Tag Archives: dystopian sci-fi

"A battlefield where Earth and an alien world merge. Two warriors wield glowing whips against a monstrous warlord, while a spaceship hovers above and a collapsing portal pulses with energy."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 9

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

“That’s it!” said the President. “Now, go suit up!”

Simon and Michael looked at each other. They nodded and followed a pair of soldiers into an enclosed room.

“Your clothes sir.”

“Forget it,” said Michael, “just do it, we’ll fit in the jumpsuits just fine.”

Metallic jumpsuits lowered from the ceiling. There were large clear openings like a HAZMAT suit. They were silvery-green in color.

“Oh come on!” said Michael.

“Sir, we don’t know what’s on the other side, we want you to be able to breathe sir.”

They were all putting on face masks.

“What, you think you’re all going with me?”

“Of course sir, we’re under your orders.”

“Then my first order is getting out of my way!”

Michael and Simon pushed out of the little room.

“What’s the problem?” asked the President.

“The problem is, we’re going on our own on this one Dave.”

“Mike, come on, you don’t know what’s in there.”

“I have a pretty good idea, and those creatures aren’t dying right away over here, so we’re on our way.”

The President grabbed Michael by the elbow, it was a vice-like grip.

“Lay off, robot.”

Mike swatted him off, then found himself looking at the bewildered troops around him.

“It’s nothing, said the President, just an old college nickname.” He gave Michael a stare to kill.

“That’s right,” said Michael.

“I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I’ll be fine. Simon, you ready?”

“You bet. He transformed into the crazed looking creature, and together they ran for the edge and jumped out of the ship together.”

“I hope you have a plan,” said Simon on the way down.

“I always have a plan, just let me think of one real quick.”

“We’ll be better off on our own.”

“Well, it’s not like we need parachutes or anything.”

“Why would we need that, right?”

Michael was looking at the ground, just a sea of sushi-like raw tentacles.

Simon was picking his landing point.

Michael touched a button on his jacket, and a parachute, small, but efficient popped forth from behind his neck. He shot up into the air, as Simon kept plummeting downwards.

Simon hit the ground like a ton of bricks, and sprayed fresh tentacle everywhere in a column above him, but still landed, kneeling, and stood up again, brushing the slime off of him like it was nothing.

Michael touched down and folded the parachute away.

“Interesting suit.”

“I got it from a—“

“Leave it.”

“Right.”

Around them, boiling pools of slime were eating away at the hardware of the old laboratory.

Simon put a clawed hand on the table, and it fell apart, from where the slime had already been working on the legs.

Before them stood the gate. It was the only thing shining in the place.

Somewhere a cell phone was ringing. It was playing a ringtone by the Beatles.

Michael answered it. “I’m sorry I called you a robot.”

“You’re forgiven.”

Simon could hear everything going on at the President’s end of the call. His senses were on overdrive.

President coughed.

“He and I went to college together,” Michael said to Simon.

“If he hadn’t been out on a mission with you I would never have been necessary.”

“I know.”

“I just wanted to make sure you got down all right. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yeah, watch our backs and stay local in case I need you to round them up again after the next pulse.”

“Roger that.”

“Roger my ass.”

“Roger your ass, roger.”

“Dave?”

“We did download the personality, Mike.”

“Are you in there?”

“Some of me. Get on with it, get through that portal.”

The President hung up and Michael tossed the stray phone aside.

“You ready?”

Simon pulled out his whip.

Michael pulled out his as well.

The portal, itself, seemed to know what was going on because it started to crackle with extra energy as Simon and Michael brought the whips out.

“Let’s crack ’em.”

They cracked their bullwhips into the portal, and they went right through and sucked Michael and Simon right on behind them.

Everything became a blur of light. Things stretched, pulled into pretzels, and then ironed out like old laundry hung up to dry before Michael finally opened his eyes again.

It was dark.

Michael felt around.

His face was there, that was good.

He thought about that for a moment. So, his face was there. What about his hat? He felt around for that, found it close by and put it on. At least he felt the sensations of putting it on his head. He could feel the satin lining caress his forehead and temples, and he could feel the weight of it on his ears, but it fell off again. He felt around and could feel the ground beneath him. He pushed up, and put his hat back on again, but still had trouble opening his eyes. Everything was blurry.

He searched around and rubbed at his eyes. His hands were there, and he could see them. He looked around. Simon was on the floor, but pushing up, and shaking his head. He kept transforming, back and forth and back and forth. Sometimes he got it right, and sometimes, he got it wrong and had to transform back so he could breathe or so his eyes weren’t on the inside of his nostrils or something. He wasn’t awake enough to control it. Soon he got it back, straightened himself up, and started looking around.

They were standing on a hill, covered in bluegrass with an open, cloudy coppery sky above them.

Before them was the portal, just as it was on the other side, just a mirror image.

“Where are the whips?” asked Simon.

“Doing their job.”

Michael reached around, felt at the base of his neck, and could feel the prickle where the extra-dimensional whip must have attached itself to him, and as he thought about it, he could see the light of it trailing like a faint ghost back to the portal.

“They are linking us back to our world.”

Simon felt for his as well.

“If we destroy the machine, we’ll have just a few seconds to make it back through before the portal loses its connection.”

“Here’s to keeping it light, right?”

There were great grinding and scraping.

Michael and Simon looked out and could see a great machine rolling forward and clamping down over the projector.

“We’ve got to get in that thing.”

“That’s it, right there?”

“I think so, we’re going to have to find out.”

Captain Harland stepped forward. Here he was about their size and started working on the machine. He waved off the help of his slaves, who scattered away as he flung his arms at them.

He threw what looked like a screwdriver at the ground and sat on the machine, looking through the portal.

“Why are they out in this field?”

“I don’t know,” said Simon.

They ventured another peek, and saw behind the portal generator, the huge army lying in wait. It looked like they’d been camped out there for a while.

Harland looked over at them, did a double-take.

“They spotted us,” said Michael.

“Get them!”

Michael and Simon turned tail and ran. They dived down into the bluegrasses and tried to hide in the thick underbrush, but the army was close upon them. Here, instead of being short and stubby six-armed assassins, they were lean and strong. It was their natural world, and they were proud warriors, skilled at what they did. They found Michael and Simon and brought them forward to Harland.

“How is it that you’ve come here?”

“Oh, you know, just looking around,” said Michael.

“Just looking around? You are not from this world.”

“Never met travelers?”

Simon turned into himself.

“And what of this little man? A skin-changer of some kind? Interesting.”

“How is it that you can understand us, and we you? Are languages that similar in the galaxy?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Michael. “One of my best friends in High School was an alien, and the most foreign thing he ever said sounded something like a combination of French and Spanish at best.”

“I don’t know of French and Spanish, whatever these things are. I should kill you now. You came through the portal, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come you could make it through in one piece? We are having such difficulty with it.”

“What happened here?”

“It was a war. We burned our planet to death. Some things still survive. The grasses seem to have thrived on our warfare. We’ve been looking for a new home for some time now, and yours was the first we found that we could get through the portal with. We just couldn’t make it stick.”

“Part of it’s because you destroyed the portal generator on the other side.”

“Did we?”

“Afraid so, and when you come through the portal, you seem to change. I’m assuming you didn’t try and push a big tentacled monster through at us last time.”

“No, it was a horse.”

The word didn’t translate well in Michael’s mind. They didn’t have horses here. It was closer to the word steed, but that wasn’t even close. It was more like a beloved animal when it finished in his mind.

“What happened?”

“He got stuck. The portal generator isn’t stable, we can’t make it work.”

“I have to ask you to abandon it.”

“What?”

“What you’re doing is destroying our world. Each time you power this system up, you deepen the crack or rift between our worlds.”

“That is our hope.”

“You must not. What you are doing is twisting our worlds and breaking them apart. You’ve already laid waste to this world, please don’t do the same to ours. We have a hard enough time taking care of it ourselves. Here you seem reasonable. On the other side, you don’t come through quite the same. Your minds and bodies get warped and altered by the portal. You need to shut it off, for our own good, and yours.”

“You do not understand. We are dying.”

“It’s never simple is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Harland straightened up. The army behind him was taking notice of what was going on. “We can’t turn it off, it’s our only hope. We don’t travel the stars, we only travel between dimensions. For most of the war, we used these machines to travel in and around and behind each other, for attack and surprise.”

“And now you’re using it to find a way out.”

“You understand.”

“Yes I do, and I promise to help, I’ve got friends, and we can make another arrangement. We’ll get you off-world.”

“I cannot accept your offer.”

Michael nodded.

“You’re sure you won’t reconsider?”

“I cannot make allowances. This portal is our last hope. Before a ship from your world could arrive, we’d all be gone.”

“You won’t accept then?”

“No. It’s kind of you, but it’s no use.”

There was a rumble across the ground.

“Sire!” called one of the technicians who had been working on the machine. “We’re ready for another pulse!”

“Good, then start!”

They rumbled away from the casing, and a blast of energy coursed up the projection that was generating the portal, and it brightened.

“Everyone move out!”

They began to move forward, and transform. In just a moment the grasses shrank into the ground and became hard asphalt, light posts, and traffic lights.

Simon looked around them. “We’re home.”

“No, we’re not.”

Harland was still standing there. “It’s just the beginning. It’s still not strong enough for anything to stick yet. If I go straight through the portal, I won’t make it through, or I’ll end up caught between two worlds, like the creature you saw.”

“What’s the point then? If you come through like some kind of monster, what’s the point?”

The Captain just shook his head.

“Come on, I can have a fleet here before you know it.”

“Sorry, Michael,” said Harland. “This is likely our last chance, this or the next pulse. The projector is dying.” He moved forward and began to push his head through the portal.

“Don’t.”

“I have to try.”

Harland pushed himself into the portal, climbing through, Michael and Simon could see him transforming into the ravenous toothy body of a major slobbering monster on the other side. On this side, his feet kicked and swayed and pushed, and his arms flailed to keep hold of the edge of the portal, which of course there wasn’t one.

“Good, he’s getting even uglier now…”

Michael leaped at Harland, and grabbed him by the foot, but could only hold on, finding himself hoisted up into the air. His feet couldn’t touch the ground, so instead of pulling, he just wiggled there, hoping to latch onto something by accident.

Simon transformed and then soared into the air and landed next to Michael, who while holding onto one of Harland’s feet, and losing the battle and began to slide through the portal. He screamed, and Simon watched as Michael’s right arm turned into a wild explosion of spaghetti as it went through to the other side.

Simon jumped up and tore at Harland, and got pulled up like a rag doll, too close to the portal for comfort, and let go, falling to the ground.

Harland stepped through with a sort of sticky squeaking spurt, and Michael fell through with him, getting turned into what looked like a wet slop of raw hamburger. Simon jumped, and grabbed at Michael, pulling him back through. They fell to the ground with a whump and looked back and watched as Harland, now through to the other side looked closer to a gelatin-based dinosaur with fangs than his usual self. Harland roared, and cocked his neck, yelling into the night sky on the other side.

Simon stood up.

“Now what?”

“We go back through.”

“What?”

“I saw it, you were mutating just like that guy was, worse!”

“It’s okay, We’ve got these.”

Michael reached behind him and touched the line that connected him to the interdimensional bullwhip. When he touched it, it fell back into his hands, and he reached back to whip it forward. Are you coming?

Simon pulled his and feeling that connection to the other side through it, that safe path, they both pulled their whips back in time to hear a great thud, a crack, and the portal snapped shut before them.

“Crap!”

Michael looked around. Simon was already on top of the portal generator, tearing into it.

He pulled off the side and looked in.

No circuits.

He scrambled around, looking for anything that he was familiar with.

Michael jumped up on the generator and just sat there.

“Alien technology,” he said.

Simon looked up from it all.

“You never know what you’re going to get.”

Simon yelled and threw a part of the machine fifteen yards away. Around them, the people and animals once perched on the hill, ready for battle, began to fade in and out like a great jackpot light exploding for the winners.

“What’s happening?”

“I’ll bet it’s similar on the other side, but now it’s a much larger problem.”

Michael kicked the machine and jumped off of it. He peered in. “Looks like Aztec stuff.”

Simon wasn’t bothered to be surprised at this.

“All physical, no circuit boards, nothing like that. It’s all put together with stone and magic.”

“So?”

Simon let out a deep breath like he’d been holding it for several minutes or more.

“It means there’s no way back.”

Simon transformed into himself from the creature version of himself.

“Never?”

“Never.”

What troops remained came down the mountain at them in a giant volley. Michael watched them winking in and out of existence like he imagined that his world was beginning to do. He ought to be seeing a McDonald’s or a Buick anytime now, flying through the air to squash them.

They came down the mountain, and Simon was ready for a fight. He transformed into the monster and jumped at the attacking soldiers, tearing one of them apart in the air before he came back down to the ground.

Michael thought about it for a moment, ignoring the onslaught of warriors and wondered if it was worth telling Simon that it wasn’t worth it, that they were stuck for good, and that’s all there was to it. He pushed up onto the projector and closed his eyes sitting on top of it. He imagined the warriors diverting their attention to Simon, and leaving him alone like he wasn’t there. He could see them in his mind, throwing their spears and daggers, and them slicing just by his head without hitting him at all. He opened his eyes and watched as one slipped by his nose, on it’s way to a nearby patch of bluish grassy land. He watched around him, in a peaceful state, almost in slow motion, and thought about how this was all going right now. They weren’t trapped, they weren’t besieged, they weren’t about to die, five minutes on this alien world. He opened his eyes. It was all still true. He closed his eyes again, and imagined them back in his office, pouring cups of coffee and getting straws for the zombie brothers. That was a good thought. He concentrated on the smells and the tastes and the textures, of the feeling of slipping back into his chair again, with all of this behind him.

Simon punched his way through the body after body, but they began to pummel him, coming at him from far too many directions. He lurched with one punch and then got caught off balance by another, and down he went, and then they piled on top of him. They couldn’t hurt him beyond a scratch. He was healing faster than they could hurt him, but they were keeping him pretty well pinned to the ground now.

Michael watched, but in his mind, it wasn’t happening to him. He was safe. He closed his eyes again. One way or another this would soon be over.

He could feel the whip and snick of weapons sliding by him, thudding into the generator beneath him, and knocking chunks of stone out of the design of it. One of the chips of a rock hit Michael in the face. He told himself it was the portal reopening again and concentrated on that thought.

“What happened?” It was the President.

“I don’t know,” said Fred. Moxie was at his side.

They were standing on the little bridge of the President’s attack shuttle.

Below them, they could hear the scream of Harland’s new lease on life as what looked like a giant rubber monster, half dinosaur, and half moldy bread. It was an awesome sight.

He came up out of the crater of the Sublight group’s building and bellowed with rage and a lot of misunderstanding. There was a crash behind him, and the entire building crumbled after a giant explosion that rocked the land for miles around. It wasn’t a full nuclear explosion, but the cloud of dust and gas rising from the epicenter was a magnificent mushroom. As it cleared, Harland pushed his way up through the rubble, grabbed a nearby army airborne in one clawed hand and gutted him down whole, then bellowed again as he pushed his way out of the crater.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“Sir?” it was an officer.

The President ignored him.

“Sir?” there was a more thoughtful, and respectful tone in his voice.

“What is it?”

“They’re gone.”

Everyone looked up.

“The portal, it’s closed.”

“Lost on the other side of who knows where the hell.”

Moxie was smiling.

“What?”

“He’ll make it. He always does.”

“Moxie I…,” said Fred. “You know I love you.”

“I know, and I love you Fred, but I can just tell, he’s okay.”

An explosion rocked the ship. Everyone fell over. Moxie and Fred slid to the edge, and almost out. The President held onto the console, and soldiers slipped in every direction.

“How do you know?” He was yelling at her over the sound of the explosions outside as the ship righted itself.

“I just know, you know that.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We gotta go look for him!”

They stood up on the edge, looking down into the pockmarked land below them, and the big dinosaur-creature that seemed to be eating a tank for breakfast, one that was currently firing at him from its uprighted position.

“Moxie, do you still love him?”

“Of course I do.”

Fred’s face fell.

“Just not the way that I love you.”

“Is face lightened.” He felt stupid for doubting her.

“How do we do it? We’ll have to trace him.”

“Do you have a sample?”

“Of course I do.”

She pulled from a small slot on her wristband’s watch, a tiny vial with a drop of blood in it.

“How did you get that?”

“You don’t want to know, Yes I got one of yours too.”

Fred just gave up and waited on it. They hadn’t tracked anyone like this in a while. Tracing his DNA across the galaxy would burn out her battery at best. She’ll have to be right the first time.

She dropped it in a little slot and pressed a button that broke the glass of the tiny vial and soaked in the drop of blood.

Her wrist band was still chewing on it when another explosion in the air rocked them again and they both went tumbling out into the air towards the ground.

“Guys!” The President was all alone on his little bridge. He thumped the counter, and his hand fell off. He looked around to see if anyone noticed, and then reattached it, and programmed himself to forget that it ever happened.

Fred and Moxie fell.

The air whistled around them.

They looked into each other’s eyes as the air rushed past them.

He clasped her hand, pulled her to himself, and kissed her.

While they were doing that, heading for the ground at terminal velocity, her wristband beeped, they had a match. She reached out, not opening her eyes, and not stopping the kiss, and pressed the button. They both disappeared in a flash of purple light right before hitting the ground.

There was a flash to their left, Simon didn’t notice it, but Michael did.

He opened his eyes.

“Moxie.”

Michael turned around, and Fred and Moxie were standing there.

Simon was still killing little blue guys with more arms than they required.

Michael jumped for Moxie, who was about to get hit with a flying dagger, and they tumbled to the ground.

Fred stood over them and then gave them both thumbs up.

“Simon!”

Simon turned around and without question jumped for them. Daggers plunged into his back. First one, then ten, then twenty. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. He fell in on them, his body protecting them from even more damage.

“Fred, get us back!” said Moxie.

Fred reached out and making sure everyone had a hand on him or the other way around, he hit his wristband and brought them all back with the feature that always kept their last location, or at least the one that kept dragging them back towards the burger joint.

They rolled into the dust near the crater and looked up. The President’s ship was right on top of them.

“Get on board!”

They all jumped on, dragging Simon’s body with them.

The ship sailed back into the sky.

“Oh Simon!” said Moxie. A tear was in her eye.

“Quick, let’s get these daggers out of him,” said Michael

They turned him over, which wasn’t all that easy.

Fred and Michael did the heavy pulling, tossing the daggers aside, but Moxie helped get some of the larger pieces out of him. His eyes looked dead, pale and silvery, then he opened them.

Moxie screamed, and Fred stood up with a sort of a yelp.

Simon groaned, and turned over again, and pushed himself up into a crawl. Moxie watched as his skin curled and peeled and began to stitch itself back together. Soon he was standing, and the color came back into his eyes.

He looked around, blinking. “What happened?”

“We’re back.”

“We made it?”

Michael looked around. “Yeah, we made it, thanks to these guys.”

"A massive, glowing portal divides two worlds—one alien, one Earthly—as a colossal creature remains trapped between dimensions, with military ships circling overhead in preparation for battle."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 8

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

The giant smacked his side of the massive gate. “More power!”

Behind him, men who all looked like they were normal, and not any way too tall for the Earth, began working harder on the machine.

“We have to get through.”

Captain Harland stood there and paced. He could see the remains of the lab on the other side of his portal, though it was only in crossing that you could tell a difference in height between these men and the men of Earth. He threw his fists into the portal, was electrified, and flew fifteen feet backward, landing in a heap and smoldering on the ground.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever done this. The men around him, all working on the machine, which is what the Captain called it, buried their heads in their jobs and kept at it, letting the big guy pick himself up. Trying to pick him up led to disaster.

The Captain stood up and brushed himself off. He checked himself and straightened his suit. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He pushed forward and continued to pace in front of the gate.

“I don’t understand, he said. There’s nothing to it, dimensional travel is all. We should be able to break through the barrier by now.”

A small robot came whizzing up to him through the air. It was spherical and seemed to float on its own repulser field. It bleeped at him.

“Report, oh-one.”

The robot twittered.

The captain smacked it away. “Speak damn you! We programmed you to speak!”

The robot righted itself and floated back up, and switched speakers so it could translate its words into a robotic whine. The voice seemed to tremble and warble over the little tinny speakers the robot had. “Yes sir, sorry sir.”

The Captain looked back at the little ball. He wanted to crush the little sphere between his fingers, and he knew that he could, but you had to talk to someone while you were waiting sometimes.

“Please continue,” said the Captain. He held his hands behind his back while they talked to remove his temptation to knock the little balloon for another spin.

“Yes sir, sorry sir.”

The Captain waved off the apology.

“It seems sir that we are splitting the barrier further and further with each attempt and reaching into the other dimension a little bit more each time. As long as we keep up with our pulses like we are, and reinforcing the link to the other dimension, we should break through before long.”

“Just a matter of time then.”

The Captain looked around at their strange, declining world, no longer habitable by his kind. Wars had ravaged here, and after hundreds of years of nuclear bombardment, subsequent mutations, and attempted gene therapy, this was all they had left. The world was dark, and silent, and filled with purple grasses and brown mists. Around him, near where the men were working on the machine, grazers worked on the soft grasses and a massive creature worked its way through the skies lowering its long snout into a local lake to drink its fill as it cruised along on a gas-filled bladder that kept it in the sky. Around them in the distance, the ruins of a futuristic city stood behind them, covered in purple and orange moss, with grass poking up through the streets and trees growing into the lower floors of the busted outbuildings. It The tops of the buildings, what remained of them, were covered in birds of various kinds and styles and their nests.

The Captain seemed on his own, desperate and lonely. The robot twittered next to him, but he found it intolerable and knocked it to the ground again. It was the only thing he had to talk to. The other men talked among themselves, but they were useless. They had no vision, and he suspected, they were too close to the new animals of his world. This portal was all he had left.

He pulled a photograph of his wife from his pocket. She was beautiful, with long blue hair and silver skin tone. On the Earth, the pocket photo would have been larger than a standard poster. He put it back in his pocket.

She’d been killed just at the end of the last wars when the bombs were still dropping. She was lost. The blue fireball had consumed his entire street. He whispered to her, his hand on the photo in his pocket. The other world, I know it’s my only hope. I have to reach there, even if I destroy it or most of it in the process.

He listened to nothing. What he imagined was her voice, soft tones in his ears.

“I know it’s harming them. I know I should just turn off the portal, but I can’t.”

He watched as the men worked on the generator, getting ready for another pulse. There was a video projection coming from a light housing on the top of the machine, the bulb within it was the only thing keeping the tenuous connection he had with the other dimension. He dared not get too close to it. He was starting to wonder if it would ever work at all.

“We just kept getting so close.”

If he’d had it his way, he’d have stepped through, and left them all behind, but it seemed to keep bleeding this world into the next. When he tried to push himself through before it hadn’t worked the way it should. He couldn’t remember. Trying to think about the last time he tried to push through wouldn’t come to him.

He pondered it all and sat watching the projection from the portal like it was a huge television screen. Beyond it, he could see the remains of the science lab on the other side. He could see there were casualties there, and that their equipment seemed to be continuing to function a little bit. They must have tried to open dimensional portals to each other at exactly the same time. “How did that even work?  What could the odds have even been?”

He watched the science lab, now devoid of life, on the other side, and regretted that those men had to die. He’d had little to do with it, just an accident, but he still felt responsible. He’d been watching the little scavenger assassins that ran over the countryside in this part of the world bursting through to terrorize them on the other side. He still hadn’t been able to get through for more than a few minutes each time.

He thought about it, no one was choosing to cross on their own. It just seemed to be everything in the general vicinity was just working its way through. So the intention to use the portal was a factor. Either way, everything would return to normal as soon as the connection was lost, and they were forced to boost the pulse again.

“If I let it go on, then there’s no going back for any of them. If there were only a way to get through without having anything else hitchhike along with me. That’s the key. I should do it. Just crush the lamp, destroy the machine, and take that last walk into the wilderness. It would be easy. Close the portal, walk away. It would be over.”

Quick, and painless, again with his own kind. He’d been born with a drive to survive, but when all you’ve got to look forward to are monsters in the forest and radiation sickness… He kicked at the ground.

Behind him, the men were starting to get excited.

Oh-one floated up and chirped. “Sir, there’s some movement on the other side.”

Earlier they’d set out sensors, and for some reason, maybe it was the dimensional static, they seemed to continue working while they were still stuck on this side.

The Captain rushed over to the sensor equipment, red dots on a field of yellow.

“Is that all the detail we have? Turn it up, let’s bring these guys into proper focus.”

He adjusted a dial on the side of the screen and smiled with personal satisfaction when he had everything in clear view.

“It’s four of them. It looks like two men, a woman, and some form of creature, perhaps a bodyguard of some kind, lean and tall. I wonder how he deals with that hair. It’s all over the place.”

They were climbing forward, and down into the caverns that had opened up after the blast, down towards the epicenter where the portal now fizzled, almost about to go out.

They lowered themselves into the science lab of the Sublight group and he watched as they looked around, surveying the perimeter.

“They’re looking for any of the creatures. If there are any stragglers. Let me tell you there aren’t. Not until I can push back through. It could be any minute. It’s the only way.”

“Sir, we’re almost there!” called one of the men who was working on the portal generator.

“Yes? Is it there?”

“We’re about to pull the trigger on it now. We’ll be there in just a moment. All the fuel reserves are full, we’re just waiting on the charge to kick in.”

The Captain watched through the portal at the four of them standing there. What was he about to unleash on them? He didn’t know. What would he look like on the other side? It was all a blur.

“Sir, we’re there. Shall I pull the trigger?”

He took one last look at them, just in case it was his last.

“Do it.”

The men worked around the generator at a frantic pace. They flipped switch after switch, generating ever-increasing surges of power.

On the other side, Fred and Moxie walked up to the portal. Behind them, Michael and Simon made their way down. Michael removed the clip from a harness he had lowered himself in with and tossed it aside. Simon just landed with a single leap from the top. They looked through the hazy screen of the portal, and just for a moment, Michael was face to face with the Captain.

The pulse went out.

There was an explosion of light on the Captain’s side of the portal, and a blast of light from the projector flew out and exploded where the portal was. All around them the countryside was replaced with a broken parking lot, a piece of the street and a field of junked cars. On the other side, on Earth, the cars were vanishing and replaced by the form of furry creatures of the night, and the four of them were knocked to their feet by the shockwave.

Before them the images in the portal crystalized, and they could see the Captain on the other side. He seemed pleased with himself, a job almost complete was the look in his eyes.

All around them they heard the ching of metal as a half dozen of the little bastards, six arms each flew at them in the dark.

Moxie ducked as one went over her.

Michael blasted one with a small silver blaster pulled from his inner coat pocket.

Fred hit one with a baseball bat, sending it flying back into the darkness in a silent crumple.

Simon roared as five of them hit him at once and were stabbing him with everything they had. He felt magnetized. They seemed to fly at him without meaning to. He punched one, sending it careening off into the darkness. Another one bit as his ankles and tore his foot off. It exploded with sprays of green blood. He hit the floor on one knee and reached out to slam two of the creatures together into a pulp before him. In another moment, he grabbed two more out of the air above, who were about to land on him, and brought them to the ground hard and fast, killing them.

“Simon—” Michael came over to him.

“It’s all right.”

Simon stood up, and Michael watched as Simon’s wounds healed together, and his foot reattached to his leg. He popped his ankle into place and shook it off.

“All right then.”

 He punched his open palm and cracked his knuckles.

The area was clear for the moment, but there was some warbling in the air, and time and space seemed to be shifting in on itself just a little bit.

“Climb back out!” said Michael. He could feel the next one coming.

“What?” asked Moxie.

“Out, everyone out! Simon, can you help them?”

Simon took Fred and Moxie in his arms and leaped out of the cavernous remains of his old office, landing on the ground above. When he got there, Michael was already up.

“How did you—“

Michael ignored him, and pulled out his telephone, a sleek black job, no good for games, but deadly secure, even for a cell phone. He was already opening up the space roadster.

He got a signal.

“Yes, Mr. President. I think we’re going to need a little help here. I’m about to put you on the car’s cam system.”

He stepped into the car, and everyone else followed. Once in there was a rumble, like a small earthquake, and then another.

“Thunder?” asked Simon.

“No. We should be so lucky.”

He dropped the phone into a slot on the dash, and an image of the President came up.

“What is it you need Michael, is everything in hand?”

“Hey that’s the President!” said Fred.

There was another rumble.

“No sir, I think we’re going to need a little help here.”

The ground rumbled and the car was thrown a hundred feet into the air, where it settled in and began to hover there.

“What was that?” asked the President.

“We’re going to need a little help getting to the portal to get through it sir, I’d like to suggest you send in a task force, can you oblige?”

“We can arrange help in that fashion Michael, what’s the objective of the mission?”

“I’m going to turn on my exterior cameras for you now, and I’ll give you a look. Getting close enough to the portal is going to prove dangerous, and I don’t think we can risk waiting for another down pulse.”

He turned on the cameras.

Below him there were seas of the little assassins, cartwheeling about, shredding everything they could find. Around them were the Grazers, transformed from local cars and trucks, but now in massive form, as if they had been moving towards the portal since the pulses began. There were large floating behemoths, sucking up everything they could find through their furry snouts, and right on top of the portal, sticking through it, and fighting its way into the world was a creature, large and insane, a multi-tentacled beast as large as an aircraft carrier. It looked like a giant mass of wriggling spaghetti, undulating in all directions. There was a large gaping maw at its base, and each clawed tentacle ended with a large rolling eyeball, the size of a truck tire.

“Jesus Michael, that’s what you’ve got there?”

“Yes sir, and I’d appreciate a little help. I just want to keep them at bay. It’d be nice if this big one didn’t get through the gate between now and then.”

“I’ll order it now.”

The President smacked a button on his desk, and Michael could see him stand up and start giving orders before the connection went dead.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Fred.

“We wait.”

“Wait?” said Moxie.

“There’s nothing else to do. If we go down there we’ll be toast, and Simon and I have to get through that portal and knock it out on the other side. Can’t get through that on my own.”

There was a crackle in the air.

Another brief pulse and a shockwave rang out, multiplying the creatures below.

“What the hell,” said Fred.

The assassins were throwing themselves into the air and climbing on top of each other. One of them landed on the hood of the floating Cadillac.

Michael flipped the car over, doing a stationary barrel roll. The little guy flipped off, but more were on the way.

“We’ve got to get higher.”

Michael pulled the car and opened the jets, pointing the car up into the sky. The sunset played on the hood.

He dropped the speed and looked down again.

“Michael, this is the P.R.E.Z one, do you copy?” It was coming over the radio.

Michael hit the switch.

“Copy that. It’s me.”

We have you on our scanners. Hold your position, and we’ll be making our entry now.

“What’s he mean entry?”

“Watch this. You think our military hasn’t done anything interesting lately?”

“War in Iraq?” asked Simon?

“Child’s play. Here come the real guys now. Let’s just hope they can hold them off long enough.”

In they came.

Three ships appeared, from dots of light in the sky, they became brighter and brighter over the course of a second, and through a rip in space and time they arrived. They were definitely US military. Two were painted in modern camouflage, which changed almost like a chameleon to match the general tones around them. The ship in the middle was pure white, which could mean only one thing. The President was aboard, commanding the fight.

The ships had no wings, but just little sharp, pointy juttings, like fins on each side. They had command bridges up top, were smooth, and silent. On their sides, massive doors opened up, and metal spheres, each the size of a car began to spill out.

“Are they bombs?”

Michael shook his head. “Your tax dollars at work.”

The silver spheres landed on the ground below, destroying everything in their way, rolling in and ripping up mounds of dirt and turf that Michael knew would be just fine in the morning when this pulse was over if it ever was.

There was no explosion, but the tremendous crash of them impacting.

Then the spheres began to wiggle, crack and stand up on long tripod legs.

Michael took a closer look at his camera.

He focussed in, and they could see the clear, yet metallic dome over the human driver of each machine. The tripod walkers marched forward on the dome. Forcefields around them kept the little assassins at bay, and they used robotic arms to toss the grazers aside. There was some laser fire, but together the soldiers, with the help of the President and his small fleet, began to herd the creatures closer and closer together.

“They aren’t killing them,” said Moxie.

“That is interesting,” said Michael. “It’s what I expected them to do.”

There was a beep from the console.

“Looks like the President wants to talk,” said Simon.

Michael hit the switch, and the President was on the line.

“Michael, doing all right there?”

“Fine as fiddlesticks sir, he said.” He tipped his hat at the President.

“We’ve got them corralled for now. Come on board, and let’s take a look at this big guy together right?”

“On my way.”

Michael cut off the channel, and dived for the President’s ship, he landed the car in an open bay. As the four of them were walking towards the President and some of his advisors, Michael beeped the car behind him, to lock it with his key fob. The convertible roof came up, and everything locked down.

They shook hands.

“Mister President sir.”

“Michael David Christopher, the Man with three first names, its good to finally meet you in person.”

“It’s an honor, sir. Shall we?”

“Of course.”

They reconvened in a separate room, with a large table on which was an interactive screen.

The President swept his hands across the table and pointed the camera at the Sublight group facility. The large tentacled creature filled the gaping hole.

“What’s it doing there?”

“I think it’s stuck.”

Michael looked up.

“I think it is. It hasn’t made a move since the last pulse. We’ve monitored one more major pulse, a strengthener, and another few minor pulses around to even the load, and stabilize it. We think they are waiting. Someone is testing something by putting this creature through.”

“Hmm…”

“The other creatures are just bleeding through. They are part of one world, and part in another. This creature is struggling. It looks like it’s stuck halfway between this world and the other, but pinned at the portal.”

“Again, hmm,” said Michael.

“There’s a bit more there. We think it might be an experiment, the attempt to push something through on purpose, perhaps before someone or something else makes the attempt again.”

One of the advisors moved the screen with a touch and dropped some print-outs on the table.

“We think it’s almost through. One more pulse maybe.”

“Then what happens?”

“We don’t know. Two theories. Either it vanishes as everything else does after a pulse is over, or since it came through the portal, it might be left behind. We don’t want to change that.”

“What about blasting it?”

“Blasting it could cause it to complete its journey. We don’t want that to happen either. The soldiers on the ground have done a good job of herding everything up and engaging the little assassin guys, but this one we’ve been watching by satellite peek through in the last couple of pulses.”

“So now it’s a waiting game?”

“Yes, it’s a waiting game. Our plan is to get the two of you down through the gate as soon as the next pulse comes through. Until that, we’re staying airborne.”

“That makes sense.”

“That is unless one of the big guys knocks through us.”

Foom!

They looked down at the table.

“There it goes, another pulse.”

“Sir! The sun!” It was one of the soldiers, hanging by the open floating hanger.

“Good good, let’s see.”

They focused down on the hole again.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“What?”

There was a huge cloud of smoke around the Sublight group.

“Are the creatures fading?”

“Yes, they are fading, but this one, half-in and half out.”

There was a pulse.

“It’s made it through for good.”

They looked down, expecting to see a giant writhing creature, but there was just a splatter of green.

“At least that half of it made it through.”

The dust settled. As it did so, it revealed the half-body lying there.

“Now we may have a hell of a time getting to that portal.”

“Why?” said Moxie.

“Sushi, My dear, said the President. The crater down there is now full of it.”

"A neon-lit diner on the edge of a warped landscape, where reality shifts between city streets and alien terrain. Inside, a monstrous humanoid and a detective talk, while strange creatures prowl outside in swirling purple mist."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 6

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

“What have you got there this time Michael? You know I always liked your second name better,” said Gregor as he shuffled around the room.

“What about my third?”

“It lacks something dear. It lacks… I don’t know… spunk!”

“What’s wrong with Christopher?”

Simon was gawking around the room. It looked like a combination of tech-boy Christmas and James Bond’s nightmare in here. Gadgets were piled to the ceiling in all kinds of little bins and various safes and other storage containers.

Simon looked up and noticed that Xip was using his tongue and little suckers on the ends of his fingers to climb the walls.

“Well, let’s see what we have here Mr. Christopher,” said Gregor. “You’ll be needing something to get through the barrier with then, or whatever it’s called.”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes, well Xip!”

Xip, stood on the wall, straight out like anyone who normally stood upon them, and looked down at Gregor not just with an attentive ear, but with little tendrils that were extending out of his slimy head.

“What do we have for dimensional travel then?”

Xip put up a finger, licked his eyeballs, then jumped down to a shelf covered in soft burlap bags. He wheedled his way in behind one of them, and pushed it back, using his entire body until it was on the way down to the ground with a whistle.

Gregor caught the bag without even looking at it and opened it up. “Yes, this might do.” He pulled out headphones, two sets of them, ones that totally cover your ears.

“You know, dimensional travel is largely a matter of vibration, these should get you through the portal nicely. You just put them on and turn them on, and the rock music they play is enough to keep you on the right frequency to get you through the gate.”

Simon put them on and phased out for just a moment. He pulled them from his head and fell over zapping back, clutching a workstation nearby.

“Oh man,” he said and dropped the headphones.

“I don’t think so Gregor,” said Michael. “What we need is something to tether to this world with. We might not make it out alive using those.”

“Dangerous you say?” Gregor said it with a lisp. “Well, maybe not. Xip!”

Xip saluted Gregor. He was standing sideways on the wall about ten feet up in the stacks.

“Let’s have the dimensional bullwhip then!”

Xip nodded and made a flying leap to the other side of the shelves from where he was, and caught it with his tongue, pulling himself up to a shelf filled with children’s metal lunch boxes of all kinds and styles. He opened an Indiana Jones lunch box, shook his head, and moved on to a Star Wars lunch box, and his eyes bugged out for just a second, then closed the box again.

Gregor chuckled.

“What was that?” Michael adjusted his hat. “What did he find?”

“It’s where I’ve been stashing the chocolate.”

Gregor laughed to himself again.

Xip rummaged through the lunch boxes, eventually coming up with an A-Team lunchbox, a big van on the side. He opened it up, and pulled out two bullwhips, and dropped them down to Gregor.

“Here they are,” said Gregor. Multidimensional bullwhips. He cracked them both at the same time like he was some kind of action hero, which he wasn’t.

“Here.” He held them out to Michael.

“How do they work?” Michael and Simon took the bullwhips.

“Careful not to crack yourself on the chin now. These are designed to attach to something, anchoring them in the real, or at least our world, while you tie them to your waist and go through the portal. They are designed to vibrate at both frequencies at the same time, keeping you anchored. Handy!”

Michael nodded in disbelief, but with interest.

“Aren’t they too short?” asked Simon.

“I was going to ask that,” said Michael.

“No actually,” said Gregor. “They are designed to stretch without much problem. They will always trail away from you, in a semi-transparent state, pointing right for the portal.”

“So we’ll have to work fast.”

“Yes, these will be your silver cord friends,” said Gregor. “If someone severs it, it’s all over, you’ll be stuck for good. At least that’s the way I think it works. There are always other ways to get through.”

“Like what?”

“Like the portal that’s already there!” Gregor smacked Simon on the head, but lightly. Was Gregor wearing blue plastic gloves earlier? Simon couldn’t remember.

“Michael cracked the whip.” There was a slight hum in the air. “I like these.” He set his down on the table.

“What about some standards for Simon here?” asked Michael.

“Is he to be your new partner then?”

“At least for a while.”

Simon stood there.

He looked at them.

“You think I’m good enough to be your partner?”

“Look, you’ve seen a lot of strange stuff. It’s pretty quick, but I need some help here and there. There’s always room for some help. Besides, I think my zombie head guys like you anyway. Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just that… Well, yesterday I was a Janitor, and now all of this…” Simon looked around himself.

“I know. Think about it. I could use you.”

“Okay then.”

Simon held his breath for a moment and exhaled, he was on board.

Michael turned to Gregor. “Clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Michael, now, what is this?” Gregor looked between them.

“He’s a shapeshifter.”

Gregor took another look at Simon.

“Okay, so what’s the other form then?” Held his finger and thumb up to his chin, thinking.

“Now?”

Michael said “Yeah, go ahead and show him. This is good.”

Simon said, “Okay then, here goes.”

He closed his eyes, and his clothes mostly ripped here and there anyway, tore completely off. He was standing there, in his troll form, gray-green skin, and slick black hair, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“He’s still getting used to being able to change.”

“Is this an effect of the portal?”

“I think so, but I think he may be stuck with it. I’ve seen him do this between pulses now.”

“I see.” Simon turned to Gregor. His voice was calm and deep. “What do you think?”

“Well, you definitely have trouble with clothes. I think I have what you need though. Xip!”

Xip jumped down on top of Simon’s head.

Simon looked up, and Xip walked forward to stand right on his face so that he wouldn’t fall off like he’d done this a million times before. He jumped off and stood on the table with the dimensional bullwhips.

Gregor sat down in a small task chair before Xip. “What do you think? Anything that might help him?”

Xip stood up, excited.

“You have an idea?”

Xip nodded quickly.

Gregor leaned in his ear, and the little gecko guy whispered.

“Yes, Xip, I think that might very well do. Go get it.”

Xip saluted and shot up into the air like a rocket, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting off the shelves like he was in a giant pinball machine. When he hit the top, he popped open a cereal box that had been filled with packing peanuts and took from it a small black amulet, smooth polished stone, with a green light buried deep within it that gave it not so much a glow, but a quality that was pleasing to the eye. They could hear him down below, squealing with delight as he found it in the bottom of the cereal box. Getting down was trickier. He tried two or three methods, before just giving up and jumping. He hit a button on his belt and a tiny plastic parachute opened up, and he sailed on down with the amulet in his hands.

Xip handed it over to Gregor and gave a brief smile and a wave to them all.

“Thank you,” said Gregor. “I can’t think of anyone better to give this to than you. We’ll have to calibrate it first, but then after that, I consider it yours. So, you’ll have to throw off everything.”

That wasn’t difficult, as most of the clothing was already torn beyond belief.

Simon took the amulet.

“Okay, put it on.”

Simon nodded and put it on. It was cold, at first.

“Did it warm up?”

“Yeah.” Simon touched it.

“Okay, now take it off for a moment, and change back.”

Simon took it off, put it on the table and changed back.

“Okay, now put it back on and let it get used to this form of you.”

Simon did as he was told.

“Did it warm up again?”

“Yes. It’s actually pretty comfortable.”

“Good, now let’s get you set up. I don’t have much more than sweats, lab coats and sneakers here, but you are welcome to them.  The amulet you have on now recognizes both of your states. If you are wearing or carrying anything with you when you change, it all gets stored in the amulet. You can dress now, then change to the Troll creature, and dress again. After that, it will always store the other set of clothes, so changing back and forth shouldn’t be a problem for you. If you are going to need something, like the bullwhip or something, then the easiest thing to do is just put it down before you change. The opposite is true for your other form. Change into the troll, then put on whatever you like, then when you change back to your normal form, whatever you had on in that form will now be in the amulet.”

“Thank you,” said Simon.

He dressed in a jumpsuit, sneakers and lab coat, and then transformed into the Troll, put on an oversized black sweatsuit, with a hoodie. He changed back and forth several times to watch in a nearby mirror. It worked perfectly.

“Thank you very much.” He turned and shook Gregor’s hand. “Where did this come from?”

“Like everything else in here, it’s what we call a gift from out-of-town, but this one used to belong to a Chinese Zen-Mookie master who could transform himself into the form of a great Tiger-man.”

“What happened to him?”

“Unfortunately he fell fighting with us during a particularly difficult invasion.”

“I never heard of an invasion like that before.”

“It’s only because he was very good at his job, he and Michael David Christopher here, the man with three first names.”

Michael nodded. “I can’t think of a better use for it. You should definitely have that. Old Mooke, he got good enough with that amulet that he could eventually pull the same stuff out of the pockets of the two different outfits with ease. I think he also figured out how to store multiple outfits in there for each of his forms. You ought to be able to figure out all that in time.”

“It’s an honor to wear it.”

Michael looked around.  “Where’s Xip?”

Gregor looked around. He was unaccustomed to being without Xip very often.

“Xip?” He called out.

There was scrambling on the other side of a large shelf system.

They turned the corner and looked up. Xip was pulling the tarp off of a large automobile, that was parked on a shelf about thirty feet in the air.

The tarp fell to the ground, and while Michael could see the wheels, he wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

“Xip, what’cha got up there?” Michael took off his hat so he could see better.

Damn if it wasn’t.

Way up high, the engine revved, with Xip at the wheel, and the car lifted off the floor, and the wheels tucked away, then the car, for lack of a better word right now, glided off the shelf, and floated gently to the ground. It was a real space roadster. The combined efforts of himself, a good friend of his in High School, a friend named Harvis, who turned out to be from a planet some ways away, his father’s convertible Cadillac, and a shop class where the teacher was the one absent for the day, was this shining machine. Black, and beautiful. Michael’s father had only let him drive it once.

“Where the hell did you get this?”

It hovered on its own, keys or no keys about two feet from the ground. Michael brushed his hand across its smooth surface.

“Xip, where? How?”

Xip just smiled back.

Gregor smiled. “We were going to wait for your birthday, but I think you should have it now, what do you think?”

“How, I mean, my Father…”

“Oh, I know. We’re not sure how it got into the collection, but we knew when we saw it that it had to be yours again.”

“Gregor, thank you.”

Michael shook the old man’s hand and took the keys.

“Just remember to put the wheels down if you’re parking it in public right?”

“Right.”

Michael couldn’t believe it.

“I think we have our ride out of here.”

“What about Lenny and Harry,” asked Simon.

“Don’t worry about them. I’ll have another assignment for them momentarily. Hop in.”

Michael and Simon hopped in the old caddy, and Michael fired her up. The engine still sounded just as sweet as before.

He pulled up and headed for the ceiling, where a portal began to slowly open, and they popped out the top, exiting from what looked like the side of a small mountain, about a mile away from the original house they came in through. When Simon looked back at where they had come from, it looked like they had exited through a giant sculpture of a porcupine eating leaves off a tree. It was a virtually unknown monument in the giant stone carving world. There was a single lemonade stand and a bathroom, three parking lots, and that was it, the only car in the lot belonged to Zorzman, and he runs the lemonade stand, and uses the bathroom all day. He was a former agent, himself, and waved them off on their way, and went back to his copy of Catcher in the Rye.

Michael and Simon rode across the sky with the top down. It was sunset, and the air was cool but not too cool. They both put on sunglasses, which were in the glove compartment, barely touched since the last time Michael had this car out.

They left the Mesas behind and back out toward the eastern shore. The going was slower, not exactly like riding in a spaceship, the speeds for the space roadster weren’t much better than a regular car, a hundred miles an hour or so. That’s all you needed.

“Check the map there Simon.”

Simon opened the glove box and pulled out a map, noting the year. “Nineteen seventy-three?”

They laughed and threw the map behind them.

Lucky I installed one of these before I lost her the last time. Michael pushed a toggle switch, like the thumb button of an old car radio, and a piece of the dashboard flipped over revealing a small black and white television on it.

In just a moment, the television faded from static to an image of the road below them. A voice from the radio spoke.

“Michael, it’s so good to see you.”

“Thank you, Gretchen,” he said to the car. “Take us home.”

“Very well, happy to assist,” said the car.

Michael put his feet up on the dashboard and leaned his seat back. Simon also leaned back, and they let the car fly them back across the country to Atlanta.

As they were getting closer, they could see the purple mist up ahead where the lines had been drawn, and the beasts were within.

“Let’s hear a little news.”

Michael pulled the car down and parked it in the lot of a breakfast diner.

“Gretchen, can you get us some news?”

“Sure thing. Satellite news is so much easier to tune in on, here you go.”

The navigator on the little black and white came back and soon there was the face of a television announcer.

“This ought to be national news. Wonder how they are going to cover this one up.”

“You never know,” said Gretchen.

The announcer pointed to a map of the United States.

“Right now, the clouds seem to be covering Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama, and there are trace reports that the darkness has started to drift into Louisiana, but there are no substantiated reports of that so far. All we know is that it seems to be coming from an area near Atlanta. We’ve had no contact from them in all this time, save for patches of time that seem to be miraculously clear of all disturbance. There seems to be an ebb and flow to the smoky mist, and the damage that it’s causing, though as soon as it clears there’s no evidence of any disturbance at all, and all of our reporters that we’ve sent into the field haven’t yet returned or reported.”

“Well, one did there, Charlie.”

“That’s true, we did have one reporter, well one of the production assistants from the mobile crew did return, but his mind is empty.”

“He can’t remember anything he saw in there?”

“No, he can’t remember anything at all. The only reason we know about him is that he was found on the side of the street with nothing but a badge, and a microphone boom, and a sack lunch at three fifteen this morning, and he can’t remember his parents, the school he went to, his name, any of his passwords or the name of his dog.”

“Nothing’s gotten through to this guy?”

“Nothing that we can come up with.”

Michael licked his finger and put it into the air.

“It’s almost time.”

“For what?” asked Simon.

“We’re due for another pulse.”

“It’s all going to clear off?”

“Yep.”

Foom!

There was a large deep noise, a sucking, and a blowing at the same time that washed over them.

“There it is.”

“On the screen, the announcer looked up from his desk again.”

“We have word that the clouds are blowing away again, or at least being drawn into the epicenter somewhere near Atlanta, and we’re hoping to get a bead on that location now. We’ve got Satellite looking down near that area. Gill, turn on that camera and see what you can see there.”

The camera flipped, and all Michael could see on the screen were rolling clouds. As they began to blow away, a solitary mouth whipped up out of the clouds and landed on the camera’s face. The last thing they saw before all went black was a snarling mouth, full of jagged teeth, then all was quiet.

“Gill?”

The camera winked back to The announcer, in his shirt and tie.

“Well folks, we still don’t know anything, and that’s the news.”

Michael flipped off the screen.

Michael cranked the car, pulled up the wheels and sped off for Atlanta.

Soon they began to get into the mist.

“Get down low, I’m going to go in on the ground.” Simon stood up in his chair.

“What are you doing?”

“A little reconnaissance.” I’ll meet you there. He jumped forward to land on the Car’s hood and rode it like a surfboard.

Michael pulled closer to the ground, and before he knew it, Simon gave him a salute and jumped off the car.

“Simon!”

Simon landed on the ground, in the middle of the mist. He watched as Michael rode on ahead of him.

Simon was in his element now. The part of him that was from this world of strange creatures opened its senses and threw himself into it. He ran through the neighborhoods and jumped houses like they were stepping stones. He closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to take over. He was surprised at how keen they all were. His sight was good, but his hearing could almost see all by itself, and his sense of smell was phenomenal. He smelled a wet cat, hanging out under a bridge and understood the feeling of contempt for its surroundings and its longing for its master’s warm bedroom. Simon saw a future where the cat made it home alive. He also saw one where the cat became a six-foot monster with three mouths and fourteen eyes and a strong hankering for bad sushi.

He jumped forward and rolled into a clearing, which later turned out to be a parking lot, and found himself surrounded by the large shaggy creatures, and calmly reached out for one of them.

He took great tufts of hair into his hands belonging to one of them and pulled himself up onto the back of the beast and looked around at them. They were grazers. He could tell they were rooting around in the dirt and eating small underground things. Some of them were munching grass, and others were eating mushrooms and earthworms. He stood on the creature’s back and looked around, the mist seemed to be clearing somewhat.

Soon what was under his feet was made of metal.

He looked down and realized that he was standing on top of a minivan with his hands on his hips with a lopsided smile.

He slid off it and looked around him. He was standing in the middle of a parking lot, surrounded by cars that were all parked where the beasts were standing before, none of them in their original spaces, but kind of all over the place.

He walked through them and wondered for a moment, then began to bound off once more, clearing the tree lines in a single bound, and moving on through them towards the remains of the Sublight Group’s headquarters.

It was a longer slog than he’d thought it would be, but he really didn’t have any indication of how long a distance it was on foot anyway.

When he found the burger joint again, where Michael’s other car was parked, he was in time to see Michael pull up in his space roadster, right next to the other one, and get out.

Fred and Moxie were in the front window of the place still, and they hit the glass when they recognized Michael.

Moxie was first out the door, slamming Michael with a huge hug, and Fred was second, much more laid back, but you could tell he was happy to see Michael. “Well, if it isn’t the man with three first names,” he said.

“Good to see you both.”

Moxie, Fred, this is Simon.

Simon flipped quickly back to himself from his troll-like form.

“Hi,” said Simon.

“Simon, this is Fred and Moxie. They are useful people to know in this world.”

Michael took both of them around the neck and walked them back into the place.

“Jen!”

“Michael you dog, where you been keeping yourself?” Jen threw her towel into the cleaning water and gave Michael a big hug around the neck.

Walter turned. “Ah Michael, what’ll ya have there?”

“Just a burger, a couple for my friend Simon here.”

“Fries or chips?” said Walter, “I can never remember.”

“Chips, I think.”

Simon and Michael sat down at the bar, and Fred and Moxie sat down with them, but not before Moxie had added five or six songs to the jukebox.

“You have time right?” asked Walter.

“Oh yeah, we ought to have another pulse soon. But yeah, time.”

“Yeah, what is all that then with the monsters coming out to boogie?”

“It’s a long story, I think we have a portal down there on the other side of town. We’ll have to close it up, but we have to see what we’re up against first.”

“Yeah,” said Jen, “it turns all the cars in the lot into great wooly beasts, they wreak havoc in the asphalt.” She pinched Michael’s cheek and wiggled it.

“Who’s your friend here then?”

“This is Simon. He was caught in the blast when the portal exploded. He can shapeshift now.”

“Ah well, isn’t that nice,” she said. “Isn’t that the way it always is. If there’s a nuclear meltdown someplace there’s always a superhero that comes out of it, all powered up and ready to go. Are you Michael’s new partner yet?”

“Yeah actually. I think I am.”

Walter and Jen laughed with each other for a moment. “He’ll find out.”

“What do you mean?”

Michael stood up, “I’ll let them have their fun.” He smiled at them as he hit the restroom.

“All we’re saying is that Michael goes through his partners.”

“What, burn out? Is he just an asshole?”

“Nah, nothing like that, it’s just that his kind of life is a bit intense. Not everyone can keep up with the adventures he goes on. Sooner or later they take a back seat, and help him occasionally, like us. He is a riot though, and we love him to death, but he does keep the adventures wild.”

There was a.flush from the bathroom, soon Michael was back with them, and the burgers were served.

“Eat up, I think it’s about to get rough.”

Michael plowed through his, he was ready for the next challenge, even bouncing his foot a little, waiting to leave.

Simon worked through his burgers, sharing the occasional eye with Moxie.

Fred sat on the table and asked Michael how the old space roadster was doing. It had been a long time since he’d seen it.