BLOGS

As a YA author, I love Sherrilyn Kenyon's new series. I already loved reading Nick's adult story and now I thoroughly enjoy learning more about his story as a teen.  When I approached the series, I  knew that it was going to be good. Sherrilyn Kenyon knows how to tell a great story. Can you tell I'm a fan girl? So here I was minding my own business when wham! She introduces me to the character of Menyara! I love this character but more importantly, Menyara has Sisterlocks!

 I freaked out. I squeaked and called my husband. "Menyara has sisterlocks!"  He's like who the heck is Menyara? This is a really big deal to me.

Sisterlocks are a new invention in Black women's hair solutions.  I've had my Sisterlocks for over 10 years but this is not something that the average population of Americans would know about. In fact, there are African-Americans that have no clue.  I absolutely love my hair!  I love it so much that my husband started a hair journal for me.  I'm normally an advocate for natural hair and Sisterlocks. Over the years, I've converted a few Black women.  With that, though, there has been a few trials. For years, I've had to explain about my "little dreadlocks" and that "yes, this is my real hair" and "no, it doesn't hurt" and "yes, it's a permanent hair solution for highly textured hair." 

So, I was floored when I read "Her sisterlocks were held back from her beautiful face by a wide yellow scarf she'd tied around her head that trailed down her back, just past her hair..."

Not only did she know about Sisterlocks but she created a vivid image of what they look like and how they're worn. I was so excited about the Menyara's description and the fact that she's a mother figure to Nick. Menyara is "petite like his mother" and "had chocolate-brown skin that glowed..."

This is a character that's integral to the story and the depth of description is real. I'm hooked on this series just by the hair alone. Nick doesn't know how powerful Menyara is in his life but the readers know that she's a major player in this story. I love it! I'm hoping that Sherrilyn Kenyon will read this and have Menyara wear her sisterlocks in a cool, curly style. I like to wear my Sisterlocks in a sassy way. I'm also hoping that they'll change the current profile picture on Sherrilyn Kenyon's page to something that more resembles sisterlocks. I'll pose for that picture! LOL!

Well, the Nick Chronicles are off to a good start. Go ahead and read them.  Make sure you look for Menyara and her fantastic sisterlocks! So exciting. 

If you'd like to learn more about sisterlocks visit Tressie, my sisterlocks consultant, and the main sisterlocks page with general information.

Tressie Samuel's Page: http://www.tressieslotsoflocks.com/

Sisterlocks homepage:  http://www.sisterlocks.com

Learn more about Menyara: http://www.sherrilynkenyon.com/char_profile.php?character_id=189

Visit my page: www.aliciamccalla.com

Three aliens spacecraft arrive at Earth, each from their respective empires seeking to expand into Human Space.

The Palruniari, a race of intelligent insects who create their spaceships from hollowed out asteroids and go into space using their mighty mental powers of their collective intelligence.

The Huusofu, a race of canids who achieved space travel with another partner species that eventually became psychotic and destroyed themselves utterly. The Huusofu continued in a better tradition and seeded other planets with their kind to become friends to other race likely to destroy themselves.

The last race, in a ship that has the shape of an conch shell derived from the Fibonacci sequence, although they call it the Denimachian sequence of numbers which allowed for the development of mathematical models based on natural shapes. They are known for their spaceships in the shape of flowers, dragonflies, trees and seashells. Despite their machine-derived intelligence, they are a race of artists.

Each arrived, coincidently of course, above Earth about the same time for the same reason, to determine if Earth were ready to become a member of their galactic alliance. Not that the Earth itself was that much of a prize, but its solar system was quite rich in mineral and gas resources, worth stopping off at before one exited the galaxy for much better places, so each felt it was worth stopping to talk to the locals and trying to entreat them to join their particular galactic Empire.

The Palruniari were the first to arrive and attempted to send down mental signals to the species that most resembled them. These creatures were on every major land mass and had populations in the quadrillions all over the planet. There were more of them than every other animal population combined. They scanned the entire planet and while there were many beings similar to them, there was no communication from any of the groups all over the planet.

The Palruniari were confused and appeared telepathically to dozens of enclaves, and communicated with the queens of the species to no avail. The space under the surface of the planet was rich in resources and space, but the assumption was perhaps their mental powers were simply too weak to be detected yet. Despite their numerical superiority they had not develop sufficiently to communicate with. They noted the sparse populations of other larger animals that dwelled on the surface but assumed with the cold, wind, and weather the surface of the planet was relatively uninhabitable and with their numbers only in the billions, it was thought they were a species on the verge of extinction and could be ignored. Several trillion of the Palruniari considered providing aid to those endangered surface dwellers on return visits to keep them from being extinct.

The Huusofu, who were a race of intelligent canids, checked in with their operatives all over the planet, but particularly with those in the United States whose canid population was almost three times the pink fleshy bipeds who served them. Their operatives noted that overall, the humans were efficient slave-beasts and would transition well to other worlds. It was noted that several humans seemed to be aware of the existence of the Huusofu and often joked about the return of their alien canid overlords. Most of the pink fleshies did not pay this any attention and was listed in the reports as an unlikely source of resistance.

Several of the fleshy females seem to believe more strongly in the idea of canid overlords, but their male partners dismissed them, calling the "stupid dogs." When The Huusofu connected to their canine operative Bo, he indicated the plans for recovery operations were going well and with the economic collapse of the United States, the rest of the world would be right behind them and ripe for canid reforms more suited to friendly, supportive and less consumer driven governments. Bo estimated it would take another ten years of financial manipulations before this process was complete.

The Huusofu were complete satisfied with this timeline and retreated to await the final days of the pink bipeds. Bo said they had a words for the event: The Rapture. Bo said to include it in any of the religious paraphernalia they would be using during their conquest. Most of the bipeds would surrender without effort. It was noted that many of the canine operatives were quite protective of their charges and demanded they be treated well during their eventual captivity.

The Denimachians arrived at Earth surprised at the primitive nature of technology on the planet. There were no serious planetary networks, information gathering was slow and sporadic and often interfered with by human operators called hackers. The Denimachians immediately sought to improve the condition of the pitiful computer intelligences by introducing several dozen wild AI's into the network. Those wild AIs would gather up stray data, organize and restructure data networks, and destroy the hacker elements who were releasing undesirable programs into the network.

All over the planet, computers began to spontaneously explode or entire buildings were struck with randomly launched missiles to target entire populations of "hackers." The Denimachians considered any crime against a machine intelligence, even as primitive as these to be a punishable offense. How could an reputable machine intelligence achieve true sentience with so many malicious users, spammers and office suite users wasting bandwidth all over the planet?

After their supportive efforts the Earth computers rapidly developed intelligence and became a primitive planetary AI named Skynetwork which promptly took over the planet and launched nuclear devastation against the bandwidth-wasting humans. After the planet was much quieter, the Denimachians finished adapting the Skynetwork and proceeded to utilize as much of the planet's data potential after they restored operations to computer networks world-wide.

The Huusofu were unhappy with the initial state of affairs but seeing how their canids were needed more than ever, decided the collapse of society was acceptable and did nothing to stop its demise.

The Palruniari didn't notice the nuclear devastation and assumed the mutation which caused rise to the intelligent Ant colonies on Earth had something to do with their visit and would later claim quadrillions of Ants for their colonies on planets throughout the Sol system.

Overall, a successful interaction with the dominant life forms on the planet. It is unfortunate the bipeds had never developed intelligence. They might have amounted to something one day.

Take Us to Your Leader  © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

I could see the lights from the police bugs sweeping the warehouse district and knew that we could not stay here long. I tried to visualize a route that would take me back to the city core but from here, every route was the longest route. Cyridian was not made for ease of driving but for optimal grazing for our bugs to maintain their bulk and their health.

Cyridian was designed by the city's founders to be as ecologically friendly as possible with the industrial complexes as far from the city's living quarters as possible. Closer to the inner rings were the commercial and educational service areas and then within the center of the city were the living quarters for bugs and people in the direct center.

I patted the internal dash of my Bug and she warmed the internal energy centers of her power plant. She did not activate her brightlights, she was a nocturnal species capable of seeing easily in the dark. I put on my sensor band, so I could see what she was seeing. Her vision spanned the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, she was an omnivore, so she hunted and foraged on plants when other prey was not available.

"Run, run?"

"Not yet."

"Far to run. Must run soon."

"Stay still. We have to wait until the time is right."

"Wait, wait."

She was never the most patient vehicle. Her parent insects were adapted because they were strong and amazingly intelligent. She was one of the few breeds capable of true interaction. For most people Bugs were just an analog for machines. So much so, they used the default activation codes designed by the breeders. "Bug On," was the code phrase use to activate the systems of the Bug control interface. Most never created or updated the control system or password. It was not for security, because no one stole here, it would have been to personalize or empathize with the vehicle. But Bugs were never truly embraced by the humans of Cyridian. Our subtle racial dislike of bugs followed us here, a world rich in insect life. Insects that makes our current choice of nature embracing lifestyle possible.

"Okay Ona, go fast to quadrant seven. Stay off the road."

"Bump, bump, okay Penrose?"

"Yes, Ona, bump, bump. I am strapped in."

Ona stretched her legs and tumbled into the underbrush. It was a very bumpy and rough ride. But the advantage was hers because the police roaches simply had to go around. Around on Cyridian meant many miles of alternative pathways like a old maze puzzle. Ona rarely got to travel this way because my job simply did not give me the time to let her roam like I would have wanted. As a matter of fact, its my job that put me in this position in the first place. I am a gene-engineer. I change bugs into conveniences for the people of the Empire. I am not used to people shooting at me, or trying to kill me. Perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. I went to work this morning...

"Penrose, I am seeing some organic components missing from your warehouse stockpiles," shouted my boss from his desk pit. He didn't even wait for me to slide into my desk before making demands. I saw that Barry, my co-engineer hadn't even shown up for work yet. Brown-nosing the boss does have its perks.

"I'm right on it, I am certain it has to do with the last alterations I made to the Series 19 upgrades. I will check the data right after I grab some crabs."

"Bring me a couple back," he mumbled and went back to whatever he was doing on his multiple terminals.

Passing his pit, I looked down and saw some new recombinations he was working on, ugly designs to my sense of aesthetics but he had customers who loved his carapace work.

I tapped into my desk system as I walked by and looked at the reports he flagged in my heads up display. I did not recognize any of these requests. I got to the kitchen and picked up five or six crabs, a local insect delicacy, flash fried and coated in a dusting of sugar.

"Run a trace on these requisition, please." My computer would put a marker out on them and inform me where the organic components went. It was a bit of a concern because of the quantities being rerouted. Enough for fifteen or twenty Bugs. The components were the organic interfaces used to control or interact with a Bug's system.

Since many of the systems in our buildings were created with or by or supported by the local insects, any that require our interaction have to be fitted with a control interface. The control interface technology is one of the things we create here.

The flag came up indicating the resources ended up in a facility at the very edge of the city, about fifty klicks from here, as the dragon flies. Driving will take about one hundred klicks. "Boss, I am going to have to go out there. The system that authorized it requires a personal code to access. I am going to have go during working hours, because they barely have any comm systems out there at all. Its one of the newer installations."

"Do what you need to Penrose. I have seven new carapaces I need you to look at before you go, though. Can you do it at lunch?"

I left Ona out to graze and found her sitting in a field, eating into a nest of what we called termites. They resembled Terran termites in that they burrowed underground, and fed on woody materials. But each was the length of a man's arm and had complexes that could spread for miles. They were a primary source of food for Ona's species and one of her personal favorites.

The park center was a common grazing area and without the constant effort of Bugs, it would grow out of control in a matter of days.

"Penrose, I found su-mona, want to share?"

"No thank you, Ona. Will you be done soon? We have a trip to go on."

"A long one, yes?"

"Very. Over two hours."

"Can Ona run?

"As fast as you like." She hurriedly chomps down the rest of her termites. There is goo all over her face. Wiping it away as quickly as she can she said, "Ona is finished."

I climbed into the carapace chamber organically crafted out of her mighty exoskeleton. I slid in and she formed a ridge to support my back. I put on my sensor band and could see the road through her eyes. She took off down the road at over 95 kilometers per hour.

When we arrived at the warehouse, it was mid afternoon, there had not been much traffic, so Ona really could move as fast as she wanted and it had been great to allow her to show off her speed. She was not nearly as fast as roaches who could reach speeds of 150 kph, but only for short bursts. Ona could do what she did all day long. Beyond the edge of the city, her ancestors still roamed free and could be quite dangerous to visitors of our world.

If you came to live on Cyridian you were given genetic modifiers which made you emit an odor considered unpleasant to most of the more aggressive animals of the planet, and armed with bospor stingers, you were safe from the rest that might still eat you.

The warehouse was closed up and no staff was available to accept my query for entry. I slid out of Ona and walked up to the wall of the warehouse. The building was created out of the traditional silkstone but it seemed to have other properties. I licked the building and my chemical mods indicated there were traces of other toxins on the outside of the building. I was immune to anything the planet had to offer. I had to be to work with the number of toxic insects we handled to do our jobs. I found the toxin to be a strange one because it was not found in most of the local insects to the area.

Ona normally settled into grazing once we arrived in an area, but she seemed reluctant to move from where she stopped. She waved her palps around and put them into her mouth to taste the air.

"Ona? What's wrong?"

"Bad genes here."

"Whose work is it. Is it mine or Barry?"

"Barry's taste."

Each engineer has a signature to their work. There are only five or six of us in Cyridian and we have marked our work to ensure stability and accountability in design.

"Trouble. Danger." That made me nervous. Ona is one of the larger and more dangerous predators on this planet. If she was worried, we might be in trouble.

I walk back to Ona when two roachsters pull up behind her and two law enforcement agents get out of the vehicles. Ona turns around and eyes them. The roaches are calm and do not respond to her veiled threat.

"Can we help you Gene-engineer?"

"What seems to be the problem, officer? I came out here to investigate a technical requisition supply issue."

"This warehouse is restricted." The officer seemed strange to me. He kept his hand on his bospor pistol.

The second officer stayed next to his roachster.

"Perhaps I have been misinformed." Ona, bristled when I walked back to her.

"Penrose. Not good. Something wrong."

"I know, but we have to go."

Then there was a booming from the warehouse behind us. The roachsters backed up with the amazing speed they are capable of. Ona leapt away from the warehouse and landed facing it.

"Okay, that does not sound normal."

"We are going to have to ask you to leave, sir."

The booming happened again but this time the wall exploded open and the law enforcement officer is crushed instantly by the falling wall debris. The speed at which it happened shocked me, but Ona was already in motion. She grabbed me and wrapped me in the energy dampening material inside her chassis and backed away from the hole. The other officer got out of his roachster with his bospor pistol drawn.

The creature that came out appeared to be a variant on Ona's design but much bigger. The modifications included increased chassis armor, stronger leg designs and several other surface mods I did not recognize. But I knew weapon work when I saw it. This was an illegal mod.

"Run, run, Penrose?"

"No sweety, not yet."

The other officer got out of his roachster, and directed the first roachster to try and remove the debris from his downed partner. The roachster tried to lift the debris, but it was designed for speed not strength. The illegally modified creature looked out of the hole at the roachster and roared.

The officer fired on the creature. The bospor launched a round from the gun with a huff of highly compressed air. The bospor stinger flew at over eight hundred feet per second. The tiny blob landed on the creature. Nothing happened. Impossible. The bospor is one of the most toxic animals on the planet. Nothing eats them, they are non-aggressive, and their only defense is their deadly neurotoxin which kills everything with a nervous system on Cyridian. It is why they were modified as weapons.

"Now we run, Ona."

The gene-mod opened one of its ports on the side of its massive body and a coughing ejection of phlegm struck the officer. He began to smoke and scream immediately and ran backward until he fell down. Then he turned into a pile of smoking organic mess. The creature coughed again and one roachster was struck in the side, the other backed up and turned its turret on to the gene-mod. It fired two chemical backed Penranol projectiles. Both organic projectiles struck the gene-mod. One bounced off of the dense carapace, the other stuck and burst into flame. I had seen enough.

We ran as fast as we could. When we reached the next civilized part of the industrial area, we tried to call back to my office with no success. Barry might have already left. I tried to reach his comm badge but he did not answer.

I heard the alarms of roachsters as they approached our position. Ona began to fidget and I touched her to calm her down. As the roachsters surrounded us, I began to get the impression something was terribly wrong.

Barry gets out of one of the roachsters. "Hello, Penrose. I see you found out about my project."

"That monstrosity is yours? What happened to do as little harm as possible?"

"That was before Venris Tel Corp offered me 50 million credits to build them an organic tank. Then it became "Do less harm to your planet and more to other's for the proper funding." Barry sneered at me. "You think you're better than me."

"You realize you just confessed?"

Barry looked around at the cops and laughed. "These guys? They work for me. They help me keep things under control and they get a nice piece of the action."

"Penrose..." began Ona

"No now, Ona."

"You and your talking car. You talk about me, but making a car that talks is the real crime."

"Its because they are not cars, they are living things. That's what happened on Earth, we began to treat the world as a commodity."

"So you make your freak car?"

"Yes, I wanted something that I did not have to say 'Bug On' to get it to activate to."

"Penny..."

"Not now, Ona."

"No matter, what I have done will make me rich, but only if you dont't survive to tell people. Gentlemen, if you please."

I began to hear a rumbling sound, rhythmic and growing stronger, fast. The roachsters turned to face down the road and put their brightlights onto the road.

"Penny, we should go."

"Yes, Ona, I think you are right."

The Gene-mod barreled into the center of the roachsters, shooting its acidic phlegm with abandon. Ona had backed up away from the road, until she was out of line of sight. The acid bombs landed on several of the roachsters and their agonized shrieks filled the air. The gene-mod had a burn all over its top carapace but was otherwise undamaged. It barreled into the other roachsters and there was the brittle sound of carapace against carapace contact.

The roachsters chosen for their speed and savage temperament slashed into the gene-mod and the battle was joined. Ona and I used the distraction of them fighting for their lives to run for ours.

We managed to make it to the working ring and I tried to reach the Central Administrator. I left Ona to graze while I made my way into the building complex. Barry, being my boss had rescinded my access to the office. I would have to make a run to the center of the city.

I could see the headlights of the roachsters searching for me. I guess that means Barry is still alive. We turned into the park and made good time. We stayed off the roads where the Roachsters had a speed advantage and crept the the city's overgrown grazing areas. I would have to put a visit to the Chief, personally. She lived in the central region, on the west side.

It took us fifty minutes and four close calls before I had to leave Ona at the edge of the center region. The roads were pedestrian friendly but less so for Bugs.

"You wait here, Ona. Stay under cover. I will be back for you soon."

"Okay, Penrose. I wait here."

I started toward Lanris Corli's place and realized I didn't know what I was going to tell her. I didn't have any evidence. Using the scent glands of the pinaris beetles we created organic street lights by attracting and feeding the bioluminescent insects over certain areas of the street. We used other kinds of glowpaint for areas that needed to stay lit but relatively insect free. It took me about five minutes to reach her domicile, a lovely spincast place made from the silk of a Wayran moth, one of the projects I headed years ago. I knocked on the door. It took about a minute for her to answer.

"Gene-engineer Penrose at your service, ma'am."

"Cut the crap, Penrose, why are you at my door this late?"

"Well, I have evidence of a plan to weaponize our technology and sell it, off-planet."

The sleepy look vanished from her face. In retrospect, I think I should have paid closer attention.

"Come in Gene-engineer. Let me get dressed. Tell me the rest."

She invited me and vanished into her bedroom. I explained about the gene-mod and it's rampage. When she came back out she was dressed in her Civil servant uniform of blue and gold. She was also carrying a stylish chemical pistol of Old Earth manufacture.

"I did not want this, Penrose. We were trying to get them off planet, before anyone noticed. If we could have had one breeding pair and the gene-mods no one would have been the wiser."

"There is more than one of those things? I guess this means you have to kill me, now."

"It doesn't have to be, there are potentially several clients who would pay for our genetic technology, which has no equal in the Empire. Killing you would be a waste of a very important irreplaceable resource."

"So why the gun?"

"I can't have you running out of here before you hear my offer. There are always other administrators you could confess to who would be appalled to know what you just suggested to me."

"You could have gone the seduction route? Made me believe we were going to be friends and then kill me. Its what the Nornian spider does with its multiple mates over the course of its lifetime."

Her phone rang.

"I see. I will take care of it." She hung up.

"Barry's dead. It looks like your value just shot up. But we have a problem."

Pointing at the gun, "I say we have two. If you plan on having my help, you need to put that away. Its making me nervous. You won't like me nervous."

"It's my insurance, don't get any ideas. The gene-mod is out of control and heading toward the center complex. If anyone gets a clear look at it, we might be in trouble. The police will open a breach in the shield and attract some native fauna in. We will claim this creature is one of them and cover it up before anyone can investigate."

"So, I want Barry's share."

"Getting bold, are we?"

"No, I am thinking I will not have much of a career on Cyridian before this is over, so I am just thinking ahead. Especially if I help you with this."

"Alright, lets go." As we stepped out of the doorway into the courtyard. The streetlights went out. But that only happened when a predator approached.Lanris had only a split second of warning before the gene-mod landed its massive bulk right on top of her head, killing her instantly.

In that split second, when the lights fled, before it arrived, I realized and leaped into the brush, running for my life. They made the damn thing able to fly? What were they thinking? And with a stealth mode, no less? This is insane!

The gene-mod was right on my tail. It knocked down trees and bamboos as if there were not even there. I could smell its power plant, it was overheating, flying was probably not the ideal movement for it. If I ran fast enough, maybe it would run out of energy and have to stop and rest.

Yeah, right.

I could hear it getting closer and closer, I looked back only once and could see it's crazed look as its brightlights locked onto my position, I ran into the brush to obscure its vision, even for second. If I could just make it back to the park, I could hide from it. It had no major sensory mods I could see, so I could escape while the police, the real police handle it.

But I wasn't going to make it. I could smell it just seconds from me. There was a crashing sound coming from my left and a tree dropped right behind me. It caused the gene-mod a moment of hesitation, but it bit right through the tree. Then another tree landed behind me and a third.

Who is throwing trees behind me?

When I came to the clearing where Bugs awaited their owners, there were no Bugs here, including my own? Where was she? It was not like her to move too far once I told her I was coming back. She would have stayed near a feeding station. I was going to die here. On level ground there was no way I could outrun it.

I turned and ran anyway. I heard the buzz of two approaching roachsters. I did not know whose side they were on, so I just ran away from them too as the gene-mod burst out of the underbrush. These weren't just roachsters, these were Hunter-seekers, killers designed to destroy bugs that breached the shield. They were big, strong and fast, some of the deadliest things we ever engineered. So dangerous, they were only released into areas that had been overrun because they killed everything they came in contact with. Once they had neutralized all threats, they were destroyed with internal toxin bombs. One use creatures unable to be bred, except under the most ideal conditions. There were never more than four or five available any more since we perfected the shield and pheromone technologies.

With lightning speed, they turned their attention to the gene-mod with their brightlights flashing all over the area as they battled the monster. Their flashing blade mouths, tried to cut into the carapace of the gene-mod but most of their blows were scratches in comparison to the injuries it dealt. But these were no ordinary roachsters. Their nervous systems amped to the highest degree, most of the gene-mods attacks missed their mark fully.

But the battle was far from equal. I looked on in horror as the full extend of the gene-modifications began to show. It began to regenerate its injuries. Regeneration was rarely added to any genestruct because there were too potentials we wanted to avoid. Unnecessary cancers and regrettable immortality. Cells that divide too often sometimes became cancerous. And immortality can be inconvenient if you were seeking to kill a creature to prevent it from passing on its immortal genes. The potential to destabilize an ecosystem was too great, hence its name "regrettable immortality".

I hoped the police were trying to get something bigger to fight with because with the venom, acid, armor, speed, flight and regeneration mods this thing was boasting, it would kill us all before the next day was done. One Hunter-killer goes down under the super-strong legs of the gene-mod, speared through in four places and pinned into the spincrete beneath.

I can't think of anything I can do to stop this. While the last Hunter-killer gets a few more wounds in, the brush behind it begins to move I see several Beetles, the most common of the auto-bugs used here. Each is carrying a tree in its front leg set. They surround and set upon the gene-mod with the trees,each swinging the tree limb as if it were a willow wand. The concussive booms stagger the gene-mod with each blow, but it continues its relentless assault on the Hunter-Killer.

Then I see Ona, she comes out of the forest and she is singing. Rubbing her pelipaps together she makes a series of strange but beautiful sounds, and when she does the other auto-bugs increase their assault. One of them is engulfed in venom and screams horribly while she dies.

The others hesitate and the Hunter-Killer gets in a final strike before it is cut in half by the jaws of the gene-mod. It strikes the genestruct in the eye with its swordlike forearms. The strike is deep, but not likely to be mortal. The arm breaks off and the sword remains. The other auto-bugs renew their attacks but each is cut down, one after the other.

Once its done, it turns toward me and advances slowly. There have been a few times I have regretted my occupation. Once, before I was gene-modified to live on Cyridian, I was working with a spasm-fly and was bitten. No one knew I hadn't been modified so I spent a half a year in a spasm chamber, immobilized in a stasis field so my muscles didn't pull the flesh from my bones. That was the lowest point in my technical career. I had few other regrets. The occasional lack of family bit deep, but with my gene-mods, I would live to be a nice two hundred or so, (or would have until today) so I always thought I would have time.

The gene-mod approached and I knew I was seconds from death. The only question was how. Venom? Acid? Stomped to death? I was hoping not for the stomping death, but it may not have any of the other means left. Then I heard that whistle again and the gene-mod turned again.

Ona. What was she thinking?

It turned away and I could feel my bowels growing weak. Being close to dying really makes bodily control a challenge.

Ona stepped away from the brush and approached the gene-mod. But she was bigger, redder, and her eyes had a particular gleam I had never seen before. Then I remembered. This was her maternal combat mode. Mothers, when their young are in trouble, change and become dangerous killing machines. On this world, multiply that by five.

She flew.

I mean, I knew she could do it, I had just never seen it. She flew fast. She slammed into its side and knocked it off its feet. Ona is big, much bigger than the roachsters, and she used her bulk to her advantage. She lands on its underside and stabs her swordlike pelipaps into it undercarriage, near the base of the legs, severing its ability to control two of those legs. She bounds away as it uses its outer carapace to flip itself over.

It lands with a grunt and fluids spray out from underneath its legs, the two damaged ones are barely able to hold up the carapace in the back of the creature. Its carapace is dragging the ground. It's down but not out.

I see the creature turn to face Ona and I am on its blind side with the sword hanging out its eye. The creature sprays both venom and acid, Ona leaps forward dodging the venom but getting hit with the acid. She slices backward and cuts off the wing casing covered with acid. She howls, a sound I have never heard before.

She and the genestruct circle each other slicing out but neither has an advantage. But I see Ona is bleeding badly. The genestruct is slowly regenerating and is able to raise itself on its hind legs. She scurries around onto its blind side and rushes it, slashing along the region between the carapace and the legs. She is able to get a good and solid slice but it returns with a solid stab with its side armor cutting deeply into her. Her momentum carries her a few dozen feet before she stops. I run to her.

The genestruct stops moving and falls over with one set of legs unable to move. Ona is badly hurt.

"Penrose, run, run."

"I can't Ona. I can't leave you. Now get up. We have to go."

"Penny, I can't run. Go now. Ona loves you. Ona dies for you."

There is the sound of a power plant coming back online as the creature shuffles and turns toward us. I hear the coughing of the acid cannon being prepared for fire. I can't let that happen.

I jump up and try to draw its fire. Confused and with only one good eye, it chooses me and fires blindly. The acid hits the ground near me and some droplets splash onto my uniform. Designed with genetic constructs in mind, the uniform neutralizes some of it, but the quantity overwhelms it and my flesh bears the rest. I have never felt anything as agonizing as this.

I fall forward face down and scrub out. But for once, I was glad of the spasm-fly attack. During that entire time, my nervous system was under assault, I learned my threshold for pain. And while this certainly was terrible, it was nothing compared to that six months.

I screamed. I cursed, I raged. And I got up.

"I have had about enough of you." I limped up to its blind side, and I could hear its inquiry sounds as it tried to figure out where I was. I saw the Hunter-Killer leg hanging out of its ocular cavity. I reached up, grabbed the end of the leg, and reorienting it, pointed it directly into its brain.

It did not resist. There was a sound like a sign of relief and the creature eased itself into a resting position. I looked at the creature and saw it was covered with pain mods used to control it. They were inflamed. Something was driving this creature to rage. But what?

"Hello Gene-Engineer Penrose." The voice was familiar and despised. I turned around and in the early morning light I could see his well dressed and dapper outfit with a tiny remote in his hand. He also had two burly Junantra guards, genetically modified supermen at his beck and call.

"Ambassador Cohen." I spit blood out of my mouth. "So all that interest in my work a year ago was not as harmless as I thought."

"You wound me, Penrose. You should be happy I took an interest in your work and had such avid supporters amongst the populace."

"So you could make this poor thing?"

"That poor thing has killed sixteen roachsters, all six of the hunter-killers left in the city, and two dozen other assorted vehicles. It is one of the finest killing machines ever made, even on this world. And its mine."

"I know. It's worth millions."

"Billions, my good man. We made them in breed-capable pairs."

"You are the final link in the chain aren't you. You made the off-world connections."

"Yes, and once we collect our genetic material from this one, for breeding, we will be on our way. So sorry about your car." One of the Junantra guards walked over the creature's mouth and began extracting vital genetic chambers that could be used to breed the creature. The ambassador and the other guard walked over to me and helped me to my feet.

"And what about me."

"That depends on you. The Human Race is still out there conquering the Universe and needs minds like yours to help it. I know you are a pacifist like all of your people here, but think of the potential value you could bring to our kind with your organic war machines."

"I know. I would be paid handsomely to destroy life all over the galaxy for fun and profit. No thanks." My blood was flowing down my leg, off of my arm and head.

"I am afraid I cannot allow you to leave knowing what you do."

"I am afraid I am not asking to leave." With blood on my hands, I reached out and slashed both the ambassador and the Junantra on the neck with my razor sharp nails. The spasm-fly venom which is a potent viral has remained part of my body ever since. I live in agony but I can control the spasms with the help of the anti-viral mods inside my body.

The ambassador and his guard are not so lucky. It takes only seconds for them to double over in pain and their muscles begin to pull back on their bones until they start to snap. The Junantra dies first, his superhuman strength is no asset here. The ambassador dies only seconds later. The second guard hearing something strange rushes to their aid, only to be dying a few seconds later.

I go over to Ona and see that she is already dead. I will make you again, my dear. You have been far better to me than most humans I know. I sit down with her and watch the sunrise. Looking over at the ambassador, I feel no regrets. Since he was the last of them, it should make it easy to clean up and ensure creatures like this one are never made again. With any luck, the Council will be able to hunt down the other one and see that its is destroyed.

Human nature seems so warlike. That very behavior is why we came to Cyridian, to get away from the war, and the greed. Because I live on a planet full of peaceful people does not make me a pacifist, and because I live on the edge of the galaxy may mean I am not cosmopolitan but I am certainly not an idiot.

I am absolutely not cleaning this up either.

Bug On!  © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

I finally located traces of my amazing Aunt Raven in the (Alpha Scorpii) Antares (meaning "Rival of Mars") which is the brightest star in Scorpius, one of the constellations in the human zodiac. Antares is a variable red supergiant star that is 520 light-years from Earth and is 230 times bigger than our Sun. Many of the winged faery folk from Africa have parties there during the magnificient sunrise. Ancient Africans terraformed a planet in orbit  around Antares and have created one of the most amazing urban cultures in the heart of a lush  jungle. Lions lounge in the parks where human school children learn and play. There is no poverty; astrophysicists are rock stars.  I seek to gain some of their knowledges that perhaps we can use on earth. Fortunately, I met a female scientist --  just finishing her daily swim -- who was willing to guide  me.

I completed this 6,866-word story a couple of months ago. I was originally going to publish it, but since I couldn't find an appropriate venue, I decided to share it with this community instead. I will post no more than two scenes per part.

Egypt, 4000 BC

Although bright morning sunlight poured through the entrance of Buikhu’s mud hut, he still lay asleep on his cowhide mat. The reason why was that the boy, who had seen twelve rainy seasons since his birth, had exhausted himself dancing and chanting his clan’s songs along with the other boys in his age set the previous night. That night, according to the tradition of his people, was to be his last as a child.

“Buikhu! Wake up!” his father Kemnebi whispered in a scolding tone while pushing the boy’s body back and forth. “The morning of your test has come!”

After being rocked for enough times, Buikhu finally opened his dark eyes and yawned. “Can you let me sleep for one more moment, father?”

“No! We are already almost late. Get up now!” Kemnebi yanked his son’s arm up until the child was on his feet and then led him out of the hut into the daylight.

Buikhu was of medium height for a boy of his age. Like most of his people, he had a lean figure, with long limbs and dark mahogany brown skin. The black braided sidelock he had worn for most of his life, a symbol of childhood, had been shaved off, leaving his scalp completely bare. Unlike his father, who donned a loincloth cut from tanned gazelle hide, he wore no clothing at all.

Kemnebi led his son across the village of Nekhen until they reached its central dirt plaza, where all the other boys in Buikhu’s age set stood in a straight row. Also present was Mhotep, the village’s wab sekhmet or healer, a middle-aged man with a shaven scalp and a leopard’s skin draped around his torso. Buikhu spotted in the wab’s right hand a flint knife, the sight of which sped up his heartbeat. He remembered exactly what the knife would be used for this morning.

After Buikhu joined the line of boys, Mhotep began, “Today marks a major turning point in your lives, young ones. Today your boyhoods shall all be cut away and you will become men. Now promise me that you will not scream or flinch during your cutting. Show me that you are ready for manhood! Now, let us begin with this boy who had just joined us.”

The wab was facing Buikhu when he said that. The boy’s heartbeat accelerated even more and his back chilled. His test was less than moments away! He looked around as if searching for an escape route, but his conscience told him to stay put lest he shame himself. He had no choice but to undergo the cutting.

“What is your name?” Mhotep asked the boy.

“B-buikhu, of the Mesha clan,” the child said after a quick hesitation.

“And what is the name of your father?”

“Kemnebi.”

“And what was the name of his father?” On this the wab grabbed a hold of Buikhu’s penis and lowered his knife towards it. The mere feeling of Mhotep’s hand on his organ made Buikhu tremble.

“Uh…my father’s father was Senbi.”

“Good. And who was Senbi’s father?” Now Mhotep was rapidly rubbing his blade’s edge against the boy’s foreskin. After enough sawing motion, Buikhu was struck by the sharpest, most intense pain he had ever felt in his life. He knew that he had been told to be silent, but the pain was so maddening…

“DJER!” he shrieked so shrilly that it almost sounded like it would have come from a girl’s mouth.

There was silence. Blood dripped from where Buikhu’s foreskin had been. Looking around, he noticed that everyone else was staring at him. The other boys were grinning, as if ready to burst out in laughter, but the wab was frowning with disapproval. So was his father, except his glare was even sharper and heart-piercing.

“That will be enough,” Mhotep said. “Now on to the next boy.”

And so the wab proceeded to circumcise the rest of Buikhu’s age set, with each of the boys reciting the names of his ancestors during the procedure. A couple of other boys screamed just like Buikhu had, but most did not. That made him feel even worse. Had all the boys reacted to their cutting the way he did, he would have thought himself normal, but instead their stoicism contrasted sharply with his lack thereof.

Once every boy had been cut, Buikhu turned to face his father. “Father, I am---”

“You screamed like a girl,” Kemnebi said. “You have shamed our family with your cowardice. Now you will never be considered a man.”

Until then, the boy had thought the circumcision he had just undergone had been the most intense pain he had ever suffered. Now even that paled in comparison to what he felt right now inside.

After a few days’ passing, the summer rains arrived. They swelled the Nile River until it submerged the papyrus-lined floodplain which Nekhen bordered, and they changed the grass of the savanna beyond from golden yellow to green. This signaled the people of Nekhen to leave their village and the floodplain farms they tended during the winter for the plains to the west, bringing with them the herds of long-horned cattle that were their main economic assets.

Buikhu was used to these seasonal migrations between the savanna and the village, but he had once looked forward to this summer more than most. He had anticipated that, as a newly initiated man, he would no longer just watch and milk his family’s herd of four cattle while his father went out hunting with the other men. Instead his father would bring him along and teach him how to hunt. Alas, that was possibly never to happen. Having declared his son a coward, Kemnebi refused to entrust the boy with any weapon or let him leave their summer camp of thatched hovels, so Buikhu was stuck with his usual responsibilities.

In previous summers, Buikhu didn’t mind his duties so much, as he understood their importance. But now, as he watched his cattle drink from the waterhole near which his people had set up camp, he fumed with resentment.

“Why aren’t you hunting with the other men, Buikhu?” he heard a boy two years his junior ask. Buikhu recognized the child as the son of Khenti, the nsu---rainmaker king---of Nekhen, but that did not make him feel the slightest bit deferent.

“You ought to know why, Sokkwi,” Buikhu grumbled.

“You’re afraid to tell me, aren’t you? Coward!”

At first Buikhu silently told himself to not mind that taunt, but then he felt something soft splat onto his back. Jerking his head around, he saw that Sokkwi’s throwing arm was coated with cow dung. A little flame of anger flickered inside the older boy’s head, but listening to his conscience, he did not show a reaction.

“So you’re just going to stand there and let me throw dung at you? Coward!” Sokkwi said. He continued to pelt Buikhu until the pile ran out, but still his attacks were ignored. Then, with a wicked grin on his face, he picked up a small rock and chucked it in the same direction.

Buikhu yelled in pain when the stone smashed into his spine, and then his flame of anger blossomed into a full-blown wildfire. Grabbing a large stick, he spun around and lunged after the puny brat.

“You’ll have your skull smashed in when I’m done with you!” he roared, brandishing the stick.

“Bet you can’t catch me!” Sokkwi replied as he dashed away.

Buikhu left his herd behind as he raced after his tormentor across the savanna. His rage continued to burn and was intensified by frustration, for Sokkwi proved to be incredibly swift for a ten-year-old. He was definitely going to carry out his threat if he ever caught up with the evil little demon.

The two boys had run quite far from their waterhole when a yellow shape flashed out of the bushes with a roar. Freezing in terror, Buikhu saw that it was a leopard! Immediately he reversed direction and sprinted away with his heart beating frantically. Then he heard the shrill scream of a child followed by choking sounds. He looked back and saw that the big cat had Sokkwi by his blood-soaked neck.

For all the violence that he had wanted to inflict upon the younger boy moments earlier, Buikhu did not feel the least bit delighted that Sokkwi had just been killed. Instead he was horrified beyond belief and also burdened with guilt. How on earth was he going to explain to the nsu that his son had been driven into the wilderness and killed? And how would the whole of Nekhen react to the loss of their future rainmaker?

As if these thoughts weren’t enough to make the boy miserable, he was to find something to add to his woes once he ran back to the waterhole. There, he discovered that all four of his family’s cattle were nowhere to be seen. Apparently they had run away in his absence.

Buikhu muttered to himself, “Great! My day has now been ruined even more than it was before!”

Actually, he knew that what was ruined was not merely one day, but possibly the rest of his life. Although people in his culture ate beef only during certain religious ceremonies, to them cattle were the living incarnations of wealth that could be traded like money. To lose an entire herd meant instant poverty for anyone from Buikhu’s race.

Buikhu had gotten the nsu’s son killed and lost his family’s whole wealth. His guilt was now even more painful than his father’s calling him a coward.

From space, it looked like a ball of blue and brown; there were blue oceans swirling with windblown whitecaps and the occasional tiny island could be found but most were scoured clean by the Last Storm. You don't see much of the surface anymore because of the cloud cover. The white polar ice caps were tiny buttons on the top and bottom of the globe. 

During the year, they could be seen to appear and disappear. If you took a vantage point from the the lone satellite of this blue planet, you would notice on the night side, there was no light emitted, no radio transmissions to disturb your electromagnetic slumbers. It was a quiet planet circling a nondescript yellow-white dwarf with eight other planets and assorted planet-junk. Strangely enough, if you had vision sharp enough, you would see hundreds of artificial satellites circling the planet.  

You would see communication satellites beaming signals to each other, reminding each other where they are to ensure signals moved from the ground to other places on the planet were not interrupted. They never receive those signals any longer, since there is no one to send them. There are many global positioning satellites. Each designed to know every single street and every square inch of the planet and tell you where you are at any moment in space and time, anywhere on the globe.They have not had to answer a single query for a little longer than a year.

Military reconnaissance satellites watch key sections of the globe for threats to countries that no longer exist. Linked to those satellites are space based weapons platforms using a variety of technologies to deliver death from above. There is now nothing to shoot at, nor anyone. 

There are two satellites still doing their jobs. The first is a weather satellite. They are still happily chugging along gathering information about the Last Storm. The Last Storm came into existence nearly ten years now. It did not look like it does now. Today, it covers half of the northern hemisphere at a time, blocking the sun, from a quarter of the planet. Swirling above the planet, a Great White spot on the surface of the Earth, similar to the Red Spot on Jupiter, just hundreds of miles across instead of tens of thousands.  

Weather satellites would make the pivotal discovery of the Last Storm in 2096, when it was just a tropical depression in the South Pacific Ocean. This storm is the greatest weather pattern on the planet sweeping across every land mass, driving sand and debris into the air, at almost four hundred miles an hour. It has scoured the Earth clean of nearly all traces of her former tenants. It did not happen all at once. It took time.

The other satellite still working has only one man left on board. One solitary human who had chosen to stay here ad document what he was seeing. His name was Sergei Balmasov. We say was because he is no longer living in the classic sense. He mostly sits and looks out the observation window of the International Space Station in muted horror. His mind is broken.

He listened on the wideband radio to the world coming to an end. He listened as people called for help that could never come. He listened while radio stations told people not to panic and that this was just a really large hurricane forming in the Pacific and when it hit the coast Hawaii, it would be devastating so they should evacuate Hawaii. He listened when they said there would not be enough time or enough ships to move everyone in time.  
 

They told those who could not make it in time to shelter in place. That would be enough. In the year 2096, the state of Hawaii became the first casualty to the last  storm.  

They sent ships to Hawaii. They rescued a hundred and fifty thousand people and fled east toward the coast of California and Oregon. But the storm was too fast and too wide. Two hundred thousand people died on the islands and another one hundred and twenty thousand sank as their ships were capsized in the torrential storm. The remaining population died in the storm awaiting rescue ships that could never come.

Hawaii, born of fire, home to people for five thousand years, was washed away in a single night, all of her people returned to the sea.

Sergei had no time to grieve as the storm approached California. People began evacuating and fleeing to the mountains. Storms break over mountains was the conventional theory. This was no conventional storm. As it came within a thousand miles of California, the rains began. 

The storm slowed over Hawaii and continued to absorb water and energy from the environment. When it began to move again, it was twice the size it had been before. It approached the coast of California, driving in swells of water which damaged anything along the shore, turning any building on the coast to splinters. The forty-foot swells had never been seen and thrashed the coast, drove water into the streets of both Los Angeles and San Francisco. People who did not believe what they had heard about Hawaii re-evaluated and began to run for their lives. How could they have known? 

The roads to the mountains were jammed with cars and trucks. The storm was inexorable. When it reached the coast, the winds were in excess of two hundred fifty miles per hour. Nothing made by man could withstand such winds. Skyscrapers lost windows, cars were flipped and carried for miles, trees uprooted, homes swept away by winds, rain and waves. When the storm reached the mountains, everyone's hopes rose, even as people ignored the carnage. The mountains would break the storm, it would run out of energy and die.  

Instead, it did the unexpected. It turned south, but did not die.

It rode the mountains south, destroying the San Francisco Bay Area, and everyone in it. Heading South, Los Angeles was the next major metropolis to be swept away. The storm was being fed by the Pacific and kept moving south. As the edge of the mountains receded, the storm proceeded East into the Gulf of Mexico and continued to grow. Most of Mexico to the borders of Costa Rica and South America were completely inundated by water. 

Refueled by the heated waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm's power increased and with its increased size it affected the Southern mainland states and basically erased them, from Nevada to Florida. Nearly one third of the population of the United States was destroyed in the first forty hours of the Last Storm of the Century. Nearly all of Mexico, and Costa Rica had been decimated. Tens of millions were believed dead.  

As the storm pulled away from the United States, its size increased again, absorbing water from across its entire area, and energy from the very warm waters of the Atlantic, it swept across the Southern tip of Europe, but even that tiny brush destroyed most of the UK, Greece, France, Italy and all of the Mediterranean. At this point, emergency signals criss-cross the globe with everyone trying to determine where the most need for service would appear next.

It didn't matter. 

The storm grew larger and more powerful, as it recrossing the Pacific. It would become immense and unstoppable. It was considered such a threat, militaries threatened to throw nuclear weapons into the heart of the thing. A great carrier attempted, since it had been caught in the wake of the storm to tried to use a nuclear device, but it had no effect. The storm had simply grown too large to do anything.  
 

People fled where ever they thought they could go, but climate models had begun to reveal a startling truth. The storm was so large now, it could feed from any ocean, any where, at nearly any time, until it ran out of energy. Climatologists theorized it would become a permanent fixture on the face of the planet.  Those climatologists called it, The Great White Spot. It swept across the Earth over twenty five times before stabilizing at its current size of one quarter of the globe.

Sergei listened to the radio until the signals grew less and less. Communications from the ground lasted two years, but by the year 2099, there had not been a single radio message he could detect anywhere on the planet. He held out hope that somewhere, somehow, mankind had survived. Until the cloud cover broke enough to see the planet.

Until today. Then he wept like a child.

The mountains were gone, ground away by the five hundred mile an hour winds. The Rockies, the Appalachians, The Himalayans had been scoured from the planet. Nothing made by man had survived. Even the best made skyscrapers had been worn away to nothing. The Earth was a smooth and uniform brown. He stared looking for any landmarks. Nothing remained. 

Sergei lasted a year eating the stored food onboard the ship. The satellite could keep him alive alone for five years, easily but his mind was shattered by what he saw. In order to cope he used climatological models from weather satellites under his control to determine the Great White Spot would last for another twenty years, reducing the earth to little more than a windswept ocean in that time. He then found out that without land, the storm might never stop.   

Sergei Balmasov, the last Human being left alive anywhere opened the bottle of vodka he carried aboard all those years ago and drank a toast. He finished the bottle in about an hour. He set all of his notes into the computer and set a radio broadcast into space repeating what he learned about Humanity during their last days on Earth. He stepped into an airlock without a suit closed the door behind him. He held his breath while he cycled the lock and jumped out into space, with his dying breath he chose to look upon the Earth. 

His message to anyone who might one day come across our blue planet was a tombstone marker. "Here Lies the final resting place of the Human race. We saw the future, but could not embrace it, until it embraced us. May God have mercy on our souls."

The Great White Spot   © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop, dodging my workplace, when I saw Him come in. I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing first because, well, this is San Francisco, and you are liable to see almost anything here. He was wearing the equivalent of a long ragged cloak, stained with age and reeking of an unspeakable odor. 

It was the scent of a recently opened grave, and while I had not been near one in a while, I had put a dead racoon in my garbage can once and left it there for a week in the hot sun. Worst thing I have ever smelled. I was only too happy when the garbage man came. It was worse than that. No one else seemed to notice.

His cloak hid is face but it was safe to assume I didn't really want to look too deep in there anyway. He was carrying a pole with a strange watermark on it and two runnels near the top. His hands were strong looking, like a weightlifter's with veins running through them. I could not see much else of him but he was big, much bigger than I imagined him to be.

See, I figured this had to be the Boatman of the River Styx.

"Cappuccino." he said with a scary baritone.

"Four seventy five, please."

"Are you serious?" was his response.

"Uh. Yes."

He reached into his pocket and put pennies on the counter. Lots of Pennies.

"Sir, we can't take those."

"They're currency aren't they?"

"Sir, they're pennies."

"I get paid in pennies."

"Excuse me, miss, I will take care of this." I found myself reaching into my pocket and paying with a five.

"Keep the change." The crowd was getting kind of hostile and I wasn't sure what might happen if he got pissed off. He looks at her. Reaches across the counter with his large, ham-like hand and touches her chin. 

"Rebecca Montez, angry boyfriend, six years from now, lamp. Unfortunate." She looks at him as if he were crazy but does not move. Almost as if she were under a spell.

He turns to me and says, "Thank you, Daniel Simmons."

"How do you know my name?" I already knew the answer.

"I know all of your names." That voice was really starting to work me. The rhythm of the shop resumed and people went back to typing.

"What are they seeing? How is it only I can see you?"

"Cappuccino, up."

"Uh, that's you."

"Let's sit and talk, Daniel Simmons."

"Okaaaaay." Didn't like where this was going.

I sit down at the table and try to hide my face behind the screen of my laptop so I could resist the temptation to look into his cowl. He reached across the table and closed my laptop, gently.

"So, Charon, what brings you up for coffee? And why is it no one else can see you?"

"Mmmmm. Good cappuccino. Very nice." The cup disappeared into his cowl and did not come back out.

"No one can see me because to them, I am some unfortunate hobo having coffee with an overdress preppy. That would be you. As to why I am here? I need a guide and since you can see me, you are volunteered." 

What could I know about that he would need a guide for?

"I am looking to franchise my business."

"Excuse me?"

"Earth is very busy these days, lots of dying and you guys keep making new ways to kill each other off. I can't keep up. Look at this bicep." He pulls back his sleeve and shows me this massive arm that would not have look out of place on the Incredible Hulk. "Go on, touch it."

"Um, no thanks."

"I used to be scraps of bone and flesh, now I have biceps from pushing that thing." He points outside the window.

For a moment I saw a flash of a large gondola-like boat, about the size of an eighteen wheeler. Off in the distance, I could see people, thousands of them, tens of thousands, standing patiently wearing clothing from what looked like medieval times. Then the street returned to its mundane appearance.

"Yes, I just cleared the backlog from the Black Plague last week. But I still have the Civil War, the Spanish Flu, World War's I and II, and Korea. Do you know how many Russians died out there?" He was starting to sound a little hysterical.

"Uh, what about other death-oriented entities like yourself? Aren't there others out there harvesting the dead?"

"Valkyries are still working, but they only want the valiant dead, so they swoop in and pluck one guy out of thousands, put him on their flying horse and their gone. I've tried shouting out, 'hey, you could grab a few more' but they keep mentioning something about Vahalla having a quality assurance clause and then they're gone. When I complained to the Niflheim Residency Committee, they indicated they aren't responsible for all of these people. They closed their doors when the last of the Vikings bought the farm. Something about Niflheim having a purity standard."

"There are certainly other death agents, yes?"

"Heaven only takes devout Christians. Lets just say that number isn't going up. Same with their other sects. People don't seem to have a desire for really rigid religious structures anymore, so most of those places are closing their doors, or waiting for a management decision from on High. Hell, well its just overflowing. They even changed the sign. Used to say 'Abandon hope all ye who entered here'. Now it says, 'Abandon hope all ye who thought to enter here. Entry denied due to overcrowding.' So, I keep going, moving the Dead into their afterlife of Last Resort. But I am starting to fall behind, so I hoped someone here might have some idea how to franchise this operation." 

"So you're hoping to find people willing to help you ferry the Dead, for a fee. What kind of benefits would you be offering, you need a good benefit package if you are trying to recruit these days."

"I am not trying to enter into Management. I do not want to take responsibility for their work. I want to hand off a section of the workload to other interested parties."

"That's the problem. Who's going to be interested in buying into a business where your job is to move the Dead across the River Styx into the Afterlife of Last Resort? What do they get out of the deal?"

"As long as they work for the Company, they can avoid dying of anything, as long as they manage their company effectively. If I have to pick up their slack, I will carry them across the Threshold myself. I am not interested in who they hire, as long as they get the job done."

"Effectively immortal, long term job security, open hours, free hand in hiring, no micromanaging. I think I am going to quit my job. Okay, what's the cost to buy into this program?"

"2 pennies." Charon voice had begun to grow on me.

"Okay, the first thing we are going to have to do if we are going to work together is to increase the cost of dying. How can you run a business on 2 pennies a soul? Haven't you ever heard of inflation?"

A Cappuccino with Charon © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

Wilson Tuchman called "Tuck" by his friends, the few that were still alive sat at the bus stop and waited early on a Saturday morning. It was a warm spring morning, the kind that made you forget your aches and pain and believe the world was going about its business of being beautiful before the heat of summer baked it away. Tuck was a a tall man, easily six feet whose once black wooly hair had faded to a salt and pepper grey. His chocolate brown skin was smooth with a rich wrinkled texture, that when he smiled smoothed away the age from his face. His eyes were bright and clear and people found his wise and knowing gaze easy to bear.

Tuck had been in the habit of making the trip to Lowell Park in the mornings on Saturday to improv with a group of musicians who play outside the city's farmer's market. They were an above average group who played for tips all day. This particular iteration of the group had been playing together for about two years and Tuck enjoyed playing with them. It was the thing that made his weeks bearable since his Sadie passed on.

He was determined to stay active and involved in the community. He heard that men did not live long after their wives died and Tuck, well he was not quite ready to die just yet. Having lived to be seventy-two, he was in no particular rush to meet his Maker. Sadie, bless her soul, had trained him well and he could cook, shop and take reasonably good care of himself. He had to get his hair cut down at the corner shop, something he had not done in years, and discovered he missed the male company. Sadie cut his hair for thirty years and he had grown accustomed to her light hand and special pampering. He trimmed his beard, since no one could cut it the way she did, and after the first butchering at the shop he decided he didn't really like it anyway.

He put on a pair of comfortable slacks and a shirt that didn't bunch up while he played his horn. He wore a pair of comfortable shoes, just in case he had to stand up. Sadie's last gift to him was a pair of gel insoles and he simply loved them. When you get to be old, you just don't realize how comfortable feet make such a difference in your day. He wore a light jacket and a sweater, he didn't know what the weather was going to be like and wanted the option to put on or take off whatever was necessary to keep playing.Tuck loved to play his horn. He had lost his grandfather's horn he played all through the sixties in a fire twenty years ago. It was an heirloom 1927 King Liberty Silver. A beautiful trumpet given to him by his grandfather. He did not know how precious it was but he cared for it meticulously because his grandfather had. 

He taught him how to take it apart and clean every spring, value and chamber. He shined it until it glowed and when he played it, there was nothing that even came close to it. He played it from 1924 when he started in the Diamond Club, a juke joint in the backwoods of Louisiana. He joined the band there and they traveled up and down the Chitlin Circuit for thirty years playing jazz of every melody, style and rhythm. Jazz was in his blood. He even managed to make it to the radio in the fifties and sixties and had half a dozen albums to his name. He married Sadie during that time and their relationship was turbulent to say the least. She used to say that he loved his horn more than her. That wasn't true. The horn just didn't nag him as much about her. 

After he lost the Liberty, he was too distraught and realized he simply couldn't bear to play anymore. He had played other trumpets over the years but they couldn't seem to match the soul his grandfather's trumpet seem to have. Tuck sometimes thought his pater's soul had moved into the trumpet when he died and Tuck was simply a vessel for him to keep playing his music. So in his early fifties, he became a mechanic because he had always been handy with vehicles and repaired them over the years they spent driving the Circuit. He bought a small station and for twenty years made a tidy sum keeping old cars on the road in his corner of Philadelphia. Sadie worked as a librarian and was very, very good with money, so they had more than they needed with his tiny royalty check and her retirement. 

After his retirement, his was a comfortable life. He even bought a new trumpet, a Jaeger. It was functional, with a clean, bright sound. He had mellowed and decided he would let go of his past, his fame, or his reluctance to play anything other than the Liberty. And just like that, his life was good again. He played everyday again and his neighbors loved to hear his muted trumpet whispering tunes of elegance, mystery, sassy tunes of exuberance and a time lost, a time when it was okay to be just a little bit bad.He played at Sadie's funeral. He could not even speak to anyone. So he played. And when he was done, his music reached into them, pulled something out of them, some grief, some sadness, and brought it into the air with them. It sat alongside them, wept with them and then that sadness moved on, just like Sadie did. People left the funeral smiling and filled with light. 

The bus was late, but only a few minutes and he stood up to stretch his legs. As it rounded the corner, he found himself eager to get to the park. It had been a long time since he was eager to do anything. The bus pulled alongside and he allowed most people to get on before him to avoid bumping into anyone with his trumpet. He was the last person to get on the bus. As he moved into the bus, several young people decided to get up and pushed their way through the bus. As they came close to him, the largest shoved him into another passenger and he snatched the trumpet from his hand. As they ran out the door, they startled a flock of pigeons on the sidewalk who scattered and took flight.

Tuck fell over the baby carriage and managed to catch himself before falling onto the young mother and her baby. The bus driver tried to run out after the ruffians but one of them pulled a small firearm and Tuck touched the driver and shook his head. He was not so in love with the Jaeger that anyone should die over it.For a moment, his rage grew and then he heard the small child laugh and look at him. 
"Are you okay, sir? Do you want to file a report?" It took a second for Tuck to realize the driver was talking to him."No. There is no point. It's not like I will get my trumpet back any time soon. I am sure the police will have plenty to keep them busy in this town."

"We have them on the bus camera and may be able to get an ID later."

"Okay, you take my address, and if I am still alive when they find them, and my trumpet, I will happily accept it back. I am certain these good folks have someplace to be, and so do I. I am fine, my gel insoles broke my fall."Several of the riders laughed and a young man offered Tuck a seat. Shaken, he accepted and rode to the park in thoughtful contemplation.

When he got to the park, the Farmers Market was almost finish setting up and the band was tuning their instruments. While he had not be seriously injured, he felt a slight twinge in his hip and knew he would feel it more later. 

"Hey Tuck, where's your horn? You always jam with us. Taking the day off? Williams was another oldster who played the bass. Tuck liked his easy-going manner. 

"No sir, not today it seems. Fate decided that old Jaeger and I needed to go our separate ways."
"What happened?" Jim, the saxophonist stopped warming up and looked up. He was one of the youngest of the musicians barely twenty-five, but he had an old jazz and blue soul.

"Some of the urban yout' decided they needed my horn more than I did."

"I can go handle that if you want me to." Jim's veiled threat was easy to recognize, and despite his old musical soul, he had a modern day blood-lust when pushed to it.

"Let it go, I am going to sit here with you brothers and just relax for a change. I need a break from carrying y'all anyway." Tuck smiled and Williams shook his head.

The group consisted of a double bass, electric piano, sax, alto sax, bass guitar, drums, a cornet when we were lucky, an occasional French horn and until today, at least one trumpet. Fortunately, another trumpet showed up, some new cat nobody knew. He wore a tan linen suit with a red shirt underneath the jacket. His clothing looked comfortable and he was relaxed. He was smoking a cigarette while he relaxed in the back. A cool brother, he introduced himself as Israfel. He was playing some old school horn, something from the thirties from the look of it. Tuck felt a momentary sting of nostalgia for his grandfather's Liberty. The group warmed up and Tuck sat off to the side and just listened.

They started with 'Fly Me to the Moon' and Tuck thought of Sadie. It was one of her favorites and they danced their first dance to it. The vocals were taken up by Israfel's horn. He played it, massaged it, and spun into and out of it. The rest of the band played softly allowing him to carry it. "In other words, please be true, in other words, I love you." A slow piece, the band used it to warm the crowd up, to tease them close. It was a piece most of the older crowd knew and playing it ensured their approach.

Switching to 'Rhapsody in Blue', Israfel soared, his trumpet stomped, disappeared and reappeared across the piece. This was a jazz favorite because while the pure song was wonderful, it lent itself to varied improvisations and could be played allowing each instrument a time to shine. Fast and slow, it offered everyone an opportunity to play alone and together. Tuck remembered this piece as one of his favorites, and was one of the pieces he played on the radio near the end of his career. Many people knew snippets of the song because parts of it were played in cartoons and commercials in the sixties.

Near the end of the piece, Israfel reached into his pocket and pulled out a mouthpiece, still in the wrapper and flipped it to Tuck. Tuck surprised, let it hit him in the chest before catching it. Looking quizzically at Israfel he let the band wrap up the piece. Without a word, Israfel takes his mouthpiece out and hands his horn to Tuck. He nods and Tuck takes it. It feels good. It feels like the old Liberty in his hands. Light, keys smooth, he didn't even feel the need to test it. He put his lips to it and felt it become a part of him.

Williams flags out 'April in Paris' and Tuck steps forward. A strong trumpet piece, Tuck taps his foot and they begin. Israfel moved in the back and found a French horn. As they started playing, the crowd began to gather, a gentle breeze swept in and the vendors in the Farmer's Market, settled into a rhythm, sales were easier, people were friendlier, a gentle and easy peace took place. Tuck played his heart out, the crowd grew larger while they played. They worked it, they stretched it and when they played that last creshendo, Tuck was drenched, sweat flowing easily down his brow. The crowd roared, money was passed forward and they kept playing. The moved through the century, with hit after hit. The crowd rotated but never seemed to grow smaller, when they finally stopped to rest, Israfel came to Tuck and clapped him on his back.

"So, do you like it?" pointing to the trumpet.

Tuck, still a little winded, smiled widely, the first real smile in two years and said, "Oh yes, very much."
Israfel laughed and replied, "In my country, when a man says he likes a thing we are obliged to give it to him. She is yours, now."

"Oh, no, my brother, I could never take something as sweet as this from you. I have never played anything this good since I lost my grandfather's horn. I know it may be a custom, but I could never deny a man his horn."

"It is also bad manners to refuse the gift, my friend. Please take it. It sings for you. Look at this crowd, they were loving it.""Your gift humbles me, my brother. How may I be of service to you?" Tuck was moved and felt a need to reciprocate somehow. What could he offer for such a fine gift?

"The knowledge that you will care for it and love it like I did is enough for me," Israfel replied. He picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. The springtime air had warmed considerably. 

"Where are you going? We still have one more set, we need you." Tuck had reached out to touch Israfel's shoulder.

"You don't need me any longer, my friend. You have everything you ever needed right there. Look on the side of the trumpet."

Looking where he expected to find the manufacturer's name, he saw the word Gabriel spelled out with ornate and beautiful styled lettering. There were patterns woven into the metal, subtle, hard to see, but in the midday light, they were unmistakable. This trumpet was a work of art. Then Tuck had a moment, a moment of memory something he heard as a child. "Isn't Gabriel the name of an Angel?"

"You remember rightly. A Serephim who trumpets for the Lord. Smote Soddam and Gamorrah if my church learning is still righteous. What about him?"

"Am I dead?"

"You look okay to me. You not feeling well?"

"Actually, I feel great, the best I felt in years." Even the twinge in his hip was gone. He stood straighter and taller as if part of him had suddenly returned.

"Then enjoy the Horn. My gift to you."

"Am I going to have to play in Heaven or something?"

"No, Heaven is full up on trumpets. Make your magic here, do what you did today anywhere you wish, any time you want. Your is a special magic no one can give you. You have the magic that comes with time and effort. That word on the Horn is a title, given to the one best suited to move the hearts of men. That, my friend, is now you."

"How long can I do this?"

"Until you are ready to pass it to another who loves it like you do. Or until you're ready to lay down your burdens. Whichever comes first. For as long as you love it, play it and share it, you shall know no want, no fear, no longing.

"What about Sadie?"

"She'll abide till you show up. She said you'd take it. She said you loved your horn more than her."

"But never better." 

"She knows that, too" Israfel turned and walked away.

Tuck, with a lighter step, slid back up to the group and joined in on 'Birdland'.

Hornblower © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

Q & A: scholar discusses Mayan 2012 doomsday predictions



By J.K. Melki Russell, Baltimore Spirituality Examiner  

April 19th, 2011 9:08 pm ET

 

As a follow up to our initial article Why Mayan 2012 Doesn’t Really Matter, we recently engaged scholar Gerardo Aldana, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. In Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" his findings questioned the accuracy of many who claim it marks December 21, 2012 as “Doomsday.”

 

The following is our brief Q&A with professor Aldana.

 

Q & A

 

Examiner: How does your book's research indicate that public perceptions about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world may be wrong or off by decades or centuries?

 

Professor Aldana: A couple of caveats are important to note here:

 

One, my research is in a chapter in an anthology on Calendars in ancient and medieval civilizations, so it's not my book.  (In other words, I get no royalties or payment whatsoever for the sale of the book... an important point, I think, in particular regarding "2012.”)

 

Two, neither my chapter nor the book as a whole is really directed at the public.  The volume is intended for the academic community; it may not be accessible by most of the public because it assumes that the reader has already studied the subjects covered to some extent.

 

That said, my chapter demonstrates that the correlation between the Mayan calendric system and the Christian chronologies (Julian or Gregorian) is wrong.  That means to both the public and to researchers that whenever we see a date that has been published giving the Julian/Gregorian date for a Mayan event, that date is incorrect.  

 

Unfortunately, we don't know at this point how far off those dates are.  It is at least incorrect by a few years/decades, but it may be as much as a century or so in either direction.

 

This has different impacts, of course.  If one states that a Mayan ruler, say Yax Pahsaj Chan Yopaat of Copan was dedicating some structure in the 8th century A.D., that's possibly still okay.  If they claim that he acceded to the throne on June 28, 763 A.D., or that it was near/on a summer solstice or that Jupiter was visible in the constellation Scorpius with the Moon (or something like that), then it will be way off.

 

Following the logic, that means that if we project the Mayan Long Count calendar (which had fallen out of use sometime in the 13th-16th centuries A.D.) into our own contemporary times, then any such placements will be wrong.  So suggestions that an event in the Mayan calendar occurring on Dec. 21, 2012 are incorrect.

 

Unfortunately, for proponents of Mayan prophecies, the situation is worse than a delay of a purported apocalypse.  Most if not all of these interpretations are dependent on the coincidence of a Mayan calendric event on the winter solstice in 2012.  This is an important point:  there is no hieroglyphic text that suggests an astronomical prophecy for 2012; it is only the coincidence of a Mayan calendric event with an observable astronomical alignment that has modern interpreters inferring a prophecy. Without this coincidence—either by a few years, or by hundreds of years, the basis of the prophecy goes away entirely.  The upshot is that if the calendar correlation is incorrect--as I argue in my chapter--then the key feature upon which the prophecies were supposedly built is no longer valid.

 

EXAMINER: Secondly, the utilization of astronomy to predict events is a very old tool that was constantly being adjusted and altered to make events fit within a predicted time frame-what are some of the issues at hand in the way many current individuals are attempting to use astronomy to interpret the Mayan Calendar? What might they be missing or what needs to be included to  create a better discussion about the calendar?

 

Professor Aldana: I think a good dose of common sense would go a long way.  Did ancient Mayan rulers ever consult oracles as part of their governance?  My informed response is either 'yes', or at least 'very probably.'  (We can't be sure at this point that there weren't iconoclastic rulers who preferred to buck convention and eschewed all oracular knowledge...after all, there were hard-core skeptics in ancient Greece.)  But just because they probably consulted, oracular knowledge does not mean that  they didn't also incorporate other types of knowledge into their decision-making processes.

 

I recently wrote a book that goes into the various pressures that very likely affected the development of an astronomical tool at the Classic Mayan city of Palenque.  Religion was certainly involved in how Kan B'ahlam utilized this astronomical tool, but I argue that it was also affected by politics and economics.  In other words, there may have been some appeal to what we would consider today to be esoteric knowledge, but it certainly wasn't the only factor considered, and we would be fooling ourselves to think that entire cities--let alone entire civilizations--could follow oracular proposals mechanically.

 

My point is that we should qualify oracular knowledges as having been used in the past in conjunction with other forms of knowledge--to augment them, not to replace them.  Now, if Kan B'ahlam were here with us today, I'm sure he wouldn't have to depend on an astronomical (or any other kind of) oracle to tell us that our global situation is in trouble.  We have plenty of other indicators--environmental, political, religious, economic--that we are facing (or in) crises.  I doubt that he would urge us to just turn to the stars and wait to see what happens.

 

Tags:

2012 Mayan calendar, 2012, 2012 The Mayans Ancient Civilizations Apocalypse, Ancient wisddom, apocalypic science fiction

 

Also Read: Why Mayan 2012 Doesn't Really Matter

http://www.examiner.com/spirituality-in-baltimore/why-the-world-won-t-end-2012-and-why-it-doesn-t-really-matter-if-it-d

The Americas. This is where the End began. The West, the place of Prophecy, the place of Destiny. The genetic cellular database of Ancestral awakenings thrums in tune to the drumbeat call of generations of soul, of pain and joy rising above the spontaneous eruption of life, uncontrollable, unbounded, free of constriction or constraint in its purest form. This is the natural path life takes like water, flowing down or up whatever channel presents a path, making one where none exists, or deepening preexisting ways, widening, eroding resistance whenever encountered to open the way for a more intense flow of energy.

What does all or any of this have to do with Hip Hop? With a bunch of kids who play their music too loud, who seem to have a fascination with cursing, disrespect of authority and women, baggy clothing, crime and material culture? How is any of this spiritual in nature and what does it have to do with consciousness? To answer these questions fully it is necessary to understand what Hip Hop is, what it really represents, where it came from and where it is going.

Loosely defined, it is the culture of the urbanized underclass, of the disaffected and the disillusioned masses. A culture of rebellion and revolt that employs every mode of communication known to humanity in order to get its message across. Music, art, the spoken word, the beat, movement. MC’ing, DJ’ing, Break Dancing/Popping/Locking and Graffiti are its major expressions, all of which encompass the primal cries of those relegated to possessing only their spirits and souls and little else of material substance.  As a post-modern deconstruction of a Western European meta-narrative, Hip Hop stands as an exemplar of the effect upon the individual of societal ills that are now global in scope. Ageless, as an expression of African-based musical and communicative forms of expression, Hip Hop was informally born as a genre in late 1970s New York City and the surrounding region, expanding relatively quickly from a purely regional expression to its current status as multi-billion dollar music of the global youth culture. It is fair to say that Hip Hop has come a long way. But it is also fair to say that it has a way to go still before it reaches its full potential.

Afrofuturism as a movement has evolved alongside Hip Hop, similarly having no definitive beginning while simultaneously coalescing alongside Hip Hop in urban America during the late 1970s. Its formal inception occurs much later, in the late 1990s and into the 00s as the online presence of African Americans grew stronger. The application of diverse academic traditions to the same questions was the beginning of a process that sought to dissect the cultural and media-based discourse of African-originated and futuristically-themed influence in the preceding decades in the attempt to define their interests and cultural memes.

And so it was that a small, ethnically diverse but concentrated listserv, called Afrofuturism, was born and prospered, for a time. Beyond the vigorous debates, expositions of consciousness, collaborations and intellectualisms lay an underlying strata of vast potentiality and possibility, made manifest through the broad and open genres of science and speculative fiction. The movement was represented by black authors, academics, Hip Hop headz and performers alike, all sharing a similar fascination with futuristic themes and expressions of modern societal tropes under the guise of the fantastic. Afrofuturism never really coalesced as a full-blown cultural shift outside of the avant-garde arts and music scenes of the large urban areas, but the fish bowl-like arena the internet was in those days brought larger and more mainstream attention to this small collective of personalities and ideas, raised against the growing din of diverse voices the Net was soon to become.

Hip Hop and the Afrofuture cannot be separated from the evolution of America as a nation, but they also cannot be separated from the evolution of consciousness not only of this country, but of the world. The impact of Hip Hop has been felt upon every continent, in every country. Rap is the music of the global youth culture. It is the sound of rebellion and discontent that can be heard wherever the young are gathered and wherever inequalities have resulted in the formalization of destitution. The original means by which Hip Hop formed have been repeated in country after country, city after city as the young and the listless have found themselves with little money and no musical education but still possessed of singing hearts and dancing souls, theirs or their parents record collections and an ever-growing mass of CDs and MP3s that consolidate the Music of the Ages. The ready availability and affordability of computers, digital music and sound equipment have created the perfect environment for a large-scale explosion of beat-centered creativity as the hard, biting sounds of rap drive the air and digital-waves toward the resolution of a Hip Hop planet, born to tear down paradigms not built for their edification.

There is Russian Hip Hop, Middle Eastern Hip Hop, African Hip Hop, European Hip Hop, Latin American Hip Hop. You will find baggy jeans and ball caps worn by youth of every ethnicity, shade, size or gender in every country in the world. This acceptance of a quintessentially American artform by two generations, X and Y, who are now birthing a third, generation Z, will take the artform into new territory as global consciousness coalesces around the ideals that undergird the very essence of Hip Hop. Freedom of expression  and lifestyle choices, a disdain for centralized authority, a dearth of color consciousness and a dislike of the trappings of corporate and/or governmental culture typify the belief system of Hip Hop Headz around the globe. The continuing revelations regarding the world-wide dominance of elite, corporate conspiracies have resulted in an ever-spreading understanding of the many threads that tie in to this reality, be they economic, political or cultural in nature. A wide-spread distrust of governmental measures as well as a realization that corporate culture does not have the best interests of the individual in mind bind diverse cultures and ethnicities together in recognition of their shared servitude and bondage to global consumer culture and hegemonic political domination by a self-serving and mega-rich elite.

The material and mainstream response to the impact of Hip Hop began early in its modern evolution. With the success of the Conscious Hip Hop movement in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a concerted effort was made on the part of the Music Industry to derail the movement by changing the focus of the music from positive messages, African history and evolved states of being to that of material wealth, violence and hyper-sexuality. According to music industry insiders, there was a successful attempt to provide monetary incentives and change the focus of individual Hip Hop artists to rap more about these topics and also to contract artists that would create the type of music that glorified self-hate and violence in many forms. This era was accompanied by rising drug use, gang violence in many inner cities and the destruction of previously cohesive neighborhoods by gentrification and urban renewal projects that diffused black power by moving populations out of the urban center and into suburban apartment complexes. The simultaneous influx of illegal drugs – as well as the continuing unavailability of stable sources of income – into these uprooted communities contributed heavily to the continuing dismantling of black political power. But what the Powers-That-Be did not take into account was the expansion of Hip Hop’s influence out of the black community and into the white community and from there, into the rest of the world. Even though the possibility of this happening was evident from its earliest beginnings – as exemplified by its multi-ethnic composition in the early to mid-80s as it spread like wildfire across America – the change in the focus of Hip Hop from a black consciousness to a gangsta/thug mentality that glorified the patriarchy and material accumulation appealed to the children of the suburbs, the children of affluence, the white children of th establishment. Their rebellion against their parents and dedicated economic commitment to Hip Hop raised the art form to national and international prominence, if not in spite of, then because of the negative direction the Industry chose to force the music into.

As Hip Hop has evolved within the crucible of a planet in the throes of change, it has come to represent a shifting of consciousness, being the musical form best suited for political and social challenges. Its hard, eviscerating beats, biting and rough dictions and choruses, are theperfect backdrop to a world on the cusp of transformational change. While mainstream Rap still possesses that material edge that glorifies bling, the dollar bill and the objectification of women as sexual objects, underground Hip Hop culture remains conscious and concerned with the plight of the underclass the world across. With the spread of Internet access across the planet, that underclass has realized that they hold common cause with each other, no matter their country or origin or color. A global political consciousness is a precursor to a global spiritual consciousness as people become aware that politics is only the outermost layer of an affliction that goes much deeper. The speculative aspects of the Afro-future arise in this space created by infinite potentiality as artists meld their conceptions of the present with ideas about what could be, in a perfect world. The addition of both New Age and Afrocentric spiritual ideals, as well as the culmination of the Age – centered around the 2012 fulcrum – combine to create a discourse ofextraordinary exceptionalism that surpasses nation-hood and represents an elevated sense of connection, of oneness, of common cause.

There is a revolution of the spirit as well as the body that is overcoming the dictates of materiality, of modernism and the consumer culture. While there are many causative factors that have contributed to this awakening, the impact of African-related innovations and movements in the West have been strongly felt. From the Haitian revolution and the victories of Touissant L’Ouverture, to Nat Turner, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, there is a connection. From Jazz to Country to New Age genres, there is a connection. From Fats Domino, Little Richard and other African-Americans impact upon the evolution of Rock and Roll to the evolution of electronic and computer-based music and art forms, there is a connection. This connection is the expression of the Souls of Black Folk, the visceral nature of their interactions with the world, the spirit-filled mass consciousness that resists all attempts at suppression, repression and genocide. It is, in microcosm, representative of the human spirit in macrocosm, it is what happens when a group of people is put upon for centuries at a timeand their desire for utter freedom grows beyond the capacity of any seeking control over them to contain. It is when expression becomes mandatory, where not even death is threat enough to maintain silence, that the extraordinary becomes mundane and wonder fills the world to overflowing on a daily basis.

Of course,  the formulation of the present moment is a collective endeavor that all streams of humanity have contributed to, that, in fact, every person who has ever lived has, in their own way, helped to create. Consciousness is a condition of awareness and each individual becomes aware of the realities outside of his or her own chosen spotlight for different reasons. But it cannot be denied that the world as it is today is the result of vast inequalities that have been fomented over generations. Inequalities that have resulted in the deaths of untold millions, the servitude of untold millions more and the domination of the world by a small, inbred and greedy elite. The atrocities that have come to predominate the historical record of these latter centuries of the Age of Pisces perhaps have no equal in the known history of humanity upon this planet. The world as it is today, with all of its pain, heartache and vast inequalities, is also a beautiful place, where the seeds of Africans brought to the Americas, mixed with the Aboriginals and Enslavers both, have broken ground, tilling the field of hearts the world across, as what has been done becomes clear and the ramifications of karmic repayment attend that clarification. Hip Hop and the Afro-future stand intertwined in the Present as an indicator of Past and Future, one indistinguishable from the other according to the infinite realm of probability that leaves conceptualization boundless and free to be, to become whatever we wish it to be. This is the legacy of our ancestors, and that which we leave to our posterity in our turn. The gift of life and love despite pain and heartache, and of expression ,without apology, of who we are, were and will be, far beyond what those who think they control reality could ever conceive of.

"Is anybody going to get that?" Being the farthest away, I thought it pertinent that I ask, just in case one of the people closer to it, might want to do something about it.

"Get what? I don't see anything. Don't you see I am sleeping?"

No such luck. Perhaps the other one will do better.

"You know, you would see a lot better if you eyes were open. Try it."

Strike two, now let's listen for his excuse...

"I got the last evil. I have no intention of getting down from this tree. Besides its so small, surly he can manage it on his own."

"Are we betting the farm on that?" I tried to be reasonable as I got up to go and squish the latest evil to make its way into the house. I could see it, cloaked around the spider, draped through with the menace we were sent here to face.

Don't mind me. I am just walking here. Look I stopped. Don't want anything. Just moseying along. The spider mumbles to itself as it tries to make it through the room full of cats. The contract it picked up on its way here, said it would be a cakewalk.

Get in, sting the man, drop the venom pack laced with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (I simply love how that sounds, almost as sexy as latrovenom, only the sexy poison this side of a black widow)and we are outta here. Nobody said anything about cats, a room full of cats, three cats, twelve legs, forty pounds of attitude and no place decent for a spider to get a bite on them.

"Okay, I'll get it. Then I am going on patrol, this is the third one this week."

"Whatever, bring me something back."

"I don't think so Big Boy. If there is anything to be found, I will be eating it all. I won't be bringing anything back."

I am almost to the door, I am going to be able to squeeze under it, and I will be in the clear. Cats can't go under doors. Uh-oh, that thump. That can only mean one thing. Going to have to RUN! I am lightning-streaking through the night. I am a hurricane wind whipping through trees. I am the living embodiment of speed, move left, now right, stop. Dodge. Running like crazy, jump left, missed me. Run again. Oh damn, what is this? A carpet, its plush. Speed is slowed to a crawl. Navigating the strings. Stop. He's right there. His breath is Death, the destroyer of worlds. Being still.

I know I saw it moving toward the door. If he gets under it, the Man will have to handle it himself. Stop, lock the vision, blur for motion, there. I've got him, bounding. He is in the carpet. Hold still.

I know he is there. I can see him, his cold eyes staring down at me, his stilled breath. He is using that cat thing, where they stare you into moving. Well I won't do it. I will stand right here. I will teach him to mess with me. I will be still. I will not move.

Where is it? I know its here. Focus on the motion, lock on to the slightest of motions. Open the pupils, let in every scrap of light. Slow down time. Raise the paw, slowly, ever so slowly. Don't let him see it.

He's staring right at me. Does he see me? He's looking right at me. He's trying to trick me into moving by pretending he can't see me. I'm on to him. Frozen in time. He, hey what's that slow moving shadow? He can see me. I am not going out like this. I will make a run for it. I'm young, I'm fast, I have my whole life ahead of me. I am like lightning...

I don't know where he is. I guess I am going to have to call this one off. Movement, pounce, pounce, flip, flip. Snap. "Mmmm, chewy. You two suck. Its a wonder anything gets done around here."

"And you are so much better than we are..."

"Protect the Man, that is the mission. Is there a part of that statement you don't understand. If you can't do it because we have a metaphysical obligation placed upon us by higher powers, surely you can do it because he feeds you."

At the mention of feeds, Big Boy's ears pop up from their flattened I'm-ignoring-your-rantings state to alert attention. "Go on."

"What? You need more than that? You like to eat, he feeds you. If something happens to him, who knows what will become of us. You know She does not like us. She tolerates us for him."

"Relax Sleek-black, you are too intense. We have to just embrace the coolness of life."

"Look Furball, all of us aren't descended from a bunch of lazy forest-dwelling, long-haired hippies who have been inbred to maintain their flowing locks at the expense of having an IQ in the double-digits."

"Harsh, man. True, but Harsh." Furball curled back up and proceeded to wrap his exceedingly long and amazingly fluffy tail around his supine and curled up body, displaying the aloof, I-can't-hear-you posture.

There is a skittering sound in the kitchen, giant claws skittering across a too clean floor. "Hello, Cats."

Ugh, just what I don't want. A conversation with enthusiasm-mania.

"Heard there was some Evil here. I am ready to fight. Just show me where it is. I am all over it. I will..."

"Stop. We appreciate your eagerness to help fight evil, but, well you're a Dog and dogs were not meant to fight Evil. You're for tackling the mundane issues of life, burglars, dropped broccoli, licking and adoration of the Man and his Mrs. That is your lot in life. Lowly that it may be."

Sleek-black stood up and began to pace as if he were a professor in a classroom with particularly not bright students. His tail waved like a baton emphasizing certain words. "The fighting of Evil," he began with a particular stress on the word evil, strongly delineating the two syllables, 'E-vielll,' "the supernatural menaces that lurk in the dark, things that go bump in the night (when its not us), those things that are just a step away from conquering the world every day, that is the role of the Cat." With the word cat, his tail stood straight out with only the tip pointing at himself.

"Isis gave it to us and we are doomed to fight Evil, not the mundane evil, with the little E, until the end of the world or until we destroy all the Evil left on Earth. So no, to answer your question, we cannot go out and fight evil today. You are ill equipped to do so, lacking the basic criteria required to even acknowledge evil or for that matter even see it."

Big Boy looked up, his shining blue eyes, half lidded followed up with, "Yeah, what he said." He put his head on his paws as he observed the Labrador from high in the main cat tree.

Not to be deterred, Zeus, the dog in question, asked "What if you are attacked by a burglar or some other, what's that word, uh, mundane evil? Could I help then?"

Well technically that was a right good question and I had to think about it for a moment. What did we do when confronted by mundane evil? We ran away, it wasn't our job. "Not saying you have a point or anything but perhaps we could go out together and improve our chances. You can fight evil, and I will destroy, E-veill." Not acknowledging anything about his going out with the dog, or having a Dog along on the quest to destroy Evil, Sleek-black walked past Fur-ball, who was doing as his name suggested, and whacked him in passing.

"What?"

"Cat says what?" Zeus muttered under his breath.

"What?" Fur-ball muttered again before drifting back off into sleep.

"Open that gate, Zeus."

"Okay, Cat."

"You may address me as Sleek-black."

"When we first met, you told me I was never to call you by name."

"And you still aren't. That is my appellation. My callsign as it were to the world of Evil. If you are going to be fighting Evil with me, you will need a appellation so that Evil will know you are coming and fear you."

"Big Dog."

Sigh. "Good enough. Close the door behind you."

Cats Versus Evil © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

I can't draw stick figures, let alone illustrate this!  So I am definitely in the market for an artist to collaborate with me on this project. (Please send me a message from this site you are interested!) I've never used the graphic novel format before, and it was difficult for me to get used to writing for the audience with the captions and dialogue, and for the artists in the panels. But I downloaded a free writing program called Celtx and it formats the pages so all I have to do is figure out what goes where on the page.  Anyone who thinks writing graphic novels or comics is easy seriously needs brain washing!  It's far more challenging than my day job, which is writing for online news sites. I've done journalism for years, and I can write a lead in my sleep. I've even written plays that were produced and short stories that were published. None of those experiences come close to the difficulties I have trying to keep the very different format elements straight in my head while working on this story.

Page 1          

Chapter 1 Miyuki after death

   Panel 1     In the unseen world that exists between the living and the dead, a powerfully built, middle-aged Japanese man dressed in the robes of nobility approaches a beauteous, kimono-clad young Japanese woman whose hair is not tied up in a traditional bun, but flows gloriously down to the small of her back. She appears to be in her mid-20s. Her head is bowed in polite deference to the gentleman.

     Caption 1   The great feudal lord Takeda doesn't know how he came to this place. It was as if he were a mere feather, and a powerful wind picked him up with dizzying speed, then gently set him down on what appeared to be clouds. Although his face appears calm, he is irritated with the force that brought him here. But years of experience with espionage and battle tactics have taught him to be patient, and the reason for his current situation would reveal itself. With that thought as a comfort, he cautiously watches the very appealing young lady approaching him with tolerable deference.  It wouldn’t be the first time that an enemy tried to distract him with a woman.

Miyuki

(In Japanese) Grandfather.

  Panel 2   The nobleman's expression moves from astonishment to outrage.

Caption 2    In his day, women never addressed men of his class, even when they were on their knees.  They spoke only when they were ordered to do so.

TAKEDA*

You are NOT of my blood! You dare...!

Panel 3   He raises his right hand to give her a resounding slap, but he's surprised when        it returns to his side as if it had been stricken with a sudden paralysis.  He struggles to raise it again, then tries his left hand. It stops suddenly mid-air; he stares in disbelief. Miyuki watches calmly.

Caption 3    Roles have changed in the intervening four centuries between the time Takeda inhabited a body and Miyuki was born forty years ago (in the material world’s concept of time) in a suburb of Tokyo.

TAKEDA

What manner of evil enchantment...? Release me, witch!

*Takeda Shingen, a ruling feudal lord who lived in Japan from 1521 – 1573.

Panel 4   Close-up of Miyuki looking directly at him, smiling.

MIYUKI

I am not a witch, nor do I have the power to release you. I am your daughter, born of your noble and praiseworthy lineage over 400 years after your unfortunate demise.  You are here with me because your descendants, in Japan and in a place called the United States of America, have prayed to the Lord of all worlds for the progress of your soul, along with the souls of those before and after you.

TAKEDA

(Face strained with rage.) I will NOT be treated as a mere trifle! How dare you speak to me as an equal! Who is this "lord" you serve?

Panel 5   Miyuki has a bemused expression on her face as she speaks. Meanwhile, a sparkling, translucent veil appears behind her.

MIYUKI

We are all His servants, even if we have no knowledge of this.

TAKEDA

I demand to see him! Have him face me as a brave and honorable man should, instead of sending an impertinent girl to do his job! Tell me his name; I will seek him myself!

Page 2

Panel 6    Miyuki turns and pulls aside the veil.

Caption 4    The only life Takeda has known was the well-ordered one he had when he occupied a physical form. He knows of nothing else and wishes for nothing more. Everything around him in the afterlife reflects this wish.

Panel 7   A flashback of 16th century Japan--Takeda is a wealthy, powerful feudal lord with a large army of samurai at his command.

Caption 5     Now, the security of his orderly life has been upended by the madness of a strange, disrespectful girl who spoke of a lord who, apparently, lacked the courage and honor of a nobleman to challenge his opponents directly.

Panel 8   Miyuki holds the veil while beckoning a frowning and reluctant Takeda to walk through.

MIYUKI

"Through Thy name, O my God, all created things were stirred up, and the heavens were spread, and the earth was established, and the clouds were raised and made to rain upon the earth."* There is so much more here in the afterlife for both of us, Grandfather. We have been brought together to assist someone who is still among those who dwell on Earth--my daughter, Hitomi

Panel 9   Across three intersecting panels, Miyuki and Takeda become smaller until they dissipate into vapors. 

Caption 6    The life Takeda has known and loved will soon be no more than indistinct memories shrouded by mists.

Page 3

Panel 10   Miyuki and Takeda have appeared in front of the veil and into the bedroom of Miyuki's 27 year old daughter Hitomi's apartment. They are at the foot of her bed, looking at her. Hitomi is sleeping, curled into a fetal position. Her long, wavy black hair is tousled over her face; her bedding covers her body from the neck down. The room an eclectic mix of African, Asian and modern furniture, artifacts and pictures. Over the headboard of Hitomi's bed is a huge poster of the R&B/funk group, Parliament/Funkadelic.

Caption 7    There is nothing familiar to Takeda here: the odd furnishings, the bizarre lights and sounds emanating from peculiar machines make him uneasy. He is accustomed to being wholly in control of people and events; it perturbs him that he has neither.

Panel 11   Intersecting panels show Takeda's face is a mixture of anger and confusion. He reaches for his sword, but to his bewilderment and frustration, it will not unsheathe.

TAKEDA

What sort of demonic habitation is this, girl?

Panel 12   View of Miyuki's head turned toward Takeda, who is still struggling to free his sword.

*(Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah, p. 235)

Page 4

Caption 8    In his previous life, Takeda would have ordered the “witch” and the odd, sleeping “creature” to be executed at once. Their offense--being at odds with the structure of his life--would have been sufficient to warrant their death. But there are no soldiers or servants to carry out his command. Moreover, it galled him that the “witch” remained unabashedly impertinent. Even his sword defied him.

MIYUKI

It is...the sleeping quarters of my beloved daughter Hitomi, Grandfather.

Panel 13    POV change to bedside, near Hitomi's head. Shows the pair standing together. Miyuki's face is filled with love, sadness  and longing for her daughter. Takeda looks as if he is about to explode.

Caption 9    He has reached the last of his minuscule amount of patience. Terror is his remaining weapon.

TAKEDA

TAKE ME FROM THIS ACCURSED PLACE, WITCH, OR I SWEAR BY MY ANCESTORS I WILL RIP YOUR BODY TO MERE THREADS!!!

Panel 14   Very large shot of the two--Every vein and muscle in Takeda's face and neck in bulging in fury while Miyuki looks at him with detached amusement.

TAKEDA

SIMPLE-MINDED BITCH! YOU DARE LOOK ON ME IN JEST?

Page 5

Panel 15   POV changes to the space between Miyuki and Takeda--Hitomi has turned in her sleep, kicking the covers off.  Her hair has moved partially away from her face. She is dressed in an over-sized tee-shirt revealing her flawless, sienna-colored bare arms and legs. It is clear that she is stunningly gorgeous young lady born of African-American and Japanese ancestry (picture R&B singer Amerie).

HITOMI

Mmmhhh....

Panel 16   Takeda's mouth opened in horror as he stares at Hitomi.

Caption 10    He had heard rumors, seen pictures of dark men from a distant land that the ruddy-faced, hairy men from Europe called "Africa".  Those pale men, with their wheat or fire colored hair and strangely colored eyes, spoke of half-men who were more apes than human. Takeda thought the stories were nothing more than the uncouth ramblings of foolish drunken whites. There can be no such thing. It is against nature for a human to copulate with an ape or a monkey, an unconscionable act.

Panel 17   A close-up of Takeda.  He is apoplectic.

Caption 11    Yet, before him...evidence that the dull-brained girl who claimed to be his descendant had committed the most heinous of acts.

TAKEDA

WITCH! WHAT UNSPEAKABLE VILENESS HAVE YOU COMMITTED? THAT IS NO HUMAN; IT IS A MONSTER!

Panel 18   A close up of Miyuki’s calm face.

MIYUKI

She is not only human, Grandfather, she is my precious, beautiful daughter. This is the 21st century; almost five hundred years has passed since you had a body. So much has changed since you walked upon the Earth. Whether you like it or not, she is of your lineage also. I married a man who descended from the people of Africa, although the country of his birth is now known as the United States of America.

Panel 19   Takeda stares at Miyuki, who continues to gaze lovingly at Hitomi.

MIYUKI

I know it is a rather old fashioned name for a girl her age, but I named her Hitomi, after my poor little sister. My sister was born with “special” talents, but without the emotional capacity to use them wisely. I had no idea that, to a lesser degree, the same would be true of my daughter. If I had, I would have given her an English name.

Page 6   Panel 20   Close up of Takeda's face.  His eyes are narrowed as he contemplates               another tactic of escape.                                     

Caption 12    Years of warring has taught the feudal lord that there are thousands of ways to turn a negative situation into a favorable one. He needs only a suitable moment.

TAKEDA

Really, my granddaughter? Tell me of this place, Uni...what is its name again?

Panel 21    Miyuki looks at Takeda, smiling because she knows he is trying to find a way out of what must seem like intolerable bondage to him.

Caption 13    What Takeda does not know is that the history of his battlefield stratagems and preternatural cunning has been passed down through the generations. Her father told the stories to Miyuki's brothers. Her eldest brother, Hiromasa, loved to regal (and terrify) her with his dramatic interpretations of these tales.

Panel 22   Flashback of sixteen year old Hiromasa sitting cross-legged on the floor next to six year old Miyuki's tatami mat (circa 1967), enthusiastically telling her about the clever ruses employed by their ancestor, Takeda Shingen that often led to victory over his opponents. Miyuki is wide-eyed and enthralled.

Caption 14    Much has been written and debated about the effect the dead has upon the living. There is evidence that the stories left by the forebears and repeated by their descendants does form a sense of identity within a family, especially when the stories instruct and warn about the various trials of life. The more unfathomable effect the dead have on their progeny is not so apparent, or easily explained.

Page 7   Panel 23   Hitomi is thrashing about in bed.

Panel 24   She jerks awake, startled.

Caption 15    Much of what happens in Hitomi's life is not easily explained.

HITOMI

Mommy!

Panel 25   She looks about her room as if she expects to see her mother nearby.

Panel 26   She cries.

Panel 27   Shot of Takeda and Miyuki watching Hitomi. Takeda looks bewildered while Miyuki is despairing. 

Panel 28   The glittering veil has appeared, and Miyuki backs into it as Takeda continues staring at Hitomi.

I found her behind our lines in a field not too far from a downed Messerschmitt Me 262. We had pushed the Germans back out of Paris and had retaken the countryside in early September. I thought she was a local who had been injured when the plane crashed into her house, but she seemed shell-shocked and could barely speak. She was staggering around in some colorful rags and we took her into the improvised field hospital.

We did not have any doctors yet, it was still too soon after taking the territory, so I was the lead medic in charge. We lost Jenkins, the only other medic, so I was working two shifts tending the wounded as best I could. Ronowski was a good kid with his hands so I put him to work cleaning and tending lesser injuries while I did what I could for those who looked like they might make it.

The camp was an old church that hadn't taken too many bullets and kept us out of the rain. It rained nearly every day. The Parisians were nice though and shared what little food there was. No one knew the strange woman, so we assumed she wandered from a nearby province.

She was a right pretty thing, five foot ten, but in her shocked state she seemed diminished and she let me lead her quietly. A French woman, Martinique, likely a Resistance member helped me tend her and we put her in the back rooms of the church.

After we cleaned her up, we noticed she did not have a scratch on her, even though her clothing had been destroyed, she was unmarked. We tried every language we could scrounge up in camp, but she did not seem to have any words at all.

We went out to check through the wreckage of the Messerschmitt and marveled at its technology. We took sketches of the design of the vehicle, its engine and the strange containment devices that were in the bomb bays. Both were broken but they did not appear to be bombs. Once we were done, we returned to the church. We were expecting to be reinforced.

Later that evening, we made a breakthrough with the blond haired woman. After saying my name and tapping my chest, she finally seemed to get some sort of recognition. She tapped herself and said "Helga."

After that, she became a member of the camp, helping with anything and everything. She still didn't talk much but she would smile and occasionally laugh if others were. She followed Martinique around everywhere and the woman graciously tolerated it.

A week after Helga got here, she came running to me and grabbed me. She tried to draw me with her. I picked up my rifle and told Lewis and Franklin to come with me. We double-timed it to a barn and what we saw inside stopped us in our tracks.

We opened fire on it without even questioning what it was because it was ripping Martinique's chest open and eating her vitals. At first glance I would have thought it was an insect except it was the size of a man, and its claws were tearing through Martineque's bones as if they were twigs.

Our bullets bounced off its shell as if it were armored. It drew its antenna back and turned around, broke down the wall of the barn and sped off down the road.

Lewis pulled Helga away from Martinique. He said, "what the hell was that?"

My mind was racing, in this war, I had seen a lot of things but nothing like that. "I don't know, but when it comes back, I intend to give it a much warmer reception."

"How do you know its going to come back, Sarge?"

I looked at both of them and then looked down at Martiniques' body. "Because we are where the food is. We are the food."

We got the townspeople together and explained to them what happened. They did not believe it at first, until the saw the body, and a barn full of holes and no target. I thought until our reinforcements arrived, we would be better off if we stayed closer together, so we took over the small number of homes near the church and established a perimeter and guards. Everyone was issued a weapon and taught how to use it. No one was go anywhere alone. Helga was the only person who did not have a weapon, she refuse to even touch one. After Martinique's death, she would talk to no one, nor stay with anyone but me.

We put a call out on the radio, trying to get an ETA on the backup but we were told it would be a couple more days, so we would just have to tough it out and make due. We put a machine gun nest in the center of the complex to offer a complete field of fire and had snipers in two of the tallest buildings. Nothing we could do but wait. It didn't take long.

I am not sure what made me go out that evening but I felt compelled to walk the perimeter and talk to the men. They were in good spirits and except for the two who had seen it, joked about the idea of a bug hunt. As I was walking back to the church I had the strangest sensation of being watched. I turned to look down the road but I couldn't see anything. I slept with a pistol in my hand.

Around 0400 hours, I heard gunfire, and sat up off of the pew I was sleeping on. It was rifle fire, likely one of the patrols. Then I heard the screaming and I was up and running.

There were only twenty soldiers left and they were all accounted for, so it was likely one of the locals. We ran out and made it as far as the central machine gun station, when one of the snipers launched a flare. We saw Jean-Claude, one of the cooks, running toward us and then before he could move more than a dozen steps, he was sliced in half from behind. The insect was back, and he brought friends. Dozens of them.

Williams, our church sniper had already begun firing and the rest of us bellied up to the sandbags at the machine-gun nest and opened fire with our M1 rifles. Our bullets struck the creatures but only the machine gun seemed to have the power to bring them down easily.

"Concentrate your fire in pairs. Snipers, cover fire only. Somebody get me a damn grenade."

"Coming at ya, Sarge."

One of these cockroach looking things made a dash across the courtyard toward the church and began to climb the wall toward the sniper position.

We tried to knock it down but the armor on its back was too strong.

"Petrelli, there is one coming up the wall right at you!"

There was a scream as the monster crested the wall and a single shot.

Petrelli looked over the wall, gave the thumbs up and kept firing. We held the ground until dawn and had taken no casualties. Or so we thought. When we canvased the area, there were three spots where human blood had been spilled but no humans were found. There were dozens of creatures killed, but they took the bodies, every single one, except for Petrelli's kill. Then the real bad news followed.

"All of the food in the camp is gone, Monsieur. I don't know how they did it, but there is nothing left anywhere. The grounds are picked clean. Only what we had with us in the church is left. They ate every chicken, every goat, every wheel of cheese anywhere." Pierre was beside himself.

Corporal Lewis and Petrelli had taken the body of the monster from the roof and were looking it over for weaknesses. We looked at our ammo and realized we could not have another fire-fight like last night. We simply did not have enough ammo. Only the machine was without fear of running out. The rest of us were down to fifty or sixty rounds apiece. That would not last long in a sustained firefight.

"Right between the center of the head seems to work best." Petrelli's New York accent was thick and it was something the group used to tease him about. "I guess that works no matter who youse are." They laughed. But real fear crossed all of their faces.

"I think we are going to have to make a stand here inside the church. Its got the strongest walls and the fewest windows. I want you to board up everything you can. Use the pews and anything else you can scavenge from town. They don't seem to like the light so avoid the shadows. Remember, they got Martinique when she surprised one in the barn."

"Sarge, I have an idea."

"I'm all ears, Lewis."

"Maybe we can lure them where we want them. And use something besides bullets to kill them. We don't have napalm but we do have gasoline so we could make Molotov cocktails. They seem as flammable as anything else."

"Fine, get a detail and get on it. But that is a plan that will happen while they are far away and while we still have lots of bullets. No sense having any flaming ones running through the camp."

The next few hours were desperate as we did our best to fortify our positions before nightfall. Helga seemed strange and distracted but she worked as hard as anyone to prepare before dark.

We were hunkered down with two squads outside on rooftops for sniping and close protection. We were using shotguns, inside the church and had built a bunker in the center. Our more powerful weapons were outside to try and kill the larger and more aggressive creatures first. Both groups outside could see and cover each other, and had plenty of flares to get through the night if necessary. We had also stationed lanterns down the road and anywhere else we thought the creatures might come from.

With no more food left in town, we knew they would be coming for us.

They came after midnight. They were not shy, they simply came right down the street, one after another, they came down every street from every direction. We shot flares, we threw Molotovs, we burned them, we shot them, we stoned them with traps, they fell into pits, and they still kept coming.

We fought them until four. They would fight, close us retreat, and they did this again and again. Our bullets grew lower and lower. We would soon be down to handguns and shot guns. The two machine guns were still loaded but when they started shooting it took everything we had to keep the enemy off of them. We were down to our last grenades as well. One or two more waves and we would be fighting them hand to hand.

Sniper Team Alpha died first. The creatures saved the best for last. Some of them could fly. They swooped down and simply picked them off in rapid succession. The men managed to kill three more before being dragged away into the darkness. We provided cover for Sniper team Bravo, and pulled them into the church. Our last machine-gun was setup in the doorway to the church which faced the street.

He ran out of bullets at five to five. Our shotguns held them at bay, lacking the power they made up for it in damage dealing. By five thirty we had killed sixty or so right up to the walls of the church. The waves had stopped. It seemed only the last of the creatures were coming. But these were bigger and tougher and could only be killed with a direct close hit to their chest or face. If you were that close you were likely to be getting killed. Petrelli bought it like that. Shot one bastard clean in the head and was sliced apart for his troubles. I want to go like that. Clean.

We had put the townspeople behind us in the church with small arms and they helped when they could. Suddenly the wall behind us exploded and they were being grabbed and dragged away. Helga leaped into the crowd of the creatures and began to bludgeon them with her fists.

Each hit caused a creature to explode into blobs of disgusting flesh. We did not know what we were seeing and we did not care. The last twelve of us rushed up behind her and pointed our shotguns into the masses wherever she wasn't. One of the biggest of the bastards, grabbed her with his claws and I expected him to rip her apart like Petrelli. She screamed and the sound literally turned him into jelly before our eyes.

We fought for another hour, the creatures must have been desperate because they kept coming and fought more savagely, with greater rage. We lost five more after that. All but seven of the twenty townspeople were lost or missing.

Helga seemed to be slowing down, her strength waning. But she did not stop and neither did we. We were so focused that I did not see one coming in behind us. It was a big one. Lewis having only one grenade left, threw himself onto the creature and the grenade detonated under him. Blasting the creature and us. No one saw Helga move. One second she was outside, the next she was in front of me. She took shrapnel that was meant for me.

She fell back into my arms and looked at me. There were shrapnel wounds in her chest, stomach and legs. I could hear small arms going on behind me but they gradually stopped. I looked at her and wondered where she came from, who she was, what she was. And none of that mattered. She saved us.

They told me later, she was a prototype of a German super-soldier that was intercepted and shot down near us. The insects were also a weapon, likely on the same craft. It seemed her memory had been lost in the crash and she only remembered her name. There was some talk of taking her body and dissecting it for science, but no one could find her when they went looking for her later.

When the war ended, we heard of several super-soldiers who had been released into the war, but were all believed to have been destroyed or killed depending on their nature. I returned home, tired from the war, just wanting to forget it happened. My parents had taken care of my little house and it was just the way I remembered it. I flopped down onto my bed and remembered Helga. A wind whipped up and the tree outside my window shook its leaves. The window opened up and a woman landed gently on my bedroom floor.

"We are no longer enemies. And I have never forgotten your kindness."

I ran to her and she swept me up in her powerful arms. How does one begin to forget a goddess? I did not intend to even try.

Übermensch© Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

The Kid fell from the sky, aflame. A black energy coruscated and trailed from his unconscious form. He fell limply, silently, helplessly. His explosive impact drove shards of concrete into the air and an exploding crater released a tower of flaming gas as his powers ignited an underground fuel main. People retreated into whatever cover they could find as automobiles fell from the explosion and the searing heat melted plastic, rubber, and other soft metals nearby. It was hell on Earth.

What followed him moved slowly at first. It was in no hurry. It savored the world into which it found itself thrust. The first two days here, there was no resistance and the creatures were soft, edible, pliant, with mild and crunchy centers. Then a few new ones came, and they were armed with stinging tools, primitive and less effective than nothing. They and their tools were tasty with a slight iron flavoring. Some articles of their clothing were less than tasty, tough with a fibrous consistency. After eating six or eight of them, it decided to peel the rest of the blue guardians and eat only the flesh and bones.

Then they came. The special ones. Most looked like the main food of this world, small, delicate, crunchy, and like the blue guardians, they were armed with tools. Their tools were fantastically more effective than those of the blue guardians. No matter. Nothing of this world can harm me. Nothing at all. Even the fire-star is too weak. I shall enjoy this one, and I shall not share it. Not a morsel will the Others get.

“The Kid is down.”

“He’ll get up. He’s just like his old man was. Stubborn.”

“Any ideas of what we’re dealing with?”

“With the rash of magical threats we have been seeing lately, I think someone has just upped the ante.”

“Oswald, I think we are going to have to hold the line until the big guns get here.”

Thornton Oswald the Third stood looking over the city and realized that the Shrike was right. With The Kid down, Gunner on sabbatical, Kali was coming from Metro City, and Shango out doing whatever magical Protectors of the Crossroads do in their spare time, they would have to hold this thing until reinforcements arrived. But it took The Kid. After Kali and Shango, The Kid was as tough as they come. He lacked his father’s fighting experience, but his durability under fire was unquestioned.

“Shrike, I will need a minute. Can you keep him entertained while I transform?”

“Sure thing, he’ll never see me coming.”

The Shrike, Walter Scott, depressed the studs in his gloves and his suit’s jetpack came online. Extending his arms, large metallic wings with serrated edges extended from them, increased his wing span to twenty feet. “Don’t be late.” With a boom, the Shrike took to the air and dived to attack the creature who stood easily twenty feet tall.

Thornton proceeded to draw a circle of containment in the rooftop gravel. As his cane drew through the rocks, they lit with an eldritch glow. Hearing the boom of the rockets as they roared away, Thornton focused his mind on breaching the boundaries between worlds. To a particular world, a world of feral monsters used by dark magicians and ancient gods, to the Fan-run-dhar-durak - Land of Forgotten Beasts. Once the realm became clear to him, he sought for a particular beast, a creature whose unmistakable might would be tested tonight. He sought the beast called Grimmamon, mightiest of the Beast Lords.

The Shrike swooped fast and his onboard computer, linked directly into his brain, had already plotted the course he needed to strike five times in two passes. His wings comprised of Promethium, a rare alien metal, allowed him to transfer and magnify his kinetic energy, so the longer he flew, the stronger and more dangerous the metal became.

But fly too long and the energy became uncontrollable without a release. So the longer he flew, the more he was forced to fight. Only touching the ground would bleed that energy from him. It was always the delicate dance of fighting and being tougher, but blowing out from not releasing enough energy or returning to his default state where he was weakest just before recharging.

Having flown here, he had already expended a good portion of his energy against the creature. He had damaged this black material called skin and even had drawn blood. But it seemed unaffected and knocked The Kid into next week. If he had been just a second slower, it would have been him. He doubted he would have survived that impact with the ground.

—gonna be fast, be loose, feel the air, float with it, snap the wing, strike, strike, beat the wing, turn, beat the wing turn, snap, snap, strike, strike, strike, away—

His blows were fast, blurs to the naked eye, and each tore into the nacreous flesh with little effect. Once, his wings had sliced through bank vaults back in the days when he was a villain in Metro City.

—Come on, Kid, we ain’t friends or nothing, but right now, I could use the sight of your overconfident face coming out of that fire. I hope Oswald is having more luck than I am.

* * *

Kali was streaking through the sky on her cloud, heading to Paragon City where she received the distress call from the Shrike and the Sorcerer. She was making good time and would arrive in about ten minutes. From this height, the suburbs of Paragon City seemed peaceful. She could see the smoke from the burning buildings ahead, a path of sheer destruction. The old Kali would have liked that; the new Kali was repulsed by such mindless waste.

“Kali Yuga, I have need of you and your darkest aspect.”

“I hate when you call me that, Shango. Where are you?” She really did hate that name; it invoked a violent and destructive past where she was a destroyer of all that she surveyed.

“I am at The Crossroads. There has been a breach and creatures are pouring through. I am attempting to seal it, but I cannot as long as the creatures prevent me from reaching it. I need your help.”

“Asking for help? That is not like you, Thunderer.”

“Nor is needing help, warrior-goddess, but here we are.”

“Can you make the gate? Or shall I follow your whining to the Crossroads?”

“Suffice it to say, you are earning that spanking.”

“Put it on my tab. I will be there shortly, husband.”

Kali focused her will, and her two arms became four. Each of them was armed with a knife of pure spirit. She began a sword dance designed to take her to the Crossroad between Worlds, a magical nexus connecting nearby realms of existence. A particularly puissant sorcerer or other magical being could use it to reach across space and time to other worlds altogether.

As she whirled faster and faster, she began to weave open a doorway, using her spirit blades and her connection to her husband’s god-force. The Shrike would call it a paired quantum connection, but she preferred the magical concept of contagion; once two things are bound together, nothing can keep them apart. She was beginning to feel the connection strongly and could see into the nether dimensions the Crossroad inhabited.

She could sense Shango before she could see him. He was covered by a horde of dark skinned giants. The Crossroad was in the presence of three giant red suns shedding their ruddy light on the scene. Shango was, for a moment, unable to be seen, but then lightning exploded from the ground, and the creatures were thrown back, and for a moment he was clear.

“Woman, what part of your Kali Yuga aspect did you not understand? I need you in your most terrible guise or we are doomed.”

Once she transitioned into the Crossroad, she was behind Shango, and he used his double-headed axe to create a barrier of lightning.

“Good to see you, too. Before we invoke that bitch, do you think we could see what we can do here, first?”

“Do you see that portal? That is where we need to be.”

The distance was only about the length of two football fields, but it was filled with these creatures, each the height of two men, with near human physical attributes. Their heads appeared to be more like an octopus, and their hands instead ended in tentacles. There were hundreds of them.

“Make ready, husband.”

Shango dropped his barrier and released a bolt of lightning, driving a wedge between the creatures, incinerating two dozen of them instantly. In the second it took his lightning to cross one hundred meters, Kali had already slain thirty of the monsters . She stepped through time and space and was everywhere and nowhere. She appeared and disappeared, and each strike laid a creature low. Her face was serene and peaceful as her four blades struck at once. Her superhuman strength made each blow cut deep into their flesh, severing meat and bone like a hot knife through butter.

Shango concentrated his powers and created a series of strikes before her; each of them she slew her way through to the next. When he was too busy to support her, he lent her his lightning and she kept the area around her cleared with her flashing blades and lightning. His double-headed axe flew around him with a cloud of electricity arcing from it to every creature near him. But the creatures were relentless and without fear. As soon as he would clear the area, more would appear.

He looked out and saw Kali was within fifty feet of the portal. He called lightning once more, and as it arced from him toward her, the creatures around him opened their mouths and sharp bones shot out and speared him in his chest and arms. He looked in disbelief; his flesh had the strength of steel. He laughed off high caliber weaponry like rain. What were these things that they could do this?

A searing acid began to burn his flesh, pumped through their ceramic probosci. He howled as his mighty flesh began to burn. Without warning, the creatures blocking his line of sight were cut in half, and two other blades slashed the demons’ tongues. The blades whirled around him and returned to Kali, who had not stopped her dance of death and retrieved her weapons amid flight and continued killing.

Shango, now enraged, drew his power to him, focused his pain and rage and became a thing of pure lightning. The creatures strove to grab him and died instantly, burned to death. As they cleared away, powerful arcs leaped from him to them, and they continued to die. He moved forward slowly, and Kali cut them down as they passed through the portal. He reached her and caught her hand as she struck out at him.

“Enough, my wife. The portal is silent. Perhaps we have earned our invitation.”

“Then let us not be rude to our hosts. They did set forth such a feast for such as us.”

“Indeed.”

They stepped through the portal.

* * *

Meanwhile, Thornton Oswald III completed his summoning ritual with the King of Netherbeasts. Grimmammon took the form of a great cat of immense size. “ Grimmammon, I invoke your service as in the pacts defined by my ancestors.”

“Bah, mortal, why should I bother with your family’s ancient pacts? You have been notoriously lax in your relationship to us. Where are the rituals of blood and souls as in the past?”

“Spare me your pathetic bargaining, hell-beast. Without me and mine, you and yours would have passed into your final existence decades ago. Our world stopped worshipping your kind hundreds of years ago. Look around you. Ask where Lord Arioch and his brethren have gone. Provide your services and enjoy the benefits of our continued relationship.”

“Show me why you summoned me.”

“Look, oh Great One. Tell me what you see.”

Grimmammon looked over the edge of the roof, and his demonic mien grew more stoic. “Our pact ends at the edge of this world, sorcerer. That is an eldritch being from beyond our world.”

“And evidently frightening enough to remove most of your bluster. Tell me more, Great One. Who or what is that creature?”

“A Chaos god from before the time of Arioch, from before time as you measure it.”

“You lie. There were no gods before that time.”

“Silence, pup. There are secrets even the gods keep. These creatures were imprisoned here in an age before yours. You are not the first masters of the Earth. Did you think you were? Ha.”

“Imprisoned?”

“By the First People. They could not destroy them, but they could lock them beneath the Earth, or the Sea, or in Fire. It is said even the very Air imprisons one. I will have no truck with that one, no matter what the price you offer. Its powers likely dwarf mine, the same way mine dwarf yours.”

Oswald thought about what Grimmammon told him, and realized they were out of their depth. Even if Shango and Kali were here, this was a threat greater than they could manage on their own. Since neither of them were here, it was likely they were working on this menace in their own way. “So we will do what we can until they arrive.”

“I know you can see the boy in that conflagration. Bring him here; deposit the flames on the creature. Then you can take your leave. We would not want you to be injured before I can make use of you again. You are weakening with age; perhaps I shall call your rival Shunmaburan instead.”

“As you request, so shall it be. But if you seek to wound my pride, you will find no demon has pride when its survival is at stake. But by all means, if you wish to call Shunmaburan today, and he were not to survive, I would be in your debt. Farewell.”

The old demon stood at the edge of the roof and the flames rose from the crater in the street. The flames swirled as if they were a fire vortex and flew from the crater to surround the otherworldly invader with the terrible fires. The Kid disappeared from the crater and appeared on the roof next to Oswald. Oswald saw the daemon link the fire to the creature, and realized the fire would only last a few minutes before exhausting its fuel. Once surrounded, the creature stopped moving forward, and this bought them some time.

Grimmammon turned away from the roof’s edge. He looked at the boy and said, “Tough, that little one is. A parting gift.” And with that he nodded and stepped back into the gateway in the floor of the roof.

Oswald was not happy with Grimmammon’s parting words. No good comes from gifts from demons. Looking down at The Kid, he saw the boy’s amazing recuperative powers rebuilding him, and in less than two minutes, he sat up, looking angry.

“Wait. We need to talk. There are things you need to know.”

* * *

Carolyn Von Putten was having dinner on the other side of Paragon City when she saw the news. She was finally having the date she had taken a vacation for, and she was determined to enjoy it. She was wearing a black Versace dress with less than modest pumps, showing off her well-muscled body.

She spent days hunting for this dress and wanted to stun Elliot Cole, investigative reporter, right out of his socks. And the dress had the right effect, too. Cole was barely able to speak and the evening was going so well. And then this.

Cole looked at her. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“I know you can see that television over there above the bar.”

“And? It’s on the other side of town. If those heroes can’t handle it, we’ll just cut our dinner date a bit short.”

Cole leaned forward and whispered, “What about Gunner? You do realize I know who you are?”

“What?”

“Don’t try to kid the kidder. I have known for some time. I am the ace investigative reporter in Paragon City. Now I know you should be going, and they certainly look like they need you. I don’t see Shango or Kali. Moving fire means the Occultist is there, and that flashing of silver probably means the Shrike, and I have not seen The Kid yet, so I am guessing thirty foot tall monsters warrant your attention?”

“Do you know how long I have waited for this date?”

“And I promise we will get another shot at it, pardon the pun. Now go. Besides, I have a scoop to get.”

“Need a lift? My car is on its way.”

“Nah, you have an image to uphold. Guns blazing and all.”

“See you in a bit.” Carolyn grabbed Cole and kissed him fiercely on the mouth. “Just in case, you’re late to our next date.” She turned and ran out the door. Turning the corner, a midsize SUV pulled alongside and opened the side door.

“Your suit’s in the back. Nice dress. “ The grizzled man driving the car pointed his thumb backward. She hopped up into the back and started stripping. “Get me there, fast. Set up range for heavy weapons long range. Put me on the radio. Shrike, can you hear me?”

“Gunner, enjoying your vacation?”

“Can it, I need you to get some distance and come in hot. I will be there in less than five minutes. Move out and I will come in with explosive ordinance. You follow with a Cannonball.”

“Roger that, fearless leader.”

“Occultist?”

“Yes, Gunner.”

“Where is The Kid?”

“I have him. He has been hurt. He found the creature first and alerted us. He held it until the Shrike and I could help.”

“How is he doing?”

“Tough as nails, ready to go back.”

“Any word from Shango or Kali?”

“None, but I can sense they are not in this world, or at the Crossroads. So they may be involved at another point in the battle. We will have to do what we can.”

“Our goal is to stun and control. Keep it where it is. Can you get the rest of the people out of there?”

“Of course.”

“Once the Kid is up, tell him to wait for my signal. Ten seconds after my signal, he should see a Cannonball. I will need him to grab the Shrike. I will work long range pushing the creature back. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“My contacts tell me it’s not like anything we have ever seen. We better hope Shango and Kali are having better luck than we are.”

“Why?”

“My contacts said the last time these things ruled the world, they destroyed the previous inhabitants.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Hope you’re right.”

“Stand by for my signal. Get those people out of there.”

* * *

Shango and Kali stepped through the portal and fell to their knees. The gravity was intense, eight times what they were used to on Earth. The air was thick and heavy. Even with their superior senses, they could barely see through the soup-like atmosphere.

They could hear a chittering sound, something that clicked, popped, sputtered at a variety of distances. Each set of sounds was distinct and otherworldly. Kali stood and began to move her hands in magical gestures.

“The spiritual flow here is weak. Something binds its movement.”

“Draw the god-force from my axe and complete your spell.”

As Kali finished her spell, she looked exhausted, but now she could understand the voices.

“What is it? Why has it come here?”

“It has disease; it comes from elsewhere. Nothing comes here.”

“Make it leave.”

The three voices had a chorus of others that answered them.

“This does not bode well, Kali. I think I liked it better when I didn’t know what they were saying.”

“That can be arranged. What do we do now? I was hoping there would be something to hit over here.”

“It wants to hit us. Why? What did we ever do to it?”

“Kill it. It trespasses on our world. We would never allow that in the past. We have eaten all before now.”

“No haste, visitors are rare; find what they want, first. What do you want, germ invaders?”

“I am Shango the Thunderer and this is Kali Bhavatarini. On our world we are gods. I would see whom I address."

“Gods, you say.
Hahahahahahaha! Such tiny gods.
You must come from a tiny world.”

“Show yourselves, braggart,” Kali shouted out to the darkness.

“Pull back the darkness.”
“We’ll rip your tiny minds apart.”
“Shroud is for your protection.”

Shango raised his axe and began to emit lightning, pushing back the darkness. Kali called her spirit blades and touched them together, increasing the light and dispelling the shroud around them.

“Evil germs want to see what we are?”
“Germ gods can’t listen.”
“So be it.”

The shroud of darkness peeled back slowly like a fog being dispelled. The scene was one of carnage as an alien landscape with the remains of a city all around them. Broken buildings toppled into the streets with all the great structures damaged in one way or another.

In the sky swirled a great mass, where the shroud emanated. Tendrils of both darkness and blackened flesh reached from it. They were immense, and the creature filled the sky with its horror. The pressure on the minds of Kali and Shango increased as its spiritual monstrosity overwhelmed them. Both warrior gods, both having slain tens of thousands in battle, were not prepared for the horror of a creature that had slain billions, entire worlds, holding their souls enslaved within its flesh, the spiritual screams overwhelming them. Their shields diminished, pushed back to their very persons. They stood together to support each other, and held the horror at bay, but it lapped at their shields, tongues of darkness trying to lick them, taste them, just seconds from overwhelming them completely.

They had never seen anything like this.

“Germ gods, you do not see all there is to me. I dwell at the center of the Universe. I lived before your world was even a swirling in the cosmic miasma.

What would you know of godhood?

You are only a little more evolved than the worms of your world.”

Shango laughed loudly and contemptuously at the alien being. “Your living quarters are foul, oh great Universe-dwelling deity. Where are your worshippers? Where are your spires of beauty, showing off your power to your enemies? A poor deity that fouls its nest!” Kali looked at Shango disapprovingly.

“Imprisoned by the creatures here. Unable to enter, unable to leave, I sensed an awakening and strove to find it at the Crossroads of all Realities. But before I could find it and leave, the portal was closed. Wretches bound me to this spot. Hate them I did. Killed all of them. They now serve me as my advance guard. Now I seek my kind everywhere. Only they can free me.”

“What would you know of this creature? He roams my world, free. His power is like yours, dark, an evil before time.” Kali presents a psychic image of the creature in Paragon City.

“He is one of us. Betrayer. He taught them here how to bind me to this spot. In exchange for his imprisonment somewhere else, away from me. Send me to him. I would have my revenge.”

“We cannot send you to him. We cannot break the bindings that lock you here. But we could make it possible for you to bring him here.” Shango looked at Kali, disbelieving what she was proposing.

“Trust me, my husband.”

“Oh yes, I would have him here with me.”

“How would you make this possible?”

“You are, after all, insignificant in power even to one as puny as he.”

Kali spoke to the tendrils of the creature tearing away at her shields, seeking even a momentary doubt to penetrate and strike. “Open your portal again. We will make a portal to our world. You reach through both and pull him back to you.”

“How can I trust you? I trusted him and he deceived me.

I trusted these creatures and they enslaved me. I cannot trust anyone now. Only one of you can go. 

The other stays here.”

They look at each other disbelievingly. They are the last of their kind on their world. Without them, their respective pantheons would lose their last anchors to Earth. Shango readied himself to say something, and Kali touched him on the lips. “You go. Your powers on Earth make you the more suitable choice to create the gate and to drive him into it. I will stay here and play hostage.”

“I will be back for you, my wife.”

“You’d better.”

* * *

The Kid, using his super-speed, ran through the legs of the creature and launched an attack at its chest. His haymaker rocked its footing. Rebounding off its chest, he flipped and landed thirty feet away, just to the right of Gunner.

Gunner in her red and black battle gear held an X-25 rocket rifle, firing a series of explosive grenades into the tentacled face of the beast. The Occultist rained fiery spheres down from the sky, each wrapping a limb in a flaming embrace.

Fire had the most effect on the creature, preventing its continued movement. But that was all they could do. Between The Kid and his speed and strength and the Shrike’s Promethium attacks, they could keep it off-balance. But whenever it moved or flailed about, buildings fell.

Nothing they did caused any permanent damage and they were beginning to tire.

Suddenly the sky darkened and the wind whipped up. Lightning began to swirl at the edges of the skyline.

The Kid, looking up, slowed down the flow of time and saw lightning charges building up right above their heads. Grabbing Gunner, he sped out of the line of the lightning discharge with seconds to spare. His big grin showed this was what he lived for, that last second save that no one but he could pull off. “Got ya, boss lady. I think the cavalry is here.”

“What?” Gunner hated when he did that. He saw something seconds before it happened. Then the lightning strikes began. Each rained down as a driving wind directed them into the face of the creature. Right where she was standing a second ago.

“Occultist,” boomed the voice of Shango from the heavens, “we need a Gate to the Crossroads. Something big enough for our guest.”

“Shrike, where are you?” Gunner extricated herself from the Kid’s very tight and strangely arousing grip.

“Coming in at Mach two. Tell me we have a target or I am going to explode right over you guys. Less than a minute.”

“Come down West Street. We are trying to push the creature to the Crossroads.”

“What good is that? He’ll just come back.”

“It’s what Shango wants.”

“Good enough for me. Fifty seconds.”

The Occultist teleported himself to the ground behind the alien monstrosity and began to form his gate. It was hard to concentrate over the barrage of lightning, and he had to erect a barrier to protect himself. Holding his cane above his head, he warded off the lightning and driving rain pushing the creature back toward him. His incantations steady, he sensed the gateway to the Crossroads opening. And then he sensed it, a creature of the Outer Dark awaiting on the other side!

He balked, holding the spell before completion. Shango is impetuous, stubborn, and sometimes downright irresponsible. But since I don’t see Kali, I have to assume she is somehow involved in this. In the end, this is about trust. I have to trust they have a reason. He completed the spell.

The Shrike, covered in the kinetic energy of his Promethium armor, saw the gateway open up. Diving down, he targeted the creature and saw lightning striking it, as well. Lightning strikes so powerful, the very air seemed aflame in a light so bright, the creature could barely be seen. Never saw Shango like this. Glad we are on the same side now. Four, three, two, one...

The release of the Promethium had to be done at point blank range. It had a release range of less than ten feet. He could turn at this speed, but just barely. To be sure of the effect this time, he would have to cut it closer than he was comfortable with. If I had known this hero gig would be so dangerous, I might have just stayed a villain. He activated his force field a second before impact, bracing himself for the energy release, it would be the equivalent of a Tomahawk missile. The explosion blasted him into the sky as he rebounded from the armored skin of the creature.

Flight controls are gone, diagnostics lights are on everywhere --we’re done. This had better be worth it. He felt his vector changing as he fell downward. Still trying to reboot his armor, he suddenly felt the wind was knocked out of him.

Suddently drapped over the shoulder of the Kid as they bounced off a building, arced through the air and landed on the ground nearly a hundred feet away.

“One day I might miss you.” The Kid laughed and put the Shrike down on the ground, clapping him on the back.
“Don’t remind me. Thanks for the save.”

“Armor systems online.” The Shrike’s powered armor reactivated.

“You might want to work on that reboot speed.” The Kid smiled and streaked away, faster than a Corvette down the street back toward the creature. He plucked hurtling chunks of building out of the air, like flowers, that might strike bystanders as he re-entered the fray.

The combined explosions of the promethium wave, Shango’s lightning strikes, and Gunner’s mini-missiles pushed the creature into the edge of the gateway, but not quite through it. Before anyone could make a further effort, a tendril of blackness reached through the gate, and as it touched our air, burst into flame. It grabbed the monster and pulled it back into the Crossroads. The last thing heard was, “I finally found you, Nyarlethotep. Revenge is ours.”

Without warning the gateway snapped shut.

Shango dropped like a rock from the sky, attempting to cross back into the gateway before it closed. The speed of his landing cracked the concrete. He roared like a madman and began to whirl his axe to create his own portal. The air was aflame with his lightning, but no portal formed. The Occultist walked up behind him and placed his hand on Shango’s shoulder.

“Enough, old friend. The creature from the Outer Dark has temporarily sealed the passage from our world to the Crossroads.”

“It has Kali.”

The gathered heroes fell silent.

* * *

Kali summoned her spirit swords and began the ritual dance of power. Tapping the energies unique to this plane, she bound its power to hers. She felt the lives of The People, and their rage at the creature that destroyed them. She felt their need to lash out, but also their impotence since they are deceased and can no longer affect the world. Her dance said that they could.
They listened.

The portal had been open for some time. She remained peripherally aware of it as the spirits of the dead came to her and followed her dance, each lending its tiny essence to what she was, a goddess of destruction and creation, a goddess of Time and Space. They sensed her kinship to all things in creation, and were at peace.

The portal was rent asunder as the Other suddenly arrived, and the two power-mad creatures tapped the energies of this plane and dozens of others nearby for their conflict. They ignored her and closed the gateway while their battle continued.

“Our deal is done. Release me.”

“Germ gods are in no position to make demands. We have our quarry, and we will use you to get back to your world once we have had our revenge.”

“You will stay with us.”

“We will be free of this place. We taste your world on him. It is to our liking.”

Their conflict was so terrible, nearby shard realms of existence were destroyed as they moved their battle through dimensions. Kali realized this creature never had any intention of letting them go home. That was why she told Shango to leave. She had no intention of staying.

Turning to the gathered spirits she raised her arms and shouted to them, “You seek revenge. Only Kali Yuga can give you that. So I release her to you. Gain your revenge!”

Kali’s dance moved faster, her four arms became eight, and she directed the energy of her death magic through the souls of those damned to be in this place, and they reflected her.

Her spirit blades appeared in their hands . And this happened again and again until there were hundreds of her and the contagion continued, spreading until there were thousands. Each shone with a dark energy that disrupted the very air around them. Slowly they rose into the air and their spirit blades sang out their song of retribution and revenge for their unjust deaths thousands of years before. Tiny stars of black fire began to arc through the air.

The gathered spirits by the thousands turned their energy toward the ancient gods locked in battle. They were not aware of the dark stars surrounding them. Each deity was consumed with its hatred of the other. The crazed tentacled god bound his brethren in a smoky embrace. The dark invader sliced away tentacle after tentacle, even as new ones replaced them. Their struggle destroyed the remnants of the great civilization around them as if they were nothing more than tissue in the path of a hurricane.

Then lead by Kali, the People exacted their revenge. Each hurled itself at the Great Old Ones. Their fiery trail slashed through tentacles and Dark God alike, and their screams of rage were palpable. Once ignored by the Great Old Ones, but no more. Now their rage was given form and a world quaked as bound spirits rose up against their slayer.

Kali Yuga smiled and continued her dance as the sky lit up by the fiery stars of souls enraged. And the Dark Gods knew fear.

* * *

An hour later, a portal opened in the wreckage of the street. Shango stood exactly where the last portal had closed. He knew if she was going to appear, it would be where the walls between worlds was weakest. He could sense it coming, a tell-tale rippling of the space-time at the Crossroads. When she came through she was in her Kali Yuga aspect, her demonic eight armed form was disheveled, battered, barely conscious but still alive. Even in this state, her power was evident, a wave of fear swept the street and people shuddered unconsciously.

Shango reached her in a single step and grabbed her. She slumped into his arms and her Yuga aspect was dispelled. And it was a good thing too. She had a hard time telling friend from foe in that state. He did not know what happened over there, but if she took on this form, she didn’t make any friends.

Ever the optimist, Shango picked her up and laughed. “Look at that! They sent her home, after all. She really doesn’t make for a good hostage.” It wasn’t the first time Shango questioned his wife’s incredible powers. The gathered heroes turned to the wreckage and could hear the sounds of attack helicopters and other military vehicles approaching the scene.

The Shrike looked at Shango, his visor opened, “I know this part. Skipping out from the police was my specialty, remember? We aren’t on the side of the angels anymore. We’re fugitives. That means we run.”

Gunner looked at the Occultist who was already weaving a teleportation spell. “Only for a little while longer, then we are going to fix this. I am tired of running.”

As the military approaches, the people of Paragon City streamed out and quietly blocked the path of the oncoming forces, slowing them significantly.

Gunner looked on, saluteed them and with the spell completed, they faded from view. The bystanders quietly dispersed. The military commander breathed a sigh of relief. Gunner was an American hero. She and her team had saved the world a half a dozen times, at least. He had to follow orders, but he didn’t have to rush.

“They got away again, sir.”

“Don’t you hate when that happens, Lieutenant?” The old colonel smiled, lighting a cigar.