Hey guys. It's your neighborhood friendly Co-mod. What do I want? I wanna see some original fan fiction from all you people, or just silly scifi stories. They don't have to make sense, they don't need good grammer, and they can be as long, or as short as you like them to be. (Note: If something is posted and its 10 pages long, I will delete it. Link it to your site, or ask me to post it on mine)

What kind of fan fics do I wanna see? Farscape, SG1, Final Fantasy, etc. Anything goes. Write a short scifi story... Ask other people to comment on it! BE CREATIVE!

I think I'll post Ship's Log, I'm not much of a fan of fan fiction, so, this is what I've got. I don't think I posted it on sciforums. It's fifteen pages long, so I hope you don't mind the slight break in length limit, counsler.


14:25
5-16-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I just cannot get enough of this zero g. It’s going to be a few more hours before the rest of the crew get the artificial stuff working, and since I have no technical knowledge of this spacecraft I have delegated my time to studying the acrobatics one can perform while not anchored to the ground. I left the NASA Wheel about a day ago with my two crew companions; I had spent about a week there after lifting off from Cape Canaveral on a beautiful Friday morning. I managed to get a vid of it from the ground. It was incredible. Watching a transport’s blue tail pass through a thin veil of sun-scarred clouds has made me feel like a bit of a poet rather than “the scientist” as I’m sure my fellows refer to me as. The Wheel itself was fairly boring, the people there seemed depressed beyond what I could have expected. I mean, I had heard rumors, but, still. It almost seemed as if each one was on the verge of tears, because they had been confined there for several months and had to watch as astronauts and scientists like myself departed for various locations around the solar system. At one point I tried to watch an old, roman-epic movie but found that the base’s library contained only pornographic films. Five hundred terabytes of storage and not a pixel devoted to reality. What a shame.

I’m enjoying the time spent away from my wife. Who I hate. If my avid reader cares.

So, anyway, our mission is a simple survey of the sun’s surface, one that should take only a few months. I don’t intend to use this log much; I have a great deal of work to get to from the sensor readouts. If I have time, however, I will be sure to inform my nonexistent avid reader of the various excitements of my voyage to the sun.
[END ENTRY]

04:39
5/19/23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
She sent me a vid just under an hour ago. With nothing better to do, I watched it, and still have not finished. Strangely enough, she seems to genuinely miss me, which I find curious, because we hardly spoke the day that I left, or the week before it. I still can’t stop hating her, I won’t allow myself to crave her presence for as long as either of us lives, and even after that. I don’t even know why I married the woman, I met her during college, it seemed like love for many months, we married, went on a honeymoon to the South Pacific and then settled into this routine of steady bickering, one that has not ceased even for a moment in ten years of marriage. I don’t know why I don’t divorce her, I feel almost a pity, she can hardly take care of herself, even if she does spend her days hollering at me. She used to apologize for it, but seems to have just given in to her desire to be the stronger one in our relationship. Maybe I will divorce her…

I have to get my mind off of her. The ship. Let me tell you about the ship.

The ship itself, which lacks a name (all the good ones have long since been taken), has the serial number “GB-3628,” I’ve taken to calling it “Geebee.” It actually isn’t so bad up here, my quarters are fairly small, but the bed is nice, the computer will, for the next week or so, have a connection to the medias of Earth and Mars. There are a pair of hallways that run sideways and into each other, each connecting to the various science rooms, the four living quarters (one is empty), the living room, and the control center. I first saw the ship docked to the Wheel and thought that it resembled a long cylinder with a large rectangle on the rear. There really isn’t much more to say about it, so I think I’ll take a break and have another look at the readouts.
[END ENTRY]

18:43
5-24-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I can still see the Earth, maybe make out a continent every now and then. I wish this thing had a telescope; the views of the stars out here are incredible. Boredom, however, is a tough thing to live with. Nelson and Tyler, two middle-aged, underpaid astronauts, have, for the most part kept to themselves, none of us have really spoken to one another, we’re all strangers here. The boredom is steadily getting worse, I can imagine that in a couple of weeks, when we lose radio contact with Earth it’s going to be crazy. I’m downloading as many books as I can, but the connection isn’t too good.
[END ENTRY]

10:15
5-30-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
Earth looked absolutely ravishing the day I left, as it steadily shrunk into just a ball of light over the course of our journey I found myself wishing that I had some champagne to pop open, after all, my wife is back there, on that little white speck, surely bored now with no one to scream at. We have to keep the windows facing the sun shut and wouldn’t be able to look out of them anyway (the sun tends to blind humans mercilessly), so I’m left with nothing but a chasm of faint stars to look at. Sometimes I feel like downloading the latest movie or television shows but lately I’ve just been sleeping or going through the sensor reports, which, for some reason, I find amazingly enthralling even though they tend to consist of little more than numbers and dashes. Nothing the ship has picked up has been unusual. However, I’ve been feeling a sense of secrecy permeating the close air of this place, my questions regarding the sun itself are tensely answered and then tend to degenerate into a “how’s the wife” conversation. Those never get too far, what with my hating my spouse. And, in addition to it all, this mission must have been enormously expensive for the UN, I have no idea why they would want to send us on this kind of task, one that could be handled (from a safe distance) just as easily by one of hundreds of satellites they have scattered throughout the solar system. Most of the data I get now comes from them, and will continue to do so until June 2.

Nelson and Tyler are polite, but they just don’t seem to enjoy my company. Whenever I arrive in the “living room” and find them both conversing they immediately stop and shift the subject. I guess I never believed those stories about animosity from astronauts toward scientists, almost like the prevalent racism of mid twentieth century America. I’m sure they must have some slur they refer to me as behind my back, but I don’t really want to get to the bottom of it.

I’m starting to think that the only good thing about this mission is that I’m as far away as I can possibly be from my wife. God, how I loathe her…
[END ENTRY]

09:38
6-02-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
We’ve passed through an outer-atmosphere of radiation, rendering our communication with Earth impossible. I am both ecstatic and depressed. I don’t have to send any more letters to my wife, nor do I have to read the ones she sends to me. However I now only have the few books I downloaded, the few movies, and the sensor readouts from the ship for entertainment. Two hours ago the radar picked up an object just a few miles away, extremely close space-wise, it was an asteroid or comet that NORAD hadn’t mapped out during the stellar cartography missions of the fifties. The computers in the control room were going nuts, the lights dimmed to red and everything, as if we were living through the last few seconds of an old Sci Fi movie. It seems to have disintegrated, it must have been made of ice, but we’re all still on edge. I try not to speak to my crewmates. I’m starting to develop a relationship with them similar to the one I wish I’d have with my wife: One with no verbal communication.
[END ENTRY]


11:50
6-02-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
Christ almighty, something just hit us. Nelson and Tyler are freaking out. The ship is spinning like a merry-go-round. We can’t close any of the windows for some reason so the sun blasts us every other twenty seconds. According to the instruments we’re losing oxygen fast—we already don’t have enough to get back to Earth. They’re looking for the hole right now, but because of the heat outside they can’t do an EVA, so it isn’t likely that they’ll be able to patch it up. I can’t stop sweating or shaking, it’s getting to be somewhat of a challenge to type these letters. Maybe I should switch to verbal, but then I’d just stutter. I really don’t know about this. It could be it. For me. What the hell are we going to do? We don’t have enough oxygen…we’re out of contact with Earth…and every twenty seconds we can’t see a damn thing with our own eyes…Christ almighty…what am I going to do?
[END ENTRY]

17:10
6-03-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
Tyler managed to find the hole and cover it up with some metal from the pantry that he welded on. We have four more days of oxygen. I’ve spent as much time away from the crew as possible, luckily the sensors are still doing fine, even though we haven’t stopped spinning. The readings haven’t changed a great deal, but, oddly enough, the fact that they have changed is cause for some concern on my part. Nelson managed to at least keep the ship from spinning any faster, which is good, because if it were to increase in speed we might all be permanently blinded. The sun would be on every side of the ship at once, in our eyes, splitting open our heads.
[END ENTRY]

18:20
6-03-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
The explosion must have screwed up the ship’s main computer; I had a look at the objectives and noticed immediately that they had changed significantly. This isn’t a scientific mission, there’s a fusion warhead on the nose of Geebee that is incomprehensibly powerful, if it exploded here Saturn might lose its rings from the shockwave. Apparently we were supposed to fire it into the sun, but I’ve looked at the damage reports, and the mechanism for launching the rocket itself has been completely severed. I think they were planning on telling me, but I’m not really sure. The wieners back on Earth had no clue as to what was and is happening inside the sun, but they think that its heart may need a kind of jumpstart, like shocking a heart attack victim when their pulse flatlines. I’m just not sure about this, really, really not sure…I wish I had someone to talk to, I’m beginning to talk to myself more and more now…
[END ENTRY]


19:15
6-03-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I’ve done some calculations. One of us would be able to make it back if…if the other two weren’t around. Even with the sensor readouts, which have been going insane, I still can’t stop thinking about the deadline four days from now, when we’ll all suffocate to death. I can see it clearly, my mouth will open and I’ll cough, my eyes will widen, I’ll fall to the metal floor, claw at the air with my hands, and then cease to move. Weeks from now a ship may come and get us, but, who knows, with the sun having a heart attack there may not be a human alive in the solar system to pack us up.
[END ENTRY]

23:27
6-03-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I walked into the living room to get some food and noticed that Tyler and Nelson were viciously staring at each other. There was total contempt for one another in their eyes. Their muscles were tense. Sweat beads ran down their foreheads. Their gray hair shone each time the sun blasted us. Something’s going to give. I managed to sneak one of the knives back to my cabin; I may bolt the door or lock it somehow, if I can.
[END ENTRY]

02:13
6-04-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
They’re screaming and banging on my door right now, shouting profanities, using those slurs that I mentioned a few days ago. I had just locked the door and braced it with my computer hard drive when they started bashing on it and demanding that I come out. There’s no way that I’m leaving here. No way. I haven’t answered them once, I’ve tried not to make any noise…wait a second…they stopped, they’re listening…I shouldn’t be typing, but—but it helps, somehow, makes me feel like I’m not alone nine AU’s from the Earth with no radio contact. I have to stop, now, I have to, I know they can hear me.
[END ENTRY]

02:45
6-04-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I just heard a scream, I think it was Nelson. My god…he’s outside…Jesus…he’s out there right now. Nelson’s body, I can see it every few seconds. It’s disintegrating. His skin is clinging to his bones. I can see the skull beneath his face. I can’t turn away. It looks like he has a stab wound to the chest, but I can’t tell, I only get to see him for a second. Then the sun flashes, then I see him again, almost like the frames of an old movie. At least, this way, we have a week of oxygen left. That’ll put us within visible range of Earth. At least, if I die, I’ll get a last look at my homeworld.
[END ENTRY]

05:03
6-05-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I have to get food. I’m going to confront Tyler. I’m not leaving without the knife.
[END ENTRY]

07:15
6-05-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
As soon as I left my cabin he came at me and tore open my left shoulder, Christ, it hurts. The man was easily twice my size, so I ran from him, shut all the doors behind me and turned off the gravity. I came back at him, with my mastery of zero g from screwing around all those days before. I slit his throat, blood gushed everywhere. It’s on my hands right now, but I can’t tell if it’s mine or his. He choked, gasped and coughed, his eyes widened and then faded as life left them. I jettisoned him just a second ago, and am now enjoying a roast beef sandwich. It’s pretty good.
[END ENTRY]

08:15
6-06-23
[BEGIN ENTRY]
I can’t get the gravity back. I don’t care. I have no idea how to control this thing. There must be a thousand acronyms, one for each button in the cockpit. The ship doesn’t come with a manual. I’ve got to hope that Tyler left it on autopilot. I’ve showered four times and can’t get any of the blood off of my body, but my shoulder seems to have stopped bleeding. The sensors have gone totally berserk. There may be merely a solar storm brewing down there, or it might be getting ready to go nova prematurely. I don’t know. I need more time. Blood is everywhere. I’ve tried to wash it away, but the ship won’t stay clean. The sun is giving me a constant headache; I think I may be losing my sight as well. I can’t sleep; it’s so goddamn bright in here. Even though I’ve showered four times I still appear as if I just walked out of a Chewbacca-look-alike contest.
[END ENTRY]

11:49
6-10-23
[BEGIN VERBAL ENTRY]
I can’t see anymore. It’s been nearly impossible to get things back up and running I’ve managed. The ship reads the data aloud to me, now. I think I’ve got a general idea as to what’s happening in the core. For whatever reason, the fusion cycle has been slowing down and speeding up, and the process has been accelerating exponentially. If my eyes worked, I bet I’d be able to see the sun flashing. I also bet the kind folks back on Earth and the solar system abroad can see it as well. Sooner or later something is going to explode, there’s going to be a huge burst of heat. It may be enough to incinerate the planets; or it may only be enough to raise the temperature by a few degrees for a few hours. I just don’t know, and I’m not sure that I can know until it happens.

The computer says that I’m on my way back to Earth. I don’t know how I’m going to explain the deaths of two fellow crewmembers to NASA. I may have to edit or delete this log. I could just say that they fought each other and both threw themselves out into space. But they won’t believe that. I’m just a scientist, not an astronaut, not a politician, not a businessman. Not a liar. I can’t lie. They’d see it in a second. I’d break down…plus, they’d never believe me, with this blood everywhere.
I hate my wife. I wish she were here right now. Her voice has been running through my head like there’s no tomorrow. Even though I can’t see. I’d enjoy hearing her scream. I’d enjoy feeling my hands tear open her throat, that’d stop her nagging. The stupid bitch can go to hell; it might be more comfortable than where I am right now.
[END ENTRY]

--date malfunction—
[BEGIN VERBAL ENTRY]
She’s here. I don’t know how. She won’t leave me alone. Blood is seeping from the walls. I can feel it. I can smell it. Shut up! Shut your mouth you whore! Leave me alone! God, someone help me, anyone, help me, please…Oh just leave me alone, get away! Stay the hell away from me! Only a few more hours until radio contact with Earth. Only a few more hours…but do I want to do it? They might find out, they might find me guilty before I even get back, then they’d shoot me down with a missile. But there might not even be an Earth left to get back to…no I don’t care what you say about my shirt color! God…be quiet…
[END ENTRY]

--date malfunction—
[BEGIN VERBAL ENTRY]
The ship started shaking a few seconds ago. It’s really shaking now. I think I can hear it falling apart. The blood, the blood is everywhere—I think I can see again! It is terrible, My God, the ship, it’s like a nightmare, the blood, the knives! Tyler, Nelson, and my wife are screaming at me and threatening me, I don’t know how. It’s shaking more now. The portholes look like they’re surrounded by some kind of inferno. I’m going to have a look.

I don’t know how I’m alive, or how the ship is in one piece. There’s a firestorm around the hull that looks like comet tails and solar flares, just steaming by. It’s stopped shaking. I can see Earth now. I haven’t contacted them. They haven’t contacted me. I can see through the inferno. My god, it’s—it’s frying the surface, the planet is turning black, it’s falling apart, disintegrating, no more than a cloud of dust, oh, my, my, my…
[END ENTRY]

--date malfunction—
[BEGIN VERBAL ENTRY]
I have been unable to make contact with anyone. I had hoped that somewhere in the solar system someone else was still alive. I can’t find any of the planets. There seems to be some kind of a red glow in every direction outside, like the color of blood. I can’t move my arms anymore, I don’t know why, I can hardly move at all, it might be all the radiation, getting to my brain, it’s becoming harder to speak…I don’t even have the luxury to commit suicide. Nelson, stay back—
[END ENTRY]

See, I really would post something, but I honestly don't think I can bloody compete with that, what with my whole geoggers situation and noticable lack of sense of humour... bloody sorry.
Besides, once you get me started on something like that, I can't stop. And depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I could start inventing my own bloody language, or twist it into some Titanic-gone-bad thing, especially what with my noticeably excessive exposure to caffiene of late.
And besides, you know that there'd be the Elves... so yes. Bloody sorry.
Not QUITE ready to get on Tolkien Enterprises' bad side quite yet. Sorry.
But great idea for a thread. I'd like to read more- ahem, cue-to-everyone-else-who-isn't-as-lazy-as-me- so keep at it.
Cheers to that!

Niudo,
Ghost of Mirkwood

Some original fiction:

For many years, they had been at the mercy of the doctor, who experimented and probed and tested them without mercy, searching for something they could not give. Now it was over. The same lord who had granted the doctor permision to do this was detroying the lab. The massive gates collapsed under the massive weight of a Behemoth battle tank. Soldiers in battlesuits stormed the compound while fighters shattered the sky with their sonic booms.

The legionares pulled back out of the building as tehy contacted the brainwashed supersoldiers, one of the doctor's successful experiments. Tom looked back into his room. When the power went out, most rooms had come unlocked, or became easy to escape. The little ones had come to him for protection. The fourth floor room was full of them. They couldn't get the inhibitor collars off, though, and they were one of the few things to survive the EMP that had accompanied the bombs that cut the power.

Someone gasped and he looked back out the window. The sickly green fog that was under teh distant trees crept foward to flow through the gate and hide the soldier's legs. With it came more legionares, dressed in archiac armor, looking puny and weak beside the powerful powered armor. A supersoldier rushed one, only to die. The smell of old dead came through the window, a slighty musty, rancid smell that they only knew by intuition. Tom soon realized that whatever these new soldiers were, the supersoldiers couldn't begin to compete. They walked through bullets and explosions without flinching. The regular legionares soon fell back to let them take the lead.

It was hours later when they heard someone come up the stairs. The Legions had focused on resistance, trusting the "patients" at the "hospital" to keep to thier rooms and stay still. They had cleared the bunkers and labs underground, and Tom had seen the doctor led away in chains. This was confusing to someone who had had it drilled into his head that by undergoing these experiments, he served the Lord of Chaos, whose same troops now destroyed the compound. Indeed, the walls were being blasted into rubble by demolition teams, and many of the underground chambers, labs, and bunkers were mere holes in the ground now. One of those blasts had shattered the window, letting him hear the shouts of the men. Now that most of the resistance was cleaned up, most of the battlesuits had left, leaving men equipped with nonpowered armor and technical equipment they used to hack into computers and other such things. Footsteps stopped in front of the door. Two massive blows knocked it in, waking the smaller children, scaring them all. Tom looked at one of the soldiers that had slaughtere the doctors supersoldiers. Now he could see why.

The man wore ancient armor, leather and steel, black with blood-red lighlights went with a sword whose blade was stained with blood. A long rend in the armor showed the blow that had cut him in two, and took his life long ago. The green mist seemed to cling in crevices in his armor. They supersoldiers hadn't been made to fight the dead!

Running was heard, and a tech wearing more modern armor designed against bullets and shrapnel ran up, looked into the room, and said something into his radio. The undead legionare continued down the hall, knocking dow ntwo more doors, to reveal the others. The tech folowed him, completely ignoring the children. At twelve, Tom was one of the oldest. HIs body wracked by cerebral palsy, the doctor had been interested i nhis mind, forcefully unlocking the telekinetic powers within and trying to find out how to unlock them in others. He had been placed here to look over the children, mostly failed experiments, thier bodies and minds twisted by the doctor, and cast aside when he couldn't use them. Tom had pleased him, obeying his commands, even if confused by an apparent double standard.

Now a man stood in the doorway, holding a lantern against the fading twilight, his armor more decorative than even the undead's, blood-red, black, and silver used in the coloring except for the white fist in the middle of his chest, but the stiking thing was the way that it fit him like a second skin, moving effortlessly with him, conjuring a premordial fear in the little ones. He set the lantern on the desk by the door, and moved aside. A second man wearing a nanosuit entered the room, His armor bearing no symbol, just the fractal pattern of Chaos. He had rounded his armor, the soft edges and smooth outline magnitudes less frightening than the other. A sword hung at his side, somehow not an anacronism. He bent down, taking off his helmet, and looked at the children, tears in his eyes. Not all of them had inhibitors, just those who could do things with thier minds. Those he took off of those who could control thier talents, working his way to Tom. The nanosuit extruded a monofilament scissors, which he held around his collar, pausing to say,"Do you hate me for what has been claimed to have been done in my name?" He drew the sword, crimson lightning crackled along a blood-red blade, reachign out and bruching nearby object, stroking him with fire, promising him unpleasant things if struck with that blade. His face was reflected in red by the blade, as the lord continued,"Many will. The doctor burns in here now, not even you could devise a more perfect fate for the man." The sword was sheathed, and the scissors closed through the collar, releasing his power. The Lord of Chaos stood and turned to go. "We have food, water and such for the children. bring them downstairs, and let me know your decision. There are others who have abused my generosity like the doctor did, and thier victims will need help, too." And he was gone. Tom sat in a wheelchair he did't need, staring after him. Ironically, it was the smell of a soiled diaper that roused him to lead the little ones downstairs, floating throught halls being wired with exposives.

The death of the fighter

He stumbled outside of his tent, slowly, he walked over to the pond glistening in the sun. The water within the pond like thousand diamonds floating in the sands of time forever, in their own content of existence. He slowly walked over, bleeding, tired, and in pain that could only described as unimaginable as it was brutal on his weakening heart. His face, carved by the brutal hands of war, constantly being slapped by the harsh winds of the desert terrain. Finally he reached the pond, the water was so beautiful in his eyes that tears streamed down his face from the pain of the wait he had to endure to take in the cool, gentle, warmth of that water, even if that wait was only a few mere seconds. As soon as his hand reached down to swin through the gentle water he died. His hand collapsed down on the hot sand of the alien habitat without ever knowing what that sweet drink of water was like. Sure he had drank plently before but now this drink would encompass them all because it was his last. As soon as his life ended his partner came over and robbed him of his money and took his clothes and left him to die butt-nakid.

The end.

Wha'da'ya think, Pollux?

It's afternoon, I've been awake for several hours and all I've done is either write or post on forums. I have to take a shower. I'll take a look at everything here--comment on it--and post some of my own stuff as soon as I can. At the latest, it'll be the end of the day tomorrow.

you guys write really well. Is there more?

very funny, sargentlard. lol.

I'll have more of that one later, and another should be done as soon as I get the research done. I'm actually considering not posting it, as it may...what's a good word...unerve some people.

Gifted,

I found some of the story a bit confusing, and as it progressed there seemed to be more and more typos. I just wasn't quite sure what was going on...

Marigny,

Cool. It was definitely cool. Like Gifted's, I didn't really understand it, but that makes total sense--because it's part of a bigger story. Some of the words seemed a little unnecessary, at times it seemed like too much.

sargent,

Even though it was a joke, I found the concept to be...intriguing. A bit too many words used though. Kind of like Narcissus....

So there are my comments, hopefully thought of by the writers of the stories as being constructive criticism. Keep in mind that I am only an aspiring writer, and I have had nothing published yet. Just take it with a grain of salt, I guess. I'm actually just back from the P.O, I sent this story (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24178) to six magazines. Who knows...



And now, to post something of my own, which will hopefully garner criticism. Here follows the beginning of a chapter from my WW1-era fantasy, entitled Intertwine.

II

Drazir pressed her finger against the cold metal trigger of her rifle, felt the weapon buck, saw a flash, felt her ears thrum in pain with the loud roar that ushered forth from its nozzle. Its body was suddenly warm, and she could hear a light hiss emanate from the end, where a small funnel of steam was rising. At the other end of No-Man’s-Land, a muddy, corpse-strewn wasteland of soggy mutilation, she saw her target, a tall thin man, running toward her with his rifle at hand. An instant after she had pressed the trigger his shoulder burst into red plasma, and he fell into the soil of the battlefield. Her first kill.

Drazir fell back behind the trench she had dug herself into, it was more like a hole, far from the protected ranks of her countrymen behind her, she was quite alone, and quite likely to perish from the perpetual hail of gunfire streaming from the rebel insurgents in front of her. She felt a pang of sadness, a strange feeling envelop her, almost euphoria, but not quite. Her first kill. Someone who would have lived at least a little longer, had she not fired, was now just another mangled, lifeless body. The man had parents who would never see him again, probably a love of his life who feared for his safety every waking moment, who cried at his departure for the battlefield, her eyes more radiant than usual, maybe children, who were the joy of his life, who tinkered with his very perception of what reality was, who made him question philosophies he had taken for granted, many friends who smiled at him and shook their heads whenever he made a stupid joke. An entire existence had just ended, and an entire slew of people, when they learned of his death, would mourn for him perhaps for their entire lives. If he were alive…if he were alive.

Combat.

She saw another target making for her foxhole. Instinctively, she lifted her gun and fired again, missed. She saw the whites of the man’s eyes as he dove for cover twenty or thirty feet away. She heard the pitch of the distant, almost otherworldy machine guns change, and she ducked down and covered her ears as plumes of wet dirt and blood ruptured around her, the bullets whizzing by centimeters above the thin metal of her helmet, the ground tremoring wildly as screeching shells burst in the mud. Her wet face grimaced, her eyes shut tightly. Even with her ears covered the noise was deafening, and as the time ached on she felt desperation climbing in her lungs, up her dirt-clogged throat. The noise grew to a cataclysm, and she screamed as the snapping and the whizzing and the roars of the distant cannons grew to such a chorus around her that absolutely nothing else could be heard. The hail of gunfire ended as slowly as it began, gradually tapering off as the gunners found new targets. Her miserable shrieking did not end until the rumbling earth was still. And even then it was all her mind’s voice could do, for in trench combat logical thought is silenced, and while she was closer to death than she ever had been before, she never felt more alive.

Combat.

Do you think posting the rest of this would be too much for some people?

The street was rubble. Kal'joonack looked at the shattered buildings, the rubble in the street, and watched another tank rumble down it. He started walking, the 22mm rifle held ready. The demons were larger than the humans working in other areas of the universe, and the Black hand of Chaos handled it easily. A nice weapon, a load of flechette would shred a man like the beef in one of his Lord's barbeque sandwiches. Screams eminated from a store he past, one of the humans would learn what it was like to live that way for weeks. The pain and fear seeped through his twisted empathic sense, lifting him up much like the intoxicants used by some humans.

One of the creatures that resided here chose the wrong moment to dart across the street, his rifle butt smashing it in the chest, knocking it twenty feet away to land in a pile of trash. The burst of pain made him gasp, usually he wore the amulet his Lord had given him, to keep the pain out. The lack of tolerence made him sensitive. He chose not to do anything to the eyes and hints of green fur peering out the the trash can, stopping only to put his foot down on the blue creatures throat, ending the gurgling, sucking gasps of its shattered lungs. They were no better than the children that his Lord had ordered them not to touch, not that it mattered, his horde moved slowly enough that the humans would evacuate an area and entrench.

Closer to the end of the street, a bonfire burned. What looked like a large bird's nest was augmented by beams from a nearby building. The mutilated carcass of an elephant-like creature with rust-red fur was nearby, pieces of it roasting with the body of a large bird, yellow feathers scorching the air with their acrid smell. He tore off a drumstick, flattening a warrior who protested.

At the end of the street, a building was somewhat intact. The windows had been broken by bomb blasts, the only other damage worth mentioning was the bullet shatter stone door posts, and the stump of the brick mailbox, blasted by a HE round from one of his warriors' guns. The body of the creature that had been hiding behind it was still there, ravens pecking at its eyes. The red fur made it difficult to see where the wounds were.

One round blew the door into a million pieces. The pink walls and childish decor confirmed that this was the creature's house. He sat down on a chair, crushing it under him, felling the sweet pain of splinters in his butt, and ate the drumstick, washing it down with water in a fishbowl that had miraculously survived the carnage. He didn't notice the goldfish added to his meal.

Back outside, he walked down a side street, pausing by the sign. Crushed by a tank, the words Sesame St. were barely legible. Hefting his gun, he walked on.

The side road led to the suburbs. Towards the egde of the city he passed a schoolyard, standing out only because of the symbology of a stuffed animal, the dinosuar's stuffing peeking out of the rips and tears. It was stained with the blood of a human soldier who had died with his comrades under the tracks of a tank.

A scene cut from the first ever Star wars. It was cut out due to being a little eccentric at that time of the gentle seventies

Han Solo *looks at Princess Leia standing near a waterfall* Hello Princess Leia...how..um..how are you.

Princess Leia *becomes uncomfortable and responds hesistently* I..i am fine...how are you...you we..were a little...a little angry last night.

HS *rubs his face in distraught* Oh thank you, i just confronted a dark part of my past and it just got the best of me..i am sorry if i worried you.

PL*grabs Han's arm in worry* No No it is ok..i was just concerned for your safety......*looks down and backs away*...do you think we should talk about what happened...um..las..last night....

HS *walks away in a hurry mumbling about fixing his ship* Um..last..last night ..what about last night..nothing happened.

PL *catches up with him and gets in front of him*Look something happened last night Han...something between us....we need to talk about it.
It's ok...it happens to every man once in a while..it is nothing to be ashamed of.

HS *Runs his hand through his hair and rushes over to Princess Leia* Please..don't say that so loud..please..it hurts ok... i promise princess i am a stromtrooper in ..well..you know...when it comes to that sort of stuff.

PL *grabs his hand and assures him*..oh i completely understand...it's ok..it's allright....it happens to the best of us...even i didn't get my first boyfriends...you know...up...the first time...

HS*surprised and excited* Really?

PL*with a smiling face* no...i was always great unlike you....*realizes what she said...*...i mean...you are great too i am sure...

HS*starts to cry* OH BY THE BEARDS OF OBI WAN KANOBE I AM A MAN NO MORE.

***Chwebaca walks in with Luke****

**Han wipes his tears off and prenends to laugh and talks about killing Darth Wader****

Luke Skywalker *happy and excited* Boy what a great night last night..i was on fire..found this tall little girlie in the bar and man a good time was had if you know what i mean....*taps Han's arm while winking*....

Chwebaca*also excited tells of his great night with a girl from the same bar who was short and skinny*

***They both laugh and feel proud of themselves untill they realize the obvious****

***uncomfortable silence...Han Looks at Leia and Luke looks at Chewbacca while crying***

HSUmm..i'll go start the ship....

Pollux, interesting. We get to see a clear perspective of what she's going through. In the middle of all the destruction she felt alive. I can feel the adrenaline pumping. thanks for the review, it's nice that you found it cool.

Gifted, nice imagery of dinosaur/elephant monsters running around or not. scary. and i don't think it's too gory. in fact i like it violent.

sargentlard, what can i say. lol.

ok, I've got another fiction-fantasy type original from the same story but in a later chapter. and yes, I do get into imagery alot. I love words.

Enjoy, people.

The handles of the gateway were ice cold, but I guided my fingers boldly over it and unfastened the adjoining entrance door. Staunchly ignoring my heartbeat as the access hinges noisily shrieked, took a step into the opening. It was resilient to see through the misty shadows, the radiance from the blue flame reflecting indistinctly from the sophisticated sight. Several minutes passed and the vapor of smoke cleared, it was then that I saw, a chorus of metal and silver intertwined in blissful unison. A vision that made even my breath catch. A moment too soon or not soon enough, feeling barren in a universe of uncertainty I unexpectedly felt alone.

Oh, come on now.
There had to be a living soul here. Wasn't there?

"Hello." My voice sounded childish and that same awful feeling came over me. The sound of it echoing off the empty vastness of the great open space, resonating against the steely glow of the metallic sheets lay up against polished clouds of gray starry lights. The quiet was so intense that I felt as if I were disturbing a place of consecrated ground or worse. My own boots, black and sooty now seemed grayish and discolored, as if the entirety of my clothing became part of this place. I scarcely made whisper-scratches alongside the granite of the obscure floorings.

Someplace within, the uneasy laughter altered and became nearly an utterance. "Hello?" I repeated again but that wasn't it-- the force touching my torso was making me dizzy, almost as if I were supposed to be communicating something. I stifled a totally unsuitable chortle. Hovering on the edge of the universe, could it be that the language I speak is unknown?

"I’ve come to bring the offering," I heard myself presenting. "I was told that there would be someone here to instruct me of what it is I must do."

Stillness ricocheted once more.

Subtly moving towards the objects so beautifully designed, I tried to emit light from my cold hands around them to further inspect the silver entities. They were sitting peculiarly, though, and the brightness denied them any obscurity and it seemed resolutely not to acquiesce to the cold blue flame from my fingers.

The silence broke.

Brief, short-winged euphoria vibrated on my pulse and the pain of the memory was as powerful and sharp, instilling a broken scream from the depths of my soul.

There was great power here; I sense it and it swallowed me wholly. Two rivals complemented each other. A female, strong and prudent; and the other, a male, dangerous and malevolent. Together, they bonded dangerously close, a vibrant force that she was no part of. And now they lived and died, twin wounds marring the visionary sky above, displacing time and space. My eyes were closed beneath my fists, gritting teeth and rather desperately, wondering through the piercing pain if she was still here.

She is here.

As I turned to the quiet noise from behind, over the gateway firmament, there was electric radiance rhizomes mounted in the ceiling that sky, for they all wavered on instantaneous. I started, but by the unnatural pale glow they shed I could at last see—her.

"What are you doing here?" It sounded like defiance.
I found my voice. “I know who you are-“I paused, noting the enclosure of her being.

Stunning. I blinked, but it was not a counterfeit notion. Skin so pastel it was lucent and dark almost black eyes. A long sweep of hair so black it seemed to absorb whatever luminescence the lights burnished. She stood, long-limbed and proud, by those radiant lights.

"I forget that there are those like you still searching for the existence." she simply said, as if that enlightened entirely. I could not prevent staring. It was not the skin, or the eyes, or the tresses, though they were by far and large, the most superb I'd ever seen. Ah, but her wings. My wits did foolish somersaults, dizzied and anxious. Monochrome, huge, translucent against the backdrop of her sky. Lifting calmly from her shoulders, feathered and damp-- but with such facet I felt I could slice a finger on the razor periphery of them.

I gulped, nodded humbly. I hoped she had the compassion she used to possess, for suddenly I could not bring myself to speak.
“Get out.” Her voice bounced off the heavens, and the silver glint of metallic embers became transformed into beings of bright lights, hovering around the perimeters of her existence.
This was not the time to chicken out, I berated myself. She had to know.

“I’ve an offering for you-“

“I know what you have. Leave it and go.” She interrupted.

“No.” it was a brave attempt but she must hear it from me. I closed my eyes. Begging quietly for a new revelation.

When I opened my eyes, she was there by my side. Her great pale wings so close, they hovered around me like a noiseless roar. "Give me more than an offering, can that, human?" she whispered in my ear, echoes of my manhood trembling just beyond the resonance of her tone. The fine hairs at the nape of my neck stood up. "What concerns you? What... makes you want immortality?"
I swallowed convulsively. "What?" I managed dumbly. The question addressed though nothing out of the ordinary began to form suspicions in my mind. Was there a catch? The offering hidden in my pocket was enough to appease someone like her. Perhaps if I….the thought came after the instant reaction.

Lifting my hand, the blue flames shot up into the silver sky, spinning her into silence. I wanted to show her that I too possess power. Transfixed, I waited for her reaction and prepared. The dark angel arched her supine brow, the faded luminescence of her perfect features unmovable. "You are a magic user then?" she whispered. She touched me, almost lovingly. So cold, so cold; I didn't dare move lest she embraced my soul and solidify my life away. Pay attention, I told myself.

She kissed my lips and the contact burned oddly. "Not even frightened?" she asked. Her hands, gradually warmer now left me. The silence between us seems to pass and she demonstrated another request. "Then for the offering you give me, I shall give you something in return." Her kisses breathed an unspeakable something into human lungs that I felt that I was being devoured from the inside out. Oh god, it was burning me alive.

I liked it.

I think I said, "Please." In a meaningless whisper.
Her hands swiftly taking the offering from my pocket, clutched at the precious piece then left me there in that vast planet, I felt no more than a lethal sweet vacant sort of pain. My eyelids flickered closed, and I was gifted with apparitions of airborne winged angelic beings and damp fibers of hot red blood.

My perspective began to change, increasingly igniting visions in my head, a cosmos unfolding from itself, galaxies like flowing hot milk, and cataclysmic, blistering sweet supernovas.
I went out into the way I came and felt……immortal.

That was VERY cool. One of the better ones that I've seen.

actually, I haven't read a thing here that I didn't think was good.
Some a bit wordy, but perhaps that's what it takes to paint a picture effectively.

I congratulate you all on your on your creativity. I wish that I could master words the way that many of you have.

Bravo...

Here's all of that last one. What'da'ya think? Give you nightmares yet?



The street was rubble. Kal'joonack looked at the shattered buildings, the rubble in the street, and watched another tank rumble down it. He started walking, the 22mm rifle held ready. The demons were larger than the humans working in other areas of the universe, and the Black hand of Chaos handled easily what took a man a battlesuit to carry. A nice weapon, a load of flechette would shred a man like the beef in one of his Lord's barbeque sandwiches. Screams eminated from a store he past, one of the humans would learn what it was like to live that way for weeks. The pain and fear seeped through his twisted empathic sense, lifting him up much like the intoxicants used by some humans.

One of the creatures that resided here chose the wrong moment to dart across the street, his rifle butt smashing it in the chest, knocking it twenty feet away to land in a pile of trash. The burst of pain made him gasp, usually he wore the amulet his Lord had given him, to keep the pain out. The lack of tolerence made him sensitive. He chose not to do anything to the eyes and hints of green fur peering out the the trash can, stopping only to put his foot down on the blue creature's throat, ending the gurgling, sucking gasps of its shattered lungs. They were no better than the children that his Lord had ordered them not to touch, not that it mattered, his horde moved slowly enough that the humans would evacuate an area and entrench.

Closer to the end of the street, a bonfire burned. What looked like a large bird's nest was augmented by beams from a nearby building. The mutilated carcass of an elephant-like creature with rust-red fur was nearby, pieces of it roasting with the body of a large bird, yellow feathers scorching the air with their acrid smell. He tore off a drumstick, flattening a warrior who protested.

At the end of the street, a building was somewhat intact. The windows had been broken by bomb blasts, the only other damage worth mentioning was the bullet shatter stone door posts, and the stump of the brick mailbox, blasted by a HE round from one of his warriors' guns. The body of the creature that had been hiding behind it was still there, ravens pecking at its eyes. The red fur made it difficult to see where the wounds were.

One round blew the door into a million pieces. The pink walls and childish decor confirmed that this was the creature's house. He sat down on a chair, crushing it under him, feeling the sweet pain of splinters in his butt, and ate the drumstick, washing it down with water in a fishbowl that had miraculously survived the carnage. He didn't notice the goldfish added to his meal.

Back outside, he walked down a side street, pausing by the sign. Crushed by a tank, the words Sesame St. were barely legible. Hefting his gun, he walked on.

*****

They had been charged by a dark power with a good deal to bring terror to these lands. They did so now. The road eventually led to a highway, where he caught a ride on a convoy. The Black Hand of the Lord of Chaos took the convoy to the next large depot, stopping only once, where a walk in the countryside showed how little of the world had been spared. He walked down a slope into a valley, passing a windmill looking like a child's pinwheel. The concrete tower was leaning where a shell had removed the concrete from the rebar. The grass was completely burnt, and the smell of leftover napalm filled the air. The low hill in the center covered a house, the semicircle windows probably once had a bright paint scheme. The inside was trashed from his troops, which by this time had gone from high to what a drug-user might call stoned. They no longer could restrain themselves to capturing and torturing, they had had the air forces napalm the valley, even though there had been no hostile forces, and mowing the five inhabitants down as the ran scearming, burning, in circles. They had ransacked the house, tore apart what appeared on close examination to be a vacuum cleaner, and moved on. He returned to the convoy, the baby face in the sun bawling uncontrollably.

*****

From the top of a hill they watched as their gigantic brethren, easily ten stories tall, duked it out with machines of similar size built ot resemble prehistoric animals. A giant lizard from the other coast provided the meat for the picnic as the machines changed, merging togather into a giant humaniod robot with a sword only to be overwhelmed as a dozen more of his brethren came out of the maze of the city and pulled it down. The machines were torn apart, peices scattered wily nilly, while they pulled out the five pilots and swallowed them screaming, to be slowly digested, very painfully.

*****

The Lord of Chaos met with his Black Hand, Kal'joonack, several miles south of the ruins of the city where the machineshad been destroyed. The name of the burned farm's owner, Piggle-Wiggle, was barely legible on the sign. He smashed his fist against his chest in the salute of his people, and bowed. "My Lord."

Benjamin Laconis, Lord of Chaos, returned the salute in kind. His nanosuit had formed itself for maximum psychological impact. Every spike and angle had been carefully computed by the quantum computers inside to inspire fear and revulsion in humans and several other species. Anger burned in his eyes as he spoke. "Soon our employer," he spoke the name in disgust, for who but an unreformed demon relish such horror as he had been forced to unleash in return for the souls of him and his people, both demon and human,"will come to gloat with us. When he comes, we will be free, one way or another." As he said this, he clenched his fist on the hilt of his sword. Kal'joonack knew full well the power of that sword, had seen it take souls of those previously thought invulnerable to its magic. The wait will soon be over, he told himself. Then they will be on their way, the poor inhabitants of this world to curse and try to regain what was lost.

I'm sure that would have inspired a response by now. Is it that bad?

it could make a good action film/story,
but since it's in story format, it's a little hard to follow but it's good in a gory, sick way. yeah.

where is Pollux V? he's good at making a judgement.

ok, this part cracked me up:

"One round blew the door into a million pieces. The pink walls and childish decor confirmed that this was the creature's house. He sat down on a chair, crushing it under him, feeling the sweet pain of splinters in his butt, and ate the drumstick, washing it down with water in a fishbowl that had miraculously survived the carnage. He didn't notice the goldfish added to his meal. "

what a demented barbaric mind you have! lol

Sorry man, not my thing.

My indulgment in psychopathy. Tell me, were yo uable to figure out the places? I was lookign for more, I suppose if I went international I could write a novel. I agree, for that story, it's hard to write visuals. Be better on The Twilight Zone or something.

I'll post more of the following if someone asks me to.

To not be is perfection.

Morning in Nelence was a sight to behold, and a sight beheld by many. Pillars of gleaming steel and forged material climbed from foundations of marble and stone into a sky filled with thick, golden clouds, the sun illuminating them with heavenly glory. Below, the streets were bustling with motorcars and dark-suited pedestrians, and the sidewalks seemed overrun with the bobbing heads and shoulders of bowler-hat toting businessmen. Lights from the insides of buildings began to flicker to life as the streetlamps along the crowded corridors below simultaneously deactivated. It was a symphony of activity, and all of it orchestrated to perfection unknowingly by the denizens of it. The patterns and joys of Nelence, oddly enough, only seemed to be noticed by outsiders, and those that had not spent an extended amount of time within the canyons of its glimmering metal.

The sky was packed with zeppelins and other flying vehicles, many of them large enough to blot the sun out for whole city streets. Inside the warm, opulent cabin of one of the bigger blimps, a transport being readied to travel to the distant isle of Vadaina, sat a lone governor from a distant, quieter region, where the only noises came from frogs and from dragonflies.

This had been his first trip in years to Nelence, for he hated the capital with a passion and avoided it whenever he could. He had been summoned by an official at the Congress Building and ordered to meet up with his friend on the Island of Vadaina before returning to convene in a conference of aristocrats. The meeting was apparently of some special importance. So he had left the gloom of Bethnen, the province he was sovereign over, against his will, as many things were these days, traveling by train, by car, and by blimp over the course of several weeks, through the various assorted territories of the nation of Isardis, meeting new people and attempting to avoid them at the same time.

He was an irritably shy young man who had assumed the helm of his lordship only months ago, alienating his now deceased father’s officers and diplomats and officials, who had been used to a jollier leader, his predecessor, his parent, who could wring a smile out of anyone by merely looking at them. His father was a great man, and Élan D’Bethne lived far within the confines of his shadow, even in death.

Élan was tall and very thin, his dark hair clung precariously to his high forehead, and his eyes seemed to suggest only laziness, only calm and peace, while the reality behind them, within the folded layers of flesh he called his brain, was greatly different. He blushed often, and realized it. His lips were thin and wide, and the overall feeling one could garner from the young man was that he was indeed of noble birth, he was of high standing and intelligence, but lacked perseverance, lacked inspiration to make anything out of himself. He was just another face in the crowd.
He had left most of the work up to the officials, preferring to instead stay within his quarters and stare at his desk, or the latest dispatches, tax reports, various municipal problems. It bored him to the brink of insanity, and yet there was no alternative. No escape. Somehow, his father, whom Élan had felt his entire life was a rather clumsy and stupid fellow, had managed to command a plethora of these ostentatiously complicated tasks, all the while with a gleam in his eye and a wide, pleasant smile on his handsome face. Élan had never loved his father, had instead felt a kind of attachment to him, a responsibility. The Old Lord had succumbed quite unexpectedly to the Halberd Fever, an incurable disease, and died less than a week later. Élan had searched frantically for another heir, perhaps a distant relation, but there was none willing to take the Bethnen Throne.

i don't know about anyone else but this is wonderfully done.
I'm totally hooked. You have created great imagery and depth to your main character already.
Post more!

You read my story, I just read yours. Early on I didn't think I'd like it...but you managed to rope me in, I guess. I finished the whole thing and I have to admit that I wanted some more. Sorry if I sound hesitant--the story was awesome. So don't hesitate to post the rest. Or just some moor. Hope you don't mind my asking, but where did you publish the story?

Even though I've started the story out with this character, and although he is one of the main characters, he isn't the character, y'see? I've only written a little with the main character, who will eventually go through quite a bit, culminating in, for the most part, everyone's death. I feel like listening to the finale of the Engima Variations.

Anyway--I'll post some more here (starting directly after I left off), but what I've got so far (about fifty pages) is on my website (http://sublunari.blogspot.com). If you're interested have a look.

A last note: the blog doesn't appear to recognize the international character I used in Elan's name, opting to instead replace it with a question mark. I'll probably get rid of that sooner or later, but for now, ?lan=Elan.



And then, only a few months after taking over as Lord, ?lan had been instructed by a high-ranking official calling himself Ignav to meet up with his old friend, Salax D’Vadai, a prince of the Isle of Vadaina, a beautiful jungle paradise, packed with wet draperies of lush leaves and foliage. ?lan fled to Vadaina whenever he had the time to, finding that there was always a pretty girl to flirt with and grin at, always a bathwater ocean to dive into.

The instructions told him to meet up with Salax and then bring him to Nelence, where the tri-annual Council of Nobles would convene to discuss matters pertaining to governing the vast Isardan Empire. They seemed to have been scrawled haphazardly by an already-strained hand. The writer had signed “Ignav: Regent under the Emperor his Majesty Alexis IV.” ?lan hadn’t bothered to check the authenticity of the note (it seemed quite ostentatious enough), preferring instead to depart from the troubles and worries of his fiefdom. Maybe he wouldn’t go back…

The cabin he sat within was quite opulent and, for the moment, quite silent, the only noise a barely-noticeable susurrus
emanating from the craft’s distant and powered-down engines. ?lan had arrived early enough to beat the traffic and the crowds. In fact, ?lan noticed that he was the sole occupant. Its walls were lit with the warm, orange glow of oil lamps, and lavish, comfortable couches were scattered about its floor. None of this really concerned ?lan, however—he had seen it all before. His whole life he had been surrounded by luxury and riches. As such, flying first class on a zeppelin was not unusual at all.

He had brought a book along for the journey but didn’t feel like reading it. He had a package of dried fruit in his pocket, and although he had a special fondness for dried fruit, he didn’t feel like eating it. He didn’t feel like doing much of anything, for, ?lan D’Bethne was depressed beyond what his outward, lackadaisical looks could convey. Before him he saw year after year of boredom and misery and municipality. Governing a gloomy, backwater province with the smallest population in the Empire (but the third-largest land mass) was a task anyone could perform—all it required was a hand fast enough to sign new tax proposals—but because the land he had been born as a noble in was governed by a feudal aristocracy he had been left no choice. If he fled, he would be found, tortured by a filthy band of hired mercenaries, and executed. If he stayed, his hairs would gray over, his skin would shrivel and he would die in his bed…somehow he knew it.

His clenched fist loosened, even though the palm was now sweaty.

Since his childhood he had always craved the life of an adventurer, and the death of one too—and yet, in these times adventures were hard to come by. There were no more knights, no more horses, no more round tables—just artillery shells and trenches, where children (who were barely adults), with minds full of propaganda fed to them by the Emperor his majesty Alexius IV, would die. By the hot bullets fired from rifles, by the acrid gas fissured from all around, by the shells blasted from tanks or artillery, they would almost certainly perish. War was no longer a thing of glory; instead it was a way to protect the
interests of the rich, of the aristocracy like himself. People died for nothing.

Nothing.

With these inward thoughts he slumped further into his chair.

At the far end of the cabin the wooden door was silently opened to allow a rather obese man inside, his dark blue suit clinging to his fat and sweating body. His head was bald and gleamed under the oil lamps, and his face seemed to be wrinkled in a perpetual smile, one so wide as to reduce his eyes to mere slits. He trotted over to the seat directly across from ?lan and maneuvered himself into it, the chandeliers shaking as his rump hit the cushion. He was holding a newspaper, but quickly tossed it to the ornate table at his side.

“Bea-utiful day,” he declared, to ?lan, who had already noticed. “Yes, quite nice.”

“Yes, learn something new every day,” ?lan replied, quickly attempting to derail any attempt at conversation, his eyes drifting to
the window.

“My name’s Edgar,” said the man, pitching his blubbery body forward and extending his hand, “Edgar Semmel.”

“How extraordinary,” murmured ?lan, who briefly shook Edgar’s hand.

Edgar noticed the sarcasm and the venom in ?lan’s voice, but pretended not to. He had actually noticed it before he had said a word, it wasn’t hard to miss. Still leaning forward, and with a shine in his eye, he asked “And what might your name be?”

I'll have to admit, Marigny, I prefer some fantasy in my stories, be it science or magic. Call me horribly scarred if you want. I read Pollux's story in a heartbeat, but I could only skim yours. Sorry, but that's my taste. English class was incredibly boring, I'm surprosed I didn't flunk more than two semesters.

and as for the public site, I'll send you an email with the attached site and there are a few other stories I've put out. I'm going to read the rest of yours today, and I'm finding it very enjoyable! Thanks for the link to your website. Now I have more to read whilst I eat my pizza.^_-

Gifted, no problem, fantasy/sci fi are usually a "mans"world, although fantasy has given a lot of girls plenty of room to indulge in these days and I can think of so many female writers that have been really good. Besides, that little short contemp. story was just for fun. If you have any more of your stories, please post ém too, i kind of think they are fun to read because your style is very different. ^_^

I have been talking about it for a while, finally decided to bite the bullet and post.
First let me say the Pollux has some neat ideas, and so does Marginy, but both of your writing styles could use polishing.
But so could my own work, so please pick the following apart.
This is part of the first chapter of my book:


The Back alleys and side streets of the lower district of Porta Quay are infamous for two things. The first is the spiciest Jovian starfish in the entire galaxy, deviously garnished with deadly Mercurian acid-peppers and atomic Tabasco sauce served at Deaf Dan’s Diner. The second despicable and atrocious thing (although lass dangerous than the aforementioned diabolic delicacy) the bowels of the city are known for is a rebellious gang of alien bandits called “The Gels”.

The Gels are all members of an alien species from the planet Gaplos 4. The Gaplosians are about eight feet tall, weighs about a ton, and are made out of a thick transparent celluloid glue material that bears semblance, in both consistency and taste, to green-apple shampoo. And even though they are essentially a large bag of goop, they are quite strong. Never let a Gaplosian catch you making fun of him because you might end up getting the stuffing knocked out of you by an oversized cup of jell-o.

The Gels slink around the dark corners of the city looking for tourists with bulging back pockets. They are some of the most dangerous criminals in existence, and collectively they have set out to break every law ever created in the galaxy, including the mundane of littering but not excluding the extreme of star vandalism. The leader of this hive of scum and villainy goes by the name Esu Djinc (last name rhymes with sink).

At this particular moment in time and space, Djinc is standing in front of Doc Granado’s Rhinoplasty Discount Warehouse. The gigantic tower of green coagulated dish-washing liquid casually hid nonchalant behind a massive twelve foot nose made out of neon lights and rusty chrome metal, waiting patiently for his next victim.

Djinc practiced unsheathing his relatively small laser blade from a pocket deep inside his chest cavity against his own menacing shadow that hung against the imitated classic-brick veneer on the side of the Doctor’s establishment. He twirled the glowing energy cutlery around his large fumbling fingers while reciting an assortment of rather cliché mugger conversation icebreakers.
“Freeze, gimme your cash or I’ll cut you!”

He returned his white-hot knife into his body and turned around. He rapidly spun on a dime (rather quickly for a bulky gelatinous entity the size of a small tank) and pulled his weapon upon his outline on the wall saying:
“Move and I’ll kill you, now hand over the purse lady”

Mutterings of disapproval escaped the slimy orifice that constituted his mouth, he turned once more and drew a deep breath, and in a that sounded like sandpaper on fine china he spun around and said “Alright you rich fat cat, this dog’s gonna rip you heart out and digest it in order to synthesize vitamins for my body unless I see some money appear from that fanny pack fast!”

Djinc’s face had a queer look of satisfaction on its semi-aqueous surface. He might have doubted the line about digestion and synthesizing for a brief moment, but he figured that the truth was scary enough, and he began the commit the line to memory.

All this time, while the jellylike gangster practiced his robber repertoire of quips, a balding middle-age man with a Hawaiian shirt, dark sunglasses, and a turquoise blue nap-sack was slinking by trying his hardest to tip-toe past unnoticed.
The outrageously stereotypically attired vacationer accidentally stepped on a soda can lying in the alley and made a loud crunching noise.

Startled, Djinc let out an awfully feminine screech and went for his weapon. Surprised as he was he forgot in which physiological pouch he had placed his dagger. Eventually finding it he brandished it against the cowering man and blurted out:
“All right you cat, I’m gonna synthesize vitamins with your money unless you give me your dog’s heart in a fanny pack fast!”

The man had put up his hands in surrender after he had seen the knife, but now he began to lower them as a very confused expression raced across his face. The tourist lips began to form the “Wh” sound when Djinc cut in and corrected himself.
“Oh crap, just give me the money skinbag, or I’ll cut you”


Anyway, thats the beginning, Djinc isn't a main character, but he is a funny way to start the story. The rest of my writing is about the same kind of comedy. Let me know what you think, and if you like it I'll try to post more.

ZERO MASS

I was actually chuckling at a couple instances throughout your story. First off, you have a wonderful way of expressing the senses to the readers,
for example, " the spiciest Jovian starfish in the entire galaxy, deviously garnished with deadly Mercurian acid-peppers and atomic Tabasco sauce served at Deaf Dan’s Diner."

It sounded pretty tasty.

And the dialogue is so cheezy it's funny. lol.
I actually can visualize the scenery/ descriptions and that's important in a story to me. good start.

That was awesome. I'm hoping to major in English as well, when I go to college in a few years. I saw a South Park influence in there, though--

Doc Granado’s Rhinoplasty Discount Warehouse

Remember Tom's Rhinoplasty?

And a Star Wars influence only a fan could find--

[wretched] hive of scum and villainy

But those were pretty much the only minor minor minor flaws I found with what you posted. I presume you've read Douglas Adams? Brilliant man, just brilliant. Don't be afraid to post more, I guess I won't be either. Hehe.

The following is the latest short story I've written. I sent it out to a few magazines (on 7/17), haven't heard any replies (or rejections heheh) yet.

NUMINA
IAN ********

Something seemed different. The room I was sitting in, the opulent skyscraper ground floor lounge finished only recently for one of my wealthy associates, was as spotless as it could possibly be, the marble at my feet gleaming under the warm lights above. The couch I was sitting quietly on had the feeling of never being used, its pillows felt almost painfully firm against my buttocks. I was quite alone; the only sound to accompany my thoughts came from a television on the other side of the lounge, where images of the war overseas played without commercial interruption. The screen would flash with gunfire every so often, with the cluster bombs dispersed from airplanes of my own manufacture rippling over the countryside, leaving green fields and modest homesteads nothing more than blackened craters and shrapnel for the world to gape at. Splashes of virile light burst over the marble floor, spreading periodically in the pattern of a beating heart, and combined with the high volume and the barrage of explosions the room seemed to thrum iridescently.
But it was just a screen, a small window into the happenings of the rest of the world, one that could be turned off at my leisure.
Above the television set there was a small, white dot, a special vision sensor. I stared at it for several seconds before the television flicked off. Now there was no noise, I was completely alone with my thoughts.

Quiet.

Quiet.

Why was it different?—This feeling, this pervasive thing blocking the cogs of my mind, forcing me to stop everything. What was different? Where were you, devious Chimaera, behind what folds of pink, pulsating brain matter were you evading my mind’s Bellerophon? I didn’t feel right. Not right at all. Long ago I had been able to silence my conscience, which had been, for a time, quite loud and annoying as I cheated friends out of deals, lied to family members and stole from those I considered below me. When I rose in the ranks enough to be a real power player my foes began to conveniently disappear, their bodies usually at the bottoms of murky lakes, corpses as silent as the skyscraper ground floor I sat in. I began to age, time passed and I learned that wars equal profits, the bigger the war, the bigger the profit, and soon the deaths of many, many more people could be easily attributed to the arms and extraordinary fighting machines I supplied multiple superpowers with. My corporation had been the neutral middleman—if you had the money, you could have whatever you wanted. No questions asked. Of course, it cost a few thousand public schools to purchase even one aircraft, so the western powers tended to be my better customers.

Harvester!

Was it returning? Was my conscience making a comeback? Would I feel remorse for the people overseas who were being incinerated in their sleep by my warheads day and night, as I had never felt?

No. Never. I’d never let such a weakness threaten me, not when I was at the top. Not at my moment of triumph.

Harvester of lives! Of the lower-denominator’s fate!

At the far end of the lounge one of the many elevator doors pinged, its surface gleaming as it slid open, revealing my friend and associate, his eye sockets dark in the pale elevator’s fluorescent lights, giving his bald head the appearance of a skull. It seemed quite eerie, even for him, however when he moved out of the elevator, his shoes clicking on the marble, he was bathed in the warm lamps of the lounge, and I could see his sharp, thin aging face for what it was.

Anton Morris.

“You’re not at the party anymore, Wes. Everyone’s been wondering where you’ve gone.”

Parties. I hated parties. Nothing but fake, smiling women in low-cut dresses, and their much-older dates, talking about mundane things, always skirting the issue of their employment, of how they profited from death—

“Wes?”

My eyes quickly refocused. “Sorry—booze is getting to my head.” I hadn’t had any. Not here. “I just didn’t feel like it tonight. Not in the mood, you know?”

He walked past the vacant couches and tables, gradually approaching me at a modest pace, each footstep louder than the last. “Something wrong?”

I sighed, eyes went to the floor. “Yeah…not sure what it is, though.”

He sat down next to me, the cushions sinking in a little deeper. His eyes focused on the television’s sensor, and the screen flicked on, the perpetual images of draconian carnage playing out once more, with the anchors discussing the importance to the military’s campaign that this bombing run had, all of them sounding like sports commentators.

It was…just…sick.

“Profits for Damocles quadrupled last quarter, I heard,” he said, a smile on his face, trying to cheer me up.

“Thanks to this,” I murmured, nodding to the war.

He sighed.

Uncomfortable pause—and silence.

“Are you having second thoughts, Wes? Thinking that, of all the wars you and I have funded together over the past twenty years, of all the profits we have made, of all the lives we have saved, in the name of freedom, that this war, this war here and now is somehow more wrong than the others?”

I shook my head. “We have them outnumbered ten to one. Why do we have to saturation bomb their cities?”

He looked to the flashing TV screen. “Cripples moral. Rebels lose support. Less deaths on our sides. Happier civilians back home. War goes quicker.”

“Not good enough,” I said, quietly, a disgust I had never felt for the man next to me growing with every confident flutter of his thin lips.

“We make more money, Wes. They die, we live. They stay poor and we stay rich. That’s how it works—”

I grabbed him by the collar with both hands, my wide, enraged eyes nearly touching his. “Not good enough, damnit!” I shouted, “not good enough!”

Uncomfortable pause.

I released my grip, stood from the sofa and backed away. My eyes found the TV. I briskly walked toward it, the current image one of my nation’s flag being hoisted above the charred remains of a thousand year-old city by a grinning soldier. I closed my eyes, tightly, thinking, knowing that I could have prevented this. I caused their deaths, each and every one of them, and if I hadn’t been so damned obsessed with garnering money and profits that I never had the time to use then I might have actually taken someone else’s welfare into account. I grabbed the television set with whitened fingers and smashed it on the marble floor, for once breaking the silence that encompassed the skyscraper lounge.

It had to stop. End. Conclude. Now.

All of the strings I had pulled to get this war off the ground I would pull even harder to stop. I had powerful connections everywhere, possibly more power than anyone else on the planet. Like my predecessors before me, those that had wielded power had chosen only to give into the demands of the populace when their lives were at stake, and when there lives and profits were not threatened, the upper class would squeeze every copper that they could from the many peons below them, who could barely feed themselves, let alone pay the exorbitant taxes instituted upon them. This was the story of civilization, of the more fortunate cheating the less fortunate, again and again and again. This cycle would end with me.

Without saying anything to Anton nor giving him the satisfaction of a dirty look I stormed out of the warmth of the lounge and into the wild, raging blizzard outside, the bright necklace of lights that was New York nearly obscured by the thick weather. My apartment wasn’t far from where I stood, and my limo didn’t appear to be nearby—although I couldn’t quite tell from the lack of visibility—so I decided to walk home, my shoulders hunching and my breath puffing into the chilled air. I had forgotten my coat.

There wasn’t a person on the sidewalk nor a car on the road. In this tempest I realized that I was quite alone, I, the richest man on Earth, was without escort. I reached for my cellphone, lifted its body closer to my eyes and dialed my own phone number, but couldn’t get through the storm. I swore, and at the same time a powerful gust of wind nearly lifted me off my feet, its breath powerful enough to knock the phone out of my hand, my eyes following its body as it quickly faded from sight in the vortex of snow. I found myself gazing at the warm, golden doors of the skyscraper lounge once more, even though I was some distance away (I could barely see them) however, it looked like—yes, yes one person, no, three people, large people, large men, were emerging, their heads looking left and right. One of them stopped in his tracks when his silhouette faced me.

The three of them bolted.

I turned and fled, my old body not as athletic as it had used to be. My muscles became weary almost immediately, and I panted in exasperation. Too many dinners and meetings and not enough exercise kept my pace slow, and it wasn’t long before I felt something large and hard smash the back of my head. I grunted and collapsed into a heap on the sidewalk, my vision narrowing to a pinprick.



I awoke an indiscernible time later, my mouth gagged, my feet and hands tightly bound, my eyes useless, for the room was blacker than oil. I could feel the thrum of a jet engine under the cool, metal floor I was tossed like a doll upon. Only a few seconds of my being conscious passed before I heard the groans and whines of mechanical cogs below. My eyes widened in the darkness, and the floor fell away, the abrupt light all but blinding me.

I was in freefall; many thousands of feet above what my eyes told me was a desert. The sky was a sickly orange and the few clouds that hovered in it sported black undersides. I looked up; to see the small pinpoint I had fallen from circling in the air, an airplane, no doubt of my own design and of my own manufacture. I watched as its retro-boosters flared a bright blue, allowing it to ascend to the void of the heavens. I remembered thinking up that idea, making it efficient, allowing planes to engage in orbital spaceflight with ease. I designed the machine that would ultimately kill me, and I had designed countless others like it, each with almost magical technologies, each generation more efficient at killing than the last. What a life to lead, what a life to end.

I saw myself as a child, when I was young, very young and very happy—I was in a forest, a wall of trees before me, shimmering in a cool breeze, the sky bright and blue above. I heard the call of a bird, a twitter piercing the growing chorus of leaves upon zephyr.

The wind grew unbearable and the dunes rushed up to meet me.



To my surprise I awoke, remembering the fall immediately. I twisted about in the sand, trying not to wonder how I had survived, knowing that I shouldn’t have, knowing that something extraordinary had occurred, with myself as its only witness. I was still bound and gagged, but I quickly used the various techniques I had procured from my shady business partners, loosening the ropes in no time at all. I stood, found myself on the desert, the crater from my fall disintegrating before me as the arid wind forced pockets of sand back into the hole I had created. I quickly noticed my hard, cracked tongue—dried now for a long time. I felt then an amazing desire for water, but knew that I could find none.

I didn’t have the faintest idea as to my location, deciding just to head in one direction and hope that it would lead me somewhere, an oasis, a city, a town—before the desert claimed my body. For many days and nights I crossed the tall crests of dunes, the sun peeling away my skin. I could only hear the faint sound of sand sliding down the desert carpet, like it was some kind of ethereal snake. My mind was running away, gliding away—and in my desperation I began to sing my favorite rock songs from the sixties, my eyes all but blinded from the perpetual furnace above. Eventually the air became even staler, and the hot desert breeze that had once blown loud enough to rival the jet engines of my airplanes was now no more than a mere whisper.

The dunes flattened out, and I discerned that this was the place that I would die—in a sandblasted basin that stretched on forever into the horizon. Night fell on what I believed to be my last day on earth, at this point I could hardly manage a steady crawl. The sweat had long ago dried up from my armpits, from my forehead, and there remained not a cell of my skin not ravaged by the burning sun. There was a full moon, the first I had seen in a great while, and as I lost myself in its beauty my legs found a weak spot in the desert carpet, and I fell through, my throat too dry to scream, and long exhausted from singing the songs from the sixties.

Water!

I plunged into a deep cushion of icy water, and had to fight to stay afloat while at the same time drinking from the pool I had fallen in, the moon’s light falling through the skylight I had created. I gulped the liquid in an ecstasy, feeling the coolness drift down my neck and into my chest, my stomach. After a long while I was contented, rejuvenated, and with new strength swam until I found the pool’s edge. I seemed to be in some kind of subterranean cave, a place long ago hallowed by ancient waters that had settled here or gone elsewhere. Curtains of light danced on the walls from the water, which seemed to have a kind of spiritual glow that’s hard to explain. I walked for a long while in the gloom, noticing odd inscriptions on the walls in texts that I had never seen before, the letters thin and jagged, like the claws of some primordial monster. Eventually it became so dark that I had to feel my way through the cave, and as time wore on it became smaller, barely large enough for me to walk through (and my stature is fairly short). My hands continued to see in the stead of my eyes, sliding along the ruffles of rock and sand on either side of me, until they met at a door.

The surface before me was hard, cold, and flat, shaped like a rectangle. I found a groove for a hand and pulled. The door opened, quite silently and unexpectedly easily, and before me, in an amphitheater below an opening to the moonlit sky, stood a dark monolith. I approached it, feeling greatly uneasy. I crept up to it, dared to touch it with my hand. It was warm. My hand darted back. It seemed, then, that the light in the room grew in quick pulse, subtly, mind you, but yes, the light in the room grew enough so that my eyes could pick out the details on the tall obelisk before me.

Hideous bas-relief met my eyes—giant, bipedal monsters danced about on the stone surface as others were skewered by spears or sabers. Flying beasts with cylindrical jaws wheeled about in the sky in dizzying flocks, swarming about their terrified prey on the ground. I didn’t know how I could see all of this through the stone, but it was there, a vision playing itself through my mind. Their statures were stunted even though they walked on two legs; their mouths seemed to be roaring in sync with each other, each baring great sets of glassy, carved teeth that beckoned the taste of flesh. This carved stone, whatever it was, held some kind of great significance, and I felt that the depicted creatures must have gathered here, in some antediluvian time, to dance about its circumference in a wild orgy of death and mayhem, cackling and reveling as they maimed each other for whatever god or slew of gods this thing was meant to represent.

My knowledge pertaining to the field of archaeology was somewhat limited, but as I studied the monolith I became convinced that it could not have been fashioned by human hands. The creatures depicted before me were completely alien to the world in its current age—all of them, and I knew that even the most ancient stone structures or cave paintings mentioned a human here or a familiar creature there. And yet there was none of this. What I was looking at was a relic from some long forgotten civilization, one that must have died out long before the age of humanity. With renewed curiosity I touched the slab, with my right hand, then with both hands, rubbing my tortured skin over its surface, feeling the grooves worked by horrific, clawed appendages.

And then it came, from some unforeseeable depth, from out of an orifice I had not originally seen. A cloud of dizzying black drained itself from the floor and shaped itself into a fiend I shall never forget, its deep, maniacal voice akin to the sound of raking claws and the guttural moaning of lions before the kill. I could hear it calling to me, the sound even penetrating my mind, trying to force me to remain in my current position, so it could catch me and drag me into whatever underworld collective it had detached itself from. I backed away, the unearthly fear so great in me that I would have fainted had not some degree of perseverance remained in my mind. I stumbled behind the doorway and slammed it shut, searching with my hands in the dark for a locking mechanism of any kind, but finding none. It shouted my name, as a mother would to a disobedient child. The door’s mouth widened, and I hurled myself against it, screaming such screams as men never scream. It hurled its hellish form against the door, knocking me into the hallway. I lay there, dazed and hopeless, and its pitch colored body, which had now manifested itself as a solid form, began to encroach upon my position, its many appendages opened wide, beckoning angrily for my body, for my soul, and for whatever else remained.

Such fear throbbed through my body then, such a paralyzing feeling, enough to nearly detach me from consciousness, but I fought it, I fought the fear and I remained awake, the thing still approaching and nearly on top of me. I felt its touch, felt its sick, amphibious skin pressed against mine. I think it was then that I lost my mind, that whoever I once was drowned in a cavernous depth of terror. I retreated spuriously, still on my back, my screams now coming in harsh rasps. A tentacle darted out and I kicked it away, the claw on the end of it slicing the skin of my leg. I stood, my blood draining away to the floor of the cave, and fled to the distant, almost otherworldly gurgling sound of the water. The thing roared behind me, and I smelt its breath, a vaporous aroma of decaying, rotting fish. I fell into the water, swam away, hoping to find some way to the surface. I saw the hole in the ceiling I created; saw the moon above, and then looked back to the cave. The thing was slithering into the water, and when its skin touched the surface an inky stain began to spread about and uncoil, swirling about like the storms of Jupiter.

My eyes widened, and I clawed at the water with my hands and feet. I searched desperately for some kind of exit, something to save me, but there was nothing. I was trapped. The stain spread about, wheeled and thickened like a tempest, blotting the light reflected from the water. The mass lurched toward me, just above the waves, its vocal cords chanting my name, the rhythm and beat quickening as it drew closer, in sync with my throbbing heart. I backed against the jagged cave wall, and as it neared me all of its appendages lanced forth through the air in a thick phalanx, many of them wrapping around my body, pulling me from my position through the waves, toward its gelatinous form. My muscles were weary, unable to fight any longer, and my body went limp, my face twisting in revulsion as I drew closer.

Its chanting stopped.

I could hear a distant, otherworldly rumbling, then, it sounded like…no…it couldn’t be…machinery? The form that held me condensed itself, a tongue of black, gleaming skin jumping toward the hole in the ceiling and pulling both the creature and myself onto the cold, moonlit desert, the water from below dripping onto the dry sand, my breath coming in puffs like it had before on the streets of New York. I sensed a kind of excitement emanating from the thing that held me, it was enthralled, and as I looked out to the desert horizon I could see why.

I saw a city, silhouetted against the backdrop of the stars, and could see the minarets of mosques, palaces and other Arab-themed architecture. I must have missed it in my delirium. Lights were flitting about the skies above it, like fireflies, and periodic flashes would result in a chorus of delayed booms and thunderclaps. Orange explosions bloomed from time to time, and the resulting sound would pain the ears to hear. Groundcars and groundtanks rolled from the other ends of the desert, some blasting away with shells and conventional weaponry, others firing beams of condensed, barely-visible plasma. Troops were dropped from enormous vehicles hovering in the skies above, vehicles so huge that they dwarfed the aircraft of any other era. The soldiers were in special suits of my own design and manufacture, they made the modern warrior more machine than man, linking the brain through wires implanted in the cerebral cortex to a device that could leap dozens of feet in the air, lay down enough gunfire to level a steel building, and have armor sufficient to protect the person inside from most forms of attack. They were invincible, and like breadcrumbs they were scattered from the fireflies above, sprinkling over the city in a spectacle I had never before seen with my own eyes, but had instead observed through the eyes of cameras countless times before.

I wonder if the creature knew that I had created these things.

And I also wondered why I was not yet dead.

As if it heard my thoughts, the thing replied. Their species, the horrific race of monsters I had thought long dead, had merely been in a great slumber, and this thing that held me, that called itself their ‘overlord,’ was the first to awake after all these eons, so that when the proper time came their race could arise again, and so that he could rule them as he had long ago—with absolute authority. They had depleted Earth of her resources long before the time our scientists thought life had been born, and they had left the monolith in the cave below sensitive to the slightest organic touch, so that when a complex life form finally found it the hibernating creatures near the planet’s core would awake and claw their way to the surface, knowing that there were sufficient resources to sustain their form of life, as their had been so far in the past.

In my mind’s eye I saw the radar screens back near the headquarters of my nation’s commanders, the soldiers there on edge but not afraid, for it had been a very long time since they had lost a battle. Suddenly their screens were alive with activity, overflowing with data as the beasts from below fought their way to the top of Earth’s crust. They shouted to the middle-aged general on duty, whose eyes widened at the sight. “Get me Washington,” murmured his thin lips, as if he were in a trance.

“Why am I here?” I asked, “how…did I survive that fall?”

“I am fate’s sickle,” it replied, its grotesque voice forcing me to shudder, “come to reap harvest.”

The tremors in the earth grew, and the breadcrumb lights above the distant city of Arab spires wheeled about and began to speed toward my position, blue tails of flame and ozone in their wake. A clawed hand burst from the ground near my feet. A hideous head followed, its eyes black and glinting in the moonlight. It turned to me, hissed. More of the earth fell away, and the blob of amphibious skin ascended a bit higher into the sky, its tentacles wheeling about like the snakes of Medusa. From the newly forged caverns an eerie, subterranean glow spread about. The air nearby danced and shimmered with Gaia’s inner wrath, and the temperature, once freezing, began to rise. The flying creatures soared into the sky; their bipedal counterparts pouring like black ants from the wounds in the planet’s skin. The desert was no more, and the war had begun.

“Slaves,” it said, “we need slaves. You are their ruler, their slavemaster, and so you shall be in charge of them. You enslaved them your whole life, only now they will know it. With this magic in the sky and on the ground you may have been able to defeat us, had you been united and loved, but your hatred and your greed kept you apart, even though you were one species, as we are. There is strength in togetherness. There is togetherness in omnipotence. Strength in omnipotence.”

I was speechless.

The mechanical soldiers in the sky landed on the melting desert, their machine guns streaming arcs of metal into the throngs of black creatures, knocking them down, slicing them apart. One after another the cannons overheated, steam hissed out of their dark nostrils, and the savage claws of the monsters tore the machinery away from the humans inside. One after another the airplanes and helicopters fell apart in the sky, their smoldering wreckage flailing to the earth. One after another…one after another…

I was going to help people. Stop hurting them and help.

…not going to be slaves…not my slaves…

I struggle desperately and manage to free myself from the mass of tentacles, I fall to the desert, hit the ground, feel its warmth. The creatures don’t wait; they attack from all directions, a horde of them, a collective, working as one, working together.

Being immortal.

I feel the first claw tear open my chest. I am not immortal.

Thank you for your input, everybody that I have shown the first chapter to either quote the starfish line or adescription of Djinc.
Thank you for your kind words, the project has gotten out of hand, I think I am losing it, writing over ten pages ahead of where I'm at in the story, things are getting disorganized, but I am getting them down on paper, soon they will all have to be digitalized.
I am not the greatest fan of south park, and so haven't heard of what you're talking about, but star wars quotes all the way...it is a lampoon of serious sci-fi films and literature at parts. Anyway, thanks for the inspiration. Pollux, I am enjoying your work too, keep writing/posting.

ZERO MASS

but I like it! I'll contribute some writings...... oh, I think I'll expect some critizisms (i'm not a good writer)
perhaps this doesn't seem to be fiction at all



When a person meets a person
the person offers words to the person
the other one insists of exchanging words with the other one
and so be it
A person opens a person's head
A person fills a person's mind
A person takes half of a person's gift and return the other half
A person starts the cycle, a person stops the cycle
and a d i o s is somewhere near

A gust of wind blew the tree away... or so people may think... Jean saw the tree as it flew across the clear air, and Jane just wished that the tree would root on nothing.

"You know, Jane, I love flying things. The Wrights will be proud of me once I can make everyone, everything be above this sticky earth...."

Jane kept silent, but her mind kept mumbling. And Jean seemed to be excited when another tree flew past her. She took some leaves, shred them and wrote something in the air in green.

"I'd rather that the earth is kept sticky, and all are stuck on it. What would people think when they saw you from the clouds?"

"Of course they'll say: 'Oh, she makes us fly! She makes us fly!'"

"Us, you mean..."

"Oh, but it seems that you're not interested in it...."

"But we're very close to each other...."

Jean distracted herself to another flying thing, that time, it's a little doghouse.

"Whoops.... I wonder how that puppy's going to enjoy its hovering trip."

"It appears that you always know how to annoy me, eh?"

"You..... yes, you do know how to....... you remind me to those strangers...."

"You know them!"

"You know them, true. But they are not whom I want to know."

"Ah... the world is too big for just the two of us."

"No problem! I think I'll somehow shape you into an adventurer! Then we'll conquer this big world place by place, and.......... oh wait! He's staring at me! Oh, wait, she's just a tomboy....."

"Aaaaaaahhhhhh!!! I'm in the airrrr!!!"

Jane shook her head. And she thought of crying, but then she realised that she had no reason for that..... all the reasons had been possesed by Jean.

"Oh, I see you're going to shed tears..."

"How?"

"I need not to explain... but don't do that! Just don't do that! I've learned that tears are worthless; to me and to you... and to them as well.... Remember when you cried that time? Those people think that every tear symbolizes your wish to live in the clouds."

"And? Why don't we try to convince them that we, the friends of the wind....."

"Cut that out!"

"I'm not done yet!"

"They've done us for!"

Jane fell silent.... Yes, they, the friends of the wind, are unwelcomed by people......

"Oh... I think I'll send this one right to the clouds!"

Jean lifted her hand, and a girl with a teddy bear was shred into stream of mass, floating up to the black sky above...

I got something on my little dandy here that's been brewing for a little while, but I'm not sure about putting it on here. don't bother to ask what it's about, i won't tell you. when it's finished, i'll think about it.

I got something on my little dandy here that's been brewing for a little while, but I'm not sure about putting it on here It can't be worse than by horror story, which, by the way, didn't seem to freak people out as much as I thought it would. Or they decided I didn't need to know.

yes, post them! post them, uberdragon.
curioucity, not bad. is there more?
at first didn't quite realize/understand but at the end of the story was quite pleased.

Okay, this is what I have so far. I've kinda been working on it on and off for about... oh, three months now. don't be dissapointed at how little I have. Just because it's been in the works for three months doesn't mean I've spent a lot of time on it.

I call it : NightWatch



A small shaft of light pierced through the leaves of the oak tree where Gordon Weyr napped. Or appeared to be napping. The sweat of the day was soaking through his shirt and he could feel a small wet spot forming on the grass beneath the small of his back. He was uncomfortable, but he was also a Highway Knight, a protector of those who traveled the roads, and he would have to bear it.

Damn it’s hot, he thought to himself. Been out here all day and still not even an overly curious child. His eyes opened, their greenish pallor slightly reflecting the light, scanned his environment. His mind already knew the space; at the right, a rather hefty looking sack of what appeared to be gold. To many, this would have looked out of Gordon’s reach, but he knew that he could span that distance with the flash of his arm. He sat facing the road that entered the small clearing, which wrapped around the tree and wound it’s way farther into the woods. Along both sides of the road, low brush followed all the way around, it’s purpose to keep animals from crossing into and blocking the roadway. It did its job, but Gordon wished that at least a rabbit or maybe a squirrel would hop out of it. Then he wouldn’t be alone.

He looked up towards the sky, checking the sun’s angles. It would be at least four more hours until the night watch even showed up. He sighed and closed his eyes; letting his thoughts drift but still kept a small portion of it on the area around him. He thought about lots of things; the items in his pack, the order they were in, the politics of the world, the sciences, the languages. The hours began to slip and blur together, as they always do when one is lost in thought.

Soon, he found himself completely focusing on his love, Mara. At this time of day, she would probably be finishing up the laundry, or eating dinner. He wished that he could be with her, to sit and hold her hand, to talk with her, to make love to her. But he couldn’t; he was stuck out here in the woods, waiting for something that probably wouldn’t even come. He decided that when he got back to Tatall, he would buy her a ring or a necklace, or some other bauble with his week’s pay. She was very fond of anything out of the usual. Anything with even the slightest hint of mysticism about it intrigued her. To Gordon, it seemed more of an obsession than a hobby. Then, he would get some hot food into his belly and apologize for not being at home lately. With the image of her face held in his mind, sleep grasped and took hold of him, pulling him into darkness.


* * *


Her eyes snapped open, reassuring her mind that her body was still in its rightful place. She sat upright, leaning against the pillows, her hand searching the space next to her for the familiar shape. The shape that would comfort her; the one that would prove what she had dreamed was false. It was not there. Her deep blue eyes continued to search the room, looking for security from the objects therein. Across the room from her, a bureau, it’s mirror reflecting only the darkness that she lay in, stood watch. The various trinkets and mementos draped on a post to each side of it, beckoned to her. They called to her.

She slid from the bed, stepping quietly as she traversed the space, feeling as though the slightest creak of the wood underfoot would summon the fiercest of demons from their Pits. A cool evening breeze traveled upon the moonlight that shone through the open window and she let it caress her naked body to ease the heat of her sweat.

Once in front of the mirror, she glanced about the posts, searching for the charm that she desired most. Her mind peaked into a frantic pace when she did not find it among those hanging up. Her heart quickened its beat, but slowed when she found the item hanging on its chain in the space between her breasts.
It was a small, silver figure of a womanly shape. Wings fanning out from the back and wrapped around towards where the figure’s hands were spread open in front of her. She grasped the figurine in both hands, and let her knees slip to the floor. Her forehead touched the top of her fists as she sobbed, and soon tears ran down the outside of her clasped hands.

“Why?” She sobbed to herself. “What is going on?” There was no answer except for the silence of the darkness.

The dream had been horrible. The visions still flashed through her mind as she sat and cried. They had been terrible apparitions. Ones of slaughter, and a land filled with death. Armies of men lay sprawled out across the earth, forming mountains with their entrails. Others, their bodies impaled on barbed poles and spears, shaped trees of hatred and pain. Some of them still lived and writhed about, trying to free themselves from their prisons. The sky rained blood, molding rivers and basins out of the land until they flooded and swept away all that they touched. The sight had then blacked out, and she heard a voice. Its strange drone carried incredibly low tones, but also rather sharp ones that seemed to blend together and form one solid voice.

“You have seen what will be if this task is not carried out.” It had said. At first, she thought that it was directed towards her, but then, another voice spoke up. This one she knew.

“I have no choice but to accept the weight of this duty. I agree to your conditions.”

As she ran what the last voice had said through her mind, she slumped further lower to the floor and cried, as she had never cried before.
© 2003 All rights reserved.

Here's more of the story, horror, for lack of a better title:

They were immediately summoned to the midwest area of the continent. There, in a cave within a national park, one of the mage units wanted to show their exciting discovery. A warp in the space time continuum, a possible way out. Benjamin flew direct, and Kal'joonak followed more slowly. Jellystone National Park was a peaceful place, after they killed and ate the bears that kept coming after their rations.

"Zenos's paradox does not exist here." One of the mages was explaining, refering to an ancient scientist of their world which hypothesized about time travel. "If you try to travel through time, you only find yourself in a parallel universe, exactly the same except for the fact that you're there. The parallels available here are dead ends, except for the fact that our current employer may not see what goes on." He gestured to his commaders, who followed him through the portal they had set up, giving access to one of the parallels. The translation wasn't difficult, after all, the parallels had the exact same physics. They found themselves on a small hill, overlooking a quarry. Dinosuars were corraled nearby. "This here is the past. We estimate one million years B.C., to use the native dating system. We can come here, and two thousand years in the future easiest. Private Metgar has used his nanosuit ot provide analysis and simulations based on our theories. He wanted to talk to you alone. You'll find him down in the quarry.

Private First Class James D. Metgar, Fourth Squad, Fifth Platoon, First regiment, Sixth Company of the Third Legion of the White Hand, was looking at the dinosaurs. "They've trained these dinosuars to help with excavation. In town, they use them for just about everything we use technology for. It's amazing," he said as he turned around and saluted his commander in chief. "Analysis indicates a high probability that our employer would be unaware of any activities that we do here. The problem is, the only way out that we know of is the Gate we came in through. We could evacuate throught the warp, but it would do us no good, as He would get us if we returned to the original universe. However, and I waited until I was over here to run this analysis, we believe it may be possible, pending addition of your expertise on transuniversal travel, to alter the warp into a Gate to another universe. We have insufficient data to theorize about the destination universe, or if we can alter it, but again, that's pending initiation of the process, and addition of your knowledge to the analysis."

Benjamin's nanosuit donwloaded the data from Metgar's suit, and the quantum computers immediately provided the results of analysis of his data combined with Ben's experiences, archived in the matrix that made up the suit. As the data filtered into his mind through the neurolink, he reached out with his mind to Kal'joonack, near the portal, and issued instructions, Pull all of the troops within the universe to the portal. Bring in Battle Group six, and prepare for transfer of our forces to this time, and the future.

Where there's a warp, there's a way, and soon secondary portals began issuing forth the Legions of Chaos. Benjamin left the little town of Bedrock for the future, where he found the legions landlocked, almost all of the residential and commercial structures, even a significant number of industrial, were on top of towers thousands of feet high. This was where the fleet would be useful, as the engineers garaunteed that the gravitic repulsors used by the natives could be adapted by the fleet's ships. While waiting for the preparations for the transit of Battle Group Six, Pheonix aerospace combat systems roared off into the sky, riding tails of plasma. Observation of news networks revealed the morale-busting effect undisputed air and orbital dominance had on a populace. He was too busy aboard the destroyer Banshee to find out the effect of a twenty million ton starship had.

OK, Im choosing Uberdragons to poke at first, cos its the first one i come to i want to look at and its nice and short.

AS an opening, its nice and short, enough to get you wondering why Gordon is waiting there with some gold. Does he get killed later perchance, since you seem to spend some time making him seem more human and therefore increasing the tension if he gets killed. Then onto the impending doom which presumably leads into teh rest of the story/ novella/ novel, giving the reason why the party of heroes and heroines blah blah blah. Which is good. Very standard, but works well enough.
My main points are more quibbles of readability. eg:
"Her mind peaked into a frantic pace when she did not find it among those hanging up. "

but yeah, seems ok.

HHMM, curiocity, not sure what to make of that. some grammatical type errors, eg:
"Jean distracted herself to another flying thing, that time, it's a little doghouse."
"Jean lifted her hand, and a girl with a teddy bear was shred into stream of mass, floating up to the black sky above..."

Just harder to read.

Anyways, wee website i've found with stuff for wannabee authors:
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/writing.htm

pollux- promising.
I quite liked it. However, problems of readbility to me, and its perhaps too close for comfort to the current situation for a lot of people.

eg:
"The screen would flash with gunfire every so often, with the cluster bombs dispersed from airplanes of my own manufacture rippling over the countryside, leaving green fields and modest homesteads nothing more than blackened craters and shrapnel for the world to gape at."

Or:
"His eyes focused on the television’s sensor, and the screen flicked on, the perpetual images of draconian carnage playing out once more, with the anchors discussing the importance to the military’s campaign that this bombing run had, all of them sounding like sports commentators. "

I would say your using oto many commas, its something ive done a lot as well. And too many adjectives that end up as loading things down. But that sort of hting is more personal in some ways, but it helps things if it is easier to read.

Perhaps it preacehs too much, youve clearly been reading sciforums too much, for although it says a lot, it does so in a way that isnt so much liek the story. Although frank herbert preaches quite a bit, its always part of a larger scheme, and as such somehow fits in, whereas in a short story, its not quite the same.

And shouldnt;
"There is togetherness in omnipotence. Strength in omnipotence"
read "omnipotence is togetherness, and omnipotence in strenght" or something like that, as it is its clunky and confusing, remember what omnipotence means.

OK, now ive done some reading, im going to have alittle rant, if you all dont mind. if you do, jsut say so and ill edit it or delte it.

Now, what struck me last week when i went into a bookshop and perused the scifi and fantasy section, was the boringness of it all. There were dozens of "space operas' based uponi improbable technology and multiple planets, with big events and odd mysteries. there were fantasy books where the paryt of peopel ahs to save the world form the evil bad guy whose reappeared or soemthing. There were future technocapitalistic books set in a future where theres large corporations and everything is for sale, ie more up to date cyberpunk. Or a book where humans spacepeople have been kidnapped by aliens. And so on, but these were the main themes. So what, you say. Well, they're all the same, and have all been done to death before. Sure, you might have a nice twist in your aliens, or your characters are superbly human, but I am getting bored of the same old plots again and again and again. Wheres your imagination, your ability to pick up on new advances in technolgy, new science, new politics? More importantly in my book, where are the novels exploring the ideas and economics and politics of the future??? Theres more to life than a ncie mystery or a nice love story set amongst exploding planets or a future where you can clone yourself, although that as an idea is quite a good one, although it seems rapidly becoming used up. I read scifi for the speculations and world building, and to come along and find yet more of the same is boring. Or to find stuff that relies not only upon old tropes, but upon the good old historical ideas and philosophy that we already know. Where are the writers making up new stuff?
Yes, i know im an old fart, and im only 26. But ive read enough scifi by now, from the past 15 years works to the past 70 years and more, as well as non scifi, to see that there are a lot of people out there just re-hashing what has been done before. Maybe im really sensitive to it, but my challenge to you, is write new, write better, write greater and more, explore things, new ideas, new philosophies, new religions, new technologies. Scifi depends upon the enw, otherwise it just turns into literary ficiton. And yes, its hard doing new, so be creative, its creativity that is the key here. Something brand new all the way through is very very rare, but a harmonius blend of new and old, eg michael moorcocks stuff, or herberts dune where he takes the usual power plays and medieval stuff but sets it on a planet that is peopel with peopel who are new derivatives of what we know today, hence belieavable yet different, that is what you must partly aim for, even in small stories.

OK, so write stories that are about things that are new to you to begin with, but always keep an eye open for a spark, an idea, something that plants itself and grows, that is new to you and to the world. For example, one of my short stories deals with the hijacking of a grat big reflector mirror in earth/ sun lagrange point, cooling the earth by deflecting sunlight. I thought that up nearly 4 years ago, and last year found a science article on it, someone else had the same idea a year or two ago.

And please please, try not to use wibble to get out of things. Theres so much stuff out there that essentially is like star treck where they wibble their way through problems. ie the technology is omnipotech, a word ive coined myself, so use it but attribute it, i want to see where it goes and if i ever find someone using it to me I'll be dead chuffed. Anyways, omniotech makes for lazy s