Spoonerville: Page 3

In the books and the movies Quora beach was a rocky, cold mess of unfriendly land that looked nothing at all like the coast lines that had made California famous. In reality, Quora beach was the catcher’s mitt for all the rage the ocean could throw at it. Denielle pulled into the parking area which consisted of two rows of parking. A few years earlier a raging winter storm moved the beach head back a hundred feet, covering half the original parking lot with beach sand and gravel. The beach was a combination of stones, rocks, boulders, and entire ancient dead trees.

She parked the car and felt safe seeing that there were a half dozen other cars in the lot. She passed the bathrooms to walk down the trail that led her through a heavily cleared part of the forest to an open area where beach access was significantly safer than the parking area. The tide was on its way out and while she couldn’t see much in the way of waves on the water she could hear them crashing in the distance.

The books had made the cloud cover of the pacific northwest famous and she had expected clouds, what she had not been prepared for was the thick layer of formless gray that blanketed the sky without detail. Beneath the blanket of nothingness there were a few clouds here or there but with less than five minutes on the beach she fully understood why seasonal depression was a part of life for many who live in Washington.

She sloughed off the incoming blah’s and pulled her cell phone out to take pictures of the giant tower like island off to her left. It stood out of the ocean like a super villain’s lair and its creepy beauty mesmerized her. She got lost in playing with filters and angles until somewhere around her fifteenth photo the laughter of children playing on the beach somewhere behind her brought her attention back. She pocketed her phone and turned to walk further down the beach but was shocked to find herself alone.

The beach was mostly small rocks and stones so there were no footprints to hint at their location but the laughter had also gone silent.

She glanced up at down the beach and the tree line and saw no one else within eye sight. Then for the first time she noticed that for as far down the tree line that she could see every mostly ocean exposed tree had long since died and been stripped bare of all life. The forest was buffered by a barrier wall of arboreal bones. The darkness that consumed the forest not much further beyond the barrier wall was probably perfectly natural but she could no longer ignore the feelings  of dread encroaching into her conscious mind. She turned back south toward the parking lot and looked along the tree line for the sign marking the path that would lead her back to her car.

She felt the ocean air cutting at her skin like a razor and hunched her shoulders against the sea spray that had been carried by the shifting wind. Somewhere behind her there was more laughter, she ignored the instinct to flee and turned to end the game these children were playing with her.

They weren’t children.

The ocean was capable of tossing ancient trees and giant boulders on a regular basis, so by the time the group of hikers returned to their car early the next morning, there was less than nothing left of the bloody hollowed out mess that used to be Denielle.

Shades of Justice: Page 35

Sonya was unconscious the medical platform had her incased in a field that was monitoring her condition. Her Heart beat was slow but steady. Dante had pulled a chair over to the platform and was sitting vigil over Sonya. Gordon had summoned up another platform and they had laid Technarious’ lifeless body on it.

Gordon, Kelly, and Warren were inspecting the damage. Shined a light into the hole in Technarious’ abdomen. Kelly shook her head. “We don’t even know if we did enough damage to him to shut him down, or if Sonya was successful in destroying his internal power supply.” She griped.

The command station computer pinged. “Technarious’ power supply has sustained enough damage to halt his functionality.” The computer pinged again.

Gordon snapped his fingers and worked through the half an idea forming in his mind. “Computer, is there, um, uh, extra parts! For Technarious?” He asked.

The computer pinged. “Technarious is a mechanically based artificial life form, he is not unique, and replacement parts do exist.” The computer pinged.

Gordon rolled his eyes and growled in frustration. “Are there parts in this command center?” he asked.

The computer pinged. “Unkown.” The computer pinged.

“Oh come on!” Kelly snapped. “You can scan the entire planet for Lumarion, but you can’t scan this room for Technarious’ spare parts?” She yelled.

The computer pinged. “Technarious’ is made up of over one million individual pieces. A full search of this command center for all one point two million parts will take four days.” The computer pinged.

Warren clenched his fists. “We don’t even know which parts to tell the computer to search for.” He pointed out.

Kelly shrugged. “Computer, which parts of Technarious have failed?” she asked.

The computer pinged. “Technarious is not powered and completely non-functional. There is no way to discern which parts have failed without disassembling him.” The computer pinged.

Dante stood up. “Well then, unless one of you got your P.H.D in sentient robot engineering in the last two week, there’s only one person I know of who might be able to help us.” He said.

Warren shook his head. “There’s absolutely no guarantee that Mark will know anything about how to fix Technarious.

Dante nodded. “You got a better idea?” he asked. The others were stone silent. Dante nodded again and put his shades on. “That’s what I thought.” He finalized.

Blood and Profit: Page 58

Mew stepped in front of the thin and the fat one to introduce herself. “I’m Mew, I managed the recycling center station were Toll worked. Before he and Rusty stole a ship and made their run for the ring.” She said.

The Doctor sat up in his chair and rolled forward a little bit. “Do you work on the ring console with them?” He asked. She shook her head. “Did they tell you how they did it?” He asked. She shook her head again. He slumped back in his chair again. “Then why the hell are you here?” He asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “You’re the scientist, you tell me.” She grumbled.

He rotated his chair and turned his head to look at her. “Can you order pizza?” He asked.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re one of the smartest people on the planet and you don’t know how to order pizza?” She asked.

He shrugged. “I never memorized the number.” He said before he pushed off backward down the hall.

The doctor’s assistants came out of a smaller computer lab and saw the group by the main door so they walked over to introduce themselves. The girl held her hand out. “Hi I’m Ling, if the doctor said anything rude or annoying feel free to ignore him.” She said with a smile as Mew shook her hand.

The doctor rolled by on his chair. “Excuse me, I have three degrees in computers and engineering, everything I say is equally brilliant and insightful.” His voice echoed down the hall.

“’You’re a sexist asshole’ isn’t insightful it’s just an unpleasant reality.” Ling shouted down the hall.

The Doctor rolled back. “Hey now. I’m not sexist, I don’t care who gets the pizza as long as it’s not me, and it doesn’t have olives.” He said before pushing off again.

The male assistant finally spoke up. “W- W- W- Can you tell us ab- b- b- about your friends?” He stuttered.

Ling nodded. “Anything that might stand out about them relating to technology? Did either of them have a favorite computer on the station? Or any obsession with any kind of machine?” She asked.

Mew thought it for a moment, her eyes got wide. “Oh hell yes Toll did! He had this ancient portable game machine that he had on him practically 24/7.” She growled. “I hated that thing.” She spat.

Instant the doc rolled back and stopped quickly. “How old? What did it look like? What was it called?” He asked in rapid fire.

Mew shrugged. I don’t know how old, It was green, like an ugly neon green that had faded a long time ago to this sort of tired green. I don’t know what it was called but it played these horrible computerized tones that Toll called music. The only other thing I remember is that Rusty got almost as angry as I did when he caught him playing it. Which he did, pretty much all the time.” She explained.

The male assistant ran back into the smaller lab that he and Ling had just come out of. Ling had a huge smile on her face. “Video game machines were on the bottom of our list, if he can figure out which machine it was, and we can find another one we might have our first real lead.” She explained as she ushered Mew back to the smaller lab.

The doctor looked at the fat and the thin gentlemen that had delivered Mew. “So that’ll be a large, sausage and mushroom pizza, light on the sauce, cheese stuffed crust mkay?” He waved them off with a hand.

The fat one flinched and the thin one held up his hand. “You do and we all die.” He said as they turned for the door.

Lidarion: Page 30

The Fog was just as thick in the morning. But the rest of the port’s population was up and moving with what little sunlight made it through the fog. Brooke and Trent woke before the others to make their way through the shops available in the port to purchase everything they might need for a long overland trip.

By the time they were done shopping they needed to rent a cart and horse to get everything back to the INN. They arrived at the Inn with their fresh supplies and found everyone else awake and nearly finished with breakfast. They ate quickly and joined the others to divvy up the supplies.

Trent had no way of knowing what time it was but he felt like it was late morning by the time they had returned the horse and cart and made their way inland out of the port town. Haruff was at the front of the line leading the way. “So, what’s the deal with the fog?” He asked.

Haruff explained as he led the group. “Legends mostly. There must be a real reason for it but no one I’ve ever talked to has ever been able to agree on what it is.” He said.

Squints was intrigued. “What do the legends say?” He asked.

Haruff shrugged. “Most elves believe some variation of the fog coming from some place deep in the forested heart of the continent. A long forgotten wound in the earth where the fog, thicker than any steam pours from a lava vent that will never close, and that the cloud will ever increase until they find and close the vent themselves or the world is covered in the escaped soul of the planet.” He explained.

They walked in silence through the fog for a while until Lisa spoke up. “So, not a very relaxed people I’ll bet.” She said.

Haruff snorted. “If your home had been swallowed by an unnatural fog over the course of a generation would you be?” He asked.

Trent chimed in. “So you don’t have any idea where you’re going do you?” He asked as brook glared at him through the haze.

Haruff sighed. “The blind are leading the blind Trent," He waved his hand, gesturing to the fog that surrounded them.  "May as well get used to it my friend.” He said keeping his slow but steady pace. 

Melody and Harmony: Page 4

Foster knew his survival depended on one thing, getting out of the back alley run he was stuck in. He sub-vocalized for a route back to safe territory and after a split second a green neon line drew an escape route. He followed the directions without question. The line directed him to the fire escape ladder that led up to a third floor balcony. He thumbed one of the buttons on his wrist control and his board elongated, straps shot out of the base and held the board halves to his feet. He scrambled on top of a trash bin and the wheels of his board flipped up to the top side so he could climb the ladder without getting them stuck.

The guards stopped and clambered over each other to be the first up the ladder after Foster. When he got the third floor balcony he unzipped a small pouch on the inside of his jacket sleeve and dropped a press button one inch wide by half inch tall by half inch thick explosive. It bounced off the ladder and fell into the open trash bin. The guards looked down in confusion and the explosive went off rocking the trash bin into the ladder knocking two of the guards off the ladder and one the rest into the alley.

Foster checked to see where the green line was leading him. He followed the balcony around the corner of the building and when he reached the end of the balcony the line went straight down. He looked over the edge and saw the road the line was leading him too. He was technically in the higher class slums, the hill he was looking down on was a road that led to the black market district. Hundreds upon hundreds of illegal businesses that no one cared about because the black market economy got more real business done for more of the population than the above ground consumer economy did. The hill was massive. Gravity alone would give him more speed on his board than his the on board engine could ever pump out. The only thing that worried him was what he would need to do to control that speed. Certain death behind him and very possible death below him. He considered his options for the eternity between two heartbeats and in the silence between songs, he jumped.

He thumbed the board control and it had returned to skating form by the time he hit the hill. He crouched low and focused on his balance and prayed that no people or cars came down the cross streets. The neon of the black market shops blurred by him in a multi colored light speed blur of electricity that he had only ever seen before on drugs. The green line was razor straight as he continued to pick up speed. He thumbed a control on his glove and checked the rear facing cameras on his bag. He saw that three of the guards had made the leap and were crouched into the suicide run maybe a hundred feet behind him.

The hill dove under an overpass and in the blink of an eye he was out of the black market district. The city opened up into an area that had never really recovered after the last of the great quakes. Foster saw that he was coming to a massive bridge that had fallen away in the middle. He also knew that there was no amount of speed he could have reached that would get him over the gap the green line had been leading him too. The guards cleared the black market district. Foster followed the green line.

He hit the bridge and it curved up a little arcing over the now dry river bed. He said a prayer to the Gods of Techno and pressed the button to expel the tiny accelerant canister to give him the last little bit of speed from the board. A split second later he was skating on thin air.

He pressed a button on his glove and front strap of his board let go of his foot and the back part of the board shot the front half like a grappling hook at the far side of the bridge. The board hit hard the wheels opened up and drilled into the road hard. The back part of the board quickly reeled Foster toward the other side as he began to lose altitude.

He checked his backpack camera again and saw the three guards guards had slowed to a stop at the very edge of the broken bridge. Foster pulled another explosive from his coat sleeve and threw it into the air behind him. It exploded and a pattern of fireworks created a skull and cross bones in neon blues and greens. The lead guard turned away from the symbol and the other two followed him to find a safe way across the river bed.

Spoonerville: Page 2

Denielle knew almost everything there was to know about her trip, she knew that she was landing at SeaTac airport. A name that literally meant “We are in between Seattle and Tacoma and couldn’t think of a better name”. She knew that Starbucks had originated in the State but most ‘true’ coffee drinkers considered it at best a last resort.  She knew the kind of car she was driving, the fact that I-5 freeway went north and south, west of that was water, east of it was mountains. She knew she would be taking her white Camry on a Ferry in order to drive another two and a half hours where she would arrive at the legendary town of Spoonerville.

The drive itself was really quite beautiful. Denielle had lived in Chicago for all but her college years and the way everyone built their homes and towns into the wilderness really spoke to her. Still there weren’t many places on earth that remained interesting after 2.5 hours of driving, the trees were beautiful but they were just trees.

The “Welcome to Spoonerville” sign was the first thing she saw and she pulled over immediately. She knew the sign they had made for the movie was actually smaller and less impressive than the real welcome sign for the town, a fact enjoyed by many of the Spoonerds. Taking your photo at the REAL “Welcome to Spoonerville” sign was considered a rite of passage for most of them.

She parked the car on the side of the road about fifty feet away from the sign, grabbed her cellphone and made her way to the sign. The movie sign was held up by two smallish wooden posts and was about five or six feet off the ground, and about five feet wide and four feet high. The real sign was maybe four feet off the ground, easily ten feet wide and ten feet high lit by lamps at night. She walked up to the sign and tried to find the right selfie angle to catch it and her in the same shot, which wouldn’t have been a problem if Quentin hadn’t been such a bastard. She took several pictures before she had one she was happy with.

She pulled up Facebook without thinking and the app let her know that she had no cell signal and no wifi in range. She sighed heavily and shoved her phone in her hoodie pocket and made her way back to the car. She’d post the selfie once she stopped for lunch. She got back into her car and saw the road sign letting her know that Quora beach was only nine miles away. Something in her mind liked the idea of seeing the ocean and that lunch could wait. She checked the clock on her phone and it was earlier than she thought, she had made good time.  She could feel the devil on her shoulder telling her that she never did anything impulsive and to live a little, the town would be there in an hour and she could have lunch just as easily then.

She started the car, threw it into reverse and turned right to head for the beach where the characters went surfing in the books.

Shades of Justice: Page 34

The Shades appeared in the command center. Dante was carrying Sonya’s unconscious body and her abdomen was a mess of torn fabric, and dripping blood. “Spark Sonya’s hurt bad, what do we do?” Kelly shouted.

“Initiate emergency medical systems.” Spark commanded the base. A Platform rose out of the ground for Dante to set Sonya on. Once she was on the bed a holographic overlay of her physiology appeared just above her. They could see her already slowing and erratic heartbeat, getting weaker. An appendage emerged from the side of the medical platform and the metal casing opened to reveal a laser. Which aimed at Sonya’s wound and began to fire short bursts of energy. As it worked faster and faster to close her wound her heart beat got slower until it flat lined. Kelly buried her face into Warrens shoulder.

Gordon kicked the bed. “DO SOMETHING!” He shouted in futility.

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Another appendage came out of the platform, its head rose barely above Sonya’s chest and the head quickly split into two haves and gave off pulses that made the heart monitor pulse for a beat and then flat line again. After six attempts the arm closed up and returned to the platform.

Dante ran over to Lumarion’s wall. “If there’s anything you can do, do it now. One of us basically saved your life, if you can, it’s time to return the favor.” He demanded.

Spark blinked a few times. “What I can do is forbidden for my race to do, it goes against the  na -“

“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” Dante exploded. “DO IT NOW!” He punched the already cracked wall and cracked it worse, shredding the gloves of his suit and cutting the skin of his knuckles. 

Sparks light became brighter. “Whatever you say boss.” He blinked, before exiting the wall and in near instant beam of light shot straight into Sonya’s chest.

She raised up like she was possessed. Her eyes and mouth opened and pure white light poured from them light explosive fissures. She began to claw at her stomach and Gordon grabbed her wrists to keep her from damaging her newly repaired wound. Spark shot back to the broken wall and went dark.

Dante ran over to Sonya and she hugged him with all the energy she had left and she began to bawl hysterically. Dante looked at the wall as she cried. “Thank you.” He said.

The wall lit up slowly. “Swear to me that the five of you will NEVER mention this to Lumarion when we get him back.” Spark demanded.