew were out hiking, got bit by a coyote, anyway they were shipped to Wickenburg, a letter in the mail a week later was all that the family got.”

“Sad,” said Conroe as he lit a cigar and blew the smoke into the morning traffic. Palm trees bent slightly with each gust of wind. Palo Verdes were dancing in yellow green blossom in the residential distance. People seemed business-as-usual on the freeway, half of the vehicles were new and shiny, half were held together with bailing wire and duct tape. “No, that Enabler was a blank page, nothing showed one way or the other on her. The death camps are just another day at the office for her type. Again, I say … ‘Sad’.”
“Brocolli.”
“What?”
“Oh, got to pick up some brocolli for Dad, he said he would die without brocolli today. He said, ‘no cabbage, had cabbage yesterday, got to have brocolli today’. We’ll stop in AJ, you need anything from the store?”
“Better pick up a few things for supper, your Mom still make her famous succatash, doesn’t she? And what do you think your Dad would like? Peach tobacco?”
“Get him something for his goats, he’s been pampering them a lot, and that makes Mom crazy sometimes. Get dry dog food, goats like that. Dad says it makes them shinier. And then Mom says that maybe she should get shinier so Dad will pamper her, too. They’re funny when they fight. It’s like watching a movie, maybe every night they write up their fights for the next day.”

Headwaters Captive 2050

Zero woke opened his eyes in the pitch darkness and tried to see where he was. A pungent smell of oil mixed with rotted meat filled his nostrils. A pit carved into the earth, concrete walls, hard packed dirt floor and rough boards overhead. No door. No Dan. He couldn’t know how long he’d been there. The pain gradually made him aware he’d been beaten. His clothes were torn and caked with dried blood, his boots were gone. His ribs felt broken, his hair was stiff with dried blood. He struggled to his knees, the cell was too small to stand. The wooden ceiling seemed to be a trap door. In the dim light he could make out rope hinges attached to metal pipes buried in the concrete. Zero moved closer to he thin crack at the opening and tried to move the door with his aching shoulder. The door was heavy, but he could push it up about an inch before it stopped. Zero let the door back down and felt around on the floor for a rock or something to wedge into the opening. The brief glimpse outside of crumbling adobe walls and wind blown sand didn’t give him much information to go on. He felt his leg where a matted clump of dried skin had crusted over some unknown wound and wondered how long he’d been in this hole, long enough for blood to clot and flesh to begin to knit together. Maybe a coupla days or more he thought. he suddenly begin to realize he was hungry and tried to remember when he’d last ate. Seemed like weeks ago, back at Tildy’s. Apparently his fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. No Dan, no truck, no boots, no weapons, no freedom. This might be quite a fix. He knew the mercs of the Red Hand probably were not his captors. The fence they crashed through was likely a remote part of the Headwaters, and a patrol had found them and knocked them unconscious before they managed an escape. This was not good news. The inhabitants of this place were incarcerated out here for many reasons; disease ridden criminal killers and general antisocial miscreants. But the worst was the rumor of cannibalism. Zero knew that to find Dan and get out of here alive would be quite a feat, and he also knew he wasn’t known for that kind of heroism.

Black Bird 2050

“Oh shit,” I thought to myself as I awoke. Bleary and confused, but lucid enough to realize I was still in the pit. I’d slept, and forgotten the pain, my empty stomach, and my hopeless situation. “Where is Dan? Goddamnit?” I mumbled out loud, “I need some goddam help here!” I struggled to my knees and felt around for the rock I remembered wanting to wedge the door up with. Seemed like days since I last tried to look outside the pit. My hand found a small stone just as the chain rattled across the trap door. Clutching the little rock to my chest like some kind of magic talisman, I froze in place as the door opened to blinding sunlight. Turning slightly, more as an instinct to shield my body from an expected blow than an attempt to get a look at the figures silhouetted in the yellow light.

“Drag that fukkin dog up outa there!” One of the figures growled. Two guys jumped into the hole and grabbed me under the arms and lifted me roughly out over the edge onto the hard packed sand. They looped a rope around my wrists and drug me across the ground, tying the other end to the back of a pickup.
“Jesus Christ you bast..ds!” I tried to yell, and received a swift crack across the head with a rifle butt. The truck started and drove slowly while the merks walked behind it laughing and poking at my flopping feet. My wrists hurt like hell and I struggled to relieve the most painful parts of my body as the truck stopped at the top of a small hill. As they untied my bloody hands I glimpsed three crosses standing a short distance away. Twenty five feet tall, made of thick posts and stained dark from years of human fluids soaked into the oily wood. Black lumps of bodies hung in twisted contortions from the two posts on each end. “Mike, hang that sumabitch on the middle one.” barked a rough faced mulatto to the most brutal of the three. Mike grabbed my neck and pushed me toward the center cross…

As they threw the rope over the crossbar and started to pull me up, my mind started to drift. My body rotated as it scrapped against the rough timber. Inch by inch I ascended and found myself examining the blacked body on one of the other crosses. The filthy cargo pants reminded me of Dan somehow… the shadows of circling birds silently moved across the sand below.

My mind drifted further away… Dreaming of a bird, black and flying from the far horizon. Steady, straight for me. What a coincidence I idly wondered. I must be dead. The bird gradually grew in size as it got closer, and bigger and… Maybe it wasn’t a bird. Too steady, more like a plane. A lone black jet. I blinked and tried to focus on the stuttering flashes through the shimmering distance. Then the sound, a dull repeating thump of explosions, running figures. I tried to stay awake….. Ah—maybe those bastards have come for my sorry ass–I hope they’re not too late…

Wickenburg

Miles of droning highway vibration lulled Emily’s mood to that of cow chewing its cud … all the while knowing that she was going to visit the slaughterhouse the next day. She didn’t like that mood, but was unable to shake the analogy. Being assigned to the CDC detention camp in Wickenburg was dreadful enough, but being certified as an Enabler was nearly too much for her to accept. She knew she was qualified, emotionally, to assist in clinical suicide for terminal patients, but she was still trying to accept her new certification to be pre-emptive with her decisions, acting as a caring angel of merciful death, all the while saving on the expense of housing so many thousands of dying people.

Conroe woke after a three hour nap, seemingly content with not knowing exactly where he was. He looked at Emily and grinned weakly.
“We’re in New Mexico,” said Emily.
“Good to know, good to know,” said Conroe as he reached into his inner coat pocket, pulling out a silver cigarette case. He got a thin black cigar, waved it under his nose, and put it to his lips. “Don’t worry, Ma’am, ain’t going to light it … just got to appease a certain oral fixation I’ve developed over the years. Had some bad days myself, but haven’t we all?”
“I couldn’t help but notice the emblem on your cigarette case. You were with Indigo Team. My husband was Blue Team in the Arctic. I didn’t know Indigo was there, too. I got all of the press releases after the Event, but I haven’t talked to anyone that was actually there. I received a few official reports after my husband was killed, but I never felt closure, I never quite knew who, or what, to blame. You know how people need something to blame, it just makes them feel better,” said Emily.

“Most people got their fixed idea of what happened up in Greenland. And they’re all wrong, so I really don’t talk too much about it. Don’t want to upset anybody’s applecart. But I can tell you, it wasn’t a weather satellite or a space station that fell that night. And it wasn’t a meteor strike, either,” said Conroe softly, not wanting to share the conversation with others on the bus.
“Oh, I’m a firm skeptic,” said Emily. “I mean, I didn’t ascribe anything religious to the Event. I’m not one of those Second Coming or UFO types. The Event happened, a few hundred people died, then a week later, twenty cities were incinerated within sixty seconds of each other. Human caused events, that’s all. And who is the best to blame for all of that?”

“That’s a good applecart to live with. The world keeps on ticking away, minus nine hundred million people, and counting. But I was there, I saw the Event … and the shit hit the fan when the media gained access. That’s when the Russians, Chinese, and Swedes got tangled in their skirmishes, then the Brits, then us … and this is what you are told to believe. What you don’t know is that it was all planned as a diversion away from the world experiencing the Event. Some group didn’t want the rest of the world to know what was starting to happen. And that same group destroyed twenty cities as a diversion, to keep our attention focused on survival only. And that diversion worked. Who has time to think about anything but their own pitiful existence?” asked Conroe.
“Are you saying that it was a choir of angels sent to save the planet?” asked Emily half-jokingly.
“You said your name was Emily, so, may I call you Emily? So, Emily, I know what the northern lights look like, and I know what angels ought to look like. I even know theoretic schematics for UFO’s. What I experienced was synaesthetic, I could taste the colors, I could hear the shapes, I could taste the sounds … okay, okay, it was like a fifth dimensional chessgame, it was real, it was tangible … thoughts and thinking and time were tangible and real and solid as a rock in your hand. The Event amplified sensation and thought for its duration, then that’s when the shit hit the fan in Greenland. And I have a notion burned in my mind that this Event was expanding, which was a good thing, the best thing ever, but it was stopped before it could accomplish much. But it accomplished something, I know that much for a fact.”
“But it didn’t prevent the epidemics or the crop failures,” said Emily. “Can I blame human stupidity for that much?”

“Of course, my dear Emily. We humans are known far and wide for our aptitude for stupidity.”

Jumpjet 2050

The 410DUK jumpjet slowed its approach over Headwaters, a small green blip on the dial getting bigger rotating into the cross hairs. Like a firehose, hardened ordinance sprayed at anything that moved. The few Redhands that made it to antiaircraft bunkers were followed by microdrone percussion missles, blasting sand, bodies, and concertina wire in all directions. A tarped-over fuel depot recieved one missle, blowing thousands gallons of igniting gasoline into an oily red mushroom cloud that took up half the sky. Zero had not flinched during the shockwave, hanging on the cross in helpless witness. His captors had moved, unfortunately for them, becoming targets for the rotating bellygun on the jumpjet.

The jumpjet manuevered over the compound, spraying fewer and fewer bursts from its guns. It slowed to a hover as rope harnesses lowered four figures clad in flak outfits. The four ran over to the crosses, carefully lowering Zero’s listless body to the ground. He opened one eye, seeing the Greenland flag emblem on their jackets. “Hey Zero, you got yourself in a bind here, eh?” said Sven as he pulled off his flakmask. “Not one of your better days, eh, but it coulda been vorse.”

“Hey Sven, ve got Dannyboy here, oh, he’s all burned up good. Not enough left to send home in a shoebox,” said Ole.
“Yah, sure, too bad. Vell, better get him down. De old Perfessor vants his pump,” replied Sven flatly.
“You sonofabitch Sven, I’m glad you could make it to the picnic,” growled Zero painfully.
“Yah, you are hard to find sometimes,” said Sven as he sprayed dermal foam on the parts of Zero that showed the most damage. “Hey you fellers better get Dannyboy’s pump, Perfessor’s orders.”

Ole firmly held the charred remains of Dan’s head while Gustaf cut and peeled the crisp skin from the back of the skull, then wiped clean the titanium plate that housed Dan’s pump. Gustaf twisted his pliers on the release pin, exposing a silvery cylinder nestled within the cooked brain tissue. With a quick tug, he pulled out the assemblage and tossed it to Sven.

“Say ve get outta here now,” said Sven, shaking Dan’s pump assemblage. “Yah, this is still half full. Say Zero, maybe you can use some of dis juice, yah?” He strapped Zero into a harness and signaled the jumpjet to haul up its retrieved cargo. Sven noticed motion in the distance as he was being hoisted into the belly of the jumpjet. He aimed his pistol and fired two rounds into a dark area of a collapsed bunker.
“Fookin’ Redhands anyvay.”

Simon Naught 2042

The old man had been sleeping in the crawl space for three days now, undiscovered by the squatters in the house above. His stench had not yet found it’s way through the floorboards to announce his secret place, and he covered himself every night with mud and cinders to mask the smell of his rotting legs and the heavy gas that still seeped from his ass while he slept. The fingers of his right hand were finally scabbed over from his homemade print removal, and his left hand was still tied behind his back. He lay cramped in a fetal position under the black floor joists. In the morning before the family stirred up above, he was just able to see well enough under the edge of the blindfold to scratch a few lines on the oily back of an old field manual.

“By misunderstanding is existence marked.” He mumbled out loud, then shushing himself with a bloody finger, he wrote on. “Love is a stony precipice, above a raging river.” He looked at the words with wonder and confusion, “The River was older than Solomon, the King of the sandy Persian veld, The River took advantage of the wide valley, rushing through in haste to lay claim to all before it, to all geography, all opportunity, all desire and all hope. The River owned the valley and sought the next one beyond. And each by each it took over the land and conquered it and came to the sea.”

The old man lowered his head onto his arm and rested, He repeated his name to himself, “Simon Naught.” He thought the name as useless as anything else, “Simon Abraham Naught.” He watched the River in his mind, washing the soil and large boulders before it, tumbling through the forests, sweeping villages and people downstream into the Sea. The River was keeper of wisdom that people could not know. The River was a teacher without a lesson plan, without a curriculum and without students.

The wind ran before the water and through the trees with great force. The sound like a huge train on tracks of iron, like ghosts fleeing imagination, like the last feeble threads of comprehension from his mind. Simon slept, and awoke, his dreams like the net of a fisherman, grasping at memories of his wife, his children and his lost life before the storms.
“Let me count the ways,” He said quietly to himself under the old house, “All the ways man will find himself… unafraid,” He wrote this on the yellowed cloth cover, “All the ways man will forsake his past—  and embrace the future– the empty space between myth and reality.” He scratched out the last line and wrote, “The most authentic thing man can do… is die.

Then he crawled further under the house through a snakelike a depression he’d carved out and down from the original basement. It consisted of a ten foot room with a badly crumbling field stone foundation and a dirt floor. The ancient coal furnace was gone and where it had stood was a deep hole straight down nearly eight feet into the earth. Simon lowered himself to the bottom of the hole and crouched like a rabbit feeling around for his cave. He had been digging the earth for many weeks until he had formed a tunnel roughly horizontal to the vertical hole up to the basement. The floor of the tunnel was a smooth hard material like polished marble, or like black glass. It felt cold to the touch as Simon crawled over it through the tunnel, but if he stopped for any length of time, it would begin to warm up to match his body temperature.

Simon crawled along and the floor of the tunnel curved very slightly downward. Ahead was his cave, a leveled out area which was large enough to sleep and store his supplies. In his excavations Simon had discovered voids in the earth which were handy to fill with dirt that he’d carved from the walls of his tunnel. The sleeping area was about ten feet in diameter and the ceiling was four feet off the floor. One one side of the cave at the bottom of the wall was a void that was impossible to fill with dirt. He would scrape the ceiling and push the dirt into the bottom of the wall and it would never compact, would never stop accepting more dirt.  In this way Simon was able to expand his cave and make it large enough to live comfortably without having to carry the dirt all the way out of the tunnel. Over time he had created a self sufficient place to live, well stocked with scrounged cans of food, canvas bags of old rice and three empty coke bottles that he would carefully position in a depression to collect the drippings of moisture that seeped from the wall.

In this way Simon lived. And when the storms came again he was safely asleep in his burrow far below ground and when he was awakened by the noise and the rumbling earth, he ventured out far enough to discover that the old house had been destroyed and had filled the basement with rubble. In the darkness he examined the wall of broken timbers with his good hand, he felt the fractured concrete and dirt and understood that he would need to retreat back to his cave and reconsider his situation. On his way back he thought he should dig out the soft area near the bottom of the wall, the place that he could never fill with dirt.

He set to work that night, for deep in this tunnel night was the same as day. He dug a large hole at the bottom of the wall, and the more he dug– the more the dirt gave way and fell in. It was as if the dirt disappeared beneath his digging. In this way he dug for three days, building a new tunnel just big enough for his prone body. He slept when tired and paused only to eat three peaches from a can he’d brought with him.

As Simon dug– the earth gave away more rapidly, at times easily revealing the smooth floor, and the further he progressed– the more he noticed the tunnel descending. He was definitely heading downhill. And the more the floor curved downward the easier the earth was to dig. On the forth day Simon began to notice the earth becoming wetter, but as heavy as it was with moisture it was still easy to push to the side and continue on. Simon drank the water by squeezing the dirt in his hand and dripping it into his mouth. Now all he needed was more air.

On the fifth day he felt a slight anomaly  on the floor. It was very subtle, but as he was very familiar with the smoothness of the floor a small discrepancy caught his attention. He followed what felt like a seam with his fingernail. It was maybe a sixteenth of an inch deep and went across the floor from wall to wall of his little tunnel. He stopped to rest and wondered what to do. Deciding to follow the seam, he began to dig both directions at first, but to the right the dirt was softer on his worn hand. His breathing was becoming very painful now. The air was thin this far under the earth and his work had caused him to use more oxygen. He fell asleep and slept for a long time on the smooth dark surface.

Simon dreamed that the seam led to a hatch which opened to a sunny garden with fresh air and flowers. A garden with vegetables and a stream with clean running water. In his dream, he breathed deeply of the sweet air and drank his fill of the pure water. He then fell asleep in the shade of a great chestnut tree.

Philosophy 2050

It was about three in the morning, and Zero and Mike were drunk as two armadillos. They had just discussed the latest breakout from Headwaters, and had lamented the needless loss of life. “So what good are you then,” said Zero, “I ask you for a simple solution to a simple zombie problem, and I get useless gibberish.”
Mike said. “Hey, I’m not a goddamn doctor, I’m a philosopher– ask me something easier– like what is the nature of God!”
“Okay, smart guy shoot,” said Zero.
“Well, uh…” Mike said,  “God is not like a person. He is not a He. God is an empty space, without human attributes, without emotion, without regard for life. God did not create anything. He does not exist”. Mike took a long draw on the bottle, then went on, “But something does…. I don’t know what it is. But it might be a sort of consciousness made out of energy. If that’s true, then the Conscious Energy is also not like us, or not like the biggest part of us. It just exists so that a very small part of us can identify with it, Floating around up in the sky like.”
“Are you sure about that?” said Zero skeptically.
“I think so”, said Mike. “look at it this way– of the many species that have existed on earth– estimates run as high as fifty billion– more than 99% have disappeared. Hell, all life today amounts to little more than a rounding error!” Another strong pull on the bottle. “Beyond the five great die-offs in history, the next– the six– is due fucking right now, and it includes us! I shit you not, my furry feathered friend!”
So Zero glances at his own bottle, slightly waggles his empty at the heavy breasted barkeep, and bravely joins the fray, “Okay, I’m not sure where God fits in here, but if the history of our material life, stretches back around 4000 years back to the Egyptians, and maybe 800 years for America, leaves us about 30 years of intelligent self awareness for our own stupid selves, right so far?”
“That’s about it Bucko”, says Mike. “Not much time to formulate a remedy you’d be right to guess!”
Then Zero really goes out on a limb, “What about all the beautiful golden Panamanian frogs that disappear before we even knew they existed!” The bar fox hands him a cold one,  “That right there is the best argument for learning how to appreciate the spiritual realm– It’s a crystal clear argument, made out of the most sublime beauty…  a pure beauty that will completely vanish in a very short time.”
Mike says, “Yeah, If it’s only a matter of the readjusted tilt of the earth, or a reversal of the magnetic polarity, then I suppose I can retire in happy childlike incomprehension, but if it’s the direct result of man’s ruthless inhumanity to himself and to the earth, then the innocence of my heart is diminished by my complicity. Your’s too no doubt.”
Zero looks longingly at the stained ceiling, “If we have missed our chance to evolve into gods, it would be a great damn shame. That’s why those Nice Aliens are coming down to save our sorry irresponsible asses! Because our destiny–our potential– is not to squander this perfect globe in unknowing stupidity, it is to grow up, to become adults in the universe!”
Mike hiccups, drools on his shirt, then says, “So true, So true. If that’s not true, then the atmosphere in the mine-shaft becomes unbearable, the canary can do nothing but chirp and jump around in his cage, and then die”.
Mike reached for the ash tray and lost his balance and started falling in slow motion off the bar stool. “Hey grab aholt of something man”, Zero said out the side of his mouth, “You’re fading fast.” Boom! Mike lay flat on his back on the filthy barroom floor. “Holy shit, man, I thought that was a damn well thought-out exchange of learned bullshit!”
Zero says, “It was man, we got it going on fer sure. Fer sure man.”

Oskar Farrow 2058

…standing at a holographic display wall is a short stocky figure.  Dressed in a one-piece battlesuit of mithiril/kevlar combinate ,he does not carry a sidearm, but attached behind his back, centered on the spine, is a 13” dagger in the florentine style…a 14th Century original.  His wide flat head was the same width as his neck, if it was indeed a neck.  Rolls of fat padded the base of his skull, but his body was rangy.  He had a good layer of fat that indicated good living or at least high-calorie living, beneath the gut, however, were solid layers of muscle like stainless steel bands.  His ears are tiny and located very high on his head, this combined with a flat plug nose gives him a oddly pig-like demeanor.  …and his hands… It looked like his fingers had been fused together in pairs, this coupled with a huge, opposable thumb created an effect much like a cloven hoof.  Clumsy as they looked, they were dexterious as a surgeons.

It was, perhaps, not so odd  given that Oskar’s DNA was 71.2265555% porcina ordininalis,  the remainder, homo sapiens.  Oskar Farrow was a Hyper-Pig. In the early 21st Century the inestimable firm of Eli Lilly and Company unveiled the latest in Genome Engineering…and named it the Mannimal…just like H.G.Wells…In Oskars case, the genetic material came from an Arkansas Razorback boar,  the rest from the frozen DNA of Edward Teller, step-father of the atom bomb.

The tests were utter failures across the board except for the pigs.  It seemed the porcine personality was highly suited to this trashball planet, given that humans had done such a terriffic job of fucking the place up.  Humans had created the perfect environment for pigs.  Nature hates an empty niche and Hyper-pigs flourished.  And evolved…it was not long until they were smarter, stronger and much hungrier than their masters.   As they flourished they became ever more  hateful of their overlords.  The pigs watched in horror and glee as the humans beshat the very earth that they lived on.   Shit, they weren’t even classed as human
and they knew better than that!…”and they call us filthy”  he thought darkly.

For three hundred years they were bond slaves,  mere chattel for anyone who could lay down the two point seven million EUROS to own one…it turns out there were a lot of people who did.  For the most part they served as highly effective personal servants, traders, bankers and commodity brokers, they were prized by their owners for the fortunes they created. Domestic pigs for sure.  But there were other test strains developed by Lilly.  The Army had an interest in special kind of soldier.  Superior intellect combined with the desire to rip your guts out with their teeth.

Which leads us to Oskar.  Trained in black OPS by the trans Canadien/Columbian Army, shuffled to hundred shitty little wars in bad climates before he killed and stole enough to buy his way out.  Now he lived in the lower depths of Kokomo…old Kokomo, the part that was buried a hundred years ago when the great nano-building bug infestation ran amuck.  From this command center he ran his OPS to anywhere in local space…As the head of a secret brotherhood of  pigmen sworn to oversee the destruction of the human race.  Known only by his code:  wildcard, his exploits were legend to hyper-pigs throughout the solar system.
He had personally taken the lives of hundreds of humans and hypers, using only a simple blade, but what he held in his control now could alter forever the course of the planet.  Oskar Farrow, the Wildcard,  had waited long for this day. His odd hoofhands flew across the holoboard .  Tripping the triggers.  dropping the carriers into the population.  It needed only a few hundred infected humans leaving to different points around the globe…someplace like Heathrow, say….wait a few weeks and the human population would be in a blind stupid panic. In a year, the human population would be low enough for the brotherhood to come out of cover, time for the piggies to play.

“Ah, the delicious irony” he thought, “First thing they did at Lilly…made us immune to any form of this shit” he chuckled “let’s see how these high and mighty scumsuckers deal with this one!” Yep….fuckin ironic…SWINE FLU!”   Oskar started laughing and just couldn’t stop.

Malaga 2051

Zero was surprised at his nervousness at the prospect of the meeting with Owen. He was used to apprehension in face of obvious danger, but not when comfortably ensconced in the lobby of an simulated upscale English hotel on the Costa Del Sol. Monkey Mike had fizzled out on the Janjiweed score, and suggested they go straight to the source. Owen Summerset was a fairly notorious figure on the coast and his reputation troubled Zero in a way he wasn’t familiar with.

“Mr. Tolerance sir?” said a crisp voice not three feet behind him. Zero startled and rose from the leather settee, “Uh, Yes, Uh… Hi.” He stretched out a hand that was ignored as another guy came up and they both motioned for zero to follow them. Walking across the lobby they headed for the bank of chrome elevators. Zero said, “Nice place, huh?” which was ignored as well, as the door silently opened and they all crowded into the empty elevator. Zero’s unease was quickly transforming into ill temper at the brusk way he was being treated, even by these flunkies, and he felt a flippant disrespect for the whole process. The doors opened into a spacious office with a long bank of windows overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean. No hallway to another apartment, no fancy locked doors with guards standing at post. Just whamo, and the elevator is the front door. He was led across smooth carpeting to a cluster of leather chairs in front of a broad mahogany desk. A smallish balding man stood and reached across the polished wood,

“Good morning Mr. Tolerance!” he boomed with more enthusiasm than seemed appropriate.
Zero smiled and took his hand. “Hi Mr. Summerset, preciate your time.”

“No problem, we have much to discuss!” Owen walked around to the end of the desk and picked up a package that Zero hadn’t noticed and said, Let’s retire to a more comfortable arrangement, shall we?”
“I’ve heard much about you, May I call you Zero?” Owen chuckled as they sat down near the bar in sumptuous chairs facing the windows. “I think I knew your father, Ha Ha, we love a lively imagination around here.” Zero sat, nodding as if he understood.

“This small quantity should satisfy your request,” Owen handed the box to Zero, “I need no payment beyond your deposit, this was rather a test to see if you were really able and willing to circumvent our admittedly over-zealous Spanish law.”

“Thanks, …I was…appreciate…”
” Well, here’s the deal, Zero,”interrupted Owen,  “I need a man that has your unique set of skills, your combination of military background and your demonstrated faith in your own judgement regardless of the law of the land so to speak.” Owen leaned back as he spoke and eyed Zero over a fresh Brandy.

“Well, Uh, that’s cool, but what kinda work we talkin about?” asked Zero.
“Zero, I consult for some people who provide a valuable service for mankind, and I don’t exaggerate. There are forces at work in these trying times that need controlled… These people are motivated by greed and self interest, and they’re fouling up the natural order of things.” Owen spoke with severity. Zero’s mind was trying to catch up, “You mean here, or in America?”
“All over the friggin world Zero!” snapped Owen, The whole damn reconstruction program has been undermined for too long by self styled neo-religious, self righteous, bleeding heart hold-outs for freedom and peace and all that shit !”
“Well the wars are really not quite over sir..” ventured Zero.

“As far as the First World is concerned, the War is over Zero!” Owen frowned. “There are strong efforts underway to reestablish the TR orbit and to restrict global movement to everyone below the equator that doesn’t have clearance. The Godheads are squashed, the Neocons are derailed and the way is clear except for one damn group of assholes in your country that are mounting enough of a resistance that they need to be stopped, Now!”

“I might not be the guy…”
“Yes you are goddammit! That box in your hand proves it!”

Spiderbush and Leonard TaTanka Sapa 2050

Fifty miles of asphalt and ten miles of gravel ended at the driveway that looped around a simple cinderblock house nestled in a jagged bluebrown hillside. The closest neighbor lived two miles away and visited only when his chainsaw needed a special blessing. Charlie Spiderbush stood on a west-facing ledge, learning how to fly. He knew he could do it, so he was doing it. He had read the instruction manual and studied all of the pictures. His bright red kite pulled tautly on the string that he was tugging between each laugh and whoop.

Leonard TaTanka Sapa had to pee like a race horse. Every once in a while the white man gets a metaphor right, he thought. So he pulled his ancient Ford pickup to the gas pump of Smiley’s Casino and Lounge, in spite of the fact that he only had two quarters left in his pocket and that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Leonard pulled himself to his feet using the trucks door and the steering wheel as his crutch. He then lumbered inside. That gunshot wound in Greenland had really gimped his leg pretty bad, and it was going to take some serious medicine to get anywhere close to healed. “ How you doin, Smiley?” he asked the owner, in passing, as he limped straight for the facility. “ I got you this time, Leo. You’re going down.” Smiley said. Smiley did not smile. In fact, his pock marked face, which he had acquired years earlier while cooking methamphetamines, did not look so friendly. In the old days, when there was still a big market for American films, Smiley would often get cast on location as Indian Number Two or Three, by which it was understood that he was to be the really scary looking Indian. Usually all he had to do was stand there and make a mean expression and it paid pretty good. Besides, everybody on the Res knew he was really a sweetheart, once he had finally got off the drugs and booze.
“ You got no game.” Leo said and disappeared into the bathroom. Leo had learned to pee many years ago, at dawn, after a peyote ceremony. He was standing next to the greatest medicine man of his generation at the time and the sun was coming up over the butte where they had spent the night in prayer and song. The old man was releasing a prodigious, golden stream that gleamed in the sunlight, and Leo was having trouble going at all, although he painfully needed to. “You think it is a shameful thing and so you make a knot in you belly. That’s why you don’t piss right.” Charlie Walking Holy had told him. “ You have to do it like you breathe, like I showed you….When you take something in, you take all of it in, all the food , all the air, all the water is holy. And when you let it out, let all of it go until you are completely hollow. That’s the only way to become Wicasa Wakan, you must become truly hollow and then you will have plenty of room for whatever you need to come in.”

“ Don’t hold on to the good stuff, because it does not belong to you, you are only using it. And don’t hang on to the bad stuff because it will kill you. Be Aware. Let it go.” The young Leo then took a mighty pee and let go of many, many things besides his water that morning. “Washtee.” The old man said. Lesson learned. Now, in the bathroom at Smileys, Leo was a seasoned pro at work and when he finished emptying of five hundred miles of bad road, as he was zipping his jeans he saw the faint shine in the air that he had been looking for. He followed it around the corner back into the noisy truckstop. That glint now lead him to a row of slot machines. The faint glow was another thing Walking Holy had shown Leo, much later.

Over the years he realized that everyone could see it, but you had to train yourself to notice it, especially if you really needed it. It was subtle and it could be a trickster. The light came to rest on a slot machine that was decorated with spiders. “ Iktomi” Leo said the insects name in Lakota, and he knew it was a trick. Leo had always been astounded by spiders and respected them greatly, but they had never been any part of his medicine They always creeped him out a little, and this , he knew, was a dangerous vulnerability. So he put his last two quarters, instead, into the slot machine that was right next to the spider machine. It was decorated with circus clowns. Leo lucked out, and the jackpot dumped noisily into the bucket as buzzers went off and circus music played. Iktomi was not without a sense of humor. Leo then took the quarters to the cash register and told Smiley;” I need to fill up on four…and a bag of tobacco.”
“ Ok” Smiley said and let the big slot machine win pass without comment, because there was nothing unusual about it.
“ You want to try the Monster this morning?” he had already begun preparing it, so he hoped the answer was yes. Anyway, it was a good show, and his customers were bored and a bit surly, now that nothing worked, anywhere in the world, half the time, and a little low tech , good clean fun might mellow things out a bit.
“ I told you, Smiley, you got no game. Bring it.” Leo chided. At a brawny six foot eight, Leo was a likely contestant in the Worlds Largest ‘Monster’ Burrito eating contest, and as a man of material poverty, winning the free food was both a boon and a necessity for him, sometimes. Smiley rang the big bell next to the kitchen and announced that he had a taker on the ‘Monster’ contest. People hooted and catcalled. A couple of guys called Leo ’sucker’ and it was game on. If you didn’t eat it all, of course, you had to pay for it, and it was expensive, so very few ever tried. For Smiley’s sake, Leo wanted made it look good. He looked down at the nearly six pounds of beans,cheese, potatoes salsa and peppers and rolled his eyes as if to say ‘what have I got myself into.’ The crowd laughed. Then he took a couple of bites and said ’MMMM that’s good’ and people, of course , believed him, although, in his vast burrito experience, he would certainly have privately admitted that it was just fair. Then it was just a matter of a guy with a huge belly who had not eaten in two days, very deliberately dismantling the daunting meal, taking his time about it and receiving a nice ovation at the end, like the one after a particularly boring Superbowl: considering all the time and trouble, you have to pretend like you enjoyed it. When everything was settled up, Smiley walked Leo to his car. Leo sang a medicine song, made a ceremony and left a tobacco offering by a tree in the parking lot. Smiley knew exactly what TaTanka Sapa was doing and he took a cigarette out of his own pack and set it down, too. It was a spirit offering, in gratitude.

“ Washtee.” Leo said. “ Where you headed , then?” Smiley asked after a short silence.
“ You see those stars up there?” Leo pointed into the desert sky. Smiley’s face turned as white as it was ever going to get. He knew that section of sky like the back of his hand. It was a clear night with no clouds and spectacular visibility. The stars there, maybe eight or nine of them, were gone.
“ What is it?” he asked the medicine man. “ If you look real close , you can see that that black there is a little darker than the rest of the sky. No matter where you look, it’s darker right there, where those stars are missing. That darkness also seems to be moving. Can you see that, like swirling.?” “ I don’t know , man. I just see that those stars are gone.”
“ Well I’m going up on Wolf Butte, if I can figure out anything about this, that’s where it will happen. I wish Grandpa Charlie was alive.” Leo said and Smiley nodded. “ You need a gun, Leo?”

“ I’m done with guns.” He answered.

Zephyr’s Death 2051

Zero was confused as usual, but he had his marching orders, and a brand new secret off-shore account with three million dollars in it. He’d flown first class from Malaga to Phoenix with only one stop at la Guardia. He’d just walked out of the elevators at the Hotel Commodore when a scuffle in the lobby caught his eye. Several hotel employees were fussing over a body lying on the floor in a pool of blood. One glance told him who it was and he sprung into his familiar action mode.

“Get the Hell outa the way!” he shouted. “I’ll handle this you stupid bastards!” Zero grabbed the right arm of Zepher and dragged him across the floor trailing a long streak of bright red blood. All the way down the hall to a side entrance. An old lady came out of a side door and slipped in the blood and feel hard on her rump with a yelp as Zero pushed the panic hardware into the alley.

“Mike, Open the door, Dammit!” the side door of a white van slid open and Mike reached over the front seat to help haul Zepher inside. “Holy Shit!” screeched Zero as he jumped in the side seat and yelled, “Go, Go, Drive Dammit!” The van tore down the alley and out onto a cross street with a squealing of tires narrowly missing a bread truck.
“Jesus Christ!” mumbled Zero as the van soared swerved around traffic and evaded what they both expected to be pursuing troops. A road block loomed ahead marking the boundary of the Metro Green Zone as Zero yelled

“I got the bastards, run that sonofabitch!” Zero reached up and released the overhead hatch and struggled up behind a M-60 machine gun mounted on the roof. Ripping off a blue plastic tarp, he snapped the ammo carrier over a fresh belt and pulled off a stream of hot lead straight ahead into the running figures as Mike whipped back and forth between the concrete barriers and floored the van over the paved area and into the gravel utility roads turning right and left at every turn. “Where the Hell are you Going?” yelled Zero falling back down into his seat.
“I don’t know” snapped Mike, Isn’t the warehouse round here somewhere?” Zero strained to peer out the back and couldn’t see through the dust cloud trailing the van. “Find anything off road!” He snapped. “Pull into that garage– left— right there!”
Whamo as the van snapped the flimsy yellow striped board at the entrance and roared up the ramp into a darkened parking garage. “Okay stop here,” said Zero. And he leaped from the van grabbing the 60 and trotted down the ramp about fifty feet and sat cross-legged panting on the concrete. He heard voices down below and saw a lone figure walking quickly up towards him. Mike was standing against the wall with a 16 loosely held in his hand. The guy slowed to a walk and saw Zero sitting there, but in the dim light couldn’t identify the gun laying in his lap. He kept walking, slowing down and finally within twenty feet, He stopped and said, “You guys parking by the hour, or the night?”
Zero closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall with a sigh. The cold concrete felt great. “what you suggest buddy, which is the best deal?”
The guy looked sheepishly at Mike with the assault rifle, and at Zero sitting on the drive with a machine gun in his lap, and said, “Well, I’m thinkin a twenty would buy you a night of trouble free parking, completely secure and low key, so to speak.
“Mike turned slowly and walked back to the van, Zero strained to his feet and reached in his pocket for his wallet. “Thanks a bunch guy.” he said. He turned to walk away and the guy said over his shoulder. “Don’t leave no valuables in the vehicle, dude.” “No prob”, said Zero as he shuffled up the drive ramp toward the van. Mike had turned on the interior light and laid Zepher out in a reasonably prone position. His skin was pale and drawn looking, the lips pearly blue. The back of his head was all messed up with sticky dried blood and it still seemed to be seeping out. “Well, this’ll take a miracle,” mumbled Mike. as he reached for his tool box. “You got any band aids?”

“Mike man, Oh man, this is a fairly large problem.” Zero looked blankly at Mike and mumbled in a low whisper.
“They gonna be pretty damn pissed about this.”

Mike looked down at the dead body of Zephyr and back at Zero, “Where’s this alien thing supposed to be?” Looking at the handfull of dripping goo in Zero’s trembling hand…
“Where’s the that fukkin new radio?” said Zero ruffling through a pouch hanging on the back of the rider seat. Grabbing the radio set out of the pouch he flicked the power button and said, “2-6 sleeper to Ivy Coast, come in!”
He started to wipe the blood off his hand onto Zephyr’s coat. “We’re gone, man”, to Mike in a low voice, “Let’s pack this shit up.” He flicked the radio again

“Ivycoast,comebak! over”, nothing but a crackling buzz said the radio. Zero jumped into the drivers seat and turned on the van.
“Mike, Zeph’s gonna get ripe soon, strip his ID n get ready to dump his ass, and Mike, Pull that artificial metal arm off too”. The van coasted down the exit ramp while Zero thought long and hard about his next step. They stopped at the guard shack and glanced inside to see if anyone would notice them leaving.
“Mike, I think Zeph’s got something metal, we need to get. Inside his head, his chest, somewhere, grab that strap round his neck, grab it.”
Mike made a face and said, “Goddamn, Zero, his heads a frikkin total mess you know!” He rummaged around in the back of the van looking for tools and rags and stuff while he grumbled, “Cleanout a deadguys head! dig round inside a freaking chest? Are you kidding me?!”

Zero pulled hesitantly out onto the deserted road and headed south, out of town. It was night and well past curfew, so he kept his lights off and just coasted along about twenty trying to look like he was a secret patrol or something. The landscape turned more industrial and as he passed a likely spot, he pulled in and around behind a dilapidated metal shed. Killing the engine he jumped in the back and shown a little flashlight into Zephyr’s busted skull. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the glovebox and thumbed the top off splashing liqueur all over Zephyr’s face and head.
“Shitshitshit,” he mumbled to himself as he stared at the face of a man struggling to stay alive. Zephyr’s pale lips seemed to be moving, blood bubbled from his mouth and he moaned. Zero reluctantly leaned closer.

“I am not Zephyr…. You are….” He stopped and tried to open his eyes, and said,  “Take the pouch…., uh, my neck”  Mike stood dumbly outside the open back doors and stared in at Zero and Zephyr.

Zero felt light headed, amazed that this bloody chaos of flesh before him could still talk at all, although, it seemed, not for much longer. Zepher’s throat was gurgling like an empty keg, now. “Take the Crescent…,” he said with much effort,”… I  understand…. You, … are the One.”
With brain dripping off his fingers, Zero slowly pulled his hand from inside the man’s shattered skull, where he’d started rummaging for the mysterious metal object. He slowly touched the bloody leather pouch tightly strapped around Zephyr’s neck. He opened the pouch and drew out the metal cup shaped thing. He held it in both hands as he looked into the eyes of the drying man.  Zephyr looked back at Zero and smiled as he took his last breath.
Mike looked through the van at Zero with a dark scowl and said, “Stow the drama, okay? This is a dead man, we gotta dump him and get the fuck outta here!”
Zero mutely nodded and stared ahead as Mike jerked the body out of the van. The body flopped hard on the ground, and Zero said quietly to himself,  “Be careful… be, careful…” Mike drug the tattered remains of Zepher into the darkness of the shed and Zero could hear metal corrugated roofing being thrown around and crashing chunks of cement blocks.

A soft rain was beginning to fall, reminding him of his childhood, when rain was a soothing welcome sound. He leaned back and closed his eyes tight. He didn’t want to think about Zephyr.

Leonard TaTanaka Sapa 2051

” Wasichiu,nudlioticus haoli boys.” Leonard TaTanaka Sapa exclaimed as he watched the slapstick mishandling of the chosen one through a quickly fogging over windshield inside his old truck.

The phrase had no meaning unless you happened to be a Lakota who was once married to a Hawaiian and lived, most of the time, with the Navajo. Then it meant ‘stupid white devil trash who know nothing of the right ways’, more or less.  He rolled down his window and shouted at Zero. ” Just exactly how stupid are you?” he wanted to know.

Zero , who had not seen Leo glide up next to the van, distracted as he was by the confusing and unfamiliar feelings Zepher had somehow generated in his head, rolled down his window, enjoyed the rain on his face for and moment and replied. ” Plenty! Who in the fuck are you?”

Technically it was not supposed to be possible for Leo to feel fear as a warrior and medicine man of his high degree, but as he realized that Zephyr might have already transferred some knowledge to this rube, he had a moment of caution that would have felt like terror to a regular guy.
“Tell your buddy to stop what he is doing,” Leo told Zero. “and give me a hand”.
Leo got out of the ford and took some things from beneath the tarp he kept bungeed over the truck bed. They were a bundle of white sage, the longest natural quartz crystal Zero had ever seen and a buffalo robe large enough to completely wrap an adult male body.

” Hey Mike,” Zero yelled into the shed. “Hold on…New plan.”
“Do you know why there’s no army on us? This guy was a big deal. The biggest deal, ever”.
“Don’t smell right.” Zero agreed.
“It’s a hundred kinds of not right,” Leo said. ” Many wanted him dead, but in the end it was practically an accident, a jealous madman. But the reason we’re not swarmed with cops is over there. Leo pointed toward the west, where the sun should have set an hour ago, but had not. In fact the evening was getting brighter and there was a distant sound like thunder rolling up from the horizon.”
” Nukes?” Zero asked. ” The Hellion Greys must have had an accident. How those fukers manage space travel, I will never know.”
” Hey Mike, get Zephyr back out here, prontosauras, We got to get seriously moving!”
Leo said, “Cool your jets, we’ll do this right, and then run like hell.’
” Hey man, I don’t even know your name. Who died and made you king?” Zero demanded.
Leo took his Zippo and set the end of his sage bundle on fire and waved the smoke in a ceremonial manner like he learned as a boy. He sang a death song that was older than anyone could remember back when his great grand father, who was called Sitting Bull, had taught it to his grandfather.
“There are no bosses here.” He said, “white people call me Leo Sitting Bull.”

“This is a goddamn fairytale!” bitched Mike after he rehauled Zeph out from under the twisted corrugated steel and laid him out under the sprinkling rain. “now I got TWO bosses who don’t have a damn bit of real authority over my ass!” He retreated back under the shed roof and watched the old Indian dude waving a burning hand-full of some weird corn stalk or something. Zero sat in the open van looking toward the west, watching a strange cloud mounting higher in the sky.

Phoenix Attack 2051

South of Phoenix was a sprawling military complex surrounding an aging airfield from back in 2018 . the sirens had been moaning for three hours and all six of the ancient Rapters and four of the newer jumpjets had scrambled and screamed off into the orange western skies. The perimeter was on high alert and defenders were sitting on bunkers, heads held tightly to radios waiting for any information that would explain the intermittent flashes of light and the rolling thunder over the distant mountains. Julian Pope was an RTO on the extreme eastern slope of the low hills west of the city. He stood in a watch tower looking towards the setting sun, and monitored radio traffic on the command frequency, as a garbled voice kept repeating the same message. “Numerous greys easterrn bound, thousand fwwt, After three repetitions it went silent. The chatter from the pilots was too fast and unintelligible, but the tone was unmistakable. Shit was happening and coming this way.

At first the Hellion ships were indistinct smudges against the evening sky, but Julian had seen them before and knew what he was looking at. No lights, a loose formation of flat grey craft flying slowly about three thousand feet off the ground. They didn’t seem to have a front or back, and no aerodynamic surfaces that held them aloft, the ships seemed more like a cluster of metal plates with a flattened ball in between them. As they neared the base, the surfaces shimmered in the lowering light and seemed to flicker on and off. Two ships veered off to the south and two to the north and two came straight over the guard shack. Julian stepped out from under the roof and looked straight up to the bottom of the craft and studied the underbelly as if he was gonna be tested later. It looked like thing was made of a dull metal with overlapping seams and braces connecting to the center structure. No sound at all, just the feeling of air being displaced by a massive moving object. The nausea hit Julian first. He grabbed the railing of the shack and went down to one knee.

“What the hell is THIS shit”, he muttered out loud, as he straightened up and grabbed the radio off the window ledge and called in. “Sixteen to command, come in!” Julian closed his eyes and tried to clear his head as he looked east after the departing craft.

Both ships had accelerated and climbed in a long arch and seemed to set up for another pass. Just then the explosions started. A wave of smoke and debris crossed the base from the western perimeter as if a great broom were sweeping the desert floor. Buildings vanished and small figures dashed for the bunkers.

“Crap!” Julian jumped down the short ladder and ducked into the small banker behind the tower. Crouching inside he felt out of breath and sick as hell. He fell down against the back wall and covered his head as the air and dust sucked out the open door, and early evening turned into dead of night. The bunker shuddered like a tornado was hitting it. Julian convulsed and puked in the dirt as he crouched tightly in the back corner. The metal tower twisted off it’s concrete foundation and vanished, and the roof of the bunker rattled furiously as if it were next. Julian choked and dry heaved, his stomach hurt like hell. He had sticky puke mixed with sand all over his hands and clothes and he tried to hold his breath as the tumult outside finally seemed to diminish. The air was thick and stank of sulphur, cordite and dirt, smoke blew steadily following the force of the wind. He opened his eyes, still dark as hell, but the mayhem was over for the moment he thought. “Where’s our fukkin guys he said to himself!” He crawled outside on his hands and knees and looked over the hill at the base, It was gone, everything was gone, all the buildings, all the bunkers, all the people. Smoke and dust drifted upwards and a sickly pale yellow light seemed to envelope the whole scene.

“Good God!” said Julian as he struggled to his feet, trying to catch a breath. “I can’t believe this shit!” He bent over and puked again.

The Hellion bombing was militarily sucessful. Estimate two million people were vaporized in the twinkling of an eye. Three million were roasted. Four million were torn to pieces by glass shard, metal, and building debris travelling at hypersonic speeds. Five million survived till the next day. Six million lingered with radiation poisoning for a few days longer, then died. Consider the mortality rate at 100%, no need to send assistance, quarantine area indefinitely. End of transmission.

Flee Arizona 2051

Zero was too preoccupied to answer all Mike’s questions. They were probably a hundred miles East of Phoenix driving on the secure E/W Interstate grid, off limits to civilian traffic, and Monkey Mike felt suddenly alone, alienated because of Zero’s “change of mind”, but too scared of their perilous situation to shut up.
“How we know we aren’t driving right into the shit?” Mike said.

Zero flexed his hands on the wheel, first the right, then the left as he drove through the night. They’d stopped at a blackmarket for gas and topped off the portables and the auxiliary and could drive all the way to the N/S intersection in Tulsa— or what used to be Tulsa till they’d heard interstat report that Hellian had cut a twenty mile wide swath all across the provinces from California to Oklahoma.

“We still have to go north and this is the only way I can figure,” said Zero”. I gotta hook up with the Independents … guy named Jeremiah.”
Mike couldn’t see Zero’s face in the low light of the dash, but he looked anyway.

Zero said, “I’m tired of flying this thing in the dark– we get my internal fixed we’ll have a better idea where to run, or how we can hit ‘em.”

He glanced over as Mike said, “How long you had that thing?”
Zero rubbed the back of his head absently. “Government Issue, man, the whole program, I can talk to satellites when it runs right, you know, like Zeph’s Alien trinket, which I think I got it safe right here in my shirt.”

Mike said, “Be neat if they can fix it up–stick it in your head. Then you’d be the new main dude, right? Plugged straight into the God frequency, eh?.”

Zero thought to himself, but said, “I think Zeph got inside my head back there.” I think he went organic. Comsat doesn’t allow that shit, but it feels like a data dump, but better somehow.” I’ll know when I get to the Rez, or the Mobile. I’m not sure where Jeremiah is. Or how much shit I’ll catch for losing Him. But I’ll tell ya this, he flat out did something Bizzarr to my head. Like I feel smarter but kinda scared, Figure that one out.”

Mike leaned back, feeling better now that Zero was talking. “Now that the Hellian are down here, I think I’ll hang with your team, after you’re reinforced that is.” Zero slowed for a small scattered group of synthetic zombies walking right down the middle of the highway. “Goddamm, They’re off the reservation I’d say, exclaimed Mike.

“Yeah, frikking weird bastards, keep your eyes open.” Mike looked out the windows front and back. “How’d they get out here?”

Zero said ” they’re immune to pain at at a certain point, electricity don’t hurt if you don’t feel it. They probably burnt off the top of their nervous system, they sure burnt off their clothes.”

Mike stared out the back at the figures receding in the tailights. “I just crossed my threshold for weird shit, Zero, I’m way due for RnR in the islands, man.”

“Ask the Hellian if they’ll cut you some time off. heh, heh.”chuckled Zero.

Medicine Pipe 2051

Conroe and Zero carefully scooped up what remained of the Indian, his clothes and burnt body and wrapped it in a blanket he found in the truck. They drove several miles into the desert until they found a sizable plateau rock, tall as a man and flattened on top to act as a burning platform. There they set to a civilized flame what was left of Leonard Tatanka Sapa. “Know any Indian words?”Conroe asked quietly, Zero stared at the ground, “I don’t know any words in White man.” They watched the fire burn itself out on the rock, and listened to a far off coyote call a mournful cry, and then Zero and Conroe piled back in the pickup and drove back to town as the sun was peeking over the distant mountaintops. On the dashboard lay the long pipe Leonard had smoked before he died. Zero had resisted burning it with the body. He had had a sense that if it carried any residual power from the man who had owned it, that it might come in handy someday. Plus, he remembered thinking that the smoke was something he hadn’t tried before, something not quite dope, but intoxicating in some strange way. Plus the pipe itself was just a very cool thing, like you see in museums or something. Very old and well worn. The wooden shaft was polished smooth from ages of handling. You just don’t let something like this get away.

Sharkship 2051

After a few minutes of driving Zero felt that too silent stillness that always preceded the odd displacement of atmosphere which told him, by now, that a Hellion craft was about to appear.
The pick up went dead and coasted to a halt.
“ We’ve had it now.’ Conroe said.
“Screw that “ Zero responded and jumped from the truck, but before he could get to his guns he saw that he was surrounded by Greys. Instinctively, he reached back into the cab dashboard and grabbed the pipe.
He held the pipestone in his right hand and pointed the stem at the Hellions with his left. When a bluff is all you got, you bluff.
Then an amazing thing happened.
The Greys showed, for the first time in Zeros experience, real fear. They spread their large, strange hands and held them above their heads, like they were now the victims of some old time movie stage coach robbery.
“ Damn straight.” Zero told them and shook the pipe a little, as if it might start firing bullets any second.
The Hellion craft was a mini version of a Jumpjet, and was hovering unusually close to the ground, these guys were just some kind of patrol unit and easily could be as disoriented by the time flip, reality shift as a lot of humans were, Zero figured.
The ship was wide open.
“ So, Conroe are you coming, or what?”

Conroe and Zero inched closer to the open door of the craft as it slowly hovered a foot off the ground. The Greys’ made a path and Zero glanced inside quickly to be sure the cockpit was empty. “Hop in,” he said to Conroe quietly, raising the pipe above his head, he instinctively felt that gesture had the most impressive affect on the aliens. As the Eagle feathers spun in the wind, the grey’s eyes widened and they backed into each other making room for Zero and Conroe to climb inside the ship.

“GET THE FUCK BACK YOU BASTARDS!” yelled Zero and he flourished the pipe in the air. The greys jumped back ten feet and Zero and Conroe  scanned the interior and the control panels in a frantic attempt to see if anything was recognizable enough to function for a couple of white man who’d never drove a space ship before.  The inside was dark and disoriented as hell. Different textured surfaces curved overhead and there didn’t seem to be any chairs to sit on, At first glance it didn’t even look like a windshield offered any view out the front. Zero hesitated to close the door because he knew it would be harder to figure this thing out in the dark, and plus, he didn’t even know how to close the door. Impulsively, Zero jumped back onto the ground and reached out and grabbed the closest grey and jerked him into the ship. “Close the Damn door!” he shouted to the Alien and surprisingly the little grey reached out and with a flick of his wrist the door slid shut with a soft thunk. It was indeed darker inside the craft. “Okay fella,” said Zero, “Lets get this thing going!” He stared at the grey trembling in the aft section of the cockpit, but the little guy just opened his eyes wider and obviously didn’t understand.

Conroe said, “Simpler, man– like, lets fly, or make this thing fly, okay?” Then the grey caught on and almost apologetically squeezed between Zero and Conroe and passed his hand over a nondescript slanted shelf running around a low wall behind Zero, and the interior came alive. the ceiling immediately seemed to disappear and what looked like a complete dashboard lit up and all manner of controls appeared ready for someone with brains and a legal drivers license.

“Where do we sit?” said Zero with a wild hope that these crazy aliens didn’t drive all over the universe standing up. The grey pointed to the floor and three dark cylindrical flat topped tubes grew up to seating level and Conroe tentatively sat down on one and said.”To hard, to small, wait, its getting better. Zero man, this thing is adjusting to my butt!” Zero stepped over and sat down at the same time as he was becoming aware that if he looked in a particular direction he could see through the skin of the craft. It seemed to manifest a window wherever he needed one. He saw the assembled greys outside standing too close to the ship, pushing the sides with their flat hands, and looking like they were trying to open the door, not two feet from where he stood inside.

And as he sat there, looking outside through the transparent walls of the space ship, and as his slow mind tried to compose a request to the little alien to drive the ship up and away. The ship immediately sensed his thoughts, and before he knew it, they were suddenly a thousand feet in the air traveling forward very fast.

“Look at the floor man!” yelled Conroe. Zero looked down and saw the earth below zooming under them at a high rate of speed. “Woweee! shouted Conroe, Thissunofabitchhawlsass!” The craft sailed up into the sky and climbed to what could have been 50,000 feet and Zero tried to consciously think to level it out, but the craft was already there. It slowed to a steady speed and seemed to wait for Zero to direct what to do next.  “Okay, Conroe, lets slow down right here and figure out what the hell we’re doing.”

Conroe said, “This is one hell of a machine Zero, let me drive.” Zero looked at Conroe and smiled, “help yourself.” The grey looked back and forth to each of them like an obedient pet, and kept quiet. “I think, said Zero, “that all you do is think of what you want to do and the thing just does it, it reads your mind.”

At that point the ship slowly started to spiral into a right hand corkscrew turn, very slowly, and as it was nearly on its side a series of very subtle straps clipped across their laps and shoulders and they noticed for the first time that the seats had backs. “Are you doing that?” Zero whispered.” and Conroe smiled like an idiot and said, “yeah, check it out.” The ship turned over on its back and pointed its front straight down towards the earth.  The view was breathtaking and Zero and Conroe were spellbound as they gazed with wonder at the beautiful earth below. The little grey sat between them and started fidgeting like he had to take a pee or something. Zero looked down at him and he pointed his floppy finger out the front of the ship to a small grey spot way down by some mountain range.

“Look at that thing,” Zero said to Conroe, “It’s coming closer, I think.” They all watched the faraway but growing grey smudge and Conroe said, “ask the grey dude about the weapons system, man.”

Immediately a small screen appeared on the dashboard that looked like a little TV. It showed the incoming craft close up and in real time. Next to the screen was crawling elevations, front, top and side views, weapons descriptions, everything. And it looked like the incoming ship was another Hellion shark just like they were in, only it seemed a little bigger,and it sure as hell seemed purposeful than they were.

“Fight or Flight man, its your call”, Conroe said. And Zero glanced down at the alien for help and the little guy pointed to another section of the dash. A round pulsing glass globe seemed half buried in the panel, and while Zero didn’t consciously comprehend what he was doing, he seemed to sense that a third course of action might be both available and preferable to his usual two choices…

The alien passed his soft grey hand over the glass and the green light turned to a warm amber. The interior lights dimmed and the outside earth brightened. The stars overhead became more visible and everything inside the cockpit darkened down to near invisibility. “Whoa, This is really getting weird my man”, said Conroe. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Zero and Conroe searched the face of the planet for the approaching craft and saw it seem to steer off course, like it lost sight of its target. “This is the best stuff ever, Zero. I think we’re, like, invisible”. Zero looked over to where Conroe was and he wasn’t there, in fact the whole interior of the cockpit had disappeared. “You there, man?” said Zero quietly,
“Yeah, man, right here, sitting quietly, watching the bad guys flying off way over there.”
The pursuing craft had indeed missed them. It was hundreds of miles away towards the right, or the east, or…. they couldn’t imagine how to describe space and direction way out here.

Zero looked around him and the interior of the ship was black and wherever he looked he saw through the walls into deep space, or he saw the bright earth shimmering below. He held up his hand and moved it back and forth between his field of vision and the sparkling planet. The silhouette was there, his hand was intact. “You know, Conroe this invisible stuff must have taken us off Hellion radar too, eh?”
“What a way to fly, man, this little unit is better than a 55′Ford Cobra.” Conroe leaned back in complete invisibility and stretched out in his seat. “Man o Man.” I can hear you, Zero ole man, but I cannot see you at all. All I can see is the cool blue earth, Which I’m starting to think might provide a hungry man with a nourishing vegimite samitch and a cold brewski, what say you to that idear?”

No less than twelve minutes later, In a shady spot between two eucalyptus trees behind Tildy’s Tavern, an imperceptible swoosh of cold air revealed Zero and Conroe stepping out of what appeared to be thin air. They stood there between the trees talking to a hole in the air, and then… out popped a shortish grey alien. The alien had a long indian pipe in his hand and he handed it to Zero as they walked across the rear parking area behind Tildy’s. Conroe was laughing, and Zero said something about unnecessary car keys, and the little grey alien between them seemed to actually smile, of course it was hard to be sure, because his little mouth was a vertical slot, not a normal type mouth like normal type people have. And he was stark naked except for a series of pouches arranged on a strap around his middle, and a very realistic replica Rolex on his wrist.

The Last Resort 2052

The Last Resort death camp was sheared flat by the initial blasts. Several thousand terminal guests were killed immediately by buildings collapsing, but the remaining thousand were euthanized the following morning. White Biogeek helicopters came midmorning, evacuating only their own personnel, at gunpoint. Thirteen sisters of death had survived, stranded in the ruins, access roads demolished, with no electricity … but with all the canned food needed for years, and enough drugs to last a thousand lifetimes. Four of the sisters committed suicide the following evening. Emily learned to love the desert sunsets, and when wiping the long days’ tears from her eyes, she would try not to pay much attention to the thin film of blood and eyelashes mixed with her tears on the back of her slender finger.

A loud buzzing preceeded the large shadow cast by a Hellion shark vessel. The sleek form of the agile vessel was in front of the golfcart within seconds, hovering ten feet in the air. The golfcart swerved, but the shark adjusted its position to whichever direction the cart was moving. The wire-gridded bottom of the vessel gently pushed down on the top of the golfcart, bringing it to a slow stop. The women immediately jumped out, running from the Hellion shark. The vessel, in swift pursuit, herded both women over the slopes of the golf course, until exhaustion forced them to stop, to face their enemy. The cockpit canopy slid open, long metallic tentacles slid down gracefully, bringing the Hellion octoped to a stately upright stance in the shadow of the hovering shark.

Without hesitation, Emily pulled her .45 from her handbag and fired three rounds at the control panel on the octoped’s flexsuit. The octoped seemed to shake its head from side to side as Emily fired the remaining four rounds into the faceplate a few inches higher. The octoped moved forward a few paces, then bowed with its top right tentacle held level at the waistline. “Oh dear, blast away if you wish, but time is growing short,” said the octoped softly. “I really must get you out of here, now, before the zombies rise. There will be many at a death camp such as this.” It quickly whipped tentacles around each woman’s torso and gracefully pulled them, despite their struggling, into the shark vessel.

The shark’s flight to the fleet above Phoenix took twenty seconds, the velocity had pressed the earth women to the back of the cockpit. “Perhaps I owe you an explanation,” said the pilot as the small vessel docked in the confines of the much larger mothership. “My name is Octobob Squarepants … just kidding … I love your old televison broadcasts, very educational … no, really, my name is Xyggo Butz, my rank is Wing Commander of the Blue Octoid Ectoplasmic Phalanx. And perhaps you are curious about why we are here?”

The mothership was vast and open inside, architecturally rich in smoothly flowing complexities. It could have held thousands of crew members, but Xyggo Butz was the sole inhabitant of this flying cathedral. The women inched out of the shark, unassisted, finding comfort slowly as they wandered the perimeter of the central deck. Xyggo unlatched the faceplate of his flexsuit, showing his face for the first time. His skin was pale blue and textured as fine supple leather, his smile was vertical, and his large kindly eyes protruded three inches above his rounded head.

“Anything you say will make as much sense as anything else that’s been happening,” said Magda. “So you’re not from around here, that much is clear, but why in the fuck do you go around blowing up shit, and speaking fucking English, and looking as ugly as a sick motherfucking nightmare on acid?”

“Ah, to be expected. The combined Grey/Mantis/Octoid fleets have been servicing this planet since the Purr have disappeared, mysteriously, over ten thousand years ago. Maybe that makes thing more confusing for you. Basically, we clean up toxic ectoplastic build-up in the areas serviced. Oh, and don’t worry about the mess, the Manti are quite fussy with returning everything to normal, they are quite adept with temporal mathematics. In fact, the time reversal should be happening soon, which is why I had to rescue the both of you.” The flexsuit stayed in an upright position as Xyggo slithered out of the faceplate opening. He stood upright on his back four, spreading his upper four tentacles in a welcoming gesture.

“Are you telepathic or anything?” asked Emily. “And what did you say about zombies?”

“The zombies will return after the timeflip, an unavoidable side effect, but a minor toothache compare to missing a scheduled ecto-cleaning. Maybe you would say I am a transcendentist? Get it, humans have teeth. Oh, I really shouldn’t hang around with the Greys so much, they have this thing about horrible puns. But if you want to have a good time, the Greys are known as the pranksters of the galaxy. But don’t drink anything they might offer, look at what happened to Ireland.”

“Bad puns … talks too much … and ugly as sin … maybe I ought to bite off you tentacles one by one,” said Magda in confusion. “And what’s that? Strawberries, do I smell strawberries in here?”
“Yeah, I smell it too, fruit salad,”said Emily contently.
“And I can smell you, also,” said Xyggo, afraid to mention his sudden arousal. The padded nubs on the underside of his tentacles were tingling with pleasure as he inhaled the rich musky fragrance emminating from the earth women. The sex organs on his lower tentacles were beginning to expand in an obvious show of interest, which Magda and Emily noticed.

“The Mantis are mathemeticians, the Greys are pranksters, but we Octoids are philosophers, poets … and lovers …” said Xyggo softly.

A curious biochemical exchange filled the air as the women moved closer to Xyggo, looking into his big yellow eyes, examining the tender space where his legs connected to his head, observing every flip and wiggle of his expressive tube-like mouth, lips and tongue articulating the now unspoken words. Magda took off her shirt, exposing her breasts to Xyggo, and Xyggo blushed a thousand shades of blue as racing patterns of emotions flashed across his skin. Emily stripped and moved into the embrace of four loving tentacles as Magda got on her knees to inhale the sweet aroma and taste the new flavors of Xyggo’s supple skin.

Xyggo stretched one tentacle to a nearby control panel, charting the mothership to a secluded orbit on the far side of the Moon. He didn’t want to be too close when the timeflip occured, and he needed a few hours to explore the possibilities offered. The women and octoid merged into a writhing weightless contortion of torsos and tentacles, worthy of being sculpted into thousands of marble statues all named after the thousands of moans and groans of orgasmic alien passion. The universe, for at least a few hours, became a much better place.

Attack of the Sphere’s 2051

Thirty seven Hellion craft of varying configuration hovered in a tight circle a thousand feet above an extinct volcanic caldera eroded smooth-sided by millions of years of storm and sun. A large hum of thirty seven frequencies proceeded the slicing beams that crackled from the underbellies of the dull grey crafts. Granite and olivine and schist vaporized in a fine superhot dust that boiled in tight plumes and flowered upward sixty thousand feet to the cold bottom of space, cooling and retreating downward in a mushroom cap miles in diameter, colored golden red by the sun already below the western horizon.

“Sweet Mother of Madness,” said Conroe as he grappled to the top of the ledge. Spiderbush poked his up head from behind a boulder. Together they watched the Hellion slicing beams excavate this long hidden egg, a perfect sphere of blacker-than-black, nearly a mile in diameter, apparently free for the taking if a million tons of hard rock is not of concern.

“This is worse than Greenland, there were only a dozen bulldozers there … these have more armor, must be ready for a fight … and where is your fukin Dakini bitch?”
“Never talk like that about Dakini, she’s sensitive, she’s holy … huh! I thought she was your friend … but where the fuk is she?”

Cool evening wind poured into the caldera as vaporization forced tight swirling plumes upward in a temporary dust monument higher than could be comprehended from close proximity. Dull orange sunlight reflected down from the bottom of the mushroom cloud, filling the deep blue nightscape with an unwelcoming glow. Half of the spherical form of the black egg was exposed to the greedy determination of the Hellion.

One of the slicer beams flickered momentarily, then went out, then the craft itself imploded with a noisless flash, all debris being sucked into the upward vortex. A second craft flashed into grey dust, acompanying the first into the vortex. A streak of bright blue threaded through the circle of Hellions bulldozers, snipping at their armor playfully, then piercing unprotected underbellies. Ten craft were allowed to break formation and retreat, pitifully slow in comparison to the blue thread tangling the air above the egg. The blue thread momentarily extended to the ten craft, proving that it could have been less charitible with its graces.

Conroe and Spiderbush stood on the ledge, trying to keep focus on the thin thread of blue, but distracted by the last swirling updrafts of superheated dust coming off the black egg.

“Do you think she heard me?” asked Conroe. “Yep,” said Spiderbush. The nine foot tall blue Dakini stood behind them, as naked as she liked, hands on her hips and head cocked disappointedly. The orange mushroom glow enhanced the roundness of her unreachably high face and temptingly reachable breasts. “I understand that you like … how do you say … bitch?”

“Yes,” said Conroe. “I like bitch very much.”

Time flip 2051

At the exact moment of the reality shift/time flip, Charlie Spiderbush was, for once, in complete agreement with himself. His human side was hoping/praying, fervently and unambiguously that recent events would mean death for him. His coyote/spirit self had surrendered, as animals do, to the same fate, without reservation or elaborate complexity. Sure, an animal in its death throes looks mightily reluctant and distressed, usually, but that is just the way of things, the spirit is long gone, and more often than not, grateful, under the circumstances. Charlie, being fully all of the above, could no longer take a step or move a muscle without that absolute contradiction in nature that says ‘give it up, you’re done.’ to a being whose most persistent impulse is to continue to survive. A long time ago the human doctors had told him that his spine was so shattered and bent like some malevolent child’s toy bow, that his pain would be unrelenting and incurable. Then, as they always did, nowadays, to avoid the scrutiny of the all-powerful Homeland Drug and Positive Attitude Commission, they sent him to a therapist who found him to be uncooperative and unhealthily focused on some kind of pain in his back. They then charged him the equivalent of two months military pension for the assessment.
Charlie had become aware of Leo, and others, in an attempt to get some healing help, somewhere, but the process was discouragingly slow and uncertain, even in the hands of masters, and now that walking each and every pigeon toed, excruciating inch came to him without help or hope, Spiderbush looked at the Hellion crafts on the horizon, and almost said to himself: “Finally”

The coyote/spirit side always knew that the stress of going back and forth between the two sides of Charlie Spiderbush would end sooner than the expected life span of either species of creature was ever supposed to, and, most likely, in agony. But his human side longed for miracles and engaged in that heroic impulse to snatch victory from the hands of inevitability. Still, the animal side, which was, after all, far more intimately acquainted with these matters, now looked at the nuclear sky over Phoenix, guiltily, with a bit of relief. But then the human side reasoned ‘ All old and broken men look at the end of  the world as a kind of personal exoneration, as if any of this had to do with us personally, and could not continue properly, without us. But just as the thought formed, a most overwhelming wind blew everything within a hundred miles wherever it felt like blowing, and fast.
Spiderbush was too advanced a being to lose consciousness at such a time, but was too damaged not to feel each micronic twist of tumbling in the chaos as a personal insult.

“ Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh” he said, because he had never learned to curse and this movement was too fast for any prayer of words. Finally he landed in a far crevice in a desert canyon. “My God, why have you forsaken me?”  He finally remembered that phrase from the Bible, but really, it was just something to say, in a place for which there are no words. Descriptions of exquisite pain are both dissociated and metaphorical until they have become part of your real experience, and then they are completely useless. Charlie  Spiderbush lay in such pain for three long, loud tumultuous days and then, inexplicably, a large, apparently random, stone fell on him.
But his extremely ramped up hope that: THIS IS IT was briefly and, for a few minutes, bitterly, disappointed. Instead, he heard his spine crack in a most ordinary way and then, suddenly, he felt both humanly and animally aligned again. His pain, while not gone, was again something for which there were words. Words like aggravating, sharp, intense and, finally, intermittent, began to make sense again. He looked up as soon as he could move his head and saw that the light had changed unexpectedly from the orange and sooty grey of grim and grimmer, to something almost, but not quite, normal.
Debriefing 2053

Charlie and Conroe were escorted down the steep slope of a mineshaft by two armed men in deer hunting outfits. The tunnel ended at a rusty cast iron gate, secured with an oversized antique padlock. With a touch on a fingerprint ID scanner on its backside, a keypad slid out from the bottom of the padlock, the correct code was tapped, and entrance to a modern underground complex was gained. The escorts pointed the way to the conference room, then returned their posts on the surface.

The door opened when Conroe said “Open sesame”. The uniformed doorman inside smiled weakly as if he had heard that line a thousand times. The doorman walked Conroe and Charlie to their respective seats at a long conference table, then left the room. An old man wearing a brown corduroy professor’s jacket entered the room from another door, walking quickly to the head chair of the table as he puffed on a briar pipe. “I’m glad you boys are here, I have a million questions … and sorry about this formality, but Blue Team and Jade Team seem to like this kind of setting for their little talks. I always liked taverns myself whenever we …”
Two more figures entered the conference room through a third door in a dark corner. A thick man wearing filthy battle fatigues laughingly introduced himself as Major Dick Hardon of Blue Team, “ …just call me Dicky”. The other figure was cut by a tall slender woman in a green spandex jumpsuit, who introduced herself as Dr. Lindsey Doyle of Jade Team, but Conroe was secretly hoping she would add “… just call me anytime, day or night”.

“Mr. Tuddweiler and Mr. Spiderbush have much information to share, but first let me offer our apologies for what you boys went through. Hope everything’s falling back in place for you,” said the Professor. “Great work, Indigo,” said Major Hardon. “Too bad about dying in the line of duty.”
“Oh, it wasn’t any worse than boot camp,” said Conroe and Charlie in unison.
“Do your talents always get the correct results,” asked Dr. Doyle.
“Mr. Tuddweiler and Mr. Spiderbush have consistent hits 87% of the time, and improving. I’m considering that they may have made it to 93% with the Phoenix Flip prediction,” said the Professor.
“Conroe’s good, Ma’am.” said Charlie. “He’s the best long range Precog in all Indigo, ain’t none better.”
“And Charlie here is the best damned Spotter I’ve ever met. Anything local, like he can hear a bee fart half mile away. He keeps me honest, he lets me know when I’m dealing with delusional feedback loops,” said Conroe. “And don’t play cards with him, you’ll never win.”
“I don’t play cards.” said Charlie proudly. “Means you’re all luckier.”
“So, the reality shift must have been an ordeal,” said the Major. “Anything we should be looking for in the general public? Any tendencies or trends that you can foresee?”
“Invest in churches and bars,” said Conroe and Charlie in unison.
“Indigo has projections in this document, Major Hardon. Complexities such as the time flip are still being studied, but usually, transdimensional and extraterrestrial invasions with resultant mass destruction and de-destruction have a way of making the general public a bit more irritable and a bit less trusting in their government. I agree with the President when she said “Deal with it, America”,” said the Professor.

“Will you be able to provide info on biologic concerns?” asked Dr. Doyle.
“Got a sketchbook full of diagrams and doodles for Blue and Jade to analyze,” said Conroe. “I can’t make heads nor tails out of any of it, but I think I hit on some weaponry, navigational systems, maybe something to do with propulsion. And the spirals on page 37 might be DNA sequencing, extraterrestrial I think. Usually the DNA from the subharmonic and supraharmonic planets has cross linked so many times that it’s obvious.”

“Assuming that their mission was sucessful, what will be our next step?” asked Major Hardon.
“They got the sphere,” said Charlie. “That’s what they came for, just like Greenland. Took ‘em eight years to read the first sphere, and this one is a lot bigger.”
“They now have two maps showing a significant number of short cuts between here and the Hellion Galaxy, as well as some of the transdimensional portals between Earth and the other harmonic realms,” said the Major. “Isn’t there something we should be doing?”

“Invest in churches and bars,” said Charlie and Conroe in unison.

Michelle 2054

Michelle had just gotten up enough nerve to put her hand on the doorknob. She was determined to go outside and walk down the street to the corner store and buy some much needed groceries. She felt strong, she knew she could do it. Her other hand grasped the leash to her little Yorkie, and he was jumping back and forth with excitement at the prospect of a trip outside into the big wide world. Michelle opened the door. At first she couldn’t bring herself to look outside, but the little dog ran out and yanked at the end of the leash, distracting her from her fear, and convincing her that all was still well. Hesitantly she looked at the row houses across the street, they looked fine. The sunlight was okay, glancing off the trees, There was a couple standing near the entrance to the hotel talking normally. Michelle walked briskly down the steps and down the sidewalk towards the corner. her dark sunglasses helped, her eyes remained fixed on the sidewalk in front of her shuffling feet. Nippy ran ahead straining vigorously on the leash. At the corner Michelle waited till an old woman with a shopping cart moved out of the doorway and started to move past her. The old woman had a musty smell, a strong odor. Like dead people.

Michelle grabbed the door frame and froze in place. Her eyes tightly shut against what she knew she would see, her muscles trembling and the fear suddenly in full control of her emotions. God– she wished she were home. Why had she thought she could come outside where her life could be ripped away like a newspaper in the wind.

The guy behind the counter came around and said, “Michelle, you okay girl?” He took her arm gently and guided her inside and sat her at one of only two wall booths in the store. “You want a glass of water, or a Coke or something?” Michelle opened her eyes and looked at the man. His face was completely normal, nice and friendly, he was comforting her and she was thankful. But without looking directing behind him, she could tell the scene outside the door to the little shop had changed. The light had dimmed, the colors had faded, there were no more people walking around. Michelle kept her eyes focused on the man’s face, and as she urgently reached for his hand she let go of the leash and little Nippy ran outside jumping over broken chunks of concrete, disappearing in the dense smoke as he ran down the rubble strewn street.

Cust Nebula 2056

At two in the morning the sky over the secret laboratories at Fireshovel was a deep rich blue. Three Sisters was barely visible low over the horizon and Zero knew that Pete would have just taken over guard duty and would be deliberately shuffling his papers, his back to the driveway.  Mike was packed and ready when Zero slowly drove behind the transient barracks, and hesitated long enough for him to slide in. “We’re you able to get the maps?” asked Zero. Mike nodded, “Yeah, The Professor was kinda pissed–well, I wouldn’t say pissed– but he did seem reluctant. He wondered why you didn’t ask him yourself.”
“Well, time is of the essence ya know”, said Zero. “I couldn’t remember where the shark was until I bumped into it, so I marked it so we could find it”. They drove silently up the hill behind Tildy’s until they came to a grove of Eucalyptus on top overlooking the plain below.

As Zero and Mike gathered the gear out of the truck, Mike looked around and said, “Okay, I’ll bite, I don’t see a blue ribbon or anything, where the hell is it?” Zero pointed over between two tall trees and Mike could see the rope, white against the dark woods and sky, forming an upside down U shape, neither end touching the ground. “Ooh, pretty mysterious Captain…. Ah, … Is all this stuff gonna fit inside?” Zero, walking towards the rope, said, “We’ll take what we can– leave the rest, who the hell knows what we’ll need”. Mike then asked Zero what had been going around in his head for three days. “Zero, why in the hell are we doing this, Why not let the Professor know, then we could’ve had the whole lab’s support?” Zero patted the invisible surface of the craft like a mime with a pane of glass, and opened the door. “We got support, man, don’t worry. The Professor knows, He just doesn’t know officially.”

The small ship rocked gently in the air, as they loaded two large duffels behind the center console in the back of the cockpit, and climbed inside. As Mike strapped into his cramped seat, he said, “Official support is better than unofficial support, you know… By the way– how’d Is Tarzan make out, with the… accommodations?” Zero climbed in beside him in the other seat nearest the door. “Yeah, he’s fine. I just hope he was as good a teacher as he is a drinker. As intuitive as this damn thing is, I just know it’s feature heavy as hell.” Mike shook his head, “Yeah, its a good thing we don’t have to go under the hood, my knowledge with weak nuclear is a little rusty.” Zero chuckled as the craft slowly ascended into the night sky, “fer sure.”

Mike had one more question, “How’d the brain deal work out?” Zero knew he was talking about the unexpected retrofit to his standard issue cortex implant. “Well, okay I guess. It doesn’t hurt or anything. And I guess it grafted, so to speak, But I’ll not know how it works till we get outside earth orbit. Smithson said it wouldn’t be operational even then till I learned how to work with it. He said the thing they got from Simon was the missing link, an organic magnet or some damn thing”.
Zero glanced at the dashboard and tapped his finger on the speedometer accelerating to Mach +0.9. “You know Zero”, said Mike, “how frikkin strange it’s getting around here, they warn that this displaced self shit will be traumatic as the difference between man and machine disappears completely– well, from where I sit, it’s strange enough, I can’t imagine how weird it is for you.”
“I don’t worry about it Mike, it’s just instinct at the bottom anyway, always has been.” Zero stares blankly into deep space on route to a vaguely defined rendezvous at some big number near Orion.

The Long Universe 2056

Zero and Mike had learned how to drive the shark, but without little Hellion to tell them, they hadn’t suspected that full immersion in blackout mode might be dangerous. This unique defensive function not only rendered the ship invisible to outside forces, but it virtually erased the inside too. The dimly lit dashboard seemed to float just beyond fingertips in a rich sea of stars. 360 degrees of infinite universe sparkled all around them. And in the silence of long travel, in and out of sleep, the two men begin to drift away from their familiar reality. So slowly as to be imperceptible they were becoming acclimated to a blackness deeper than anything an earthly existence had prepared them for. In their unique position as navigators of an invisible Hellion sharkship they were perhaps the first earthlings to experience the purest form of space shock: The side by side comparison of absolute infinity with the simple mind of man.

Familiar memories of earth so important to the human mind vanish quickly in the broad reaches of space. The senses disengage one by one; As a pilot sits in one position for hours without moving, and minute control adjustments are affected by a subtle gesture of a hand, and as sound gradually disappears altogether, disorientation becomes the only reality. The physical body melts away and the mind becomes a small point in a vast endless night.

“What the fuck is that smell? Zero mumbled inaudibly to anyone, “Did you piss your goddamn pants?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ”, Mike jerked spasmodically to an upright position in the darkness. Zero could just barely make out his silhouette against the cluster of galaxies near Orion. “This is disgusting,” groused Mike as he opened his pants and reached for his web gear, “Fucking space travel, I’m gonna put an alarm on my dick!” Mike pulled out a shirt and sopped up the piss all over his seat and the floor. “What a bunch of crap!” He unstrapped and fumbled his way to the back of the cockpit to what for a Hellion passed as a head: a suction cup on a flexible tube attached to the wall. This was one item they had not mastered in their overall proficiency in the ship’s various functions. Fortunately the standard spaceman diet of no food helped somewhat to overcome that limitation. The waste vacuum seemed to be stuck on the on position and it grabbed any nearby surface with an eagerness that seemed alive. “Are we home yet?” called Mike from the back.

Zero didn’t even hear Mike, his mind was a whirling spiral of information he’d been force fed during his tour of Cust Nebula and the meetings with Manti. The whole thing had been– how would you put it– otherworldly. Starting from the first hints back on earth, that the Hellion craft had been deliberately placed in their hands just for this mission. And through a dogged briefing the little Hellion had outlined the purpose of their expedition. He’d drawn pictures of the Manti spheres with little earthly people beside them to show scale. He drew maps of seven locations on earth where they were buried and he stressed how important the mission was. Then he’d sliced three thin stripes of flesh from just under his chin to the center of his chest and bound then together with a special cord and gave them to Zero as a presentation of respect for Manti.

Then the long strange trip though space and time which the Hellion craft seemed to accomplish on autopilot. The semi conscious dream state toward the end when they were brought to a long silver convention center, orbiting over a vague blue planet as big as Jupiter, the tests, operations and rituals passed without understanding, and then finally, a Manti appeared. Tall and generally humanoid, the Manti was so translucent he looked like a ghost. Through his eyes and his mind he communicated a message that entered Zero’s brain as if it was a remembered event.

Millions of years ago seven great spheres were buried on earth at precise intervals all over the surface of the planet. They were generally designed as a sort of vast antenna, placed on earth because of the planet’s position in the galaxy. They’re purpose remained unexplained, but the more immediate issue was the urgency of protecting them. For millennia they rested in peace fulfilling their benign imperative until a race of Hellian discovered their presence and sought to harvest them for a rare element essential to their function; the energetic manifestation of the soul of a deceased Manti priest, suspended in perpetual animation in an activated decay retardant media and sealed in a container equidistant from others of its kind and laid out on a galactic grid to provide an living catalyst for whatever grand and mysterious purpose the Manti had promised to reveal at a later time.

The spheres are also outfitted with a synthetic warbot armed to protect the sphere and its contents from whomever or whatever may present a threat. But the warbots had nearly been overwhelmed in Greenland, and fought a major battle to maintain the security of a sphere in Phoenix, so Manti had initiated a mission to reinforce the earthly installation. One element of this effort was to educate a small group of select humans to assist in a way that only earthlings can. For a most interesting aspect of the relationship of humanity to the race of Manti turns out to be a common ancestor of the soul. This weighty piece of knowledge promised to open doors unimagined by the human mind, and as Zero sat zoning out into the twinkling universe, it gradually occurred to him that he was the first human recipient of this momentous knowledge.

Temptation of St. Zero 2056

The midnight approach to Earth was comforting. The glowing aura indicating sunrise and sunset on opposite sides of the globe filled the cabin with brilliant colors which contrasted the vast black void of space. Zero and Mike were silent as the Hellion Sharkship slipped through the upper layers of atmosphere. Zero manipulated the velocity controls deftly, slowing the transparent ship during the last few miles of descent. The landing was as soft as the word ‘pillow’, with a slight bounce up as the Sharkship stopped inches above the ground. Mike exited quickly, running toward the main hanger, excusing his need to find a change of clothes.

Zero deeply inhaled the cool midnight air, feeling no need for a rebreather, but feeling the strength of his feet so firmly planted in the gravity of his tiny planet, Earth. This place was his home, no matter how much it was in need of repair. He had possession of Zephyr’s braincup and Leo’s sacred pipe. He had the implicit blessing of the mysterious Manti. He had the determination of intent of his own free will.

“Welcome home,” pronounced a soft voice in the night breeze. “I see that you are fit after your brief excursion. And I hope that your vision is clear about the future which is yours to create.” A slender female figure approached on the dim landing strip. She wore a skin tight uniform not of earthly design.

“And who are you?” asked Zero with a sigh of fatigue.

“Ah, yes, my name is Helen. I am the High Queen of the Hellion Confederation. I have been following your exploits from a distance, and I know of the powers you now possess. I am here to freely offer my technology for your use. Every ship in the sky shall bear your name, shall be yours to command.” She walked closer, her hourglass silhouette gaining detail as she faced Zero. She was obviously more humanoid than the bigheaded drones who piloted Sharkships, and her visage definitely indicated the high point of Hellion engineered evolution. Her face seemed to change when she was at arm’s length from Zero.

“Queen Helen, the Manti have explained many things about your kind. Why should I accept any offers from you?” replied Zero.

The High Queen unsheathed the dagger from her right thigh, lifting it slowly by its slender emerald crystal blade. She presented the carved bone handle toward Zero’s grasp. “If you don’t trust me, feel free to thrust my own blade into my heart. I wait for your decision.” She pulled her shoulders back slightly, heaving her breasts forward as the target of sacrifice. She pressed the dagger’s bone handle against Zero’s fist, but he silently refused to move a muscle.
“Maybe you desire a different sacrifice that I could offer. Perhaps I could become your slave, your consort, your satisfier.” Helen sheathed the dagger in one graceful motion, then continued the twist of body with a slight shudder of pleasure. Her skin changed color and texture, deep blue and slick. Her figure shifted as her breasts and hips enlarged and her face became more rounded. “Perhaps you like this, or maybe this …” as she became taller, pale rose in color, velvet to the touch, her now oval face perched delicately over an impossibly slender neck. “My dear Zero, I can become anyone you wish, every part of me can satisfy every part of you. And all I need is one kiss to complete my offer.”
“I don’t think so,” said Zero. “I have other plans.”

“But I think I can change your mind,” cooed Helen. “I think I can make you discover the animal that rages inside your skin.” Her long inhalation was followed by a moist exhalation. Tiny beads of fragrant sweat formed on her tight skin and glistened in the halogen lights on the midnight runway. Her pheromones had been engineered to human specifications, focusing her destiny to be fulfilled at a moment like this. She moved closer, pressing her lips on Zero’s bearded cheek. She nuzzled her face lightly, spreading the fine film of her pheromones across his nose and unmoving lips, searching for his reciprocating kiss. She continued with her tongue tracing a velvet path to his ear and then down the length of his neck. Zero could feel her chemical snare gripping every blood cell pulsing through his body. He tightly closed his eyes and concentrated on his own mind. “Don’t let her in– think…,” he whispered to himself, And less a thought than an emotion– a feeling… “God- that smell, I’ll not soon forget this one.” With firm single-mindedness he slowly raised his right hand in the narrow space between his chest and the vibrating figure of the alien– ever so lightly brushing her poised breasts– taught under a now colorless fabric, and took a step backwards. “You do have the moves, lady.”

Zero keep her in the corner of his eye as he turned to walk away at an angle enough to see her change again. Her eyes turned black in an instant and her flesh the color of deep water. He was both drawn to her and afraid to see what she would become, his pace quickening, three more steps. “You are less than worthless earthling and will die with the rest unmourned and forgotten.” Her words were as hard and brittle as her transformed shape, devoid of life and sending a cold finger of fear into his heart. Zero gripped his left hand around the metal crescent in his pocket as he glanced once more behind him across the tarmac, She had disappeared. And he gratefully welcomed the feeling of cooling sweat across his brow as he walked through the shade between the hangers.
“Damn! he thought to himself. Goddam Hellians can do anything, they’re freaking magic….”

But even as it occurred to him, the idea seemed obsolete somehow, and another part of him seemed calm, unguarded, and mildly excited about tomorrow. For as clever as they seemed, he had a strong sense that Hellian designs on earth were no match for the focused attention of Maniti. And in his mind, he saw the bejeweled knife, laying on the hot concrete, sparkling in the sodium vapor…

Zero tried to make a line for the nearby barracks building, but he didn’t have his earth legs under him just yet. A cold wind was starting to whip around the airstrip flags, and the sound was almost painful, after the peace of deep space. There were more flags here than serviceable aircraft, as far as Zero could tell, but that would all change now with the engineers having an actual sharkship to extrapolate from. “ Weather.” Zero marveled to himself, as if he had forgotten what such a thing might be. He then reminded himself to go back and get his jacket from the ship before he did much else.
By the time he got to the barracks he could walk pretty normally, and gravity was sending a familiar memo to his bladder, as well. Mike had already split and the only person in the front office was a cute young lieutenant typing away at a com terminal. She turned her head and smiled at Zero. Her hair was pulled into a pony tail and she wore old fashioned glasses, probably laser enhancers, since all military got an eye operation at induction, these days.
“ You’re famous, Zero..’ she said, matter of factly ‘ You’ve probably got an hour before the whole circus comes down around you. My names Debbie, by the way.”
“ Thanks for the heads up.” Zero said. “ So what would you do if you were me?” he asked the girl.” The last thing I want to be is famous.”
“ Well, as PR liaison, I would not advise you to take the civilian pickup out front, with the keys in it, and drive about five miles due west to the Red Wagon, where no famous people ever go for a beer.” She said, and continued typing.
“ I would further not advise you to come back and pick me up about midnight, after I’ve had a chance to send the TV folks on a wild goose chase into the land of the Navajo……But you’ll have to debrief tomorrow, I can’t save you from that.” She smiled at Zero again.
“ Good Deal.” Zero said and headed for the head.
He went out a side door and turned back for the ship to retrieve his jacket and some cash. He was no longer tired. He had a date with a regular, funny, human girl.
His braincup was going nuts but he kept it tuned down. It was probably the history of news reporting or some kind of medical report on STDs, the Manti could be too thorough, Zero had decided, and tonight was for Rand R.
The sharkship dutifully opened as he approached and he took the step up and began to glide to the cockpit, knowing this kind of ease was going to be hard to give up.
When he got the cockpit he was in for a surprise.
“ I knew you’d be coming back for you stuff.” Debbie said, almost shyly.” I was curious about about the ship, and it opened right up for me.”
‘ I’ll bet a lot of things open right up for you.” Zero drew close to her, and she moved ever so slightly toward him.
“ Do you want me to go?’ she asked.
“ Not at all.” Zero said and they kissed. In a few seconds they were pushing the parameters of the captain’s seat beyond even a sharkship salesman’s imagination.
Zero closed his eyes, but then he smelled smoke and he looked up, too late.
Helen, in flames, was cackling as she thrust her dagger into Zeros shoulder.
“ What pedestrian taste you have, you clown of dirt.” She said and her body contracted into a dragon-like skin , scraping away at Zeros naked body and everywhere drawing blood.
An instant later a laser rocket flew into the cockpit and split Helens head like a walnut. She was still laughing, burning up with the Hellion spaceship, as Spiderbush and Monkey Mike pulled Zero, his flesh a haze of steam and smoke, from the fire.
“I have more forms than all the earth soldiers who ever lived could destroy.” Helen said, as her Debbie form popped like a tick held over a Zippo, disappearing into flames.

Mike immediately banged Zero with his emergency morphine when they reached safe ground, and then looked helplessly up at Spiderbush.
“ They’ll be coming with all they got, now.” Spiderbush said. “ Our only hope is underground. I know the place.”

Billy Goat Butte 2056

Monkey Mike sprayed three cans of nanoderm foam over the bloody abrasions slashed across Zero’s torso and thighs, fortunately the morphine had toned down the pain of the instant skin graft. Zero wretched tightly as a tube of bioputty was injected into the dagger wound. “What else do you have in your pouch, medicine man?” asked Monkey Mike with a strong sigh of disbelief. “Thirty freaking minutes after we land, we blow up that Hellion freakjob, blow up the Sharkship, and Zero is half dead.”

Spiderbush reached into his pouch and pulled out a candy bar. “Here, Monkeyman. My wife keeps packing these in my lunch, I don’t know why, I never eat ‘em.”

“Chocolate covered Mojo Clusters, my favorite, and I’m starved.” Monkey Mike shoved the candy bar in his mouth while looking at his watch. “Two more minutes for the foam to set, then the jumpjet should be here.”

“Freakjob will be back. We blowed her up real good, but that just makes her mad. She’ll come back to dance some more. Maybe I should try some silver bullets next time,” said Spiderbush with a quick glance to the night horizon. “But Billy Goat will be a safe place.”

The DUK410 jumpjet skimmed silently above the high desert terrain, dipping and rising to maintain a constant 50 foot cruising elevation. Blackout conditions onboard didn’t help the roller coaster ride as Zero was coming out of his drug-induced coma. “Did you get that bitch’s phone number?”

“Don’t worry, buddy boy, first dates get messy sometimes. We’re going to get you patched up, good as new. The Professor is waiting for us at Billy Goat Butte,” said Monkey Mike, refraining from an urge to shake Zero by the shoulder as an affirmation of their warrior heritage. The bumpy ride was bad enough.

“Did you consummate with that freakjob?” asked Spiderbush.

“Does a dagger count as foreplay?” asked Zero in return.

“Bodily fluids,” said Spiderbush. “Did you swap spit, did you bump uglies? There’s a chance you got infected.”

“There was the kiss …” trailed Zero as he painfully reached for his braincup.

Billy Goat Butte jutted a thousand feet straight up from the level of the desert floor, one sandstone butte among many that populated the Four Corners region. Undisturbed Anasazi ruins could be found on the flat tops of these buttes, their tribal strongholds during the great droughts of the past thousand years. Cold War era military tunnels riddled the subterranean sandstone strata, stockpiled with enough K rations, MRE’s, and canned beer to last the duration of any global disturbance.

The DUK410 sped toward the base of the butte at 500 mph, then shot vertically to a complete halt at the summit. It turned a graceful 360 and gained permission to land on the carefully camouflaged pad. A tangle of mesquite trees surrounded the elevator entrance, which opened moments after the jet blasts had subsided. The butt ramp of the DUK lowered, allowing the medics to hustle Zero to surgery.

Billy Goat had been hollowed out as a strategic command center several wars ago, complete with state of the art medical facilities. The gift shop directly below the landing pad had been tacked onto the black-op budget by a senator who had been told it was for an airport in his home district. But the gift shop was very popular, considering that they offered good coffee, postcards, magazines, prosthetic upgrades, and a wide variety of firearms and weaponry.

The elevator dropped 20 stories from the landing pad to the pre-op. Zero was wheeled directly to an isolation unit loaded with every gizmo and gadget, with every bell and whistle, that taxpayer money could buy. Blue Team’s head surgeon, Professor Goya, was waiting inside the room, wearing his best Sunday-go-to-meeting hazmat outfit.

Nemo 2056

Zero woke about 14 hours after arriving at the Billy Goat medical facility. Professor Goya was standing by the side of the bed, clipboard in hand. “Welcome home, Zero. I saw the videofiles of your brief affair on the landing strip. You do have … the Hellivirus … unfortunately.”
“No cure yet?” asked Zero.
“Not with your level of infection. That is why I initiated plan XYZ. I’ve installed the dual magnetic containment nodules and the delivery tubule. You are the ultimate weapon now.” Zero stared blankly at the sterile white walls for a few seconds. “Okay, Professor. I know the XYZ has never been tried before, but it’s crazy enough that it just might work. I wanted the save the world when I took this job … and hey … it might be fun.”

“The Hellion fleet is in orbit above us as we speak. We don’t have much time,” said the Professor. “Your transportation will be ready in a few minutes, but you should eat something, to maintain your energy.”
Zero took a quick shower and put on a clean uniform. He went to the cafeteria, desiring his favorite breakfast cereal. As he was munching on a bowl of Raisin d’Etre, he was joined by Monkey Mike and Spiderbush, who silently put a long fringed pouch, containing the sacred pipe, on the table. “So, it’s true, you’re loaded for the XYZ,” said Mike. “You’re a better man than me. We have a classic Razitov flycycle waiting up on the pad. Sweet machine, I flew her around the butte myself.”
“Thanks, Mikey. I’m ready. And give my love to the Willow sisters.” Zero then went to the landing pad, pouch slung over his shoulder, braincup held in place by a bandana wrapped around his forehead. He gunned the Razitov a few times, raised his right arm in farewell, then shot off at remarkable speed into the late afternoon sky. Zero arrived at the tallest spire of stone in the Monument Valley, a single spike rising 1500 feet from the sandy desert floor. He landed on the flat top of the spire and waited. He knew he was being observed by the Hellion fleet. A small cluster of k’nick k’nick bushes were impossibly growing where they should not be. He gathered a few dry oval leaves and filled the sacred pipe. He blew soft blue smoke into the five directions. The evening sun was glowing with a bloody hue when the Hellion flagship descended, attended by the thousand warships of the fleet in tight formation. Zero stood straight and tall as Queen Helen floated slowly down from the belly of the flagship. She was attired in a long jeweled robe that wafted open in her descent, showing her firm nakedness beneath. Zero pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it in the dust, exposing his battle scarred torso to the queen.

“I am ready to dance,” he yelled with a powerful joy. “And I am ready to conquer your weakness, my little jester of love,” replied the queen as her painted toes touched the dust of the Earth.
“I’m not so little,” said Zero as he unfastened his kevlar codpiece.
“Indeed,” said the queen with an approving smile. “I am curious about your ability to dance. My royal desires have proven unquenchable to all who have tried, and died. I shall be ravishing your carcass as my minions overhead applaud your folly.”
“You talk too much, bitch,” whispered Zero.

The dance began, viewed by the clustered fleet, and transmitted by the cam on the Razitov flycycle. The queen’s visage morphed during the initial positions, and Zero kept his pace with determination. She drew blood as she gripped his back with dangerous fingernails, but Zero thrust harder with such a minor infliction of pain. “You are of value … your toy amuses me,” gasped the queen as Zero switched to the 47th position of the Kama Sutra. The queen was submerged in her violent fleshy distraction, contracting her attention in full focus on her quivering physicality. Zero pressed his tongue in her ear, and whispered “XYZ” as she was screaming with orgasmic mindlessness. The four grams of antimatter held in the magnetic containment nodules in Zero’s scrotum released through the magshielded length of the tubule which had been implanted in his manhood earlier that day. A sphere of pure white energy expanded in the following billionth of a second, engulfing the entire Hellion fleet in the resultant ball of ultimate destruction. All of the atmosphere in a fifty mile radius was sucked into the instant voidness, boiling upward in a magnificent mushroom form to the cold underbelly of space. The hot desert air was instantly supercooled, then descended like a rock to the crater marking the location of the last dance. It began to snow.

The next day, Monkey Mike and Spiderbush flew over the twenty mile wide crater, finding no trace of even two connected Hellion molecules. An unusual reading on the scanner was detected at the center of the crater, so they flew in to investigate. There, sitting on a thick blanket of fresh snow, was an infant, playing merrily with the sacred pipe and the braincup. They landed nearby and walked to the wide-eyed child.

“Hello, little fella,” said Monkey Mike. “Do you have a name?”

The infant replied with his infant voice, “Nemo.”

Mike vaguely remembered his Latin ‘Nemo’ is Latin for ‘Nobody’.
Then he glanced at Spiderbush, standing arms akimbo, head tilted to the left, in a singsong voice to the child:  “The monkey and the spider found a baby in the snow, then hid him in a cave till he had time to grow ….

Trailer Park Time Bubble 2056

Gray rainy sky, telling neither morning nor evening, covered the small trailer park outside Atlanta. Muddy roads glistened as rain kept falling, tapping messages in code on the thin metal roofs of the singlewide trailers. A crack of lightning shook Zero from his sleep, he rolled over blearily, and inhaled the soft fragrance on the pillow next to his. He tossed the blankets aside, propped his aching body upright, and went to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror proved that he needed a shave. The Hellivirus inoculation shot in his arm was still swollen, then he noticed a tattoo band on his other arm. “Hey, when did I get a tattoo?” asked Zero. “Oh, don’t you remember anything after a good night out drinking?” replied Helen from the kitchen. The aroma of bacon and eggs filled the air of the cramped trailer, the sound of coffee being brewed accompanied a country western love song on the radio. “Hey, you want white or wheat toast?”

Zero dragged himself to the kitchen and plopped into the built-in seat at the tiny table. He lit a cigarette and chuckled. “Hey, that was something … last night … was it three or four times?”
“Three for you, and seven for me,” said Helen softly. “Three more days of leave, and I’m going to make sure you remember it. Now eat your breakfast, so we can get back to bed.”
“Oh, yeah, three more days of leave, till I have to get back to the base.” The small TV on the refrigerator was picking up only one station, the weather channel, a false color weather map showing rain clouds covering most of the state. Helen poured coffee, a gold band on her ring finger matching the gold band on Zero’s finger. They looked at their matching tattoos and smiled. “I musta been drinking tequila,” said Zero. “Man, am I beat, I hope this inoculation shit wears off before I gotta get back in uniform.” He looked through the ragged window screen into the driveway, wishing he had covered his motorcycle better, hoping the weather would be clear in three days. They washed dishes after eating, slow danced to Patsy Kline, then went back to bed. The rain continued through the morning, providing the perfect background for sighs and whispers, then finally, sleep. Helen woke in the early afternoon to pee, then heard a tapping at the trailer door. It was Vivian from next door, bringing a pan of fresh baked lasagna. “Zero, wake up,” said Helen. “Viv brought us some supper. She said it’s just as easy to make two as one. Damn, she sure is a good cook. That pizza she brought over the other night was the best pizza I ever ate.”
“Oh, yeah, that was the best damn pizza. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much good food in my life. I wish this leave would last forever,” said Zero from the bedroom. “I haven’t even had time to meet them, you keep dragging my ass back to bed every hour, heh heh. How long have they lived next door?”
“Forever,” said Helen. “Vivian and Mort d’Manti, Italian I guess. They are the sweetest old couple, maybe 90 years old, but they manage to get around just fine. Maybe we’ll be like them someday.”
“The lasagna smells great,” said Zero. “This is the best damn leave ever.”

The rain was persistent through the afternoon and into the evening. No troubles from the outside world were going to enter this little trailer park. Mort d’Manti sat at his kitchen table, building a complex sculpture with thousands of toothpicks and bottles of glue, intricate spiral shapes swirling like a Hirosige wave frozen in time, reaching from the tabletop halfway to the ceiling. Vivian was baking cupcakes. “How long till this time bubble bursts?” asked Vivian.
“Well, if the algorithm of this swirl is correct,” said Mort while pointing to a section of his three dimensional equation, “Then, it will stay intact until they have their first big quarrel. He goes riding off in anger, or she storms out in a rage, then it will all be over, the bubble will burst, and they will reposition … right about here … and here … ” he said pointing to other swirling functions made of wood and glue.
“And this is where the fleet is now?” asked Vivian, touching a corner of the construct. “Over St. Louis and Phoenix, I assume.”
“Very good analysis, dear. They’re presence won’t be noticed in all the jumble of other Hellion vessels, and the drones can’t tell the difference between a timeflip and a cucumber. They too will reposition in corrected linear time when our little bubble bursts. But it still concerns me that the Hellions are dabbling with temporal physics. They are such children.”
“I know, I know,” sighed Vivian. “And the Hellions and Humans are just like siblings, the older tends to vent frustrations onto the younger. And the Hellions are acting like bullies, teaching Humans how to be bullies, too. Sad indeed.”
“We could never change that even if we wanted to, you know the rules. Besides, this equation might work in larger models. Zero and Helen prove that it can work on a smaller scale, for a while, at least,” said Mort. “They are a cute couple. I do hope they can extend this bubble for a few more weeks, they really do need the peace. Too bad this will be no more than a vague half-dream for them when they reposition on the timeline,” said Vivian as she softly gripped Mort’s wrinkled hand. Mort kissed her cheek and forehead tenderly.

Hell Hounds on My Trail

The gravel road to Flatrock was difficult and dusty on better days. This secluded region of New Mexico had been victim to a long drought cycle, abandoned and neglected by ranchers and miners for the past decade. From a distance, the town of Flatrock was a collection of weathered cinderblock buildings and decaying wooden houses, populated by vagrant tumbleweeds and sandblasted wooden telephone poles. The afternoon temperature was peaking at 117 as Conroe T. Tuddweiler drove into the ghost town in an open camo jeep with tarped trailer in tow. His middle initial may have been for Tippecanoe or Tyler, but that was of little importance this hot afternoon.

He looked in the mirror and chuckled at the reflection. He wasn’t the ugliest man on earth, but he could have been a runner up in any local competition. He wiped the gritty sweat from his twisted grin with a bandana tied loosely around his neck. He beat his broad felt hat against his faded denim jacket and pants, beating out the dust in a thick ochre plume that drifted away on the relentless dustbowl wind. He reached for a flask in his jacket, but paused in mid reflex … maybe he should stay sober for the day. The highest structure was a forty foot windmill, the highest window was on the second story of the empty fire station. Several trees had been turned into twisted charcoal sculptures by lightning strikes.

Conroe opened a compo book and compared the drawings he had made five years prior, confirming in his own mind that the details of his precog had been accurate. It had taken a lot of arguing with Prof. Goya before this little one man operation was funded, considering the extreme rationing program instituted since the Hellion presence had been made public. Gasoline had the same value as blood plasma on the black market.

The evening sun was an orange ball on the horizon as Conroe was finishing a fire ring from loose stone and cinderblock. The wind would continue for an hour or two, maybe by then the sky would clear enough for a nice viewing of the heavens. He flipped through several old journals, looking for any clues as to what would happen in the morning. His precog drawings were often vague and elusive, but somehow all of the puzzle pieces fit together seamlessly, afterwards. His stint in the military as a remote viewer proved useful in completing a number of unauthorized personal missions, always with no clear indication of what was happening or why. He simply knew when he was supposed to be somewhere, doing whatever.

Fifteen minutes of chainsawing provided enough wood for several days, if indeed he was supposed to stay for that long. Supper was the typical tube of squid protein paste, a pack of salty snackers, and a square of watermelon jerky. He grabbed a pencil in midbite of his feast, rendering stick figures on a blank page, then jotting a few obscure notes to the side. All humans have the neural wiring to be a precog, but few can tune out random mental noise and ego-babble to allow that potential to become a useful skill. Conroe felt blessed, maintaining quiet humility with his talent, when he was sober. It was not in his philosophical contract to attract the attention of the general public or, especially, the members of the ruling class. His path in life had been that of a free man, and he intended to keep it that way. The military was distant enough from the government that his skills could be used, but kept hidden from the people that write ‘history’ books.

After supper, as the fire was dying down to a whipped bed of embers, the weapons were examined. A lever action .44 carbine, a .44 single action revolver, labeled boxes of handloaded ammunition, and a Bowie knife were spread out on a flattened duffel bag. Old weapons would be more than adequate for welcoming the small Hellion incursion in the morning.

Conroe thought that it was too bad, that it always had to come down to this, more death and destruction … the Hellions and Humans had so much in common, if greed and powerlust were the basic determining factors of a longterm friendship. He sighed as if it were a prayer, then took a warm can of ginger ale from a camo cooler. His evening conclusion was that the high point of man’s technological advancement was, indeed, the ice cube … unfortunately, man’s ultimate downfall was dancing toe to toe with that same lineage of technical advancement.

The night cooled to the lower 70’s, almost chilly, with the constant breeze from the mountains to the south, as Conroe fell asleep. A thin silver crescent moon preceded the sun by an hour, floating silently in the dusty indigo dawn. He awoke with a tickle on his nose, then carefully began to get up from his repose. “Shoo” he repeated softly, brushing the thousand scorpions that had covered him during the night. The scorpions liked to stay warm during the night, too. He swept them away with his hat where they fell on the sand, he stood erect and stomped his boots to waken any stragglers that might have been curled up napping in a wrinkle or a pocket. He looked to the eastern sky, considering this to be the most beautiful morning in the past thousand years.

The morning hours passed idly, the shadows shifted slowly as the earth spun in orbit around its lonely sun. Conroe was good at waiting patiently, he had long years of practice. His left hand was doodling into a book while his right hand was picking a burr or twig from his tangled hair. His old school cowboy guns were in reach. A tin cup half full of bitter coffee was staying as hot and dusty as the wind. He occasionally tugged on a leather bootlace tied around his neck, from which a decorated chicken leg bone dangled down to rest upon his chest. He wondered when he was supposed to use the chicken bone.

Around 3pm, a bright speck of white in the cerulean sky appeared, growing in size over the course of several minutes, zigzagging like an apoplectic fruitfly as it approached the flats north of town. The Hellion vessel shifted velocities and directions sporadically, disappearing then reappearing somewhere else, as if time and space were not agreeing with the intended navigation of the vessel.

“If the Hellions were as good at being mechanics as the were at being pompous jerks, they would never have problems like this,” thought Conroe as he loaded bullets in his carbine and revolver. He had 160 grain .44 magnum hollowpoints, the tips loaded with pellets of various freeze dried venoms and toxins, but he didn’t quite know why. It seemed like a good idea on page 263 in an old journal. He quickly cross references several other journals to their respect page 263’s, only to be greeted with disturbing images of angry beasts. His sigh was like a prayer for patience as he slowly walked to the old windmill.

The Hellion vessel was a larger tigershark, jet black with angry yellow glyphs, slippery and dangerous in appearance, but currently  as responsive as a spastic monkey on polycyclopropachlorothiazine. Managing to lower the landing struts as it wobbled erratically at treetop level, the tigershark thumped to earth, rocking erratically until the thrusters whined down to silence. A ramp extended to the ground, and fourteen large quadrupeds exited warily, surveying the perimeter for something to fear, or better, something to eat.

These animals moved in unison like a school of fish, connected with external electronic neural networking, as indicated by the intricate wire mesh antennae above the eyes, each sensing and feeling what any other was experiencing. They were totally ugly genetic hybrids, with alligator heads and leathery skin, long vulture necks, porcupine spikes covering the curvature of their back, scrawny monkey arms that allowed knuckles to drag on the ground, kangaroo hind legs, and a writhing reptilian tail. “Hellhounds,” Conroe whispered from his station at the top of the windmill ladder. He leveled the carbine at the lead beast, waiting until they were within a hundred yards. He waited patiently for fifteen or twenty minutes as the hellhounds meandered in the distance. Then, a loose piece of ladder rung splintered off and hit the corrugated metal roof of the pump housing at the base of the windmill.

Conroe roused himself from some deeply philosophical ruminations as the herd of hellhounds directed their attention to the windmill. He had always drifted into philosophical thoughts whenever he was sober and facing eminent danger, and at this particular moment he had to put off considering his own philosophical considerations. It was time to be actively mindless. He jacked the lever of the carbine, took aim, and fell the alpha hellhound with a single bullet targeted into the center of its ugly yellow eye, penetrating the cranium at its weakest point.

“Good … botulism toxin works real good,” whispered Conroe as he jacked another round. The second bullet worked its magic, as did the third, fourth, and fifth. The pack scattered, then regrouped in a ravine. Conroe loaded a few more cartridges into the side of the carbine, curious as to the effects that freeze dried black widow venom would have on these alien monstrosities.

The hellhounds attacked in unison, and Conroe kept a steady pace of knocking down the frontrunner of the pack. The widow venom was slower by a few seconds than the botulism, but the results were more disturbing, with sudden liquification of internal organs and violent muscular spasms as the beasts hit the dirt. Five more hellhounds were down, but the remaining four were learning to be more cautious. Conroe was a good shot with a firearm, having learned his targeting skills during years of being an archer. He reminisced about the simpler bygone days of bows and arrows for a few moments as the remaining beasts made a charge at the windmill from the four points on the compass.

The beasts hit the base of the windmill at the same split second, climbing the cross bracing in near identical motions. Conroe had placed the carbine on the top platform, then unholstered his revolver while thumbing back the hammer. His first shot blasted through the skull of the hellhound twenty feet below him, and he anticipated the head jerk responses of the last three wired beasts. He shot again, finding his mark, then jumped down from his perch onto the belly of the first creature, glad that he didn’t have gut liquifying widow venom in these bullets. These rounds were cobra venom and seemed to work quickly enough. The second beast hit the ground a second after Conroe, who had regained his footing and jumped, avoiding a collision with the two hundred pound mass of twitching, spiked leather.

He had a good rectum shot on one hellhound, but shielded his face with his arm, in case there was any high pressure blowback as the creature fell. The last hellhound pounced down from the top of the windmill, landing like an awkward ballerina ten feet away from Conroe, who pulled his Bowie knife and threw it into its long leathery throat. The creature hacked a stringy volume of dark viscous blood and collapsed. Conroe took no chance, putting a poison pellet deep into the brain of that last beast.

Kemosabe 2056

Spiderbush had gambled away all the gas vouchers and Mike was plenty pissed about it. Spiderbush had always wondered how Leo did it, always getting what he needed when he needed it, always winning, never knowing the shame of this kind of miscalculation, the befuddlement of it. It made Charlie feel less Indian somehow, and certainly less a medicine man than his mentor had been. Also, his teeth had started to ache.
“Is it a full moon?” he asked.
“ Fuck the moon.” Mike said.
“ We wouldn’t have made it anyway, Mike.” Charlie tried to explain.” We didn’t have enough gas stamps to get there, we’re out of medicine, and we’re out of food.”
“ Charlie, listen to me, with Zero out of it, I’m supposed to be in charge here. Not some fucking reservation werewolf with a gambling problem.” Mike said. “ I don’t even know how to call this in. They’ll probably tell me to shoot you and move on.”
Zero was out of it for sure. His temperature was running from about 103 degrees up to the ‘ he must be dead’ range, but he hung on. His  burns had reappeared as the cortiphine wore off. He seemed to be having a lively discourse with somebody named Helen and somebody named Debbie and the president, too, off and on. The braincup was buzzing so loud that you could almost, but never quite, make out what it was saying, from outside Zero’s brain.
“ As grateful as I would be if you shoot me,” Spiderbush answered Mike,” You might want to explain that you’ll never find the cave without me, and the cave is Zero’s best shot, if he’s got one.”
Just then the motel next to the truckstop where they had stopped erupted in bursts of automatic weapons fire.
Mike grabbed his Petersburg split shot from the dash and said.” What a place to run out of gas.”
Nobody was shooting at them, though, so, like everybody else in the parking lot they just stood there, weapons drawn, for a few seconds waiting for things to sort out.
Finally a man on a mule crashed through the picture window of a ground floor motel room, with three horses in tow and galloped across the parking lot toward Mike’s position. The fact that Mike hesitated to shoot the man, however momentarily, seemed to indicate to the crowd that they were together, a notion that was cemented when the man pulled up behind the armored vehicle, to shield his horses from incoming gunfire.
Now a wall of gunfire was focused on them and they had no choice but to return it. It was all over in a few seconds.
“ What the fuck, who are those guys?’ Mike asked when the shooting stopped.
“ Redhand Rangers.” The man said.” And they ain’t getting these horses. They ain’t going to eat my horses.”
“ And you are?”
“ Sean Blackburn, I’m a real cowboy.” The man announced.
“Well, Mr. Blackburn, I hope like hell you know a slick way out of here cause the Redhands don’t travel alone and they are generally adverse to having a squad killed over three horses and a mule.”
“ Oh, I can get us out of here all right, mount up.” The cowboy said.
“ We got a man wounded,” Mike advised the cowboy.
“ Put him on the mule, he’s steady as a rock.”
The men grabbed their gear and ammo, mounted the horses and tied Zero onto the mule. They made their way along an old irrigation ditch until they got to the opening of a sandstone canyon, and then headed west. “Maybe the Redhands never got  the co-ordinates transmitted.” Mike concluded after about half an hour of riding.
“ So Spiderbush, are we on course for the cave or what? “ he asked. “ Maybe two days ride, Kemosabe.” Spiderbush said and laughed. Mike had never heard that word before but he laughed, too, from sheer relief of being alive and on his way, again.

One thing about horses, they don’t like any coyotes or wolves around, least of all werewolves riding them bareback and sniffing their blood. So by dusk Charlie was barely able to lead his horse, let alone ride it. Fortunately, he was now actually faster than a horse, so the party was still making good time, tracing an ancient riverbed into the peach and turquoise sunset.
“I need higher ground to get my bearings, let’s camp up on that ridge.” Charlie told Mike and Sean Blackburn.
He was lying, he knew exactly where he was. He simply had no time to explain that he smelled black tail antelope above them , and no power on earth was going to stop him from running one down and eating it. Spiderbush handed the reins of his horse to Mike and bounded up the hillside and out of sight. Both the other men were startled but continued up the old trail to the point Charlie had indicated, they were dead tired and one anomaly, more or less, wasn’t going to spook them now. They propped Zero up against his gear and started a fire. Zero was talking, off and on, but Mike had tuned him out, because he made no sense. In a few minutes Charlie walked out of the brush and dropped a full grown male antelope, which was slung around his shoulders, on to the ground next to the fire. Sean Blackburn was about to compliment the Indian on a fine, fast hunting job when he noticed that Spiderbush was covered in blood and fur. The fur was his own.
Zero now sat bolt upright and looked at Charlie.
“ I know what to do, Charlie.” He said, and Charlie bent down and put his face beside Zero’s leg, like a favorite dog. “ Mike,” he said “ Get me the pipe and the sage and draw a four foot circle in the sand over there.”
“ How you feelin, Zero?” Mike wanted to know. “I don’t feel anything, Mike,” he said.” I am far, far from here. Please do as I ask.” When Mike had done as Zero asked, Zero made a hand gesture that he needed to stand up. So Mike and Sean Blackburn propped Zero up and Zero said a prayer in Lakota. He filled the pipe and blessed it with burning sage.
He smoked it and the men passed it around. He then waved the sage smoke down toward Spiderbush with an eagle feather. Charlie howled a most painful howl. Zero said some thing to Charlie in Navajo and Spiderbush crawled over to the circle and collapsed inside of it. “ Seal that circle with this sage.” Zero told Mike, and Mike made the circle fast with a ring of white sage.
“ He’ll be ok, now. “ Zero said. “ When he wakes up tell him Leo says hi.” Zero lost consciousness again at this point and the other men laid him back beside his gear. Then they had a fine meal, and went to sleep beneath a beautiful full desert moon.

In the morning Spiderbush smelled coffee and felt pain. He had to rub some canine ooze from his eyes to see Mike standing over him with a metal cup of camp coffee and a Flamoxidil bottle in his hands.
“ I’m plenty screwed Kemosabe.” He said after a long, realigning cough.
“ Yeah, I’ll bet. Did you get bit in Greenland?” Mike asked as he handed Charlie the coffee.
“ Romanian Redhands.” Charlie explained. ”Leo said I can control it every day but the full moon. Then it’s like some wild Peyote dance that usually ends up in the woods with me forgetting to barbecue the ribs, if you know what I mean.”
“What if you ain’t in the woods?” Mike asked as he tore the top off the Flamoxidil.
“ I been lucky. Every time I’ve been in a city at full moon, I’ve been in some kind of action. ”Spiderbush said. “ It’s a pretty handy deal in combat cause I’m so fast and I feel no pain.”
“How about now?” Mike asked and handed the bottle to Charlie.
“ There ain’t enough gods in the universe to curse.” He said and swallowed the medicine. It was used in combat and could make a soldier feel like a god for about sixteen hours, but the crash was brutal. Mike had saved his last one for a special occasion and it seemed like Charlie’s situation fit the bill.He would have given it to Zero, if he was a little more stable, but, as of now, he was still out like a light.
“ So now I’m gonna become a damn Flamer on top of everything else.?” Spiderbush wondered.
“ I doubt it.” Mike said,” We’re gonna be in another world by nightfall, where there ain’t no pharmaceuticals, if our cowboy buddy tells me right,”
“ Your cowboy tells you right. “ Spiderbush confirmed. He then got unsteadily, but determinedly, to his feet and the horses spooked just slightly at his movement.
“ Cha, horses, Cha.” Sean Blackburn calmed them. He was eating a plateful of quail eggs and antelope steak.
“ Charlie, you been to the Cave?” Sean asked.
“Never.” Charlie told him.”
“ So what are we lookin for?”
“ We’re lookin for nothing in the middle of nowhere.”
“ So you can’t talk about it with white eyes, but it’s ok if we get killed trying to find it?” Mike asked.
“ That’s about the size of it, I’m afraid.” Charlie did seem sorry about it, but that didn’t change anything. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.” He said.

Into The Deep I

At about three o’clock in the afternoon, New Mexico time, the party rode into a box canyon where, about every fifteen feet, Spiderbush jumped spryly from his horse, sniffed the air, felt the ground, squinted into the distance, only to re-mount and move on.
Zero was speaking normally now, except that everything he said was in some language that nobody with him recognized. He waited expectantly for a response, and when none came, would smile and say something else. He spoke in magnificent pentameter, clearly intelligently composed, but completely lost on his companions.
When the other men spoke, he would interrupt as if, now, he had this language thing straightened out, but then, when his mouth opened, another incomprehensible non-sequitur came tumbling out. Mike was starting to worry that the combination of braincup and fever had fried his friend for good but, in fact, he would not allow himself to believe such a conclusion, until it became unavoidable.
Sean Blackburn was the sky scout on this patrol and he pulled up binoculars at every stop.
When they were just about out of canyon to inspect, and all eyes were on Charlie, Blackburn kept looking up, even though Spiderbush was moving on.
“ Hey, fellas,” Sean said now. “ What’s the biggest craft that the Hellions have,  you suppose?”
“ Oh, probably twenty times a jumpjet or so, as far as I know.” Mike answered.” Why?”
Sean pointed slightly east and way up.
“ Holy shit.”  Mike said as he saw  the spacecraft, as big as a harvest moon and maybe just as far away, growing rapidly above the earth.
“ If that’s Hellion, we’re done.” He said.” That sucker is big enough to have it’s own gravity.”
‘We’re only done if the earth itself is done.” Spiderbush said.” I’ve got the cave, boys, it’s right in that corner, just opposite where we first came in.”
“ How come you didn’t spot it then?” Mike asked.
“ Werewolf hangover and Flamoxidil gitters, I guess.” Charlie said. “ anyway ,that’s it. “
“ That little hole in the rock?’ Sean marveled.” I don’t se how we’ll get horses in there.”
“ We won’t,’ Spiderbush explained.” Me and Mike will have to carry Zero in, and I thank you for your help, but you don’t need to go any further.”
“ He’s saying you can’t go any further.” Mike told Sean.
“ I know what he’s saying.” Sean did know, he had been around native culture all his life, but the call it seemed a little arbitrary, at this point. “Mike is white and Zero is white, but I’m too white?” he asked.
“ Leo gave the pipe to Zero.” Spiderbush said. “ so that is beyond my control or my understanding. I need somebody to help carry Zero and Mike is his second in command, so I’ve got to take him. But, guys, no other white man has ever entered this cave and lived to tell about it….So no, I can’t be responsible for some cowboy going down there.”
“ Well, I know where the cave is, so what if I just followed you in?”
“ That’s on you, not me.” Spiderbush told him.
Mike smiled.” So, are you coming in, Sean?” he asked.
“ Hell no, I’m claustrophobic, and anyway somebody has got to keep and eye on this topside mess.” The cowboy answered.

So they made camp, decided what provisions could go with them and Mike and Charlie carried the gibbering Zero the mouth of the cave.
They took a last look at the spectacular craft approaching Earth, waved to Blackburn , and disappeared into the darkness.

Into The Deep II

Just inside the cave entrance, along with the pervasive odor of sulphur and the stark darkness, was a large sandstone wall, blocking any further progress.
“ This can’t be right.” Mike said.
“ It’s right” Spiderbush told him.” We need to set Zero down and get busy.”
They wedged the stretcher that held the unconscious Zero between two boulders, where he slumped like a man sleeping in a hammock, and stuck a torch down beside him.
Spiderbush got into the medicine bundle and pulled out a bud of white sage and the eagle feather. He also retrieved a rattle made from a turtle’s shell and shook it at the wall of the cave. Then he began to make a sound that was half a whistle and half a humming or singing sound which echoed and reverberated with the stones, as if the stones were tuned to the frequency of his voice.
When he turned back to Mike he was no longer singing but the sound was still in the air and growing louder .
“ Try to sing that sound.” Spiderbush told Mike.
“ Mike’s singing was way off key as it left his mouth, but seemed to be immediately absorbed by the now deafening hum around them and was transformed, somehow, into the same sound.’ Daoum, ‘ it rang, and each time Mike ran out of breath and began again, the sound became louder. The cave was full of sage smoke now and Spiderbush danced in a small circle and spun on one foot like a halfback in serious traffic.
Mike looked down to check on Zero. His eyes were closed, but he was singing.
The stones chattered and vibrated to the sound ‘ Daoum Daoum’ until the feedback loop was  so strong it seemed that it was going to explode.
At that moment an earth quake began to split the back wall of the cave which crumbled like so much sand into a steaming pool of blue water, just beyond the cave entrance.
Then silence.

The new air enveloped the men and they picked up Zero and waded into the pool. It felt good. In fact, it felt great.
“I could use a nice hot bath.” Mike said. The water seemed to bring Zero around now.
“ Me too.” He said groggily.
“ Well, that’s the general idea.” Spiderbush told them. “We need to get purified. A bath and a sweat and we’ll be ready to move on.”
The air was sauna hot in here and the water was slightly hotter than the air. The men cast long shadows on the cave walls, the room they had entered was huge and every little sound echoed off to who knows where.
“ This is great.” Mike said, as helped Zero float into the pool on his own.” You OK?’ he asked Zero.
“ Fine as frog hair.” Came the reply. Zero was smiling weakly.” What’s our status, Mike?”
“ Well, lets see. You’ve been out for days, I thought we were going to lose you. The sharkship got burned up….the president made some kind of a deal with the Hellions but we don’t know any details on that….We got Redhands, Hellions plus all the usual bastards on our ass, so me and Charlie here decided maybe a nice underground vacation mjght be in order.”
“ OK, Charlie, what’s really happening?” Charlie was not used to being in on these kinds of talks, so he thought about it for a while. Finally he spoke.
“ The braincup is older than men, red or white. It fits you, so you must be the man who saves the people, the prophesied one.” Charlie laughed “ I have no idea why, no offense.”
“ No offense taken” Zero responded. “ The why part hasn’t come up on my screen, either. I flunked calculus, for god’s sake.”
“ So where are we?” Zero asked.
“This cave has always been sacred and so powerful that only a hand full of medicine men have ever even known  that it exists.In the old days every medicine chief had to come here at least once in his life. The first level is for healing and purification, I’ve never been beyond it. There are seven levels beyond here, and we need to go to seven, to get your business fixed.” Spiderbush said.
“ That’s all I know. Except each level has a test and if you fail the test, you don’t go forward and you don’t go back.”
“ Level one is cool with me. ‘ Mike added, washing the desert off of his sunburnt arms.” I could stay here for a while.”
“ Roger that, boys.” Zero said and dunked his head below the surface of the pool.

Into The Deep III

While the men bathed, the great room of the cave seemed to be getting brighter with a wonderful misty glow. The source of the light was unclear at first but then the fireflies, pink, blue and yellow pastel fireflies, flew close enough to make out their forms.
“ This looks like the Christmas I always dreamed of as a kid.” Charlie said.
Mike was walking around now checking out the place and saw that there were several pools beyond this first one.
“ Check this out,” he said, plunging into another pool. “ This one is ice cold.”
The other men soon joined him and between the hot springs and the cold springs their body temperatures became quite comfortable.
“So Charlie, if you don’t mind, just how in the hell did you find this cave?” Zero asked.
“ Well,” Charlie explained.” The old stories of my people say that our land, the Dinetah, is bordered by the four great mountains.
They exist as surely as Mount Zion or Mount Everest. So first I had to figure out where the mountains were. Then I had to find the exact spot that is in the center of the circle that I drew around those mountains. That’s how I knew where this canyon was, but to find the entrance, I tell you we could have been out there a year, but then I saw coyote tracks and knew which way to go. The rest was just instinct.”
“ But the cup tells me coyote is a trickster.”
“ For you, maybe so.” Spiderbush said. “ For me, he is family. He might trick me for a joke, but he wouldn’t mislead me about something sacred.”
This stuck Mike as very funny and he started to laugh and couldn’t stop and pretty soon the other men also were cackling uncontrollably.
“ I got fucking coyotes guiding me to the center of the world. Man, I could stay here forever.” Mike said and reeled toward the far end of the firefly light. Then he fell down on a huge pile of soft stones.
He picked one up to look at it, but it was looking back. It was a human skull.
“ Oh baby Jesus.’ He said and ran back to his gear. He pulled out a test strip and put it in the hot pool.
“ Well it’s no wonder we feel so damn good. “ he said as he read the results, “We just damn near flunked the first test. The lithium and arsenic levels of this water are off the charts.If we hung out here another 8-10 hours we’d be as dead as these poor knuckleheads.” He said pointing to the pile of bones. “I got enough  antidote to bring us around, though” he said.” Another couple of hours and, maybe not.”
“ First time I’ve felt good in years and it’s a damn trick.” Spiderbush complained.
“ Good catch.” Zero said to Mike.” I guess I better keep the braincup on.” He continued and began to reattach it to the tender, pink skin behind his left ear.

Cave Six

“ I can’t make it, either.” Zero told Mike as he pulled himself from the entrance to the next cave.
“ Maybe we’ve come the wrong way.” Mike wondered. “ What is the cup saying about all this?”
“ No. this it right, all right.” Zero told him.” As usual, the bastards know something that they aren’t telling…It’s like this is all some happy little game to them, or something.”
“ It ain’t fair.” Mike groused.
“ We passed fair about fifty thousand years ago, I think.” Zero was amused that Mike would still waste a speck of energy considering if something was fair. One of the first things a combat soldier learns is that nothing is fair. In a lot of ways Mike was still the gung ho kid he had met in Greenland, Mike thought, although he was about a thousand times quicker and more badass than he had been all that time ago.
“ Yeah, but what kind of bullies are running this shit, you have to wonder.” Mike said
“ No, I don’t have to wonder….What I have got to do is figure out how to get through that hole, with no tools about a mile below anyplace a sane person would ever go.” Zero was, of course, improvising a new plan, as he spoke.
“ Well, compadre” he said after a few minutes, what kind of food have you got left?”
“ Not much, two days, tops.”
“ Take it and head back.” Zero said.” Two days for us can be maybe five for you. It should be quicker going back than coming in, so you should pick up Spiderbush, if he’s still back there, and get the horses.”
“ What does that accomplish, aside from getting you killed down here.?” Mike asked “ We’re supposed to follow the cave route to find our reinforcements or our super weapon , or whatever in the hell the cup was talking about.”
“ No, I’m supposed to follow the cave to the end, no matter what.”
“ But you can’t get through.”
“ No , not as I am now.” Zero knew that Mike would not go unless he saw how it could work, orders or no, so he went on.
”  I can lose ten pounds in a few days on just water and exercise, then I should be small enough to just squeak through. You’ll never make it unless you cut off your arms, and we may be needing those arms later on, topside.”
“ What the hell, Zero.” Mike complained. “ It sounds like you re just sending me off to save my ass, and you’re gonna go ahead and die down here.”
“ Look, Mike, the cup talks to me, not you.” Zero said sternly “ And shit is hitting the fan, topside. You would be as safe here as anywhere, but, this is the only way. Ok?”
“ Allright, but even if I get back on terra firma, and even if I collect Spiderbush, Sean and the horses, how in the hell am I supposed to find you at the far end of this  thing? It ain’t like they’re selling tourist maps.”
.There was that huge geyser,  two caves back, remember? It definitely pokes all the way through, or we would have seen some splash back somewhere So when you find it , you’ll know which direction this thing is going and, its been a fairly straight progression so far, so get Spiderbush tracking from there. You’ll find me.”
“ How long?” Mike was resigned now.
“Give me a week, and if I don’t show, tell the general everything we’ve seen down here and then… do whatever you want…. Good luck, old pal.”

When he finally squeezed through and then dropped from the hole at the end of the tunnel into the sixth cave, Zero collapsed, as much from disappointment, as from exhaustion.
There was nothing, apparently, there, but darkness.
He had been looking forward to getting somewhere where he could wash some of the gravel and mud off of his body for the last two days of spelunking along in the pitch black, maddeningly confining passage. But now he was too tired to do so. He had had to fast for ten days before he was even thin enough to clear the entrance, and now he found himself in yet another black space, and not exactly at the end of anybody’s idea of a rainbow. The cup was silent and Zero crumpled onto some flat rocks, and passed out.

When he awoke things looked very much different. Someone had built a fire in the center of the circular cave. Zero could now see that this was a large space, maybe fifteen feet tall and big as a carnival tent. The same underground stream that ran most of the distance of this chain of caves ran a little more swiftly here, and it was wide and deep and quite clear.
Zero immediately waded in , took in a huge refreshing mouthful and started to wash up. He had long since absorbed more speleological information than he would ever want to think about once he got out of here, but this place had it all.
There were huge, stunning, apparently gravity defying stalactites above, man-sized quartz crystals jutting from the walls and diamond shaped,  vibrant fluorites strewn about the otherwise soft earth of the cave floor. In the center of the room was a circular wall of polished lapis lazuli and at the center point a fire pit which sent its brilliant golden-white, narrowly focused flames at least four feet into the air.
“ How are you feeling?” a voice asked from behind a limestone slab, “ did the bath help any?”
A man came out from behind the stone, it was Leo.
“ I didn’t think you would make it. “ He said. “ But there were a lot of things I didn’t know before I got here.”
“ My God, Leo, you’re alive.” Zero said. “ But…I cremated you myself.”
“ And a piss poor job you did of it, as I recall.” Leo laughed. ‘ So let me be the first to welcome you to reality, my friend….and you’d damn well better have the pipe with you.”
“ Yes, of course. Pipe, brain cup and totally shot, probably hallucinating Zero, at your service.”
“ You can and should relax now, Zero. You are in a different place, here. It wouldn’t even be possible to get here, if you weren’t ready.” Leo said reassuringly.” That’s why Spiderbush and Mike had to drop out and go back. They are good men, but this is not for them.” Leo moved closer to the circle and motioned for Zero to follow.
” Get the pipe first.” He said.” And,’ he added  be very carefull what you say today because the word is always powerful, but never more so than in this circle.”
Leo sat left of center at about 11:00 o’clock and patted the center spot for Zero to sit down.
As soon as he sat down, Zero felt the dirt begin to move beside him. It shot up like a cylindrical shaft of earth to around six feet high and then the earth fell away and a man stepped out of it. He wore an ocher robe and a magnificent strand of large beads around his neck. He sat down full lotus next to Leo in one exquisite, ballet movement.
‘ Hi ,fellas. “ he said.
Then the earth next to him rose and revealed another man, and another, then a woman dressed in a simple, ancient habit and on around people appeared until the circle was complete.
Zero tried to study each face, for they were all vey familiar to him., somehow. He had seen photographs of Bhaktinanda, a late twenty first century American yogi, and he recognized Leo’s relative Sitting Bull, others were Chinese or maybe Tibetan, it seemed that all peoples were represented somewhere in the circle.
Leo was loading the pipe and Zero wanted to know why, with all these great spiritual figures present, it would be the medicine pipe being used in ceremony.
Leo anticipated the question.
‘You are American, I am Lakota American. This cave is in America and we know each other.” Leo explained. “ So we will use the most venerable way we have. It is no disrespect to any one else’s way. Everyone here understands that very well.”
“ Besides, we let Rumi lead last time we got together, it was very beautiful… we take turns, more or less.”
Now Leo stood and prayed in Lakota. The braincup translated his words to Zero’s mind.
Leo prayed for everything. He prayed for the wind and for eagles and fish and bugs and for the political leaders and the soldiers, the babies and mothers, the mother earth and he even had a word which translates as ‘all my relations’ in case he left somebody out.
At the end of his he spoke briefly in English.
“ Bless and have mercy on this friend of ours named Zero.’ He said. “ It is his mission to try to set all this madness back in order.
That is why we are here today, Oshinmalaye Tunkashila.”
The Hindu man next to Leo received the pipe next and he spoke his prayer also at some length. He quoted from the Gita’s and demonstrated several yoga techniques for Zero to make use of. But mostly he prated for peoples suffering. There was so much suffering everywhere, and so much to be prayed about that Zero, for the first time in a long time, began to feel completely overwhelmed and helpless. It came on him like a physical weight, he found it hard to breath but he was determined to remain attentive and focused all his remaining attention on each person , as they prayed. When he was sure he was about to pass out, he inhaled deep and exhaled fully once more, and upon this exhalation it seemed to him that he, himself, Zero, could take no more. After all the fasting and crawling and all the endless fighting which had come before, he literally felt that he was about to die.
Then he inhaled again but did not seem to be getting any air.
He was breathing light. His lungs filled up with it and his belly and spine and then his head, and he felt just fine.
“ Good going.” Leo whispered to him.” You are one of us , after all.”
Now as the remarkable people spoke and prayed, Zero could sometimes hear, and sometimes not, but amazing transformations were occurring throughout his body and fantastic visions came and went in his mind. The braincup, as always, was giving him the play by play, but it hardly seemed necessary, now.
After several hours of prayer and demonstration of all kinds of powers, the pipe was passed to the man sitting just to Zero’s right.
The pipe gurgled as if it were nearly burned out and the man’s prayer contained only one word.
“ Love.’ He said
Zero had not looked this way before and turned to see who had made this most simple prayer. It was Zephur.
Zephur handed the pipe to Zero who managed to inhale once and say “God help me”, before he fainted dead away.

The Mantle

“ That’s what everybody thinks, at first.” Leo said to Zero, now that all the others from the circle had disappeared. And they were the only two left in the cave. “ But, as you can plainly see, thinking has nothing to do with it.”
“ But there is water here and food above. There is no reason to ever go anywhere,” Zero started to laugh in a most disarming way,
“ and its all madness, the most horrendous kinds of madness, out there I don’t think I want to go back or to go on to the seventh cave.”
Leo laughed too. “ No doubt about it, all crazy as hell.” He said.’ But you have to go on to cave seven, that’s what the story says. You’re supposed to be the true white brother, not me.’ he chided and then he became a little more serious.
“ Why don’t you tell me what you just experienced, before we, or perhaps I should say, before you die laughing,” Leo said now.
Even that was pretty funny to Zero because he had already seen Leo die once, and he seemed , if anything, more vital than ever, since the time he was struck by lightning and killed.
But then Leo leveled those dark eyes on him and Zero shifted affably, to a more somber response. “ What is important, is not an experience.” He said, with certainly.
“ Yes…. and yet things happen, things are seen and heard.” Leo responded.” So go on and tell me.”
“ One of the holy men was speaking,’ Zero now remembered.” And I was watching him and he looked at me and raised his eyebrows very comically, and then it was as if his gaze held me for a minute while he prayed, but I could no longer hear him because of a wonderful sound in my head, a most glorious sound….. Do you know what he was praying about?”
“ He was praying, like all of the others  for a healing for the people of the earth. All in their own way, of course.” Leo answered.
“ Then” Zero went on.” as he was praying, his face started to change drastically and looked very sad, and then it turned into the face of every man I ever shot, one by one.” Zero wasn’t laughing anymore.” They looked at me a long time but then they smiled, and I know that they actually forgave me, I could feel it at that moment. I have no idea why, but I am so grateful.’
“ You were a soldier, they were soldiers, it was a grace for you both to be present today, .Lelan Wakan.” Leo said.
Now Zero was crying but the smile could not altogether leave his lips or his eyes. It was his first experience of sadness within bliss, he would later confess that there is no way to really describe it.
“ And then?” Leo prompted the next memory.
“ Well, a very powerful bluish light came into my inner eye, so much so that I had to close my eyes.”
“ Close your eyes now” Leo said.
Zero closed his eyes and the same light instantly returned. It was as wide and deep as you cared to look and it was rising. Zero spontaneously threw his head back as if to follow the upward motion of the light with his eyes. But it was too fast for his eyes, and all he could do was to attach his very being to the rising.
A moment later he was there.
A softly brilliant silver star with too many points to count, yet all distinct, hung very close to the highest point of his vision, and yet just beyond grasp, if one were foolish enough to try to grasp for it.
The star also seemed , in some sense, profoundly large, as if to view it at all were some kind of anomalous optical illusion, because the human eye could not ever hold such a vision, under ordinary circumstances.
A spire of white light next descended from the star and pierced the center of Zero’s heart, most pleasantly, just as it had when the men were praying with the pipe. The spire made a circuit back up to the star and the laughing feeling in Zero’s heart intensified again. But there was more to it this time, Zero knew that this light was the nature of everything, somehow, before questions or answers. before matter or even ordinary light.
“ This is the self.” He said
“ That is it.’ Leo responded again.” What else do you notice now, Zero?”
Zero saw that the light in his heart had now become a sun, and that his now utterly quieted mind, was a moon moving around that sun.
He felt a moment of fear now, to see so much at once, a natural human reaction, but immediately he intuited that his simple intention could rotate the moon of mind into the sun of the heart, where the fear then died quietly in flames, and the moon reemerged, unharmed.
“ That is it.’ Leo said. Then he chuckled again.
“ Have you noticed that I am you?” he asked now and Zero opened his eyes to look at Leo. But he was looking through Leo’s eyes at himself. His spine shook at the shock of it, and then things returned to normal.
‘That one is not for everyone,” Leo laughed.” Listen, I need to clear some brush away from the cave entrance, so we can leave, but you have to do that meditation once more now, go back the Manti star one more time. Douse the mind and see who you are. Then you will be completed, as completed as I know anything about. Others may take offense, but I will call you Wicassa Wiccan from now on.”
So Zero breathed deep and followed the brightness back to its source but when he got there a woman stood beside the star wearing a white Buffalo robe. She then removed it, and draped it around Zero’s back. She was the most beautiful and the most sacred thing Zero had ever seen and he wished to speak with her, but as soon as his moon of mind formed  the words, he returned to his place, sitting in the cave, naked and all alone, now.
The fire had gone out but there was the faintest light coming from somewhere ahead so Zero picked up his grip and followed it, to catch up with Leo.
Then Zero thought about the next cave, the seventh, and he doubled over with laughter. What more could there possibly be? ‘There can’t possibly be any more. Could there?’  he said giddily to himself and to the universe. “ Anyway, Leo will know.” He excitedly took a few steps in the darkness toward the faint light, only to soon discover that he was now outside and looking up at a full desert moon.
“You now have this mantle of power.’ He heard Leo say gently.

Zero turned about to see if Leo was standing over by the cave entrance, but there was no Leo there. There was no cave there anymore, either.

Simon and Tian 2049

On the six day Simon woke up to a reality that he couldn’t understand. He remembered his cave and the candles and the brittle water he sucked out of the moist earth. He remembered crawling along the tunnel until he came to a deep seam in the metallic surface, he remembered his hunger and his meaningless dreams.

But now he was no longer in the tunnel. There was no mud on his hands. He was suspended by a million filaments of glass above a smooth surface of silver liquid. His blindfold was gone, and he squinted his eyes against the unfamiliar light. His left arm was floating silently in mid air about six inches away from his body, hovering in apparent position to be reattached. Simon studied the severed wound and the infection that had rotted it off of his body. The bone was exposed and a thin silver rod extended from it’s center to his shoulder. He didn’t feel any pain, even the hunger that was a permanent part of his existence was gone.

Then it surprised him that he couldn’t smell himself, he couldn’t smell anything. He slowly raised his left arm and looked at his hand. Fingers were white and so clean they seemed translucent, a delicate metal net seemed to enclose the palm and fingers. Simon strained to test the harness that held him over the liquid surface.

He could turn his head with some effort, but nothing else, he was tied fast. Simon relaxed and stopped his experimental struggling. He studied the ceiling of the room and tried to understand what this place was and how he came to be here. He listened to the silence and begin to sense a low humming sound. Overhead there was a slot in the ceiling that started right over his head and ran across six feet or so to stop over another figure, suspended over another liquid table. He focused and narrowed his eyes and saw a flickering movement over the chest of the other figure. It rose and fell and moved silently down the length of the body. As it moved, it left a trail of it’s activity, a mark of its path along the taut skin of the other body. Simon couldn’t watch anymore. The strain of holding his head turned began to hurt his neck. He closed his eyes, wondering to himself what it all meant. The pain in his neck immediately began to subside.

Simon opened his eyes, and the other figure was standing right beside him. A mild surprise vanished immediately. The figure looked vaguely like himself, a vague mirror image of Simon. But he was not human, he was a very refined machine that seemed to be completing its own construction as it stood there, looking down into Simon’s eyes. The chest area was building itself, becoming more substantial. The figure lightly touched Simon’s forehead and Simon heard a soft human language, a conversation between himself and another. The figure was talking to him. Telling him what to do, and what to think. The figure said he was Tian, a Manti robot created to educate the Sphere about Simon. The Tian said he was part of the self defense appliance. He explained that the Sphere had been aware of Simon’s proximity since he had tunneled down and established a refuge on it’s surface. The Sphere had a security protocol to investigate all peripheral unknown’s to determine degree of threat…

All this transpired as a conversation between a largely inarticulate human being and a highly developed alien robot. The information was transmitted directly into Simon’s memory without passing through cognitive parts of his brain. The information became knowledge and the knowledge became intelligence. All the while, the capabilities of the Sphere expanded to accommodate the rehabilitation of Simon, as his health improved, his natural strength was restored and augmented by organic fluid synthetica and elemental chemistry was compounded that is not present on earth.

The core mechanism of the Sphere is entrepreneurial and evolutionary. Not only does it have the power to build, but it is opportunistic, and it set about to fundamentally recreate Simon into a creature through which the Manti could learn about the planet it occupies, about the human inhabitants of the planet and ultimately about the Hellian invaders who are the immediate threat. The Sphere was motivated as part of its automatic behavior protocol. As an integral part of all the Manti Spheres throughout the Universe, and as a fundamental basis of Mantiu culture and philosophy, this was active passivity, self responsible and supported by high policy to seek alternatives to violence by any and all means.

The Spheres of earth had been on alert since Hellian had entered the solar system four years ago and had begun a cursory probe to search for the smaller less protected units. Although the spheres were installed by Manti they are completely self reliant and aside from their primary purpose, they are expected to exist as a benign, non invasive presence on their host planet. The Manti Spheres had lain undetected on earth for sixteen thousand years. And now they faced their first test. Although the Hellian invasion had been forecast and the network had been preparing for years, there were always surprises. Simon offered a way to avoid the undesired recourse of wiping out a regional constituent of the Hellian genus.

It was an overcast Monday morning and the through the small village a gray mist rose from the cold ground. The inhabitants were long used to staying undercover, behind doors with windows barred against the weather– against invaders–against everything. But they had to go out once in a while, to scavenge for food, to kill and drag home whatever wild animal they could find. And on this Monday a small group of villagers had assembled to go into the forest for a hunt. They were trying to put a halter on an old horse. They turned and saw two figures walking down the center of the road straight towards them. They walked slowly and were unarmed. But something about the two figures sent a chill through the gathering. But they didn’t raise their weapons as the figures approached. Simon stopped and looked at the horse, he had never seen a horse, as he reached out to touch it’s flank, Tian looked from one human face to another while his nevian core scanned an infinite database at light speed quickly assembling options and defining social interaction on earth in 2049.

Mantiwarbot  2050

Public Access laboratories of Fireshovel INT. Bero Davidian had his nose pressed to the smooth metal of the instrument and his eye trained on the lens.
“The bot is sucking everything out of Simon’s brain.” He whispered, “processing it somehow and feeding it back simultaneously. It’s so fast it doesn’t even register. The only way I can tell — Nylon recorded about twenty minutes before it blew up. Unbelievable”. Steve felt cold beads of sweat on his forehead, “And your permissions?”

“No, In fact, nobody knows we’re here. So keep this in your pocket.”

“Jesus Christ. Bero. How are you going to hide this shit? You broke Nylon and the time locks know you’re here, you’re fat is fried dude.”
Bero looked up and smiled, “Steve, are you shitting me? In all probability this is a genuine alien robot and it’s actually cloning itself onto a local street bum from our fair city? My job security doesn’t even fit into this equation, Doc will absolutely love this shit, I’ll get my grant on a silver platter. Christ!”
“Why’s this thing need the facility? he obviously generates his own power. “Steve looked at the clock, it had stopped. “How’d he git in?”

“That’s the thing Steve, He actually drained the lock, It was set on open when I came in, His computer spun the options like the old days and found the sequence– even thought this thing is multiplied to the fourth power. Tell me we’re not talking silk pajamas.” Bero went on, excitedly in a low voice while glancing across the room. “Far as I can tell, all he needs is a sterile atmosphere, the temperature dropped automatically when he started to work on the guy… come here.” Bero took Steve’s shoulder to guide him quietly, closer to peer at the strange coupling taking place in the center of the room. The pale figure of a man lay motionless on the stainless steel table. His body was thin from starvation, he was nude except for a grey rag tied around his waist in breechcloth fashion. His eyes were closed and his bony chest rose and fell with calm precision.

The alien robot crouched directly above him with long gleaming legs bent double and both arms symmetrically poised on either side of the reclining figure. Where his hands gripped the table they matched the color and smooth surface of the metal and appeared impossible to dislodge. The head of the robot was positioned barely above the man’s face, his forehead just touching the human’s forehead ever so slightly. A cold blue light resonated at the corresponding point of contact.

Steve stared in wonder at the robot. It was the finest thing he’d ever seen. Smooth, but with a texture that varied in the light, mostly human in shape and form, but with subtle quirks that seemed somehow to be obvious improvements. The little finger looked more like a small thumb, the musculature apparent through the effervescent translucence of the skin seemed way more capable than organic human bones. … and the face….

Steve froze as the thing disconnected with the prone form, and looked straight at him. The room fell into a stillness– and he didn’t know if Bero was next to him or not. It’s eyes like black glass, no white at all. Like a fucking insect– the thing looked from Steve, to Bero and back. It arched his back and those scary ass inhuman eyes connected again. A dull fear transmitted through Steve’s chest like electricity in slow motion. He felt immediately sick, weak and unable to think. His mind went blank and he started to fall when he felt a hand grip his arm. Bero’s choking voice, “St..eve… les git outa here… The two techs’ stumbled from the lab into the hallway and tripped over each other, panting as if they’d just ran a mile. “Goddamn! What the hell was that?” Bero coughed and rubbed his shaking hands and looked at Steve. “What happened?”
“That thing got some juice, or what?

Africa 2050

“Why can’t you make your skin look better? You can do everything else, but you can’t look like a white guy?” Simon’s plaintive frustration was clear. Tian could simulate a soft bronze sheen to his face and hands, but the pale flesh was beyond him. They were bumping along a narrow track though the brushy plains of the Eastern Congo. Their driver a thin black Rwandan named Tuba was expounding on the joys of driving his ancient Land Rover.
“These thing es the moost vantastik trook uf alll the vehicklez en toiwn! Et Nevver vail! Always it stert on Verst tri!” He shook his head vigorously up and down, “I lof thee trook! soo much!”
Simon looked at Tian and said, “He likes his truck.” Tian nodded gravely and filed the tidbit back amongst the very beginnings of his archive on human frailty. “I understand.” Tian replied to Simon, through a mental telepathy that Simon had learned to accept as routine.

Simon and Tian had a very interesting relationship. In Simon’s 42 years he had been a ivy league university professor in comparative Literature, he had also served as an advisor to policy makers in the state department. But his most pivotal position was that of ringleader in a very public controversy about gun control. It was during the 2040 peak of climate related environmental disasters along the eastern corridor of the United States, as crime rates soared and roving gangs of armed thugs moved with impunity throughout the whole region from Boston all the way down to Washington DC, that Simon organized a public campaign to close all gun stores in the Boston metro area. With the help of the media and the criminals themselves, he made great progress and had began the first serious challenge to the second amendment of the American constitution

It was a well organized reaction to the ubiquitous gun violence that was spreading through the region, and he was able to marshal support from the concerned citizenry and local government. His organization began to see ordinances passed that limited gun ownership and reselling laws were rolled back and resistance from the remaining gun stores that hadn’t yet been burglarized was strangely muted.

Then came the fated night when his home was attacked. He was beaten and left for dead beside his massacred family. Simon was in a coma for two full years. When he woke one dark night in the late fall, he walked out of the hospital alone and unseen. Then began his prolonged transformation into a sort of night wanderer and street bum hovering between illusion and a tenuous hold on reality. He traveled south along the coast and settled in a small abandoned village in what used to be southeastern Pennsylvania. What little of the poet that remained in him must have been drawn to an old broken down house because of a strange room full of broken mirrors glued to all the walls. He made a refuge in the basement and eventually dug a deep hole that led him to the surface of what was to become known as a submerged Maniti Sphere.

The Sphere had monitored Simon for a year before deciding that he was both harmless and potentially useful. Eventually he was brought inside and rehabilitated. His past trauma was healed, his mind sharpened and he was transformed into a fully functioning companion and advisor to a robot that was created to embark on a mission of discovery, a mission long devised by the Sphere to study the affects of human’s inability to attain a reasonable level of civilization and evolve along a natural course.

As the spheres are equipped with a broad capability for independent action and able to self direct by a highly evolved synthetic reasoning, they can do whatever they want. The only limitations are the guidelines set forth by Manituis Ministerium, the sphere’s creator and ultimate sovereign. Those guidelines had been built into the sphere and had been considered carefully as the sphere watched the humans make war and destroy a third of he planet and trigger irreversible global climate change. For not only did this action seem to preclude any kind of future for the species, but it also presented a threat to the infrastructure of the Maniti galactic network, key elements of which are buried on earth in the form of the spheres. Therein did the Maniti sphere find its responsibility to act.

Kinshasa

“Tian was telling Simon that they were three miles outside of the largest refugee camp in the world, forty miles south of Kinshasa, sprawling along the border with Angola for eight hundred miles, the camp was as large as a country. Simon leaned forward and told the driver to stop at Yogandi a dusty village along the route. They were to meet a Russian psychologist who was in the area running a small independent Abola virus clinic. He had heard that a great Silverback highland gorilla, thought extinct since 2010 had been spotted among a large group of militarized chimpanzees, acting as their leader and conducting probe and protection actions along the northern boundaries of the refugee camp. To the researcher this meant only one thing. Not only had animals learned to fight human wars, but they had rejected the notion and were mounting their own missions in opposition to war. They were protecting the refugees from the predatory rebel factions coming down from the interior.

Simon wanted to talk to this man. He had been teaching Tian everything he could about human nature. “Tian, This gorilla could teach us something. Love manifests in many ways, and compassion too. They are similar and both hard to describe.” They passed a camel with a huge bundle of straw tied to his wobbly back raising a thick cloud of dust. Simon stared at the flank of the beast and covered his mouth with his hand.

“Hate is easy to understand, there are many examples and many teachers, but love is more illusive.” he said.

Tian nodded as he always did. mutely accepting the information and storing it in his infinite database, and made a quick comment with his mind,

“Mankind is a young race, equal to an adolescent if compared to an individual’s life. That’s why animal instincts have not died and he still fights to gain superiority. When your race grows to adulthood it will abandon competition and learn to cooperate with fellow man”. Tian stared straight ahead while he made this observation, He was looking at a group of soldiers approaching in a battered pickup truck. Simon was wetting his hands from a canteen and wiping dust from his eyes as he heard Tian in his mind. “Right again, Tian, mankind is a spoiled child.” He looked up too, as he felt from Tian a very subtle shift in attention.

Simon saw the soldiers as they shouted and abruptly pulled their vehicle across the path to block the Land Rover. Tuba slunk back in his seat as three men approached with weapons drawn.

“Bantu! Bantu Saddo! the smallest yelled as he brandished his AK and glared with hatred at Simon and Tian.

“Git down, Gitdown, Now! another yelled pushing his muzzle in Simon’s face.

Tian reacted quickly once he was sure this was unacceptable behavior. The three men yelled and dropped their rifles as they fell to the ground in pain. The two soldiers in the truck saw what happened and jumped out running forward with all intentions of protecting their comrades, but as soon as they got close they too flopped on the ground with cries of pain. Tian dismounted the Land Rover and walked among the writhing men. They reached out and grabbed feebly at his legs as he walked by. Tian crouched down beside the apparent leader and began to read his mind. The man laid there sweating profusely, his eyes wide with fear and stared at Tian’s alien face as his whole history flowed from his brain. The soldiers laid immobile like that for an hour as Tian processed their minds. Then they slowly started to get up. Siman walked over to hear what they were saying to Tian.

“Thank you sir… for my life.”  said the biggest one. “Thank you for everything.” his body shuddered as he talked,  “I am new man.” He bowed and the others were mumbling the same things, “Thank you, thank you”… they mumbled as they walked back to their truck leaving their weapons laying in the dust. The truck started up and did a slow turn off the track and swung around taking a random direction into the desert.

Refugee Camp Tulu

The camp sprawled under a hot yellow sky, a thick haze of dust and cooking smoke drifted lazily up to disappear in the dull brightness of an unseen sun.

Tian was dressed like anyone else, a grey rag wrapped around his head and a long tattered robe disintegrating at the hem and colored the same as whatever earth he was walking through. Simon was dressed in similar nondescript robes as were most of the refugees that crowded both sides of the road, watching and jostling each other, passing the rumor back and forth of a true human equivalence in a machine.

The crowd pressed forward, the dust swirling overhead as a clearing opened and followed the small group through the endless expanse of the camp, Tian’s hand rested lightly on the shoulder of the Russian researcher who jabbered away about what he believed his research had discovered. The Russian was Serge Volodya and he was so excited to have someone to talk to that he didn’t noticed that he could hear Tian’s questions without Tian having to speak. Serge walked with his head down, staring at the hard packed earth and waving his hands in front of him as he explained months of experiments with a group of two dozen chimpanzees that lived in the scrub about five miles north of the camp.

Serge said they are a remnant of a wider effort by the ROC and a specialized contingent of Hellian scientists to modify the neurobiology of over a hundred primates and great apes in order to electronically control their brains. The ultimate goal from what Serge could determine was to field a fighting force of prosimians that could sustain themselves in the wild, and yet be available when needed to fight local wars. Tian made no value judgement on this notion and filed it in the same section with human frailty. Simon trailed the two enthralled by the otherwordly scene and observing every detail of the environment. Among the throngs of gaunt dark bodies trailing them were six armed fighters. The same ones who had accosted them on the road and had been subdued by Tian’s suggestive mental powers. They had taken on the occupation as independent bodyguards, and passed the group to take position as point just as the road reached a clearing, and the group came into sight of the sun baked mud block hut housing the facilities of Novaya Russian & Eurasian Institute for Uranium Mining and Research Institute.

Inside the building was one long room, dark with only the light from the open door falling on the dusty floor. Papers were strewn about and a single chair stood in the center of the room with a small boy tied fast, head down apparently asleep. From contacts on his head and chest wires trailed off into the gloom. A bank of rough whicker cages lined the back wall. The stink was immediate and pungent. Animal feces and rotten food overlaid with the faint whiff of death. The little Russian scurried around a cluttered desk and said, “Let me put on some light.”

The Dead Russian

Simon had a lot to be sorry for. The African trip was not turning out well. His best judgement failed him and Tian too. There was no love in Africa, just as there was no love in America. He no longer knew where to look. Simon had great hopes that among the most desperate, the people who had lost everything, that they alone would hold onto the last thing nobody could take from them. Hope… and love for their children. Why had he held this ridiculously romantic notion for so long? His own experience had seen his own children die a brutal death at the hands of mindless thugs. Did he still feel love for them after all these years? Or was it just a profound regret.

All he could do was hope Tian would accept an apology. Would he have to teach forgiveness before he could be forgiven his own sins? Simon absently gathered his gear, and glanced at the small figure of Serge wedged between two blood splattered boulders.

The ridge was scattered with the bodies of the dead. The ROC independents and freelancers of unknown origin, and about twenty simian fighters of various species. Simon shook his head to free his thoughts and focus on the present. Help Tian get the three remotes in the truck….

“Obtenez svp dans le camion, là n’est aucune crainte.” Thankfully they responded to French. The infinite African dialects were beyond even Tian’s ability to decipher. The three boys clambered into the back of the truck and Tian drew a tarp over them.

Simon picked up a headset that one of the boys had taken off, glancing at Tian, his mind running ahead to a vision of the burning hut, an event that hadn’t happened yet, but he was sure would happen soon. Realizing nobody could figure out what happened here anyway, he dropped the headset and got into the truck. A momentary pang of regret that all the weapons were laying around waiting to be used again was forgotten as a military technical rushed up with four of their ‘bodyguards’ and a captive Hellian ‘advisor’.

Tian didn’t turn on the ignition. The one called Deuce walked up and said in a low voice. “This guy might be a leader, he had a controller, but I don’t think he pinged anyone”. Deuce held out the device for inspection; it was obviously damaged, depleted uranium had melted the receiver to the battery pack, but untouched were the three dials that corresponded to the three young boys, the three ‘remotes’.

Tian said, “Burn the hut and free the remotes”. Tian glanced at Simon with deferential nod that he still included him in the big decisions.

Simon marveled that Tian could not only read peripheral emotions, but be generous enough to consider them and respond with immediate mental reassurance, while at the same time– make quick decisions about a complicated situation– and give directions to a complete brute in a language he’ll understand. This is truly what it means for a machine to be ‘awake’.

“Deuce, Organize a guard tonight on the northern perimeter, we’ll have to find the rest of the advisors.” Simon said, “Can we just let the remotes go?”
“Once the Hellians are done, they’ll grow away from their training, there’re young, they’ll forget.”

Tian was driving west, they had traded the three young remotes for the Hellian and were heading toward the grey horizon, lit occasionally with dim fires. They drove over a low rise and Tian pulled over near a burned out tree and braked to a stop. He pulled the Hellian down from the truck and set him on the ground at the base of the tree. He then sat down in front of him and stared at him. The Hellian glared back with equal intensity, his wide-set eyes sparkling through the bristly hair on his face. A thick stream of drool drained from his snout as the Hellian strained defiantly to block Tian’s attempt to get into his head. But Tian was a quick learner, much quicker than a Hellian. Soon the stiffness went out of his body and he slumped forward, his shaggy head caught in both of Tian’s hands.

“We know where they are.” Tian stood up-dropping the lifeless head into the dust and unsnapping the weapons harness from the dead alien. “We have to find the Silverback.”

Conroe and the Queen

The mess would need to be cleaned up sooner or later. The alien carcasses would have to be gathered and burned in a pyre. Conroe knew too many vultures and crows personally to allow them to eat the fresh toxic flesh. “Later,” thought Conroe as his boots took him toward the silent tigershark vessel, one ridge over. A memory of a guitar riff, something sweet and haunting by Clapton, kept playing in his head, muffling his peripheral attention from the boot-scuffing hot sand and the relentless afternoon wind. ‘One ridge over’ in desert talk is a strenuous ten minute haul-ass hike through brush and cactus.

Approaching the ramp of the tigershark, Conroe was confronted by two big headed pilot drones in full flightsuit, carrying large over-the-shoulder weapons. Standoff. Conroe yelled something derogatory about the maternal parentage of the two pilots, but they didn’t seem to understand the implications or to take insult. They simply stood in their threatening postures, until, several minutes (of one sided insult hurling) later, the Hellion Queen, Helen, strutted from the confines of the tigershark, down the ramp, appearing calmly perturbed in her alien shape-shifty way. Her exaggerated feminine form was further enhanced by the angry black and yellow battle tights that took an hour to put on properly. But the battle tights weren’t put on quite properly, and thus were pinching the queen in places that made her more irritable during an already bad day.

“Who are you … let me see … you are not on any strategic file,” said the queen with a slant of her head, accessing her biolink. “Curious, you seem to have public records of being a drunken disorderly drifter. How can a bag of mucus like you defeat my noble beasts? Even your best warriors had difficulties … and they all died with the flavor of fear in their blood … to feed my pets.”

“I saw the surveillance of what you did to one of our boys. Not very neighborly. I’ll give you one chance to leave this planet. Go home … now!” said Conroe flatly, assured that the queen had a direct biolink to the top secret military infobanks. He had personally entered his drunk and disorderly files several years prior, when he had in fact been quite drunk and disorderly. He always liked to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in cyberspace for an instance like this.

“You killed my pets with some lucky magic. Is that chicken bone around your neck your Voodoo charm?” sneered the queen with biomechanical grace. “I believe you should die a thousand times for each one of my dear pets. Your primitive luck is at its end, mucus-born.”

“Why don’t ya quit your yabbering, lady. Get going now.” Conroe was hunkered slightly with his arms poised in a classic quickdraw stance. The queen’s big headed pilots stood their ground at the base of the ramp, buckling down a bit from the weight of their menacing shoulder weapons, dutifully held in the heat of the afternoon. The flight schools for Hellion pilots was essentially about pushing buttons, so holding real weapons for prolonged periods of time was not really in their job description.

The queen walked past her pilots, out to where Conroe stood, halting ten feet from him. She moved like an eel as she fetched her emerald dagger from her thigh sheath. Bright green air-slashes against undulating black and yellow battle tights were part of the choreography of her display of Hellion martial arts. She jumped and spun a complete 360 midair, then extended her emerald blade. “I shall feed your blood to the sand … ever … so … slowly.”

“Shut up,” said Conroe, drawing his revolver and fanning three rounds faster than his lower lip could finish the ‘p’ sound of ‘shut up’. One round struck the dagger, knocking it out of the queen’s grip. Shards of splintered green crystal sparkled for a few milliseconds in the late afternoon sunshine. The other two rounds had passed through where she had been standing, continuing on to their intended targets … the two big headed pilots were blown back from where they had stood. The queen’s battle tights had electroreflexively shifted her a fraction of a second out of time phase, saving her precious skin from such displays of force.

“Huh, time shift or something. I guess bullets won’t work,” said Conroe as he casually fired another round at, and through, the queen. She shifted predictably as her battle tights performed flawlessly.

“What magic do you have now, human,” yelled the queen as she bared her dangerous teeth.

Conroe lifted the chicken bone of his necklace, giving a trumpet player’s puff of breath at one end of the bone blowpipe. A slender dart blew out the other end, accompanied by a chalky cloud of fine dust that spiraled in the hot desert wind. The dart passed through the queen, she phased in and out of time, but the fine dust was carried within her boundary of reintegration. She was immediately paralyzed, motionless in her angry, ugly grimace.

“Huh, so that’s what the wasp venom and powdered platinum was all about. Hey lady, I told you to leave my planet, but did you listen to me? Look at what you made me do, damn it. You had your chance, damn it.” The mixture of a neurotoxin and an electrical conductor managed to stop the queen dead in her tracks. A strong whip of wind knocked her rigid form to the ground.

Conroe walked to her biomechanical body, as rigid as a plastic toy soldier that fell over in a child’s sandbox. He wiped a tear from his cheek with the back of his hand, knowing that at least part of this form had been a viable living creature made from the clay of the universe. He touched her face and hands, feeling the hard metal construct underneath her petal-soft biologically once-living skin. One eye was mechanical, the other was biological. Her brain was undoubtedly original equipment, but enhanced with the best that her technology had to offer.

The Queen’s Dying

Shadows stretched longer as gusts of hot wind pulled away invisible wisps of water molecules from each cactus, bush, carcass, and lone standing figure. Conroe stood over the queen, blankly watching heat shimmers on the horizon. Something was wrong, he considered, or at least something wasn’t right, yet. He had accomplished as much as was indicated by his notes, but there was still something missing from this picture. He sketched a line in the sand with the pointy toe of his right boot, then he crouched and completed a diagram of the queen’s access panels.

Using his Bowie knife with the skill of a surgeon, Conroe dismantled the robomechanical vertebrae access panel at the base of the queen’s neck, exposing her interior, like opening the hood of one of Spiderbush’s chopshop racing trucks. Tangled tubes of pneumatic oil twisted around clusters of servo gadgets, their controlling electronic components compromised by a whiff of platinum powder in the wind. The queen’s rigid body quickly unfolded as hinged sections, obviously easier for the 20,000 light year scheduled maintenance and cleaning.

A large flexbag filled the torso cavity, connecting up to the cranium with tube clusters, and up to the mouth with an artificial larynx. Inside the flexbag was what had kept the queen’s brain alive. The queen had sacrificed most of her organic self for a logic of survival understandable to Hellions. Then the large bag, filling the torso compartment, began to kick.

“Blood-brain barrier … it’s still alive,” muttered Conroe unconsciously. His knife found a way through the tubes and gaskets at the top of the bag, exposing the gasping face and tiny torso of an old woman. He gently disconnected all tubes from the writhing stub of a body, her arms and legs removed by cruel alien surgery, her neck shortened, and most ribs removed. The wrinkles on the old woman’s face pulled in deep furrows as Conroe removed a stretch of tubes from her throat. Her eyes opened in a pale blue glaze as she looked up from the gentle cradle of Conroe’s arms.

“Merci,” she said in a hoarse painful whisper. She continued in an ancient French dialect, “I have been in hell. Are you my Lord?”

“No, but I have walked with him,” said Conroe with a fluid command of the dialect. “Where are you from?”

“I was taken from … monastery in Lyon … by the gargoyles … terrible, terrible … they put me in hell … thank you, thank you,” she struggled to say between sputters and gasps.

Conroe remembered the Gargoyle invasion of 991 AD, and it had been terrible, indeed. The Hellion and the Jin had been part of the attack force, but had subverted to destroy the Gargoyle while the Human race suffered from the battles raging overhead. All forces went their separate ways after sufficient damage was done to all involved, but the spoils of this forgotten intrusion included, apparently, human subjects.

“Sister, you were waiting for your Lord to return,” said Conroe, having been caught up in the first Millennial frenzy himself. “You have little time on Earth, and you shall meet him soon.”

“You said you have walked with him,” gurgled the old woman with a crooked smile. She gazed into the deep blue of the afternoon sky.

“Yes, sister. When he  first walked the earth, I walked with him. And he blessed me, a double portion of blessing, asking me if I would wait for him to return, and I said, yes, I would wait for him.”

“I have heard of your kind … angels of the Earth,” forced the old woman.

“I am only a man, a patient man, waiting for my friend … my friend the Healer … to return.”

“Remember me to him, when you meet him,” whispered the old woman as she went limp. Her eyes were fixed on Conroe’s face as she died.

The blood red sun dipped lower in a blaze orange sky. The temperature had already dropped to 105 and the wind was blowing more softly, perhaps with a slight scent of pine from some distant mountain. The alien carcasses had all been towed by Jeep to the base of a lightning stuck tree north of Flatrock. Enough petrol was sacrificed in the pyre to get a good funeral bonfire for the entire night. Enough explosive caulking putty was used to obliterate all traces of the Hellion tigershark.

A smaller pyre was reserved for the old French woman who had traveled as a bioslave for forty or fifty years of her life at near light speeds, taking her more than a thousand years from her birth. However, her dust would soon be returned to the dust of her home world.

Conroe hadn’t stopped sobbing for two hours, sweat and tears were mingled as a salty film on his face and neck. His mind was empty, as it usually was, but perhaps it was more of a hungry emptiness than usual. He wanted a strong drink, then he didn’t. He wanted to believe in reincarnation, then he didn’t. He didn’t need the words ‘faith’, ‘grace’, or ‘love’ in his vocabulary … he only needed the word ‘patience’.

Wood was added to the fires throughout the night. The Milky Way was brilliant. Meteors and mysterious lights traveled their paths in the sky. Conroe shared a bag of roasted peanuts with a friendly crow who had decided to visit for the evening. He wondered if it was time to start creating a new identity, which was becoming more and more difficult to do in the current technoculture of infomaniacs. Secrets were becoming more difficult to keep.

Petarde’s Command

“ Well, what about it, Meeks?” Willie Petarde demanded as soon as his subordinate had tossed back an obligatory shot of single malt that all the men received as a reward for returning alive from any mission, these days. It went well with the Artois grog they had found in a barn near the ruins of Logansport, which was once a small town in Indiana. The grog had all but replaced food for the local military and was the only liquid left uncontaminated for a thousand miles.
“ You waiting to inherit the earth or something, Meeks?” Just like his father, Willie made lame jokes and slapped his men on the on the back when he wanted something, lest they forget who controlled the scotch around here.
The exhausted Meeks’ breath was taken away by the hot liquor and the hard slap and he nearly puked on his bosses’ battle boots.
“ You were right, sir.” Meeks finally squeezed out a sentence.” It is Zero, evidently, that the Manti are watching over and somebody, not Zero or any of his buddies, has killed the Hellion Queen, too.”
“ So it is Zero hour, eh, Meeky Boy?” Willie was drunk and plainly enjoying himself.
“ Almost, sir, as near as we can tell books 21 and 35 of the New Zeroaster Testament are an accurate account of the near term.”
Meeks reported.” Unfortunately the books disagree about the outcome of the battle, “
“ Do they mention me?” Willie asked.
“ Not exactly, sir.” Meeks reported. “ They speak of a General and his Son. Mostly it’s about Zero, though. How he heals radiation sickness and teaches people about EIE.”
“ What the fuck is EIE, Meeks?”
“ It means Energy is Everything or you can say it the other way around.”
“ Thats the big revelation? Hell Einstein knew that.” Willie scoffed.
“ Apparently knowing it and realizing it are two different things, sir”
“ Are you fucking with me Meeks?”
“ No . Sir. It’s the biggest deal in the testament accounts but apparently its something that has to be transmitted to you from somebody who has already got it.”
“ Like the clap?” Willie roared.
“ Exactly…Sir.” Meeks reported. “ As near as we can tell, that’s what its all about.”
“ Well, I will never be able to sell that shit to the General. “ Wille concluded.” So get drunk, sober up and get back out there and find me some intell I can use. “ Willie thought about it for a minute, then he changed his mind.
“ Scratch that, Meeks.” He said at last “ I got to go and meet this Zero myself.”

Epiphany

(Piff’s ancestry dates back to the early 16th century, She is French on her fathers side and Ottawa Indian on her mothers. Canadian by citizenship before Canada was dissolved into the greater NAFIS, North American Federation of Independent States. She holds three degrees in public policy, government and military history. She is a Major in the Nafis Defense Council and a specialist in covert operations. This latter is how she met Zero during an extended survival and warfare training period in Fort Brucker Greenland. This was just prior to the declaration of war by the Israelis against he Solib of Arabian States, and a full year before the Hellian presence became known. Piff and Zero had a brief encounter but both thought their careers important enough to forestall an escalation of their relationship. However as it so often happens, fate is getting ready to intervene. Zero has been made commander of a company of men to head a test and train campaign throughout the Hellian strike areas worldwide. It took six weeks to do NAFIS and SAFIS, The Southern Fed of States, and now he is heading into EU and the African States. As a side occupation, Zero has initiated a personal, i.e. secret mission to examine the Ascendance of the Spheres as they have finally stopped emerging and the final count seems to be seven. [Zero has a “feeling” that he needs to get closer somehow to the Spheres, that there is something about that whole thing he needs to know. To complete his.”training”. Unwittingly he requisitions a Special operations section without knowing it’s managed by Piff. His former paramour from Greenland. Zero also needs a small combat brigade because he intends on checking out the latest emergent sphere near Mogadishu. He’ll need protection and firepower and his old buddy Jeremiah recommended a pretty capable guy named William Petarde. Zero sent in another request to headquarters…)

The Ascendence of the Spheres 2062

From the topmost ridge the broad valley shimmered in the pale light of the rising sun, Thousands of people crowded the foothills and the rocky slopes down to the valley floor. Some standing still, others walking in slow motion toward what appeared to be a new lake. They stumbled, confused and mumbling, but curiosity drove them forward.

What seemed to be a lake had appeared over the past several weeks, like a hidden spring beginning to fill the valley with still grey water, but with no reflection.
Then to those who ventured closer, it was apparent it was not a body of water. It was a solid surface, silvery grey and subtly moving, growing perceptibly wider and taller. Growing in the center and forming a convex surface that reflected the transient light. At it’s circumference the earth made way by crumbling and breaking away. The multitudes drew close and drew back as the thing emerged from the earth.

By nightfall it had slowed it’s ascent and seemed to rest, fully exposed to the bright night sky, a giant black sphere, silhouetted against the stars.

Tia and the Simon were sitting in a modified Rover on the summit listening to the BBC Biolink prattling on about this remarkable appearance of yet another of the mysterious spheres that had begun to sprout at various intervals over the surface of the earth. Somewhere below amid the the sparkling cooking fires of the now unseen multitude was a Nippon reporter dutifully relating in breathless tones how this latest event brought to seven the spheres so far recorded.

“This one is bigger!” He exclaimed. “Much larger than the the one in San Cristobal! Apparently they come in two sizes; The smaller ones are approximately a quarter mile in diameter, and the bigger ones range from a half mile to as big as the Arizona Sphere which is nearly a full mile in diameter. Even though they seem to have come from underground, and many agree that they are not of this world, there is still no consensus on what they are, or where they came from! There are many who blame the recurring Hellian invasion and yet others who hope that they mean something else. There is no denying the impression this event is having on the affected areas, on the world as a whole!”.

Simon listened intently to the biolink as an endless flow of people moved like shadows through the bare trees and down the mountainside. He sat and watched Tia’s eyes as the Sphere emerged.

“I’ll just keep watch, right?” said Simon.
“Yeah, sit tight for a moment.” said Tia.

Deep inside the Sphere, a subtle preaction, a technuance of movement prepared itself for communication of specific energetic chemistry via a small silver tube to Tia, as he sat high on the remote hillside.

Tia stood up and rested his hands on the windscreen and waited.

A blink of light as the tiny silver object transcended the outer membrane of the sphere, covered the intervening distance in a slit second and silently hovered three inches in the general area of Tia’s sternum, as if he had a sternum. Tia gently grasped the silver tube and turned it 90 degrees and fitted it into a slight depression in his chest. Like a metal chameleon, the tube seemed to flatten out and change color, and then became flesh, or like the fleshy material that Tia was covered with.

Tia sat down and turned the ignition. “The Queen is dead,” he said to Simon. “We must act quickly to avert Hellian vengeance. He jacked the rover in a tight circle and headed away from the mountains. “We’ll ask Silverback to accompany us to the main earth camp of Hellian, which just happens is seventy miles south on the outskirts of Mogadishu, and then— I must ask them to depart this planet”.

Earthrange Africa 2063

16 miles outside Hellian Earthrange Africa. Temporary bivouac of Zero’s HP command. October 21st, 2057

Zero had been looking forward to meeting Tia since talking to Simon prior to his arrival in Cameroon. Simon’s descriptions of a true evolutionary robot was definitely beyond anything earth technology had developed and Zero was intrigued. By this time Tia’s appearance was as close to that of a regular indigenous human as any that roamed the roads and dusty trails of earth. The metallic compound of his exoflesh had begun to learn what organic looked and felt like. His forehead looked like a soft hammered copper and his cheeks like leather, it all came together in a convincing approximation of a weathered and deeply tanned south African of mixed descent. But his eyes– naturally– were what made the impression. Not only did they seem to bore into your soul, but the guy could actually read your mind. Literally and without making a big deal of it. It made for an immediately honest conversation. But underneath his nearly human appearance, Tia was also a highly developed machine, completely without human ego. Which is a characteristic so pervasive among humans that its complete absence is an impressive effect.

Prior to his recent enlightenment, Zero had been a self actualized and confident personality. But now a profound calm had subtly re-founded his being. As the convoy pulled to a stop near the old sandstone buildings at the edge of the village, and the dust from their arrival blew forward down the trail. Zero could see Tia standing in shadow just under an awning of canvas between the buildings. He had never seen him before, and yet he knew him immediately. He felt as if Tia was a brother, and he noted with brief curiosity how naturally he trusted this man he had never met– as if he were a life-long friend.

The day was hot, a bald sun burning unseen in a wispy yellow sky. But a steady wind broke the heat and stirred the palms just outside the rough canvas attached to the mud thatch cafe facaden. A skinny black man brought a tray of tea and bread to the table just under the awning. Zero and Tia sat gazing out over the deserted scrub in the direction of Mogadishu forty miles south. Primarily Zero wanted to learn as much a possible about the sphere’s, but Tia quickly took him deeper than he was prepared to go.

“Tia, Let’s hold off for the moment on the Manti and the Hellian. Let’s just consider the Spheres first. Without going into too much detail, I understand that their original installation on earth was– and is still, part of a galactic network of some kind to harness a harmonic potential of universal energy.

And that one temporal aspect of the sphere’s presence on earth is to popularize the spiritual aspect of energy,” Zero searched for the best words, “and that earth’s recent history of war, its proliferate use of nuclear weapons has somehow threatened this function?”

Tia smiled more at Zero’s paraphrase than what he was talking about. “Your understanding is closer to the truth than your words can describe”.

Zero continued, “And that you were created by a Sphere near Philadelphia to somehow correct this situation?”

Now it was Tia’s turn to hesitate. “My knowledge is supranatural– you might consider emotional. I have no technological comprehension of this issue at all.  I am a temporary biotechnical construct with capabilities and appearance much like yourself, but with a mandate from Mantuitius to lend correction to what Manti sees as an imbalance in energetic appreciation. Other than that, I have no directions from Manti as to means or method, and the search for a human counterpart was an instinctual impulse to gain inside knowledge.  But now Simon recommends that your physical resources and position in the military can accelerate our mutual objective, and I see from your honest soul and your official directive to administer the deployment of the Hellian, that he is correct”.

Zero digested this, and a brief thought crossed his mind about his unfamiliarity with Manti warbot technology, wondering what special skills this guy might have…

Tia smiled and glanced at the grey canvas overhead. The two glasses of tea lifted gently inches off the table– turned vertically 360 degrees without spilling the tea, then the rickety wooden table with the stain and wear of ages on it’s rough surface magically transformed into a bronze and gold gilt Louis the Fourteenth reproduction.

The skinny little black fellow stepped back with eyes wide. It was just a palor trick, very subtle, but it did temporarily neutralize gravity. Zero looked at Tia and asked, “Just the tip of the iceburg, eh?” The table and gravity retuned to normal with a soft thump.

Then Tia moved his hand slowly over the rough surface and it brightened into a map of Hellian Earthrange. It was more than a map, it was a photographic display, in color, in real time as seen from Natelslip satellite 600 miles above the earth. Zero could actually make out the movement of figures and hardware. The scene seem to self illuminate and he felt like he was looking down through the clouds at the actual site.

He looked up at Tia and said, “Partners then?”

Fort El Nezek

As Tia and Zero walked across the baked earth toward the tracks, they heard the soft whirr of two sharkships overhead but kept their eyes down knowing the sun would demand a high price for a glance upward.

“Silverback has joined us and Manti may make a surprise appearance if we need it”. Tia said as they mounted the lead track.

Both sides of the single lane track through the hot desert was strewn with burnt hulks of ancient vehicles, wheeled artillery, and other military hardware, Much of it had been converted into rude shelter, as twisted metal sheeting and faded blue tarps made up the dominant roofing material rigged from one skeletal detritus to another.
Former nomads and other desert dwellers, not far evolved above animals seemed the primary inhabitants, as dour simian faces could be seen ducking out of sight as the convoy rumbled past.

The command traversed the forty miles south without incident to the low walls of the abandoned fort that Hellian had taken for a world headquarters on planet earth. A eleven mile wide free fire zone had been established surrounding the fort and seemed to be patrolled by local forces commandeered for that purpose. No overt Hellian presence was evident aside from the the ubiquitous sharkships hovering overhead. Mogadishu lay off to the east with it’s permanent haze of grey smoke hanging above the teeming city. The convoy drove through the open entrance gates.

Through Tia’s translation a brief communication had been exchanged between the base commander and Zero insuring safe entry and setting up a meeting between the two groups. Zero had taken conflict resolution courses but doubted they would be much help in this situation. The convoy brought itself to a rough circle in the center of a broad courtyard, and set up a rudimentary security perimeter. Each platoon leader opened his respective door and peered foreword to Zero’s track as Zero stepped down and mumbled into a small radio mounted on his shoulder. “We’re cool guys, so far anyway.”

The ruins of a sprawling desert fortress sat still and baking in the hot sun. It was deserted except for a long low building that looked of recent construction. A center door opened and a black vehicle rolled slowly towards the convoy. It approached Zero’s track and stopped. A wide hatch opened and a Hellian functionary stepped out. He was uniformed and had a face shield designed to mimic human appearance. It had the effect of a Japanese mask, and as he walked up to Zero and Tia his scaly tail drug through the soft sand leaving a shallow trail. He stopped and held out an envelope, and Zero nodded to Tia who stepped forward and took the note and read it aloud, translating from Hellianese to English. “Welcome earthlings to our temporary location on your generous planet. We appreciate the opportunity to host a meeting of the official representatives of planet earth and of Manuitius Ministerium. Please follow your guide and be assured you will be treated with respect and full security”.

While Tia was reading the note he was also giving Zero a mental interpretation of his feelings about each part of the message, so that when he finished reading, an affirmative nod confirmed to Zero that all was still well in hand.

“Okay guys, Tia and I are going in, Silverback will serve as bio-comm between top and bottom and we’ll maintain radio silence”. Zero talked into his radio as he made eye contact across the short distance at each of his platoon leaders. “Don’t hesitate to double click for any reason,” Zero looked at his watch and said, its 12 hundred, this shouldn’t take longer than 2 -3 hours. thanks guys, stay alert.”

Inside the newly constructed building was a long room whose main feature was a series of what seemed to be freight elevators. They were made of the same black metal as the larger supersharks, and as Zero and Tia followed the guide into the center one, Tia communicated to Zero that they were also matter transference portals. But for the purpose at hand, they acted like elevators and descended into the earth far beneath the desert. As they reached what seemed to be the bottom, Tia nodded to Zero that he could still hear Silverback so they were not out of communication with the top. Tia also said that Manti was aware of how far they had gone into an insecure position with Hellian.

The doors opened upon a very large low ceilinged room in the form of a great ring around a central raised dias with a round table. Seated at the table were several figures. All seemed to be Hellian except for a creature that was of a different species altogether. As the guide lead Tia and Zero to the table and indicated which chair they should take, the insectoid trembled and avoided their eyes. The head was like a large praying mantis, and the thin snakelike body seemed to be liquid filled latex.
The others were standard garden variety Hellians and seemed to be in a trance, awaiting the entrance of the leader. Zero and Tia knew the queen was dead so they both wondered who would have taken her place in so short a time.

A side entrance door slid open and three Hellian drones stonily walked in pushing a wheeled table supporting a long ornate box.

Everyone at the table rose stiffly from their seats and the Hellian at the head begun intoning in Hellianese some officious claptrap and Zero looked questioningly at Tia.

“It’s Helen” whispered Tia under his breath.

The Originals

Events were starting to come a little too hard and fast for Zero. The Hellian Earthrange commandant had orchestrated a complicated subterfuge with the remains of the queen and what they claimed was the original “healer” that had been thought long dead since 2012. Tia had not only vouched for the authenticity of the healer, but had detected a battery assisted heartbeat in the shrunken chest.

At the same time, Silverback was sending telepathic messages of alarm that the company up top was engaged in defensive action with an incoming Hellian strike force just returning from an attack on the latest ascendant Sphere that emerged in Kazakhstan, and apparently the Hellian force outnumbered Zero’s lone company of fighters.

Zero and Tia wanted to get the healer up to the top pronto, but the Hellians had concocted some outlandish offer to trade the Healer for exclusive rights to the core of the three largest spheres. The scheme was out of the question, and Zero’s time had suddenly become too valuable to waste. So he simply took matters into his own hands as he is known to do, and pulled out a concealed weapon, a plastic fulcrum 48ml and silently dropped the two bodyguards and put the gun to the head of the commandant– and told Tia to translate…

“We’re going up right now and taking the commandant the healer and the Jin– or everyone dies!”

Tia experienced surprise for the first time in his life as somehow Zero acted before Tia knew he was going to. Tia looked at Zero with a bright curiosity and translated the demand to the commandant held tightly in Zero’s grip with a 48ml jammed into his scaly neck. The commandant bristled but immediately acquiesced with a sputtering command that the remaining Hellians accompany the group into the elevator. The coffin with the remains of the queen and the healer was wheeled in and Zero motioned to the Jin to join them as they crowded inside.

Zero and Tia emerged from the elevator at a crouch, meeting Quill and Neff, two of his men, who’d been notified by Tia, to be prepared to cover whatever retreat might be needed. But Quill said, “Relax boss, the coast has been cleared in a most unusual fashion”.

The ancient stone fort was bathed in a soft unfamiliar light. Three crashed Tigersharks were nose down in the smoldering earth and Hellian bodies were strewn in a jagged line, motionless in the sand.  From the open gate could be seen a loose group of Hellian fighters coming in for a controlled landing, unopposed and guns silent. Several of Zero’s tracks, smoke still coming off their 105′s, were moving slowly back towards the compound and Zero looked at Quill and Neff with a questioning look.

“We had a fine fight going on here just ten minutes ago, boss, But as soon as that thing showed up, the whole strike force broke off and just stopped fighting”. Quill looked up to the west at a vaguely visible shape moving through the pale clouds. A great ship of unknown identity was imperceptibly moving in the direction of the old fort. It was difficult to describe, it must have been several hundred feet long, the shape seemed to undulate in the distance, and as it came closer, Zero heard Tia’s words in his mind.

“It’s Manuitius.”

Epiphany Two

The Manuitius ship had slowed to a stop a mile from the fort and hung motionless in the sky like a dream. A thin haze moved slowly around it obscuring definition. It floated silently about 600 feet from the ground and a soft light shown softly in it’s shadow on the desert floor beneath it.

Zero’s group did their best to organize the aftermath of a brief but destructive action with the returning Hellian strike force. The disabled Tigersharks just lay where they crashed and burned themselves out. Hellian fighter pilots landed, dismounting their craft and wandering over to a low wall to sit in a forlorn line, taking their helmets off they looked like sick frogs, heads bowed. A squad commander stood aimless in the compound slowly taking off his gloves and looking at the ground.  Something had happened to these Hellian fighters, the leaders had stopped giving commands and they all ran down like unwound clocks. The blue crew had no trouble rounding them up and corralling them behind a rough fence and several crumbling buildings of the fort.

The third platoon secured the base commandant and the Jin in a lookout tower and the second platoon handled medical for several non lethal injuries, and burial duty for over 200 Hellian dead.

Zero stood with Tia and Quill over the queen’s casket. Inside the long box was an astonishing conglomeration of technology and biomorphic material that used to be the Hellian Queen. Her carapace was split open down the sternal center and the feeble form of the Healer lay exposed and pale inside. His skull was evident beneath a aged face mask woven of dried weeds, and a dim light blinked fitfully deep in the recess of an eye socket. One gnarled hand of the queen lay murmuring from residual nervous energy across the translucent skin of his boney chest.

Zero felt conflicting emotion as he looked at the expressionless mask of the Healer. The fact that this man existed was news indeed. He remembered the brief funeral many years ago which he and Leo arranged for a man they thought was the healer. But he’d since learned that the man they buried had been a close friend of the healer; the one who had watched him crucified by the ancient Creed. He remembered the bronze crescent that he still carried today as a talisman, next to his sacred medicine pipe, powerful relics that had become part of this being. This new event pulled his mind back into that strange time, a time before he knew the strength of the pipe, before he had found his own spirit.

Tia was aware of Zero’s thoughts, but did not know the history of these things, and could not offer consolation. He only knew that the atmosphere was righting itself. And he knew this man laying inside the shell of a dead alien queen was alive and might have useful information. Tia stood quietly with a calm patience. His mind was being filled with the intelligence that Manti brought, the boilerplate of understanding. He knew the Manti understood all the parts of earth and all the motivations of it’s inhabitants.

He knew that soon he and Zero would have to help Manti balance how the information was shared and help the people accept it.

Zero was watching him and wondering what he was thinking, but Tia did not know what to say. He looked back at Zero and said with his mind, “The questions are as big as the ocean, and the answers are as big as the sky”.

He hesitated, and tried to wink, “We might be messengers, a small bridge between man and Manti.”

Zero walked closer and took Tia’s shoulders in his hands, “Me, you, the Healer and maybe someone else, someone who has yet to arrive, are the bridge to Manti, eh?”

Tia couldn’t disagree. He stood looking at Zero as a warm wind came through the open door. They both looked out over the desert as a small group of tracks pulled up just outside the gate. Even from this distance Zero had a good idea who it was. He knew he’d requisitioned tech support, but he’d been too busy to realize who he might get. Standing this close, he knew his emotions were making Tia smile. He could tell from the feminine silhouette that he was right. Epiphany was here– in command of a ROT technical and fully aware who she was reporting to.

She approached with a small group across the sandy distance toward the compound. Zero could could recognize her walk, and beneath the web gear and uniform like any other, he could plainly see the grace of her movement. He even imagined he could see her smile.

Facets of Magic

The effect of the Spheres on the people is widespread and growing. Not only are they unafraid, but they seem inexorably drawn to the spheres. Extreme deprivation from years of war, poverty and ultra pollution have created a worldwide population of subhumans, desperate for something to believe in. Definition is unnecessary, Any kind of help is welcome–even, and maybe especially– of the variety of Hope. The ascendance of the spheres have ably filled that void. The people have witnessed a great mystery and are defining it to mean whatever they desire most, which is Redemption– deliverance from the hell of their life, even from themselves…

The international media, long discarded as the irrelevant mouthpiece of predatory corporate interest, has nothing to say that is listened to, The ever ubiquitous PTV just provides a meaningless background noise. Zero, Piff, Tia and others of the company were drinking desert soma and trying to grok the latest in a series of very unique meetings with Manuitius Repietrie.

“Tia excels at this complexity, it’s all mathematically algoristic to him. But it is obviously all new information to us, but it’s so involved that it seems like a pre-existing system that makes one wonder why, in all the history of science on this planet, we haven’t even seen the patterns.” Zero closed his eyes to re-concentrate his thoughts. His own understanding was coming quicker than it would for the others. And he knew why — but he also knew he was responsible for their understanding.

In his mind the patterns formed a great circular web of effervescent energy descending from the heavens, in sparkling filaments of light that reflected all the souls that have ever lived or died. It was a purely visual image within his consciousness that he knew would not translate. And behind his desire to make his compatriots understand, was the curiosity that Mantui was engaged in the same task, only with a profound foreknowledge and experience and great silver spheres as educational props. He was also coming to understand that the spheres were as plastic as they needed to be to cohabit on an energetic level on whatever planet they happen to occupy. He saw the inevitable infinity of energy and felt a rush of time held immobile only by the presence of the Manuitius ship hanging motionless in the eastern sky.

Piff was watching Zero and Tian intently. Her interest in the synthoid was acute but professional, however Tia was more than fascinated by her. He had never seen a creature as beautiful as an earth born woman. Tia was considerably distracted while explaining the surface of the spheres. “The material is a compound of prismatic vectorn assigned a personal energetic singularity, somewhat like your quartz, only more deliberate and refined.” He stared at Piff completely unaware that among humans this direct a level of attention would be considered fairly obtuse.

Zero tried his best to tilt Tia’s conversation in a slightly different direction…

“Apparently the Spheres are covered in billions of small metal facets or tiles that correlate to each person on earth, and that once a person is in possession of his own piece, he or she has some kind of profound insight into his or her own personal existence. I guess the arrangement of the pieces on the surface of the sphere is significant too. Each individual’s tile is surrounded by those of his ancestors, both passed and yet to come. There is also a tangental issue about types of people and groups of types, but I didn’t get all that. The main point I think, is that thousands of people have somehow figured this out and are scrambling over the spheres all over the world, prying off tiles and finding their own. Language doesn’t figure in, and the tiles seem to be as active in seeking their owner as the people are in finding their own tile.”

Zero rubbed his eyes again, took a long drink, and continued, “The phenomena is being studied as quickly as possible but naturally the wild stories are as prolific as whatever the truth might be. Fortunately for us, Mantui is trying to stay ahead of the hype and explain this thing as it happens. Mantui also says it will unfold in a manner that is known as Pherisous, and while it may seem chaotic, this process has been done before on other worlds. The key idea behind it all, is that the tiles constitute actual physical proof that everything is made out of the same energy as everything else, and that once possessed, the tile communicates this fact to its owner, and once this truth is known, the person undergoes a spiritual transformation and becomes whole. He becomes aware of his connection to the cosmos, he ceases to want, he becomes compassionate, humble and moderate in all action”.

“That’s it?’ piped up Monkey Mike with a jaded smirk.

“Uh, one more thing”, said Zero, “After the magic tile does it’s assigned job of refining it’s particular human to the proper appreciation of the spirit. it simply vanishes into thin air.”

“It disappears?” said Mike incredulously.

“Well more precisely– it just changes form — again…” said Tia hesitantly… stealing a glance at Piff.

And Piff says, “So if your magic tile is still on the dresser in the morning, you still have work to do…”