Tag Archives: time rift

"A retro diner glows under neon lights as a towering alien leader in robes addresses an army of creatures. A group of adventurers stand ready for battle as dawn breaks through the swirling mist."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 7

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 pulses have been getting worse haven’t they?” asked Michael.

Jen nodded. “Yeah, they have been getting worse.” She stuck a pencil behind her ear.

Walter turned and leaned against the stove. “It’s like that time a few years ago when we had the bunnies coming through.”

Michael couldn’t remember. “Bunnies?”

“Yeah, you remember, it was like there was something to do with a hole in a tree, and bunnies kept coming out of it.”

“I remember that now.” It was vague in his mind, but he could remember something.

“I sure as hell remember that. I didn’t know how we were gonna get rid of them all.”

“True, I’m not sure how close to this that is.”

“What happened with the bunnies?” said Simon.

It was getting dark somewhere behind them. They brushed it off, but Walter spoke up. “We’re about to get a pulse.”

They turned around, but Jen kept talking. “There was this rabbit hole, it was in my neighbor’s back yard, at the base of a tree, where the roots all tangled up. My friend had been taking pictures of the rabbits, blogging about it, and when they had a bunch of little bunnies that spring, they blogged about that too.”

“And then there was the big power outage.”

“It wasn’t just the house either,” said Walter, “it was the whole dang neighborhood, out for like two weeks. Drove Nancy crazy, she had to go to the library to do her blogging.”

“Yeah, I remember that, said, Jen. She was sitting there, watching as the power trucks came through, and all that. There was a spark, I guess it was so many electrical things turning back on at once, it was kind of shocking, but she had her video camera trained on the tree at the time, but this time she had a timer on it, to try and catch them as they came and went, and a bunny popped its head out and ran across the yard, right at her. She watched it all happen. She jumped, upsetting her iced tea, the glass smashed on the patio, and she jumped and looked around. There was nowhere for the rabbit to go so it must be cornered behind her where the fence met the house. She looked, but there was no sign of the rabbit.”

“She was shaking it off and thinking about where she was going to find the broom and dustpan. Her tea was sitting there calm as anything where it had been and the rabbit, we’re pretty sure it was the same rabbit… just sitting there.”

“It was definitely the same rabbit,” said Walter.

“Yes, the same one, came out at her again, and we think it was grabbing the tea the second time that did it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the rabbit came out and flew across the lawn to her. It got to the table that it bumped, knocking over the tea, and it just disappeared. Right there. Before she knew it, here came another rabbit. She knocked away her chair and pulled the table out of there. Her husband wasn’t due for another four hours, and the kids were staying at a friend’s house, so she just sat there and watched it as it all happened over and over again. She counted them for fifteen minutes and up to one hundred and fifty before she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Walter pushed forward, dropping burgers in front of everyone, just for the hell of it. “Then it really got weird when her husband got home.”

Simon turned to watch Walter. The old man seemed to have a gleam in his eye, and he looked ready to talk.

“There he was, Jerry, he had just come home from work. He’d stopped by here on the way home to bring home dinner, that’s how I heard about this later.”

“Oh I’d have told you, Walter,” said Michael.

“I know, anyway, it was just funny.”

“What happened?” asked Moxie.

“Well, it was like this. He gets home, and it’s already dark right, and she’s out on the patio, she’s upgraded to wine by this time, but he didn’t notice that at first. The first thing he saw was that she was sitting out there in the dark.”

“What’s with the dark?”

“I don’t know if I can take it anymore.”

“What? We’re doing all right aren’t we?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

She waved out to the tree, with a pained look, and said: “Do you see them?” She could no longer look on her own.

“See what?”

“Oh God, I am crazy then.”

She stood to go and said “I don’t know, pack our stuff or something,” and he said, “That’s odd.”

She closed her eyes and hoped. “What?”

“I just saw a rabbit go across the yard, and then another one must be your little troop. Wonder what they are doing out tonight?”

“Keep watching.”

“Okay.”

He continued to watch until the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth rabbit had come out and skittered across the yard.

“What the hell,” he said.

“Can you see where they go?”

“No, it’s too dark.”

“Try.”

He walked out into the yard, to watch from a different perspective and saw that they whipped across the yard to a certain point, and then just stopped. It was like they were just running into nothing.

“What the hell?” It seemed to be all he had left at this point.

“Yeah.”

“Can you touch them?”

“Yeah.”

He seemed surprised. “Really?”

“Yep. I’ve hit them with golf clubs, I shot a couple of them just before dark. I kicked three as they came out.”

“What happens?”

“They land, head for the same point, and vanish anyway.”

“What happens if you put something in the way?”

“Nothing much, they just go around it and get close.”

“What if we plug it up?”

“What?”

“The hole. Let’s plug it up.”

The idea hadn’t occurred to her yet. “What can we use?” She looked around for something. She went into the house and came out with a 2-liter bottle of soda, and together they jammed it into the hole and waited.

“That was their mistake, you see,” said Walter.

“Plugging the hole was just enough,” said Jen.

“Enough for what?” asked Fred.

“It was enough to put the portal just a little off-kilter.”

“What happened?”

“They starting busting out of there like gangbusters,” said Michael. “They popped that Coke bottle out of there, and started coming out in droves, not one at a time, but like five, six, eight at a time, and this time they weren’t going away, they were just piling up in the yard, and they didn’t want to leave.”

“It’s true. They were just sitting there.”

“So, I get there,” said Michael, “I’d already been called and I’d been watching them for a half an hour trying not to laugh, and it was time to go in, so I open the back gate and act all official-like I’m a regular cop or something.”

“Is there a problem here folks?” I say. “I’m completely ignoring the bunnies, even though they are hopping all around me. I’m not acknowledging them at all. They get in my way, I act like I mean for it to look like that.”

“So they’re freaking out right?” said Fred.

“Yeah, no doubt,” said Michael.

“So the lady says, Um, no officer, I don’t think there’s a problem. Did you hear something nearby?”

“The rabbits were all around us, one was up on the table now, and a bunch of them were in her lawn chair. No, I say, I was just trying to be neighborly,” said Michael. “I heard the two of you arguing, and thought I’d come over and make sure everyone was all right.”

“One of the rabbits jumped up on my hat. I totally ignored it as if nothing were in any way different, and pulled out a pad and a pencil. I licked the tip of my pencil and started to jot down notes, just to make them nervous. She tried to see what I was writing, which happened to be a list of books I’d like to order later. I kept the list away from her so she could not read it, which was the point, right?”

“Soon rabbits were in both of my coat pockets, and I was holding two or three of them in my arms, I was even petting one, and the two of them wouldn’t admit they were there for fear of being ridiculed. So I looked at them, covered in fur and rabbits, and said now come on, just admit, this is a bit funny.”

“Sir?” they said.

“The rabbits.”

“What?”

“All these rabbits, they’re everywhere!” She looked so relieved that she almost fell over, and, he did fall over and was then engulfed in the fuzzy little bunny brigade.

“Where is it? I asked, dropping the bunnies that were on me.”

“Down there, in the base of the tree.”

“Right, it’s the old rabbit hole eh? I’m on it.”

“After pulling the husband up from the sea of rabbits swarming all around us, I jumped into the oncoming stream and started to fight and sort of swim through them until I got right up to the tree. I stuck my hand into the hole, and though it was tearing the flesh from my arm to do so, I reached in and pulled a switch, on the other side, turning off the portal. There was some kind of box on the other side that was causing the rip, and it was jarred in just such a way to deluge us with thousands of copies of the same bunny from another dimension.”

“What happened to the rabbits?”

“We let them go.”

“They didn’t go home?”

“Not really. Thousand-plus clones of the same rabbit? We just let it go. Didn’t hurt anybody. I took some of them to my friend Harvis’s house, and some of them followed me home to the warehouse, but most of them just hopped off into the woods and became fox bait or something. It was odd though. Later there was no scarring or even a scratch from reaching through the bunnies like that. Every once in a while I still see one of them around.”

Thunder clapped, and the sky filled with misty clouds again. Outside, the cars were turning into great plains-walking beasts, and the buildings were transforming and taking flight into the sky to reach down and pick off the weak creatures with their colossal snouts and tongues.

“Walter, I’ve never asked you this before.”

“Yes, Mike?”

“Why doesn’t your diner ever sustain any damage?”

Walter’s smile broadened.

“Well, there’s a reasonable answer to that question my friend.”

“What’s the answer?”

“It’s simple. This is my space ship.”

Moxie and Fred stood up.

Walter hit a switch on the stove, and it turned over, revealing a large panel of instruments and computer screens. He checked one of them out. “Yep, the force field is still holding.”

He flipped it back again.

“You dog.”

“What?” said Walter.

“This is your ship then?” Michael looked around, noticing the grease spots, and the worn seats.

“Has it always been a diner?”

“It used to be a trailer, back in the days when we were marketing to construction workers of the clone fleets, and the people in the robot industry.”

“You sold, what, burgers in space?” asked Simon.

“Yeah, I guess, it was something like that. You don’t have cattle in space, well you do, it’s just that the meat is different than what you’re used to.”

“What’s different?”

“Well the cows, as close to an earth name as they come, are purple, but the meat is much the same. You cook it about a minute less on each side, but that’s about it. They still take ketchup pretty well.”

“Why land on Earth?”

“Well at first, I wanted to settle somewhere half-way normal, so I put down some roots here, only to find out this is the strangest planet of them all. Isolated, yet it draws every strange onlooker that has ever gone everywhere.”

“Do you mean anywhere?”

“I know what I mean.” He said it with a sort of a glint in his eye that said there was more to the story.

Thunder crackled outside. Great red forks of lightning flashed across the night sky illuminating the creatures in the fog.

“We’ve got to get out there, and get to that portal,” said Simon.

“You are right,” said Michael, “but have you noticed what’s happening yet?”

“I don’t know, sort of.”

“It’s like there’s s separation between day and night.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Walter, will this place hold out?”

“Mike, with our force field on, we could withstand a nuclear explosion.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. We wait until morning then. As soon as the day brings us some time, we’ll get as close as we can, in my caddy, and see if we can get through that portal.”

They looked at each other.

“All right then,” said Fred, and started pumping quarters into the jukebox. He and Moxie picked out as many songs as they could, and tried to make it last until the morning. When they ran out, Walter tossed them a couple of rolls from the till and they kept on plugging. Before long, they had every song in the box set to play twice.

“Why didn’t you ever tell us this was a spacecraft?” asked Fred.

“You didn’t ask,” said Walter, with a smile. “I know that’s not fair, but there you go.”

“I’m with Fred,” said Moxie, “we’ve been here like a hundred times, and we never figured it out?”

“Why do you think you keep zinging back here with your little wristbands then?”

“What? I figured it must have been the portal thingie.”

“That’s just the last theory you came up with.”

Michael sat on one of the tables in a booth to himself, laughing at them. “Walter, what did you do to their wrist bands?” he was chuckling at them.

“Nothing they didn’t deserve.”

Jen smacked Walter on the arm.

“What?” Walter was laughing now.

“Walter you old space cow.” She smacked him again.

“Jen, do you know who this is?” He was pointing at Moxie.

“Yeah, it’s Moxie. She and Fred have come in here a hundred times.”

“It’s Maxine’s daughter.”

She just looked at him.

“Maxine. You know, my sister.”

“What?” It was Moxie now.

“You’re my—”

“Uncle, right, and this is your Aunt Jen. 

Jen smacked Walter again.

“Hey now…” He held up his hand to ward off the blows.

Simon decided to stay out of it and drink his coffee. He also decided to change into the troll for a moment, just to see if that made any difference. Besides making Fred jump again, it didn’t.

He shrugged and returned to normal, but before he finished with it he decided to transform just a couple more times. He was starting to get good at taking the clothes with him each time, and anything that was in the pockets, although he kept dropping his fork.  That wouldn’t stay in the amulet.

Moxie turned to Michael. “Did you know?”

“Oh yeah, but I didn’t realize it was Maxine, that’s all. I thought it was another sister. It makes sense that it’s Maxine for some reason.”

Moxie jumped the counter to punch Walter on the nose but hugged him instead.

“You’re mother asked me to look out for you a little while back.”

“So you kept us from traveling far off-world?”

“She doesn’t like the bands. She just asked me to make sure you were doing well before I let you get too far away again.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Well of course I have!”

“She’s not here is she?”

“No.  She’s on Alpha Proxima, but I didn’t tell you that either. Once this business is over, you ought to be able to go off-planet again, but She would like it if you checked in once in a while.”

“What did you do to our wrist bands then?” Fred and Moxie were taking them off.  The bands were made of a strange synthetic leather and flexible plastic that was definitely alien in origin. On them were little screens, and red and blue light.

Walter pulled his from below the sink and put his on. “See? Right here,” he twitched the blue button, and it turned green. “It’s a safety feature. The colors are so similar that I bet you didn’t notice. It’s designed to keep you from getting too far off course on short hops. Call it a feature, rather than a bug.”

They both switched them to green and then back again to blue, just in case.

“Either way they won’t be able to get onto the network until we shut this portal down.”

“So, what’s the plan then?”

Michael jumped off the table. “So we’re serious now then?”

“You bet. We’ve got to get off this planet, eventually.”

“Why?”

“So we can go tell her mother to cut it the heck out.”

“Good luck with that. You’ll be lucky if Maxine doesn’t put a complete tracer tag on you.”

“Have you met her?”

“She used to be my partner.”

“Who hasn’t been your partner?” said Jen.

Michael was glowing with old memories. He pulled out a small lens, connected to a power supply and dropped it on the table. A three-dimensional image of the Earth appeared before them in full color.

Fred waved his hand through it, but Michael slapped it out of the way. “You’ll screw it up — ah look, it’s heading for the coast of Libya, nice.”

Michael waved through it, and repointed it to the United States, and then down to the area in which they were.

“It’s here,” he said, pointing to a dot on the map. He closed in, using his hands to get in closer.

It was a real-time image of what was going on there.

There were creatures all around the remains of the Sublight group building. Some of them just stomped around, some were circling and eating the large grasses that came with them for lunch, and others, the little blue ninja attackers, stood guard and walked around like they had something to guard.

“What’s going on there?” asked Fred.

“I don’t know,” said Michael, “but I’ll bet it’s not that nice.”

There was a great fooming sound and after that a blast of light from the crater. A hand reached out and pressed against the ground, it was the size of a compact car, then there was another one, and it pushed it’s way out through the ground.

“What the hell is that?” asked Fred, not that he wanted to know or anything.

“I think it’s daddy,” said Michael.

The creature pushed its way out of the hole in the ground, it was easily fifty feet tall and stood over the other creatures like they were its scruffy little pets. It wore long sweeping robes, and a pair of long scimitars made of gold hung from its belt.

He reached out and petted one of the grazers with its left hand, and then stood, looking around at what must have looked like its own lands, and the little assassins started to line up around him, and bow.

“Yep, that’s what I thought,” said Michael.

When Michael thought that he was just going to walk around some more and observe his turf, the colossal man looked around and began to address his people. He was making an effective speech, but the language was lost on them all. Lots of hand gestures and fists in the sky. What they could tell about him was that the creatures were all laughing in all the right places, that they seemed to both love and fear him, and that they were totally obedient to him.

He opened his arms, and proclaimed their goodness, and his happiness in them, and seemed to be giving the speech of his life. Michael couldn’t understand each individual word, but he began to put it together as he was watching the arm movements and gestures the giant was using.

“You know what he’s doing Mike?” It was from Walter.

“Yep. He’s declaring victory.”

“That’s what I thought too. We’ve got to get that portal closed.”

“We’ve got to get it closed before they can make it stable. How much longer do you think we have Mike?”

“Not long, another pulse or two. I don’t think this is the final one though.”

“No?”

“Nah, I think that this is the premature victory speech.”

The towering figure turned and looked around him. In the distance, the sun was coming up, and the creatures around him were beginning to fade. He stepped down into the crater, and slipped back through the portal, and into his own world.

Around them in the diner, the mist was clearing. The cars were transforming back from creatures of another world into the hunks of junk they used to be.

“Walter, do you think you can get this hunk of junk flying again?”

“Mike, you know I haven’t actually flown this thing for fifteen years.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’ll take some work.”

“I need you to try.”

“If you need it, Mike, then I’ll do it. Jen?”

“I’m already on it,” she said from the other room.

No one had seen her leave, and Walter hadn’t thought to look around for her. She emerged from the door to the back in a yellow jumpsuit with black trim, form-fitting and zipped to the cleavage. Walter’s eyebrows went up. He hadn’t seen her in that outfit for some time. He turned to Mike. “I think we’ve got a chance.”

“Simon, What about you?”

“I’m on board.” He stood up and transformed. I think I’ll keep to this shape for a while. “Its kind of Troll-like, don’t you think? I keep thinking that for some reason.”

“It could be.” He turned. “Moxie, Fred, what do you think?”

“Count us in!”

They grabbed their packs and pulled their goggles on.

“Leave the packs. You can pick them up later.”

They dropped them but weren’t sure they wanted to.

Michael held his watch up to his mouth and tweaked a knob on the side. There was a crackle of static on the line.

“Gretchen?”

“Yes, Mr. Christopher?”

“Meet us by the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

The car outside, the space roadster, lifted its wheels, and they vanished under the car’s frame. It floated up in the air and sailed over to the door as the last of the mist and monsters faded away with the morning.

They stepped out into the cold morning air and jumped in the car, its convertible top already folded down.

“Hey, Walter?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you feed my other car?”

“Oh yeah, sure!”

They jumped in and Gretchen pulled into the sky and pointed herself towards the crater at the Sublight Group.

"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.

"A towering humanoid creature stands in a rain-soaked street, facing a fearless young girl, while an enormous alien entity looms overhead, distorting reality around them."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 5

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.

Simon hit the ground with full force, sending a shockwave out around him in all directions. It’s almost a good thing the pulse had already taken the land because he would have disrupted the electricity for several blocks, and toppled some of the closer buildings to the ground. He stood up. His clothes were in tatters, and his rucksack lay on the side of the street. He stood to his full height, which while transformed, was about eight and a half feet, and shook his long black hair out of his face. His gray-green skin showed through his tattered shirt. His mind was awake and alive, he could sense telepathically in all directions around him. He closed his eyes. In the buildings by him, he could hear the conversations of everyone in them.

“Did you do your homework young lady?”

“Mom! Can’t you see outside there are monsters everywhere!”

“There is no such thing. Do you know what time it is?”

“No, but mom!”

He shifted his attention and focused on another house.

“Billy, you need to take a bath.”

“Mom! Can you see them? They’re in the sky, everywhere.”

“You need to stop lying—“

He shifted away again.

There was a girl standing on the street corner not a hundred yards from him.

He drunk in her presence and listened to her mind.

“Can you hear my thoughts?” she thought.

It began to rain.

Simon turned to her. “Yes.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Simon, but it’s hardly fitting is it? I’m more of a troll or something now.”

“You were human, not one of these creatures?”

“I don’t know what I am anymore.”

“It’s okay.”

She stepped closer to him. She couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“What’s your name?”

She didn’t speak but continued to just think her responses.

“Alice, that’s nice.” He heaved in a deep breath and felt the strength in his body.

She hugged her arms. “Are you real?”

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel real.”

She stepped closer to him, and reached out to him, the janitor of secret projects, and put a hand on his chest. “You feel real,” she thought.

“Then I suppose I’m real.”

He shook the rain out of his hair, and one of the larger creatures flew over them, its long snout reaching down from the clouds and sniffing over the land. The snout, long and hairy, was all that could be seen beside the slow manta-like wings it used to glide through the air. He looked back at Alice. “Is this your world, or are you from mine?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know anymore.”

He looked down at her as the creature floated above them, and smelled the rain around him. The smell was alien, oily and strange, it stung the interior of his nose and clung to it.

“Does the rain sting your nose?”

She looked at him and considered that. Did it? She inhaled, as the rain-soaked her hair.

“I can’t tell. I can’t tell if it’s stinging or not.”

He knelt down and faced her eye to eye.

“Did you know one of your eyes is bigger than the other?”

He felt his face and his eyes. He didn’t know.

“I must be grotesque to you.”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

He stood.  “I must go.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ll return?”

He leaped up into the air, forcing himself to ignore the second glance in her direction. He must stay focused. He landed on the top of someone’s house and began to jump from rooftop to rooftop. He found it easy to do so, almost as if he was floating under his own power. He found it easy to soar like this, just a few hundred feet at a time, stepping stones across a pond.

He increased his speed and took a flying leap over one house. Then they swung up through a tree and found himself heading for the side of an office building. He twitched the muscles in his torso and turned to face the building, grasping onto the sides of it easily. Then he started climbing up like it was level ground. He stood atop the building and looked back at the neighborhood.

Behind him, some of the houses remained, and some others did not. Where they were there were now great rolling hills of purple flowing grass whipping in the wind. His larger eye seemed able to focus farther away, almost telescopically, and focused back, looking for Alice in all of this.

She was still standing on the corner where he’d left her.

She gave him a smile like she knew he was going to look back for her. Then she waved and turned to step into one of the houses.

He looked around, checking out the grasslands.

Grazing creatures stood in the tall grasses. Their long tusks and tall tails poked above the line of grass as they shifted and plundered through the weeds. Were there eyes on the ends of those tails? Were they warning devices or something like that?

He watched them chew the grasses around them to the ground until he could see them for what they were. They were short, maybe four-foot-tall mammoths, covered in long brownish-green fur. He took a closer look at the tail, It did have an eye on it, a single eye capable of looking in any direction that it needed to. There must have been thirty of them standing in the field just eating the long purple grasses. In his mind, Simon realized that on some level all the purple grass was the dimensional drift of houses that might not come back again once this pulse faded if it ever did.

He jumped to another building, and looked out at the remains of the Sublight group, and could barely see the scattered remains of the ship they had been in.

He decided to jump down to see if everyone was all right when the building shook. He grabbed hold of it and held on tight. It shook again, it was a slow rhythmic pummeling. He looked over the side and saw massive creatures, each the size of a house, crawling up the side of the building. Several were already in his view. They hit the side of the building with large padded feet that seemed to dig in, blasting out the windows and making the glass tinkle to the ground. All Simon could see was a gaseous mist down there. He watched them lumber up, and also noticed several of them down the street, starting in on one of the shorter buildings, which just went down without a fight.

They’re building smashers, some kind of stomper. They smashed into the side of his building again, each step with the force of a car hitting the building at a hundred miles an hour. Concrete spluttered out, and gashes in the side of the building sprayed out into the sky, flaking off the building like it was exploding with charges of dynamite. They smashed and smashed as the creatures ascended. He could feel the building starting to become rocky, leaning this way and that.

He jumped to another building.

Then he felt it again, they were already on this building. He jumped to the next one as that building came down like an old Vegas implosion. He realized at the bottom, at the street level, all the mist was the smoke and mess of the other falling buildings.

It didn’t seem to phase the grazers one bit though, who stepped aside and kept to their grasses that were growing quickly up through the asphalt.

Simon jumped to the ground and landed in a crouch. He stood up, and what remained of his shirt flowed around him like a cape.

He stepped forward and looked around. He could hear them. What the hell were they, goblins? Was there a better word for the little beasts? They began to run upon him in droves. Each running on two short stubby legs, and using their four arms held high with swinging daggers to rend and strike and slash. They were screaming, a garble of incoherent jabbering, and leaping at him from the darkness like they were on kung fu wires… They flew at him from all directions. They climbed over him, and stabbed him in the chest many times, then cutting his throat. They stabbed him in the eyes, which popped with a hideous spurt, and he hit the ground. They jumped on him like he was a giant beanbag chair and slashed at him some more. When he was a nothing more than a ragged heap, they slowed down and stood over him to watch him bleed. They stared and wondered at him, as he continued to breathe despite their torture of him.

One of them stabbed him again.

“Alice.”

It healed up.

They prodded him.

His blood was gone from the ground around him. His eyes opened, full, clear, bright and healthy — for the troll that he was — and he stood up in their midst and looked around at them.

He breathed, unhindered for a while, and thought about them all, looking at him like a piece of meat. They jumped on him again.

With renewed vigor, they thrashed and he thrashed back. He threw them from himself, and they careened off into the mist of destroyed homes that covered the land. He kicked them like footballs and punched through their skin as if they were grape jelly. It stained his hands and the remains of his shirt.

Simon strode to the nearby landing strip where he’d seen the saucer go down, then he started to run. Soon he was making great strides and bounding over buildings once more. He rode on the back of one of the crazed creatures for a moment, gave it a pat on the back and flew off again to land outside of the ship, which was standing back up on three repaired landing feet. He walked up and shaking off the troll shape for his normal form, he walked into the shop and looked around.

Lenny and Harry were just pulling Michael from the rejuvenating pod.

“Is he all right”

They turned to see him

“Simon! You’re back!”

“You’re not going to drop me again are you?”

“Of course not!”

They bounced up and hugged his legs, each looking at each other through them, half scared. Michael offered his hand and Simon shook it.

“Come on, we’ve got to take this bucket to Headquarters for debriefing and some equipment. You up for it?”

“Yeah, I’m with you.”

They piled into the ship, and once they were all in their seats in the sunken couch, they were off again.

They glided over the horizon and off across the country, leaving behind the sickened, and pock-smeared area of the country. They blasted from the mist and hugged the ground as they spun off out to the other side of the country. Before long they were gliding over the American southwest. Beneath them, they left behind, desert areas, large rock formations, and beautiful canyons.

They watched as cars, able to see them, skidded off the road and slid off the road behind them.

“What is the cloak thing not on there Harry?” said Michael.

“Oops!” Harry hit a switch and they disappeared from sight.

Out in the dark regions of the desert, beyond the streets and the shops and the tourist traps, there was a house.

It was just a little farmhouse. Not a good house, and next to it was a five-acre farm. Not a lot, but it looked like someone’s home. Of course, the corn was all made of rubber, and the house itself of solid steel, concrete, and rebar.

As they arrived above it, the house, miles from any observer outside of an armadillo that was standing within a hundred yards of the place, opened up. It split in half underneath them and spread apart until there was a large space open big enough to lower the ship into, which Lenny did without breaking a sweat, not that he could sweat. His race expressed excess fluids under stress through a series of misting jet sprays on their backs, which he did.

“Excuse me.”

When the ship had lowered beneath the house it closed up behind them.

The armadillo gave less than a damn. He was too busy with a candy wrapper and an extra bit of chocolate nougat to give the first whip.

Below the surface, the saucer descended until it was floating over a sea of enormous cubicle shaped cubbies, each with its own starship parked inside it.

Simon came forward and looked out at the expanse. Michael had seen it all before, but it never ceased to amaze him.

Below them, one of the ships was shaped like a giant ice cream cone, with the point of the cone up in the air. Was it Neapolitan? Another of the ships looked like two massive tin cans connected together with a cord of flexible wire that was ten feet thick and seemed electrified. Some of them looked like saucers, which was nice, but there were some of them that looked frankly stupid in nature. These couldn’t be space ships. One of them looked like a fucking Italian restaurant turned on its end.

“What the hell?” said Simon

“Yep it’s true,” said Michael.

“What, these are space ships”

“Some of them are captured or salvaged. Others are just visiting and needed a place to park for the weekend.”

“So this is what, both impound and parking lot?”

“Yeah.”

Michael didn’t tell Simon it was all a lot of garbage, and this was just the stuff they couldn’t have floating around in the sky, the stuff that didn’t cloak, or didn’t look like an average Nissan. He just let him boggle at what was before him.

“Michael, look that one looks like a Bonsai Tree.”

Michael nodded his head. He’d been in that one.

“A fifty-foot bonsai tree!”

“I know.”

“It’s even got an eighteen-foot Buddha sitting at the base of the trunk. Come on! What are these? Disguises gone wrong?”

They were starting to pass into what Michael called his own personal Hell’s Kitchen, and was grinning, waiting for it.

“Good Grief…” said Simon. He failed to notice that he’d changed into the troll-like creature and back again. “That one looks like a food processor!”

“It does?”

Michael acted as he’d never seen it before, mocking but with good nature. He hadn’t been able to show this to anyone for a while.

“Oh you know it does. I suppose you’re going to tell me it was a miscalculation on size before a brief trip to Earth for a weekend at the beach then?”

“Well they were on vacation, but it was to New York for a weekend of Broadway shows and dancing before returning home. Seems they lost the blade while gambling in Atlantic City earlier in the week, and it won’t work without it.”

“And where’s the blade?”

“It’s currently part of a large children’s playground that looks like oversized kitchen gear in a home show open to vendors only. It’s a masterpiece.”

“And you can’t retrieve it and send them on their way because?”

“Because they lost their pilot’s license, traveling on a ship that could chop their heads off, and anyone who was traveling with them. I think it’s safer this way.”

“Where are they now?”

“They are both Blackjack dealers in Las Vegas at the Playboy Casino.”

Simon opened his mouth to talk, and just gave up and looked out at the expanse of space ships there. Did one of them look like a skyscraper-sized lava lamp? He shook his head. He could turn into a massive troll, who was he to say that any of this was impossible, or even just plain stupid. He sat back.

“You’d be surprised how popular blackjack is off-world.”

Soon they were docking and bringing the ship around to land in one of the massive cubicles. In no time they landed, hooked up to supply lines, and several robots glided out on unicycles with round silver balls for heads, and little spindly arms for checking the ship over. They slid out and checked everything they could find as the four of them were coming down the ramp.

Lenny and Harry waved them off. They would tend to the ship. Michael stepped out onto a moving walkway with Simon and they rode off into the great underground building.

As they glided on through the underground, they seemed to be picking up speed. Simon wasn’t sure, but he could feel a slight breeze and Michael was holding onto his fedora.

“Where are we going?”

“This is the headquarters.”

“Of what?”

“Everything.”

“Of what? Washington?”

“No, everything. The whole Earth.”

“We don’t live in a world government though.”

“You need to understand a few things if you’re going to work with me.”

Michael took off his hat. His hair was a lot grayer than Simon thought it ought to be.

“Understand what?”

“You’ve got understand the score. We’re not living in a democracy anymore.”

“I know, it’s a constitutional republic, right?”

“No, and it never was. the whole history of the founding fathers…”

“Yes?”

“Baloney.”

“All of it?”

“All of it, yes.”

“We live in a global economy, and under a global government. We’ve been doing so for three hundred years at least.”

“Three hundred?”

“Yes, it could be five though, the records were destroyed a couple of times.”

“But what does all of that mean then? To the world?”

“Mostly, nothing. People go about their lives like they always do. The even elect people President and everything, newscasts the works. It’s all real. At that level. Then there’s this level, where we all get along, because we know there’s something else out there. Hell, there’s lots of everything else’s out there, and we’re here to protect the world from it.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Why of course.”

“Is it worth it?”

“It’s the best job in the world.”

“What about the president?”

“He’s a puppet.”

“What, you mean he’s bribed or controlled in some way?”

“No, I mean that. He’s a puppet. Well, that’s not the whole truth, he’s like me, an agent in the field protecting the world from everything else, but we also have puppets of him that we operate. He’s a muppet, I think. Here we are.”

They glided past a room full of full-size and half-size replicas of the current president, and the past few also, stacked up against the walls.

“Oh hell.”

“Yep, there they are. Looks like they are getting ready for a press conference, no it’s an address from the Oval Office.” On the sets, people were starting to haul out the great puppet, wheel it over to the desk, and hook it up to the power feeds. Its eyes lit up, and they started to control it with joysticks.

“No wonder he’s always boring.”

“You got it. We like to keep it that way. The more boring a President is, the easier it is to keep everything under wraps.”

“I can imagine.”

“You see what I mean then.”

“What about those Presidents that just keep getting into trouble?”

“Let them, then it’s even easier. It’s when you get a good person in the office that you have trouble.”

“I’d think a change like that would be good once in a while.”

“It is. It’s just that sometimes they don’t agree with keeping all of this a secret.”

“It’ll come out.”

“Maybe, but not for a while. It’s just too weird.”

Michael held his hand up. They had arrived. The doors before them opened up, and they continued to glide into a dark room. It felt huge and cave-like. Simon couldn’t see, even with the advanced vision of his troll persona, which he switched to for a moment just to be sure. He was getting better at that.

The lights clicked on, and Simon ducked, finding himself hurtling down a corridor that was not much wider than the two of them could stand there in, and just tall enough that he wasn’t scraping his head on the ceiling.

They began to go faster. Could Simon even tell how fast he was going now? He felt that if he reached out to touch the wall he’d end up skipping and bouncing against the tiles, and with such great force that he’d be dead in a second. He closed his eyes and waited for it to all stop, which in just a matter of moments, it did. Willy Wonka anyone?

The air, now cool and calm around him, Simon opened his eyes and found himself in a regular corridor, already walking with Michael who was dusting off his fedora and placing it on his head again. Funny, he had thought for some reason that he’d be standing in a field somewhere looking out at alien flowers or something. He wasn’t certain he was still on the Earth after that ride.

He stepped forward, and Michael led them through a doorway of frosted glass that said Lab 1 on it in large friendly letters.

They stepped through the door, and an ailing human greeted them, with a full beard, a blue lab coat, and his assistant, who was an alien of some kind, sort of a pink frog creature with four hopping legs, and a fifth for writing and another for hand-eye tasks, also in a little blue lab coat. He was about a foot tall. The old man introduced himself as Gregor, and he motioned to the little one, and said: “This is Zip.” Xip licked his eyes with his prehensile tongue, then smiled and croaked.

Gregor motioned them over to the table, and looking at Simon said, “We’ve heard about you, can we take a look please?”

Michael waved them off. “What have you got?”

“Well, we’ve got to shut down that tunnel right?”

“Right.”

“It thinks I have what you need, right this way.”