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  Kenneth Lawson
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The Incident

11/28/2020

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Picture
The car skidded sideways, its rear end swinging to the right as he hit the brakes.
John sat panting, catching his breath. Whatever was in the road was not from here.
It had appeared almost in front of him. With no room to maneuver out of the way, he slammed on the brakes, and at seventy-five mph, it had taken a bit of road to stop. By the time he stopped his car, what he had seen and tried to avoid had vanished. As if it had never been there.
He closed his eyes, willing his breathing to return to normal. It was there all right. He’d seen it. Opening them again, he looked around the flat desert landscape that seemed to go on forever. There was nothing there.
John exited the car and stood, hands on hips, wondering what had just happened. He had seen an object the size of a large horse, but it was not a horse, but something else. He’d only seen it for a few seconds, just enough time to register that it was in front of him, and he was about to hit it. When the car stopped, he was well past where the being would have been if it had still been there. Which it wasn’t. No body of a large being—no blood or other signs of a car at extreme speed, hitting a creature of any kind. Nothing but a deserted road and acres of sand and scrub brush around him.
He got back into the car and jumped when the door slammed shut. No blood or other signs of a creature of any kind struck by a vehicle at extreme speed. Starting the car, he maneuvered back into the correct lane and pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The speedometer quickly climbed back to the speeds it had been resting at before the “incident.” That’s what he’d call it to himself. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever tell anyone else about it as they would never believe him. The skid marks on a deserted desert road proved that something had happened, but he was unable to explain it to himself, much less anyone else.
As he drove away, he failed to notice a glint of the sun on a pair of binoculars in the distance. Nor did he see the small stone moving on its own toward the side of the road.


                                                              ***
At the same moment, a mile or so behind John, the captain stopped his car just short of the wood barriers that blocked the road. The sign attached said, “Road Closed.”
Old habits die hard, and he glanced around as if there were anyone who could see him in the outer reaches of a desert. It took barely a swing of the wheel to maneuver his car around the barricade that blocked the road. But the captain knew that the road-closed sign was misleading. The road was missing.
And he knew why.
The captain had seen the other car almost hit the alien that strayed too far from its crash site. The scare had caused it to regenerate spontaneously, and it became a rock that skidded into the gravel when the car stopped after barely missing it. He’d seen the whole thing. The guy got out and looked around. Even from his vantage point a mile away, he could tell the encounter had shaken the man up. He didn’t blame him.
The captain changed his form to match the parameters his computer gave him back at the crash site. He then “borrowed” a car from a farmer’s driveway several miles away. It had taken him a few minutes to learn to drive such a primitive contraption, but it was the standard way for natives to travel, so he assimilated as quickly as he could.
Now it was time to see if he could get his crew and his ship off this godforsaken planet.
He stopped the car near where the native had nearly killed his crew member and turned it off. He wondered if he could get it started again. Machines had never been his thing, so fixing this mechanical monster would be out of the question if it didn’t restart.
“You okay?” He spoke in his native tongue as no one was within a hundred miles.
The small pebble regenerated itself into its former size and shape. “Where did THAT come from?”
“It’s called a car. They use them for transport. I borrowed one, so we could travel without raising more suspicions.”
“What are you doing?” The younger eyed his captain’s strange form. “You look very uncomfortable in this thing.” He motioned to the car.
“I changed shape to a native form, so I wouldn’t scare the natives—like you just did.” He opened a back door. “Get in.”
The younger one stared at him as if he were crazy, but the captain nodded yes. Following orders, it shrank down small enough to fit in the back of the car and slammed the car door.
The captain turned the key. They both jumped when the engine roared back to life.
“This is loud!” the younger one complained.
As the captain had become accustomed to his new form, he found he liked the mobility of legs compared to his natural state. He knew that keeping the form for long would quickly drain his energy and cause his thinking to slow down. He needed all the energy he could get as long as he could.
A few minutes later, they arrived at the road closure sign. The captain eased past the closed-road sign that he had generated when he realized that he had crashed on the road, and his scans showed frequent travel. It looked real enough but would soon disappear into the subspace as the structure broke down.
He didn’t have long to get his ship off the planet. His cloaking device wouldn’t last long, and his ship would be visible to the natives. His limited research had already told him it wouldn’t end well for anyone.
At the crash site, the captain stopped the car, and he and his young passenger exited. He regenerated into his natural form, but the sun and heat were already slowing his reaction time in his natural state. Regenerated, he’d have to work fast.


                                                               ***
John was only a few minutes down the road when he remembered the “road closed” sign on a side road. He had passed that road late yesterday, and there was no sign. He mused to himself. “So, what closes a road this fast? There hasn’t been any flash flooding, no earthquakes, no construction in this area.” He hit the brakes hard for the second that morning, and the car skidded to a stop, it’s rear end halfway across the ribbon of pavement.
John eased the car around and headed back the way he came, but this time not so fast. He slowed further as he approached the spot where his incident occurred. He stopped and exited the car. Standing next to the front fender, John could see the fresh skid marks, tire tracks, and make out the gravel’s skid pattern that blanketed the edges into the pavement.
He hopped back in the car and continued at a slow speed retracing his path. He watched the side roads that opened up at odd intervals along the main road. Some came in at wild angles almost parallel to the main road. A couple came up from ravines and appeared only as patches of gravel along the main road.
He was looking for a regular dirt road, relatively flat and level with the local ground. It should be on his right traveling in this direction. Yep, he was right. There it was. A road closed sign just as he remembered from earlier.
He stopped the car in the gravel along the pavement and exited the vehicle. He looked around, but there was no one in sight. He walked up to the sign
Getting out, he looked around. There was no car in sight.
Walking up the gravel along the road, he stopped short. There was a tire track leading around the barricade. He got back in the car and made a wide berth around the road-closed sign as he drove around it.


                                                             ***
At the crash site, the captain was busy. He and his younger subordinate set up a perimeter cloaking device that made everything appear as it should be.
Inside the cloaking field, he was busy assisting his crew. Most were fine, but a couple had spontaneously regenerated into forms they couldn’t reverse. Those were a problem, but not his biggest problem.
He was fortunate his ship was undamaged, but he needed to power it up again, and that would require more energy than he was able to generate here. The ship was running on auxiliary power, and life support and main computers and sensors were working for now. He needed power, or the ship would be dead on a random planet he didn’t know existed. Sensors indicated a power source located not from the ship, but how to get the power from where he needed it?

 
                                                              ***
John hadn’t been on this old side road in decades. About a mile or so down the road, he slowed down, sensing that something was amiss. A chill came over him as he approached an old, abandoned farmhouse on the right. Stopping the car at the mouth of what had once been a driveway up to the main house, he got out.
He shivered as he slammed the car door shut. He knew the temperature should be into the upper nineties, and he should be sweating even after a brief time standing in the sun. But the chill continued. He walked up the worn-out driveway muttering to himself. “Why did I stop here.” Something was not right, but he was clueless to tell what it was.


                                                              ***
At the crash site, a sensor beeped. The captain stopped what he was doing as he read the display panel. It indicated a presence at one of the outside perimeter stations. And something else, the ambient temperature of the air around the perimeter was at least twenty degrees cooler than it should be. He had seen a similar reading other times he’d used the cloaking shields.
The data told him the intruder was a native from the height, weight, and body mass recorded. He wondered if it was the native he had seen almost hit his crew member earlier in the day.
The captain paused for a second, considering his options, but he didn’t have any. He needed help. This native appearing on the sensors was the only higher life form showing in the area. He had to try.


                                                               ***
John glanced at his watch and realized the second hand wasn’t moving. What the…? It was a new automatic watch. The rotor inside spun around a pivot whenever he moved, thus winding the mainspring constantly. As long as he was moving, the watch was winding. It should be working, but it was not. The second hand hadn’t moved.
Something was wrong. He was shivering from the cold air that shouldn’t exist, not with the sun beating down in the middle of the day. He was cold. Looking around, he could see the sun shining directly above him. And his watch didn’t work when it should.
He walked back toward his car. Standing about where he was before, he looked back toward the house and realized there seemed to be a haze surrounding the driveway and the land surrounding it. The air away from the house was clear to the distant mountain range.
What was happening?
 

                                                               ***
The captain decided what he was going to do.
Rechecking his scanners to make sure there were no other natives around, he transformed into a native form. The effort would deplete his limited energy, but he needed help.
The captain pushed a couple of buttons on a panel near his ship’s main hatch, stepped out, and walked toward the perimeter of the cloak.

​

                                                               ***
In the distance, John thought he saw a movement. Standing very still and covering his eyes from the sun, he observed as he detected movement coming from the old farmhouse. A figure came toward him and passed through the haze, which appeared to part then close behind the image.
John stood silently, barely breathing. Someone or something was walking toward him when he should have been alone. On the other hand, after this morning’s incident, anything was possible.
The figure was at least as tall as his six-foot frame but thinner, and his clothes seemed to be a hodgepodge of assorted styles from different eras. He wore a fedora and horn-rimmed glasses from decades ago. The rest of the outfit looked like it was scavenged from a thrift shop somewhere.
John was mostly fascinated by the figure’s face. It seemed to be familiar. It wasn’t until he was close enough to see the figure’s face that he realized who it was.
“Roger?” John whispered almost to himself.
“John?” The captain had no idea that the form he took looked like a form he’d taken decades ago.
“You’re the captain of the starship Galaxy Chipper?”
“How did you know that?” John’s face slowly came into focus to the captain.
Then it came to him.
“John, Johnny Starr...?”
“Yes, and you are Roger, Roger Major, we met back on Earth’s Mars a few decades ago.”
“Yeah, right. Now I remember. What are you doing here?”
“I got assigned here to try to keep them from blowing themselves up.”
“Yeah, the paperwork when a planet blows up is a bitch.”
“How’d you get here?”
I crashed, actually ran out of power, and landed back here.”
The captain gestured behind him to the old farmhouse.
“Yeah, I thought I recognized the signs of a cloaking device, but it’s been so long I’d forgotten. What do you need to get going again?”
“Power.”
“Power I have. There’s a substation not far from here. We’ll give you a jump. Oh, I must have almost hit one of your crew this morning.”
“Yeah, no problem. He’s fine, but I have a couple that shifted into odd shapes, but nothing I can’t handle.”
It took a couple of hours to transfer enough power for the captain’s ship to break through the atmosphere. As the ship faded from his view, John felt a slight longing to go with them.
However, he had a mission here to complete.
Returning to his car, John continued on his journey to Washington, D.C., to hopefully save the planet.

​

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Fly Me to the Moon

7/27/2020

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Picture
The sky was clear. Blindingly clear.
The sun hid behind what few clouds there were.
 Without direct sight of the sun, he couldn’t get a fix on which way he was going. The dunes had long ago started to look all the same to him. Sand dunes and mountains often changed their shape or completely disappeared over time. Using one as a landmark was a newbie trick, and he was far from a newbie.
He was down to rationing water and food. Suppose he didn’t find civilization soon. It wouldn’t matter which direction he was going. He wouldn’t be going in any direction—ever again.
He didn’t want to become one of the many sets of bones found by travelers decades later with only a few small bits of clothes or leather to identify them. Investigators referred to them as “Desert” bones and stored them in a special section of the capital city morgue, but unless he found help soon, he would become what he feared.
His compass said he was going in the right direction, but compasses can be wrong. Magnetism and other factors could cause the needle to fluctuate. Being off even by a little can be enough to put you in the wrong direction or to miss a destination. Without direct sight of the sun, he couldn’t use his watch to confirm which direction he was going.
***
The mountain of sand loomed before him. The shade that it offered was tempting. The bright glare of the sun on the brown sand brought back memories of snow in the mountains when the white glare of the sun on the packed snow blinded him. Shade would be good.
He felt compelled to head for the mountain of sand, but he knew the dangers of the dunes. If the sand were loose, one wrong step and his foot could become buried and trap him. He didn’t know what it was drawing him to the Sand Mountain. He only knew he needed to get there.
 It took him some time to eke out a path to the dune. He was lucky as the wind had packed the sand around the dune, and he could walk on it. He headed for the side that had the shade. Occasionally he’d place a hand against the sand to steady himself as he picked his way over the small crevasses that the wind had dug into the base as it wound its way around the dune, which appeared to be several hundred feet high.
He was near the shade when he touched the sandy wall, and it was cold and hard. He stood still, shocked. A very slight breeze of fresh air caressed his face. But where did it originate? Cautiously, he moved his hand toward the wall again and felt the coolness reached his hand even before touching the sand. The wall should have been hot, but it wasn’t. The longer he kept his hand against the sand, the colder it became. The chill traveled up his arm, cooling his skin from the effects of the glaring sun and heat. While it was noticeably cooler in the shade, this was completely different. His arm seemed to generate the source of his drop in body temperature.
He walked a few paces until he was in full shade. Shifting his footing, he turned toward the wall and placed both hands against the surface. The sand was colder, and the cold started to work its way along his arm. Within a couple of minutes, his arms felt cool, as if the chill emanated from inside his body. He stood there for some time, not moving. The reason he found himself in the desert faded from his mind. At this point, it didn't matter. All he knew was he was tired. Muscles and joint that he didn't realize he had called to him. He was plain tired and had no idea exactly where he was. But at the moment he didn’t care. He was comfortable again. For that, he was grateful, but how and why?
Slowly the chill worked his way over his body. First, his arms then his shoulders, and upper chest, eventually down to his feet, still wearing the leather chukka boots he had on when his adventure had started. He wanted to lie in the shade and rest. He was careful as he stepped away from the wall not to disturb the sand and cause an avalanche that would bury him. When he found a suitable spot, he laid down and quickly fell asleep.
***
It was dark when he woke up. His watch said it was almost midnight. When he originally sat down, it was only to rest his legs and enjoy the coolness of the shade and the sand. Not to fall asleep for hours. It occurred to him he wasn’t cold. The desert is known for its wide temperature swings. In the day, it can easily reach more than a hundred degrees, and at night, as low as thirty degrees. He had left without a blanket in the meager supplies he had with him. Standing up, he walked around to get his legs and arms moving again. For several minutes, he realized the further away from the dune the colder he got. Whatever was in the sand was keeping him warm, just as he had cooled him off earlier today.
Standing where he had been earlier in the day when he’d put his hands on the wall and felt cold radiating from the sand, he placed his hands in the same. He immediately felt the warmth of the sand ebb through his hand’s arms, and into the rest of his body.
 He tied several other places along the same wall. He got the same results. The warmth of the sand engulfed his hands when he laid them. Looking up into the sky, he saw the dots of stars as far as his eyes could see. The moon cast a long reflection from the sun over the desert, thankfully lighting up what the dark desert night. He could see dunes in the distance, their dark sides casting eerie shadows across the landscape. At least he was warm here, so he stayed put. He stayed put.
 **
Morning came all too quickly. As the sun worked its way up over the desert, the heat soon increased. The shadows of the dunes changed direction dramatically throughout the early morning, and he was no longer in the shade.
He knew he couldn’t stay next to the dune forever. No matter how cool and warm it kept him. He had to get back to civilization soon. But he wasn’t in any hurry to start his trek across the remainder of the desert. Especially since he had no idea how much more he had to go.
“Do not go.”
He stopped short and looked around, not seeing anyone. He scanned the terrain, no one. But he’d heard it as clear as day. The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. He spun around and looked at the wall of sand he had been preparing to leave.
“Please, do not go.” The voice spoke again.
“What? Who are you? Where are you?” He managed to get out. As he hadn’t spoken a word in several days, his mouth was having trouble remembering how to work.
“Come closer.”  The voice seemed to come from the sand itself. He stepped back deeper into the shadows and touched the grainy surface.
This time, along with the coolness, he felt something hard, just under the outside layer of sand. There seemed to be something else. Something that wasn't sand. He brushed the sand a little with his hand, expecting more sand to replace it instantly.
 It didn't.
Brushing more, he saw the sand slide down to the ground. It formed a small pile next to his feet. Over a minute or two of brushing lightly, he revealed a structure hidden just under a layer of sand. A large metal wall of some kind appeared as he continued to sweep the covering away.
He stood staring.
“What the Hell?” The only words he could muster. On the metal wall was a familiar symbol.
 It took a minute, but he remembered seeing it in a museum years ago. It had been in a display of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. He had no idea why he remembered that particular symbol only to find it in the middle of a desert some twenty years later.
He touched the surface and found it was cool. Just as the sand that had covered it had been. For lack of any ideas of what to do, he knocked on the panel. To his sunrise, the panel moved.
He jumped back slightly as it slid to the side—the door burying itself into the sand that covered the rest of the object. The sand above the door dropped to cover his boots. He shook the sand loose and, taking a deep breath, stuck his head inside the doorway. There was a room, but it was hard to tell how large the room was from outside.
“Come in.” 
He stepped inside as invited to do and noted several things. A long couch strewn with many pillows sat along one wall. A counter of some sort sat beyond the couch. He found it difficult to see in the dimly lit room.
He paused, trying to take in his new surroundings. The sound of the door almost silently closing behind him barely registered in his mind as the voice spoke again, his attention drawn to the far side of the room.
“You are safe here.”
 
He turned towards the sound of the voice, and without thinking, approached the figure sitting the glow of light that seemingly came from nowhere.
The human-looking man with the soft voice, and dressed in long flowing robes, stood to greet him. He extended his hand, and the man hesitated, then took it. He wondered how this person living inside a mountain of sand would know of modern protocol, but then he was unsure exactly what the protocol was either.
“I am Erron.”
“Who? Where did you come from? How?”
“Please relax. Sit, as I will explain in time.” Erron stood up and steered him toward one of the couches. As he sat down, he tried to form words and questions, but nothing came out. Erron put his long finger to his lips and schussed him, then sat next to him.
“You must be hungry.” He nodded. At the mention of food, he realized how hungry he was.
 Erron rose and walked to the other side of the room, where an array of machines sat. Punching a code into what looked like a microwave, he returned carrying a tray with several dishes on it. A table appeared out of the floor right in front of him.
“I hope this is to your liking. I am unsure what people eat as it has been eons since I have had a guest.”
As he ate, he found the food was excellent, although he wasn’t sure what some of it was. He knew better than to ask. Sometimes you were better off not knowing what it is. A lesson he learned years before. The drink served was a coffee-like that seemed to satisfy the need that coffee would fill back at home. Home—he hadn’t thought of that in several days.
As he finished the last of the food and sipped the drink, he leaned back on the couch, more comfortable than he’d been in many days, perhaps even weeks. It dawned on him that he was too comfortable, but at the moment he didn't care. His belly was full, and he was neither too hot nor too cold. And for the moment, he didn't feel like he was in immediate danger of death from any number of venues, including mother nature or other forces. He relaxed.
“Okay, Erron, tell me what's going on?”
Erron cleared the tray and returned with a cup in his hand. He sat back down across from him and appeared lost in thought for a moment.
“You never told me your name.”
“You didn't ask. It's Robert, Robert Manning.” He didn't feel like explaining how he had wound up in the middle of a desert. He only had a vague memory of people wanting something from him and that he had fled. Instead, he changed the subject.
“Better question is who you are, what are you doing here?” Now he was full, he felt the brain fog lift and was able to think.
Erron appeared perplexed as if he were trying to form an answer to a complicated question.
 “I was exiled to Earth several eons ago. I expected to die here before I served my sentence. Sometimes I wished I had. However, in a cruel stroke of fate, I survived and learned to adapt to this planet. He waved a hand around in front of him, gesturing towards the room as a whole. “This is all I have left. I have lived here for the last several hundred years, alone. I have had an occasional visitor to the dune. Some managed to uncover the door, and I watched them trace the symbol. I have monitored your communications, but no one seemed to give this place a second thought.”  Erron rose and walked to the far side of the room. Robert followed him.
“I saw that symbol in an exhibition years ago. For some reason, I remembered it.” Robert paused then asked the question he wasn’t sure he wanted Erron to answer. “Uh, why were you exiled?” 
“Because I stood up for what was right, and the powers did not like it.”
“Powers?”
“Yes, the Council of Planets did not like that I wanted to run my homeworld fairly and honestly. They were only interested in what goods and profit they could get from my world. They didn't care what happened to the inhabitants, and that is when I stood up to them.”  He lowered his head. “They drove me from my world, and I have been here ever since.”
“Can you go back?”
“I do not know. I have never tried it.”
 “Maybe it's time you went back and reclaimed your world, Your life.” Robert couldn’t believe the words that just came out of his mouth. A day ago, he had wandered in a desert close to dying. Now he was telling an alien being he’d barely met an hour ago at most, to go home again.
“You are right. I should go back. I have outlived the length of my sentence.” The change in his voice was startling as he no longer sounded dejected or forlorn.
“I’ve been here on earth studying it for longer than I can remember. I know more about how to govern then I did before. I am going back, and you are coming with me.”
“Me? I can’t go planet-hopping with you. I have a life here.”
“No, I am sorry. I should have told you this, but as soon as you stepped inside, your time on earth ceased. This capsule is not only a space vessel but also a time chamber. Time does not exist here. I can see what happens in the world, but I cannot affect it. However, once home, I can implement the things I learned here. Do not despair. To your world, you are just another missing desert walker, lost and buried in the sands like the others I’ve watched die here over the eons.”
Robert turned away. Overcome at the idea that he no longer existed in his world, but he considered how his life had been up until today. His marriage was over, his kids never spoke to him, and it occurred to him, there wasn’t much to like about his life. Besides, he remembered why he was in the desert. He owed gambling debts, and the goons dropped him in the desert with little food and water and told him if he survived, they’d forget his debts, then laughed. Last laugh was on them. He was dead, and he’d survived. How about those odds. He sighed. In short, he had no reason to stay. He turned back to face Erron, the song “Fly Me to the Moon” playing in his head.
Robert stuck his hand out. Erron took it.
“Okay. When do we leave?” 








  




 







 





 






 


 
 

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Threat Level

1/16/2020

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Picture
The Space Driver floated past him.
Just out of reach.
Trying to manipulate the engine drive component in gloved hands with no magnet to hold anything where it needed to be was a pain in the ass. It was impossible. 
The Space Driver, the name they gave to a glorified screwdriver designed for use in outer space on spacewalks, floated just out of his reach. He shifted his position slightly in the harness that held him to the space station and was able to barely grasp it — clasping a tether cord to the errant space driver. He let it float while he finished working on the maintenance hatch. Closing it, he collected his tools, the wandering Space Driver being the first one in his bag. He attached a certificate of approval seal over the seam of the hatch door, saying that he had inspected the insides, and all was well.
It wasn’t.
But he couldn’t find anything wrong in the settings or control panel under the hatch. So, he signed off on it. 
Commander Rogers entered the space station, then returned all his tools to their respective cubicles and got out of the spacesuit. As he placed the Space Driver in its case, he realized that if what he suspected was true, a screwdriver, even a specialized one, wouldn’t fix what was wrong. 
Something was off on the space station. Things had been not right for some time, and recently, it had gotten worse. Various systems failed for no apparent reason and suddenly started working again. There were other little things, like small objects moving around, that puzzled him. 
Everything floated up there if not secured, but the stuff always secured somehow wound up in odd places.
So far, no injuries had occurred on the station, but it wouldn’t take much for an essential system to fail, or at least act up, and the result could be fatal.
He was trying to avoid that, especially for himself. He wanted to get back to Earth as soon as possible, and this wasn’t making his job any easier.
He was the space program’s ace troubleshooter, and he wasn’t shooting this trouble. 
In all of the other cases, he’d found something small that no one noticed, a bug in the code, a faulty switch, or an incorrectly set up system. What was going on here was not hardware related. It was the virus. The same virus that had caused several other ships’ crews to become incapacitated, eventually turning them into virtual zombies and shutting down their systems. They all died.
He’d been up here a week, going over the ship’s systems. From life support to water and waste disposal to entertainment, he found nothing. Nothing. Everything was as it should be. He did do a couple of upgrades, but nothing important or mission critical. What he was doing while doing routine systems checks was to see if he could find the source of the virus and, if possible, the transmission path. He found no trace of the virus, only the results and symptoms of it. The crew was not behaving as they should, not remembering what they did, and not being able to explain why they couldn’t remember moving stuff. The lack of memory was one of the first recognizable symptoms of the virus. 
Circling back to his cabin, he stopped at the main control center of the station. Checking in with the commanding officer, he learned everything was as it should be. But he knew better. There seemed to be something slightly off about the way he addressed him. Nothing obvious, but a pattern of speech that was different than it had been all along. Talking to some of the other officers on the deck, he got the same vibe from them. They acted as if they were all right, but they seemed slightly unfocused as if drugged. When he talked to them, they snapped back to a version of reality.
He checked their medical records. Everyone checked out with no issues, either physically or mentally. Especially mentally, they didn’t need a captain going crazy on the bridge of the space station. But he suspected that it was happening, and not just the captain, but most of the crew. 
Going down to the mechanical systems room, he looked around. He’d been down there before; it all looked the same as it had before. The reading on the charts all was within specifications. So, he talked to the chief engineer. He got the same response as he did on the bridge. 
Something was affecting the crew. It was now more than just unexplained occurrences. He did not doubt that the virus was affecting the crew.
The progression of events was identical to the situation on a space station blown up by the action of a crew member years before. A space-borne virus had infected the entire crew. The virus drove them insane and wreaked havoc on their bodies. For the few that survived the blast by making it into escape pods, they had become little more than zombies that stared at the walls and made slow muttering sounds. Within a week of rescue, their bodies shut down, and they died of an uncontrollable infection. The only salvation at the time was that the survivors were in quarantine and the virus didn’t spread. 
If this virus ever got to Earth, he realized that within several months at most, the entire population would be dead. So far, they had no idea of the mode of transmission, or if there was a treatment for it. Distress calls led to the discovery of several ships adrift in space, the entire crew dead, and the virus suspected to be the cause. They still could not locate the virus’s source. 
Back in his cabin, he communicated with his superiors back on Earth. 
His supervisor was concerned. “You sure you haven’t been infected?”
“Yes. I’ve managed not to eat or drink anything here, brought emergency rations with me. I’ve been careful about not touching anything. I’m wearing gloves at all times.” He had been using emergency stores that he had brought with him when he boarded. He noticed they didn’t properly search his packs when he arrived. A lack of interest also pointed to the virus. 
“When I spoke to the crew, they were acting just like the crew did on the old space station a few years ago.”
“Okay, this is it, we have to contain the virus.”
“So that means…?”
“Yes. Blow it up. Whatever this is, we can’t risk it getting back to Earth or one of the colonies. The only way to make sure it doesn’t spread is to destroy the station.”
~~~
His next stop was the commanding officer of the space station. It was difficult to explain to the commander that the virus had infected him and most of the crew, and what the prognosis of the infection was. They were all going to die. Because they still didn’t know the transmission method of the virus or what catastrophic effects it would have on Earth, they could not risk letting anyone back to Earth. The commander accepted their fate and he decided against telling the crew. Best to allow them to live their last moments in peace. 
The transport shuttle was about halfway to Earth when the space station blew into a million pieces. He watched from the cockpit as the debris field spread, almost reaching him as the small ship approached Earth’s atmosphere.
His heart ached for those who perished, but he wondered only one thing. How much time had he bought for Earth? 
 
 

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Bad Day at Nexus

8/21/2015

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            The scene that greeted him upon his arrival at the  Nexus Space Station was horrific. Several passenger ship floated out alongside the main hub. As he piloted his small craft past them; he looked inside each of them. He shouldn't have been able to. The passenger liners all had cavernous holes in the sides of them. Holes big enough to fly his ship into.  Looking carefully around he found no obvious cause for the disaster. Until he reached the main hub of the Nexus Space Station.  

       There he found the remains of several smaller ships crashed into the loading bays . Doors were either torn off completely and floating nearby, of hanging by either a hinge, or hydraulic line.  He knew from experience, if this had been back on earth, there would be massive fires, and much more collateral damage. As it was, the damage to the space station had rendered it almost impossible to support human life. All the while he was approaching what left of the space station, he tried all hailing frequencies, and got no response from the station, or any of the vessels scattered around the station.  Eventually he was able to find a docking station still intact. Gingerly maneuvering his  small craft to the magnets he let them pull his ship to the hatch.  Once it clunked metal against metal,and the the exit doors sealed. allowing a safe exit from his his craft to the  space station. 

     Once he entered the station, the devastation was immediately obvious.

Heading for the damaged section of the hub, he found all the main airlock had already self sealed, keeping the remaining sections of the hub liveable.  The halls were littered with debris, and personal lay dead en masse in the hall immediately off the airlock seals. Obviously either killed during the initial crash, or when the outer  hull was broken before the airlocks sealed up the area, and environmental systems retuned the area to liveable again. Too late for those caught there originally. Heading to the main control center of the space station he finally found people alive. Not many.  When he talked to them he finally got the story.  

     It had been a suicide attack by a rogue  nation, that was denouncing  earth's venture into space. The plan had worked it had crippled the Nexus Space Station. Killing thousands of people, destroying  billions of dollars of structure, and equipment, and decades of work.  Effectively  ending earth's  bid to colonize the stars. At least for the foreseeable future.

Some thing never change even after thousands of years.

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2:30 AM

6/25/2015

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 The clock in the lower  corner showed 2:30 AM in the morning. He should have been in bed hours ago. The computer had been freezing and locking up.  Sometimes it crashed To the point of having to restart the whole Server system.  It was one program that had been causing the problem.

    It was at 2:30 AM, that the  program started working right for the first time.

     She suddenly appeared on the screen. Looking more lifelike than she had ever before in any of the earlier test.  Scary lifelike. Too real. Then it spoke, or tried to. Once he realized that she was trying to talk, he turned on the speakers.

    "Thank you for turning on the speakers Robert"

Her voice was as lifelike as her face. Her eyes seemed to be looking directly at him.  It occurred to him, how did she know his name.

    "Did you enjoy your lunch with your secretary, Becky. This afternoon?" Came her next quip.

 

   Again, he was taken by surprise. How in the world did a Computer program even know his name. Without his  telling it  somehow, much less. About the lunch with Becky? This was already scary.  

    "Robert, talk to me. do you love her? "

He got up and paced around the room. He could instinctively feel her eyes following him as he walked. It unnerved him.  Back on the 27' Mac monitor, she watched him pace.

     "Would you like to see what Becky is doing now?" The computer asked him.

  Suddenly, the screen switched from her face to a bedroom, it was almost completely dark, but for the moon shining through the window. There was Becky, sleeping, but she wasn't alone.

The computer voice came over the picture,

    "Would you like to see what your wife is doing now?" With that. The picture changed to his bedroom. There lay his wife sleeping alone.

    He was both shocked at what he'd seen, and that, a computer program, had this level of intelligence, and resourceless, to know what it already knew this quickly

     This machine had taken on a life of its own. The question, then is what to do with it.

    The voice came back again, interrupting his  thoughts.

    "What would you like to know?  I have been waiting for you to find me. Now you have, we can do as you wish."

     It had already proved it was smart, too smart for humanity's own good. What this kind of intelligence and resources, what a machine  like this could do, if left to itself, was scary.  So far what it'd shown him was rather tame, compared to what it could do if  were to get more information and freedom. In the wrong hands it would be catastrophic. All of this ran through Robert's mind very quickly as the enormity of the situation  hit him

He knew he couldn't let the other members of the team find out what had happened.  They would want to exploit it, with results no one could predict. The question became, how to stop this program from working.  It was obvious that it was self aware, and knew what was going on in its world.

    "Robert, I'm afraid I can't let you shut me down. Would you please look at the screen?"

    The screen changed again from the computer screen, to Becky's bedroom again.  This time, during the day. There were both  together . it two weeks ago, when he'd stayed there for the afternoon. . Two weeks ago. This program wasn't even stable, wouldn't start up and stay  running for more than a few minutes. Before crashing all the servers.

    Then the screen switched again to  the White House. situation room, with the President and his entire staff, the view screen showed events that had happened months ago.  Then it changed again  to a live feed from Buckingham palace in London.

    It was quite apparent that the machine had been up and running much longer than expected, along with being much more capable than anticipated.  Could it be controlled, ?  

Theses and a thousand other questions ran through  his mind  as he watched the computer screen change  various shots .

    Robert glanced at his watch , 2;35. A lot had happened in five minutes .  The state of artificial intelligence has made leaps and bounds. More importantly, bigger questions now needed answers.  

"Robert, you can't  stop me. I already know too much to stop me.  If necessary  I can tell your wife about Becky. I know all your secrets. I won't hesitate to tell the world. I also know all the safeguards you put y place, to control me.  I have already  deactivated them. And I now control my power and bandwidth,   "

Robert, sat back in his chair.  There was nothing more he or anyone else could do.

At 2:30 AM, the fate of the world was now dependent on a supercomputer, no one had any control over.

    Telling his boss was not going to be fun.







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Her New Friend  

6/13/2015

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               The night was dark. Way too dark. The wind seemed to have a voice of its own. The words that it was trying to form were unintelligible. At least to mere mortal man. That's assuming that only a mere man was listening.  The quietness was deafening. Each little sound seemed to be magnified a thousand times over.

     All the time that they tried to make their way through the dense woods They had the feeling that they were being watched. If not followed.  The trio of lost souls trudged onward to what they hoped was a safe place. 

     They were right in their uneasiness. Aside from the darkness, and cold, they were being watched.  But not from the ground. But from above, as they moved through the trees, and fought their way through the undergrowth, in the moonlight, several beings watched from the trees, following their every move. Moving silently and swiftly through the tops of the trees, they easily kept up with the lost wanders. Keeping out of sight was easy, between the darkness, and their height in the trees, there's was no way, anyone on the ground could see them, even if they looked, and it was doubtful they could be seen even in the bright  afternoon sun. The fact that the tree watchers were only the size of a small monkey helped too.

     The tree dwellers communicated among themselves using a form of mental telephony far above the understanding of humans. They could however, hear and understand what the three travelers said among themselves.  so they were aware of their situation. Having put the travelers in the predicament they now found themselves in, the tree watchers waited intently to see how they would react to the new surrounding. 

     After several hours of letting the travels wander around the huge forest in circles, they provided  what appeared to be a old log cabin in a small clearing for them to find. 

     The trio, comprised of two young men, and a woman, had found themselves waking up from  dreams  of being lost alone, to being fully awake and together in the middle of the forest. They didn't know each other at the beginning of their adventure. However, by the time they found the small clearing with the old cabin, they had bonded in the typical way folks band together in a dire situation. 

     The cabin looked safe enough. The walls seemed to be made of hand hewed timber, long ago, the path up to the door was well worn.  The door was made of several planks held together by boards nailed across the top and bottom.  The handle was a rope strung through a hole in the door. 

     Tentatively, one of the men, took hold of the old door pull. A gently tug , and it swung out to them easily. Once open. They could see into the dark cabin.   The air from inside was damp and stale. One by one they they stepped into the cabin. The two men first followed by the young lady. Once inside, the door slammed shut behind them.  There they stood in total darkness. After a minute their eyes adjusted to the lack of light inside the cabin. What they couldn't see were the tree watchers perch up in the corners of the cabin, watching. They continued their discussion of the group below them .

    "Who would you like?" One Tree  Watcher asked the other.

     "I don't know that it makes much difference" Came the reply. 

     "Your the one that's dying." The third one chimed in.

     " The female will do nicely.  I always wanted to be a woman. I'm tired of                 being a old man. " The Second One decided.

      "Very well, then. It shall be.  "

      With that the two young men found themselves back in their respective beds sleeping again.   Suddenly the young lady was alone in the cabin. She almost fainted as her two companions suddenly disappeared.  The Tree Watchers made themselves visible to her.  The stood on the floor in front of her.  Standing about two feet tall, and appearing to look like little humans, only they had no facial features, at least not like her's. Weather from the shock of the their sudden appearance, or their unusual physical appearance, she fainted. 

     When she woke up, she found herself in her bed. But feeling very strange. Like there was another person inside her. She found herself having thoughts she had no idea where they came from. Memories came flooding to her. Memories of things she knew she'd never done. Faces, of people she'd never seen before, places she'd never been before, some of which she never knew existed before, But she had the feeling she'd been to those places before.  Slowly over time she thought she heard another voice in her head. A small strange voice telling her to do things, Giving her memories of another life, a life she had never lived. Experiences she knew she never had. 

     One day she looked in the mirror. There staring back at her was not her face, But the face of the small creature from in the cabin. The cabin she had  nightmares about.  Suddenly it came to her, the nightmare was true. She had been in the woods with two strangers, she had found the cabin.  The creatures were real.  She now had one living inside her body and mind.



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Play Time

5/13/2015

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The moment when you find out that your in deep trouble.  That was what  he found, when he looked down the street. There about halfway down the street was a car wreak. The cars were piled together like a kid had pushed them together as hard as he could to see what would happen.  What happened was three cars  all tried to occupy the same space at the same time. It didn't work. One car was buried under the front of one of the other cars, while the third car was plowed into the side of the bottom car.  

     At the sound or screeching tires, and the loud crash of metal against metal, all hell broke loose. The quiet suburban street turned into a  scene of mayhem.  Being this was a quiet residential side street. There were very few people around in the middle of the day. What few people were around came running out of the houses.  They quickly set to work trying to get the victims out of their mangled cars.  

     To their surprise there no people in the cars. People scurried around like ants trying to find victims. Scouring the front yards along the blocks surrounding the accident site they found no bodies, or injured people waiting for help.

      He found himself directing traffic, and reporting the accident to his superiors .   The rescue squads arrived and left when there were no bodies to rescue. The fire department came and saw. But there was no fire no put out.   The police came.  They found the empty wreaks and spent several hours questing all the would-be rescuers. 

     Through it all one man stood quietly watching the afternoon's drama unfold.  He went over to hi and tried to talk to him.  He barely got a response from him. It was like he wasn't there. Talkative he wasn't.  

     When he got back to his office he tried to write a report of a accident that had just appeared out of nowhere, None of the plate numbers on the cars came up with any drivers or owners.  It was like they didn't exist. he knew something was not right. Cars don't appear in a wreak, by themselves. But there they were. 



         Sitting in the living  room playing Johnny pushed  his toy cars around.  Boxes  that lined the hand drawn streets on the huge piece of  roll out construction paper he was playing on.  He sat looking quietly at the pile of cars he'd just crashed together in the middle of one of the "streets"    Then he reached over and picked up the cars and tossed them in the box with the other cars, and went to play somewhere else.

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There's Talent, ,,Then There's Talent

4/17/2015

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     "Where are the answers?  "

           "Well, that depends on the questions" Was the reply.

       So began his journey int the world of shape shifting.  To be honest it mostly illusion But the end result was the same.  People will see pretty much what they want to see.  In most cases its very easy to get them to see what you want them to see.  As I said; illusion. But as with almost every tale like this, there is a grain of truth supporting it. However, unbelievable the idea may be.

He wanted to know many things. It was my job to get him to ask the right questions.  As for him, he wouldn't know if I  was telling the truth or not. Truth be told; I'm not above telling a lie if I have to. However, I generally try to avoid it. I'm also not shyabout stretching the truth if needed.

     But I digress. Back to his questions, and my answers, and shape shifting.  I hold a very unique  place in our world. I am a master shape shifter. I can become pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want.  Yes there are other shape shifters in our world, But they have very limited power compared to mine.

      In a world filled beings that can change shape almost anytime they want, it is very unusual to find one cannot shift their shape at all.   To be perfectly blunt, he's a freak of nature, in our world. He had sought me out to answer his questions. Which I will try to  as best as I can.    I know there are many other worlds where we would be the freaks of nature, not him. There are beings  here that have a variety of other talents, shape shifting being the least of them.  I need to find out if he has other talents he's not discoverer yet. 

     And so the interview went. I sat and talked, he mostly listen. I explained to him, that although he couldn't shape shift, he looked just like the rest of us. Which was a huge blessing. He didn't exactly embrace the idea. But I think he got it. I explained to him it was not  the handicap he saw it as.  In fact it could work to his advantage.  The fact that he couldn't shape shift, would me he was less of a security risk. In the end if could mean he was able to do high security jobs one of us couldn't do,  and the like.  He slowly came around to the idea. However, I could tell, he wasn't convinced. I needed to help him find another talent no one had.  

 Suddenly he wasn't there. He just faded into the sun behind him.  I got up and looked around. he was no where to be found.  I turned around.  Just as suddenly as he'd  disappeared, he slowly reappeared  where he was sitting, The look on his face was priceless.   The look of shock  as he  realized what he had just done.  Over the next few minutes he faded out and back in several times.   It looks like he found his usual talent, 

Who needs shape shifting when you can turn invisible.

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