Howdy folks,
People have asked what music I listen to while writing
this stuff. Well, you'll find out a few selections here.
This one's quite a bit different from the others. If at all
possible, I'd reccomend reading this prolonged nightmare alone
at night during a thunderstorm. If not, how about down in the
basement by candlelight? |->
2G
AND YOU KNOW SOMETHING'S HAPPENING,
BUT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS
DO YOU, MR. JONES?
by
Scott Kellogg
- I -
You walk into the room like a camel and you frown.
You put your eyes in your pocket,
and your nose on the ground.
There ought to be a law against
you comin' 'round
You should be made to wear ear phones.
And you know something's happening,
but you don't know what it is.
Do you Mr. Jones?
"Ballad of a thin man" -Bob Dylan
Silence...
Silence...
I'm lying in a vast black void. How long have I been here?
Days?... Years?... Millennia?... Hmm. That's a problem. I
believe I am Doctor Mako Malenkoviepr. Well... I was the last
time I checked. Or am I? Or AM I? Do I really exist? Does
anything exist? Or is it all an illusion in my mind? I wonder
if I could be an illusion in someone else's mind?... So many
questions... No answers...
Does it matter? Even if it does matter, does it matter that
it matters?
All I can really say is: apparently, I am.
AAARRRRRR!! WHOAAAAH! HEY! That's cold! What's going on?
Brrr!...
It's gone now... What was that?
Yes, I am. And there's no apparently about it. But, who is
it that says I am? In other words, who am I? Hmmm. Oh yes, I
think I know...
Where am I. Can't see a thing. Total blackness. But I'm
thinking a lot clearer now: I know who I am anyway... That's a
start.
I'm lying on something. I can feel a floor. "Ok, let's
stand up doctor."
Well, I can hear my voice any way....
Try to stand. Muscles are slow. Ouch. Stiff too. But,
now that I'm standing, where am I? I still can't see.
A ring of luminous fog suddenly glowed around the doctor's
legs. Slowly, as though it were wavelets spreading out from a
stone dropped in a pond, the fog spread out slowly illuminating a
huge endless sea of thigh deep fog.
A buzzing sound swept in from behind the him. He whirled to
face it. But as he turned it was fading off in the distance.
Another flew in from overhead but was off to the horizon before
he saw it.
A third swept in.
He turned to face it and saw a vague shape headed straight
for his face.
He dropped to the ground, covering his head, shutting his
eyes tight.
Hey, I'm in a house!
A comfortable study spread around Dr. Malenkoviepr. Wood
paneling, a warm oil lamp, a large wooden desk, huge bookshelves,
hundreds of books.
And what books! I remember these... Here are my old text
books on telepathy... awareness... physics... psychology...
sophontology... Wow, there's all my old children's books! 'Burt
Dow Deep Sea Fisherman', 'How and Why Book of Starships'
'Millions of Cats', 'Vlezhdames and the Giant Peach'. I haven't
seen these in years!
He picked up a book: Oh yes, Burt Dow and Giggling Gull in
the Idely Tidely... I was about five years old.
Here's one I don't remember. What is this?
A red hologram album. Baby pictures of me. Me at ten years
old. Hey there's Chewersta! I wonder what ever happened to her?
I haven't heard from her since I was nineteen... Hey! what's
this? A hologram of us in the woods? That's not possible...
There weren't any cameras around there... Now this is getting
ridiculous... Where did this hologram of us come from?...
The buzzing swept in at the open window.
Through the window was the sea of fog sweeping out to the
horizon. Out of the black sky swept long fingerlike tendrils of
mist. Reaching, grasping, probing. They were almost to the
house. Reaching out to grab...
Mako slammed the window. Outside, the silence was broken by
a huge gust of wind as the tendrils hit the house. Whistling and
howling sounded all around. The other window's in the house were
all Wide open.
Got to move fast. Close all the windows! Move.
Quickly, he ran into the next room. The fingers were
sweeping up to the window. Slam the window! Lock it!
Next room! Again the probing tendrils were almost inside
when Mako slid the lock home.
Mako flew about the house slamming windows and shooting the
bolts of the locks. The tendrils flew to one window and the
next, and the next, and the next, and the next... Down to the
first floor, to the large window next to the door, and the
kitchen, and the den, and...
Just how many windows are there in this flaming house?
He ran to the last window and slammed it down. The glass
rattled as he shot the bolt.
The wind battered impotently outside the windows.
Ha! They're all locked! You can't get in!
Wait... I didn't lock the window in the study!
Up the stairs and on the right! Run! Go! Go! GO! Into
the study!
Suddenly, the window burst open. Streamers of fog shot into
the room and flew about like confused birds.
Slam the window and lock it!
As the lock slid in place, the fog tendrils faded and
disappeared.
Safe... Silence...
Mako slid to the floor, tired, but safe for the moment.
Slowly, a book began to pull itself off the shelf.
A telepathy text book opened by itself and it's pages began
to flip.
He stared at the book as he lay on the floor. "Who *Are*
you?..." The pages continued to turn... WHO ARE YOU!?!"
More pages began to flip.
Malenkoviepr jumped up, grabbed the book and put it back on
the shelf.
Slowly, a physics text came off the shelf, and began to read
itself.
Contemptuously, he put that one back too.
Slowly, several more books started abandoning the shelves
and reading themselves.
Mako collected them, and shoved them back.
A torrent of books flew off the shelves and began to flip
their pages.
Angrily, Malenkoviepr grabbed for them, but as one went back
another came out... And another... And another...
A mad contest of book pushing developed. Books flying,
pages flipping. Shelves revolting...
Someone was laughing.
Malenkoviepr shoved the last book on the shelf back. He
growled angrily at the thought that someone was enjoying this
somehow.
One last book lay on the desk. The red hologram album.
Slowly, it opened itself.
Fury enveloped Malenkoviepr. He turned to grab the book.
Suddenly, he was walking in glue. Paralyzed, watching the
nightmare world around him. He watched as the book slowly
proceeded to show his life story in holograms.
Born to a low, low station... Baby pictures... First
teeth... First steps... Psi testing... First time meeting a
Droyne... First school... Becoming an Intendant... Living with
the Droyne... First girl friend... First lover... College...
Becoming a Droyne... Becoming a Noble... Joining SORAG...
First assignment... Second assignment... The ancient base...
The ancient warriors... Their decision... Orders... Counter
Orders... The destruction of the base... The explosion...
The next page appeared black.
The page appeared to split into two opening doors. On the
page, Dr. Mako Malenkoviepr, Honorary Droyne marched into his
superior's office. The letter in his hand addressed:
"Lieutenant Baremkatlasche'. Personal.": The resignation. He
paced angrily about the office shouting at Baremkatlasche'. The
fool didn't understand the Droyne way, never would. He could not
expect Malenkoviepr to prevent them from being what they are.
You can not make iridium into tin. You can not make night into
day. But the idiot didn't understand. Wouldn't even try to
understand.
I resign. I will not be pushed around any more. I refuse
to go against what I know is right. Science is to improve life,
not destroy it. Baremkatlasche's goals are not improvement, but
enslavement. Any work for SORAG will be subverted.
I resign!
Doctor Mako Malenkoviepr slammed his the envelope onto
Baremkatlasche's desk with all his psionically enhanced strength.
A mug on the desk flew up a meter in the air fell back and
shattered.
The page went black again.
Suddenly, the hologram split open again. Malenkoviepr
marched into Baremkatlasche's office a second time. A second
time, he told his superior off. A second mug smashed.
I resign!
A third time the hologram replayed itself. A third mug
smashed.
I resign!!
A Forth...
I resign!!!
Fifth...
I Resign!!!!
I RESIGN!!!!!
Malenkoviepr screamed out in fury. He jumped to the desk
where the album laid. Grabbed it. Slammed it back into the book
shelf, and shouted out in psionic fury and hate, "I RESIGN!!!!!"
A psionic right cross whipped out into the blackness.
Suddenly, Malenkoviepr was back drifting in the black void.
But I felt the punch connect...
- II -
The Interrogator shook her dark hair from her shoulders.
"The subject has exceptional psionic strength and determination."
"How long will it take?"
"Unknown, I will have to make some further tests. But a
direct attack is not indicated here: his defenses are too well
laid."
- III -
Leave your cares behind.
Come with us and find
the pleasures of the
journey to the center of the mind.
Come along if you care
Come along if you dare
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind.
Beyond the seas of thought,
beyond the realm of what's
across the streams
of hopes and dreams
where things are really hot.
-The Amboy Dukes: Journey to the Center of the Mind
Malenkoviepr bounced down the beach at top speed. The grav
harness absorbed most of his weight, but still gravity dragged at
him, keeping him grounded where evolution had put him. Wind
gusted and he threw wide his metal wings. He rose over the
windswept seas of Tesser.
Tesser. Land of the Droyne. Home.
His silver wings tugged pleasantly at his muscles as he
pulled himself aloft. The winds were his. He rose higher
seeking out the updrafts as he tacked up wind. The rolling sea
below him shouted a challenge up to him and he dove to combat.
Screaming down over the waves he dipped and rolled over the
blue foam. The wave tips set up a deadly obstacle course that he
swept through with ease. One dipped wing tip and he would drown:
no one can swim with five meters of wing span strapped on his
arms.
Briefly he thought of the greater ease of regulation grav
belts, but no grav belt gave the user actual flight. Altitude
must be fought for. Flight is not mere movement while aloft but
a sonnet of motion. Wings lend grace, poise, flow.
The Droyne, his adopted people disdained grav belts. Even
Mako's artificial wings seemed little better than crutches
compared with wings of flesh, bone and sinue.
But even the Droyne were not the captains of the air. Their
stubby wings were almost vestigial. Evolution had turned them
away from the air. Many of them could not fly at all.
Of all intelligent creatures yet found, only one race truly
lived in the air. The two Ael Yaels flew circled overhead.
They soared on the blustery sea winds of Tesser. Bat like
wings stretched five meters in wing span gave them the edge over
the tiny wings of the Droyne. Their golden skin flashed in the
light of Tesser's sun as Mako rose on flashing wings to join
them.
The two creatures were truly alien in flesh and mind. They
evolved in a totally different ecological niche from Humans.
Aerial carnivores, nearly solitary creatures. Far from Humans
and Droyne. For example they had never developed a thing called
a government. Trying to explain a nation to them was like
explaining sexual reproduction to an amoeba.
They had the one system of running their planet no Human
world ever could even attempt: anarchy. (That which governs
best, governs least.) Thus, they could safely be invited into
the Consulate, despite the fact that they were Imperial citizens,
For to them there was no great difference between one group of
humans and another. Humans all acted the same to them.
In a flash the two came together and rose almost vertically
in an ascending corkscrew, describing by their motion a double
helix. Slowly they reached for each others talons. As they
touched and grasped each other, they folded back their wings and
stalled. They fell in a double hammerhead that sent them
plunging down. Down toward the waves, they tumbled out of
control clinging to each other.
Slowly, with great reluctance they released the others
talons and pulled out of the roaring dive and sped off with a
flash of golden wings in close formation.
Mako banked and flipped just for the sheer joy of it. He
leapt from wind to wind as an acrobat of the sky. The winds gave
a thunderous applause as he flipped over into a showman's outside
loop coming out in a hammer head of his own.
"CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH!" Kittan's warning crossed languages and
jolted him back to awareness of their mission. Four frigate
birds flew in towards the emerging baby sea turtles. Odd, how
the ancients had brought both species this far from Earth. Mako
rolled and dove in hot pursuit.
Hloch made the first pass at the flock of attackers. The
carnivore's talons flashed, striking one from the air. The other
three cried out in surprise and banked away. Hloch dropped down
and caught his prey as it fell and sunk his teeth in.
Kittan veered off after one of the frightened hunters. The
frigate bird swooped avoiding her claws but not quick enough to
avoid her powerful tail. The crushing blow nearly severed the
creatures wings and it went plummeting to the ground. She dove
and caught the falling victim.
Mako came into the fray slower than the others as the
remaining two frigate birds realizing they weren't pursued closed
back on the helpless turtles struggling across the sand. Mako
had no claws or tail but simply battered both with his wings,
blasting them from the air.
The sea turtles crawled on to the open ocean and safety as
the three scientists provided their air cover.
On the ground the two Aels exchanged their catches and
proceeded to tear into the carcasses with vigor, feasting
hungrily on the bloodied birds.
Mako swung in and landed close by.
"Good hunting, Mako!" called Hloch. The creature leapt to
retrieve one of the birds Mako had killed. Hloch washed it
briefly in a tidal pool and held it out to Mako as he unstrapped
his arms from his silvery wings.
It was a mess: wing and neck broken, bleeding from the
eyes. Mako grimaced at the sight of it as the alien scientist
held it, his face covered in the blood of his mate's kill. He
seemed puzzled.
Mako glanced into the Ael's mind. "Why does this human not
take his own catch? Does he intend to waste it?"
At last Kittan spoke up. "You two have been studying each
other for some time now. Hloch, haven't you seen humans don't
like blood? And you Mako, do you not see that we never hunt for
sport?"
For a moment they stood watching each other, then Mako took
the carcass and carefully broke off it's wing. The rest he
presented to Kittan who bowed her thanks and shredded the bird's
remains. The other bird was presented to Hloch.
He examined the wing he still held and attempted to gnaw it.
It was tough for his omnivorous teeth to pick apart raw, as the
Ael Yaels did, but it was for appearances anyway.
Mako thought to himself, "Well, you were the one who wanted
to study avian sophonts weren't you?"
- IV -
"Well?"
The Interrogator nodded, "The subject is responding to the
new direction of attack."
"Turn up the pressure. We need him."
- V -
Come along if you care
Come along if you dare
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind.
But please realize,
you'll probably be surprised.
For it's a land unknown to man
where fantasy is fact.
So if you can,
please understand:
You might not come back.
-The Amboy Dukes: Journey to the Center of the Mind
Malenkoviepr was alone on the beach. A dark haired frigate
bird was sweeping in towards the crawling baby sea turtles.
The gauss rifle came into his arms.
Must protect the turtles!
He opened up the gauss rifle on full automatic. Ten rounds
of gauss needles went into the bird at hypersonic velocity. Red
mist came down. Tiny red fragments hit the ground.
A great whirling noise came up behind him. Slowly he turned
and saw a great dark cloud. The cloud whirred and flowed as it
came. A huge cloud looking like a flowing amoeba.
It began to resolve itself into components.
Hundreds upon thousands of frigate birds.
Malenkoviepr grabbed a mounted VRF gauss gun.
The air thundered with their wings as they came.
The gauss gun vomited steel into the cloud.
Hundreds dropped. With their eyes open...
They kept coming.
The gauss gun rattled and thundered. The cloud turned from
black to red.
Still they came.
One hundred meters... One hundred fell... Ninety meters...
Five hundred fell... Seventy meters... Five thousand fall...
Fifty meters... Fifty thousand fell... Forty meters... One
million... Five million... Ten million... Fifty million...
All with their eyes open...
The sky runs red with blood and feathers... Death wears a
hat and carries a VRF gauss gun...
The eyes still stare... Millions of dead eyes looked up
from the sand.
The turtles crawl on towards the sea and safety...
"The waves are retreating... The tide's going out...
They'll never reach it..."
The sky was a bone white sclera, the setting sun, an iris
and pupil of a giant piercing blue eye.
Slowly, the pupil expanded and swallowed the sky.
Mako kicked a dead frigate bird splattering the sand black.
Slowly, it began to ooze a vile smelling black liquid onto the
sand.
The blackness flowed across the sand to another frigate bird
corpse. The second began to flow, and slowly it spread. The
carcasses becoming gaunt as their blackness flowed freely from
them.
A red orange glow came from behind Mako. Slowly, he turned
to look. Behind him the beach was littered with birds. It
seemed to glow red all around him.
He was looking into the eyes of a dead bird. It was gutted
by a gauss needle and was bleeding black.
The eyes caught the reflection of the rising reddish moon.
It hung on the horizon and seemed to grow deeper and deeper red.
As the moon glowed so did the reflection in the eyes of the
carcasses on the beach. The glow waxed as the sun waned.
Brighter and brighter and colder and colder, the eyes glowed like
tiny cigarettes, flaming... staring...
The carcasses melted slowly and flowed across the sand.
All the while, the eyes stayed focused on Malenkoviepr.
The blackness began to flow together.
The slime climbed onto itself mounting and molding itself as
it flowed together with its flaming red eyes staring. A hideous
parody of human legs began to form as the black ooze lumped
together.
The blackness seeped up the legs and began to form a torso.
Higher and higher it rose. Soon it was two meters tall and still
growing. Distorted faces appeared in the mire of the forming
thing.
Slowly, the thing formed itself into a grotesquely fat and
flabby torso. A lump of a faceless head came into being.
Shoulder stumps began to shape themselves and then lengthen into
arms.
Revolted, Mako grabbed the VRF gauss gun, swivelled it on
its mount and fired straight into its quivering flab of a belly.
The gauss needles ripped open the black ooze, spattering it
like pudding. The edges of the hole waved back like lips.
Jagged teeth appeared in the gaping hole and the mouth shut
itself with a snap erasing any trace that it ever had been there.
Mako pulled the trigger for another blast.
Nothing happened.
Quickly he rechecked the gun. All in order? Then fire!
The gun kicked in its mount. The projectiles flew into the
oozing black form, splattering the black ichor.
The gun began to thump.
Mako glanced down at the gun and back at the black figure.
The gun was firing sloppy black lumps of filth into the thing.
The globules were slamming into the blob, adding to its loathsome
mass.
Quickly, Mako released the trigger.
The gun continued to fire. The thing was growing.
He tried to turn the gun away from the thing. The mount was
frozen. He hammered on it with his fists.
The gun continued to chug out the lumps of black ichor. It
was growing. Five meters tall and growing. It towered into the
darkening sky, a quivering slime of a human blob. The thing
flowed and shuddered as the slime jetted from the VRF gauss gun
into its abhorrent form adding to its bulk as it grew... topping
ten meters and still growing.
It leaned the lump of its head back. A cavernous, blood red
maw opened up and it let out a gurgling, strangling roar. A
cloud of stench billowed from its gaping mouth like the rotting
of an open grave, while black ichor dripped onto its lump of a
torso. The ichor flowed across the thing and reformed as part of
its huge frame: twelve meters and climbing.
The head came forward and glowered at Mako with a blind
face. Slowly, two pits formed above the sealed gape of the
mouth. The pits began to get covered over as eyes began to form.
Mako backed away in horror from the forming beast, watching
as the pits molded closed lids over the rapidly growing eyes. He
turned and ran as the thing towered past fifteen meters of
loathsome flabby filth.
The darkness shrouded the beach with a purple sky while the
blood red moon stared at the scene.
Mako ran across the sand to the dunes with his pulse
pounding in his ears. Slick, spiky dune grass slashed at his
clothes as he ran over the sand shredding the fabric like razors.
Through the torn cloth, the blades sliced at his flesh. His skin
ran wet with sweat and blood.
He reached the foot of the first dune and climbed up the
steep sand pile on all fours. The sand bit at the cuts on his
hands as though the skin was being peeled away from his bones
layer by layer.
He topped the dune and glanced back.
A hundred meters away, the thing's eye lids opened. Inside
the eye was gloss black. Dimly, a tiny red glow pulsed inside
the pit of the eyes. It glowed dimly and then faded to
blackness, then again it began to glow a little brighter than
before. Again it faded away. More brightly, the eye pulsed like
a beacon. It glowed and flickered like a bright flame caught in
a wind.
Then the eyes lit up brightly in a flaming blood red.
Mako fled across the dune and into a dead forest. The
leafless trees were sparse and monstrous while the blood moon
stared down at him.
In the distance a thunderous sucking sounded like a foot
being pulled from a mire. Then a pile driver came down and
smashed the ground.
The thing had begun to walk.
Mako ran under the sparse cover of the dead trees, the
sucking pile driver still coming: battering its way after him.
He ran and ran through the wasteland forest. Every few meters a
tree blocked his path and he narrowly avoided hitting them as he
ran through the darkness.
The sucking pile drivers came closer as he ran. Quickly, he
changed course in hope the thing would follow the straight line
he'd been going on.
For a moment he couldn't tell where the thing was going it
seemed to hesitate and then strike after him again following
closely.
The sky light up with the red searchlights of its eyes as it
sought him. A huge ripping sound came as trees began to be torn
from their roots as it passed through. The stench of its breath
came down and hugged the ground like a fog.
Suddenly, it was in front of Mako. The red eyes towered
over the trees glowering at him.
His heart in his mouth, Mako skidded to a stop. He turned
and jumped...
He sailed over the trees and into the night sky. The trees
reached out their branches after him, but he flew over them.
Slowly, he reached the top of his an and began to come down.
He clawed at the wind, but to no avail.
Down he came through the slicing branches of the dead trees.
He landed in a thigh deep fog. The ground squished under his
feet as he skidded to a stop.
Again, he leapt into the air and safety. "A few more jumps
like this and that thing will Never find me..."
The prodigious leaps carried him fifty meters at a time.
Soon, he was out of the forest and on a fog covered plain. His
heart soaring as he left the grotesque abhorrence far behind,
sucking and roaring impotently after him.
"So long sucker!" he called after it as he reached the top
of an arc. Slowly, he descended to the fog and sank in thigh
deep before touching the wet sloppy ground.
The mud grabbed at his feet pulling him down. He was up to
his calves and still going down. He kicked at the muck as he
sank deeper.
It flowed up his legs and over his abdomen. He grabbed for
the plain grass growing in the mud, but it tore from its roots
leaving nothing to pull on.
He sank up to his chest in bog stench with only his arms and
head above the stinking ooze.
Red searchlights swept the horizon as the thing followed his
path. Closer and closer it came. Mako huddled down in the fog
trying to hide, but the fog was thinning rapidly at the thing's
approach.
He could hear its sloppy pounding footsteps as it came on.
Mako struggled desperately in the mire, grabbing for
anything to pull him out; but nothing came to hand and the mud
was too thick to swim and too liquid to support him.
The thing reached the edge of the bog for it's pounding
steps turned ponderously to sloppy sucking sounds.
It gurgled and howled its triumph. The red eyes stared at
him as he struggled in the mire, illuminated in the beam of the
blood red search lights.
"CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH!!!!!" sounded from the sky as a
whirling winged form dove from the red moon in the sky.
Mako barely recognized the Ael Yael before Hloch's talons
sunk into his shoulders and began beating wings over his head
trying to lift the trapped scientist.
Agonizingly, millimeter by millimeter Mako began to rise
from the slime.
Suddenly, the thing saw its caught prey escaping and
screamed in a horrible high pitched whistle. It began pounding
across the bog sinking up to its knees in the muck.
Hloch pulled and strained against the suction of the bog as
it pulled at Mako.
The thing was upon them. It screamed a gurgling laugh and
swatted the Ael Yael scientist to the ground.
Hloch smashed into the muck with his wings crushed. He did
not move.
It reached for Malenkoviepr. Outstretched, barrel thick
fingers stuck into the bog around him like a cage. Over him the
hand of death closed in a fist blotting out the skies. The ichor
flowed over his body and up his neck.
It was cold as a winter slaughter house ripping the warmth
from him as it flowed up his neck and over his face. He clamped
his mouth tight but it crept up his nose and into his throat
slowly, agonizingly filling his mouth and lungs. Mako suffocated
as the slime oozed over him.
The universe faded into blackness as Mako drowned in the
filth.
Pleasant dreams! |->
Scott