Friday Challenge: Reindeer to Remember Galore!

Note:  This blog post is an entry--well, actually, this is a Series of Entries--into the Friday Challenge, which can be found here:

http://thefridaychallenge.blogspot.com/2011/12/friday-challenge-12092011.html

This week’s Challenge?  “A Reindeer to Remember.”  Provide a 120 word character sketch of one of those OTHER reindeer--you know, the ones behind the scenes, that you never seem to hear about...the ones who live in the shadows of the Famous Nine that everyone does hear about, year in and year out.

Now, I made a minor mistake with this particular Challenge.  

That mistake was to announce the details of the challenge to Lady Quill while there were munchkins within earshot.

The next thing I know, I am being bombarded with requests for rules, and details, and permission to post...and a heartfelt request to make this a homeschooling project...which, of course, was granted.  

Yes, daddy is a sucker.

So, with no further fanfare, my kids would like to present their homework assignment, and their unique and individual attempts at meeting this, their first Friday Challenge.

First up...the six year old, as transcribed verbatim by a sibling, from the spoken word:

the 4  Leg  reindeer  is  Artemus  fowl .

He  can fly.  Well   you  no  dasher and  

dancer and  prance  and   vixen  Commet and cupid and Donner and Blizen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? Artemus fowl? where is a fire in Santa’s workshop there is. There is a christmas tree in Santa’s workshop, and a elf reading, and Santa writing this story. Two elves are not at the workshop. The next elf is working on a story too, we are going to send these stories to Friday challenge,but she doesn’t know what she is going to write. she didn’t know what to write. And there was music playing. What should she write?

The nine year old has a thing for the name “Artemis” as well...

Do you know who Blitzens grandson is? Well, it’s Artemis Boomer! You know how Rudolph has a special nose? Well, Artemis Boomer has a special uncontrollable voice. If you’ve seen Sky High, then it’s like that gym teacher Arnold Boomer. Well yeah, his voice was like that. Anyway Artemis Boomer loved Blitzen he had always hoped that he would grow up to be one of Santa’s reindeer, but today was different for some reason he didn’t have any energy like he used to, and for some reason neither did any of the other reindeer.Somehow all the reindeer had gotten sick. When Santa looked into the ball of Christmas he saw that a strange plague was spreading there. They died!

The ten year old went a little further afield:

             My reindeer name is school bus reindeer. He is a school  bus with hooves. He runs everywhere. He has windows. He has no driver because if you talk  into a microphone where you want to be .  You’ll be there when you are done with your  food. He has a family too.  There names are Baby Reindeer,Papa reindeer,Mama Reindeer. He is different from the others. He looks like a school bus with a head  of  a reindeer and  the hooves too.When he got back   home he ate and ate. He goes to sleep instantly because he has to go to work . When he is awake he goes to work  after  breakfast. He is really fast when he has no people it the bus.

Lady Quill decided to invent The Mother of All Reindeer:

“Grandpa, tell us about Great Aunt Tonna.”

“Tonna was Santa's plow helper many generations ago. One year, on the day before Christmas Eve Tonna looked up and saw a bright light streakin' through the sky. Her hair stood up on end, and her antlers started glowing.”

“Then what happened, Grandpa?” asked Rudolph.

“A piece of starlight landed on Tonna. It burned a hole through her fur and into her skin. Her body started to tingle. Tonna started running. Her feet lifted off the ground. She was flying! Aunt Tonna went 'round to Santa and showed him what happened. That's when she realized that Santa could understand her. She was talking, like the humans do.”

And here is mine.

The reindeer glared across the table, bleary-eyed.  “It’s all a scam, I tell you,” he said, before dropping his snout back into his feedbag.  The scent of fermented oats and holly drifted out.

“How so?” I asked.

“Rudolph is cybernetic, don’t buy into that stupid song, and don’t even ask where he keeps the batteries.  And the rest put on this big buff manly show, but come on, with names like Dasher and Prancer and Cupid?  Even the antlers are fake!”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because they kicked me out!” the reindeer shouted, knocking his feedback loose.  Alcoholic oats and holly berries flew across the room.  “All because Santa couldn’t fit ‘Reynaldo’ into his stupid rhyme!”

-=ad=-

Days of Nano Past: From Nano 2009 - The Zombie Wrangler!

So, what do you do when you write yourself into a corner...?


One of the characters in my Nano last year was...well...Prometheus.  Or what's left of him, anyway, after all his worshippers died or forgot about him.  Now, his name is Tesla.  And his home base is an incredible museum:

Tesla turned from the storm lashing the window, and returned to his workshop.

And what a workshop it was.  The building itself was massive, but Tesla's lab covered a full three floors, end to end, of the entire building.  Two of the three floors had been almost completely removed to allow the room for display, flight, testing, or simply space to observe.  In the center of the room stood the bulk of a Cray mainframe, constantly cranking away at variables that only Tesla knew or understood.

Centuries of oddities and curiousities inhabited the shelves, from frisbees to Tesla coils, V8 engines to perpetual motion machines, items ranging from the simple and basic but interesting like a Moebius strip to the impossibilities of a half-developed scalar levitation pod.  MP3 music players shared shelves with Rennaisance instruments and Stradivarius violins.  A Gutenberg Bible leaned awkwardly against an Apple II computer, and both were balanced precariously atop a carved stone tablet dating nearly to Hammurabi.  Suspended by strings from the ceiling were a scale model of the Wright Brother's plane and a full-size model of a daVinci Ornithopter, and just between them, an artist's rendering of the fall of Icarus, complete with detached feathers drifting lazily in the air-conditioner-generated wind.

The entire room was a monument to human ingenuity and creativity, and the drive to create something new--the drive to apply science and move technology forward.  The very concepts that Tesla excelled at.

I invented this museum knowing full well that I was very likely going to trash it later in the story.  And when the time came for the fight, what other critter is a Necromancer going to send after the bad guys than a squad of zombies?

There was only one problem.  I had placed the good guys' hideout seventy stories up, and during Nano, you don't have time to go back and rework something because it would be easier later in the story.  You keep on going.


...so...how does one get a battalion of zombies to the good guys when they're hiding on the seventieth floor?


Easy.  


Craigslist ad for "entry level management position" with non-disclosure agreement, couple of interviews, pick the best one...voila!


Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet...the Zombie Wrangler.


-=ad=-



Jason had been monitoring the Machine, and called them all over.  "You need to have a look at this," he said.  In the distance view, there was nothing worth looking at, but as he zoomed the image in, closer and closer to Tesla's Museum, they could see a narrow band of black dots, looking like nothing less than a steady invasion of ants, slowly but steadily making their way to the building.

"He's finally sending out the zombies," Trevor said.


They barely had time to prepare for the zombies' arrival.  From the same storage room where Tesla had found the net gun, he pulled out a collection of handguns and passed them out to everyone.  They all filled their pockets with spare clips.

"Standard zombie rules apply?" Lewis said, expertly jacking a clip into the handle and cocking the pistol.  Unfortunately, his attempt at bravado and expertise failed miserably, as the slide of the gun came off in his hand.  He stood there for a moment, staring stupidly at the pieces of the gun, until Tesla came over and showed him how to put it back together.

"There are rules to zombies?" Tesla asked in confusion.

"Well, yeah," Lewis replied.  "No points for anything but a headshot, keep your distance or you get infected and turn into a zombie yourself."

"I don't think we'll have to worry about that part," Trevor said.  "This isn't a Resident Evil sequel.  These are magically animated, so I don't think they'll be infectious."

"Guys!" Lewis shouted, pointing.

The elevator had risen to their location, and the doors were about to open.

"Maybe it's the lobby security guards?" Trevor said hopefully.  The doors slid open, and a dozen animated corpses spilled out into the museum.  As the group opened fire on the zombies, the doors slid shut, and returned to the lobby.

Tina opened fire on the lead zombie, missed with the first three shots, and blasted out another plate glass window, before finally landing a hit.  The zombie staggered backwards two steps, half of its head missing, and collapsed.

"Cool!" Lewis shouted.  "Standard Rules!"  He pointed his gun at another zombie, pulled the trigger, and totally lost control of the recoil.  The bullet took out a light fixture on the far end of the museum.  He growled in frustration, held the gun with both hands, brought it to bear on a zombie, and fired, hitting it in the nose.  He cheered in satisfaction as the zombie's head exploded in a shower of gore.

"Tesla," Trevor asked, "I thought zombies were...you know, really stupid...?"  He gestured with his gun at the elevator display, which showed the car was rising again.

Tesla nodded grimly, stepped forward to point blank range, and fired, blasting two zombie heads apart simultaneously with a pistol in each hand.  "They must have the security guard's key card."


Stan Trimbett had decided he hated his job.

He hadn't known what his job was going to be when he applied, of course.  The Craigslist posting said "Entry Level Management" with opportunities to travel.  As an out-of-work burger flipper, he had jumped at the chance, and it wasn't until after he had signed the non-disclosure agreement that he had found out that his REAL job title was "Zombie Herder."

"Zombies are really stupid," he had explained to his girlfriend one day, after just a few too many beers.  "Oh, they're great in a fight; hack off body parts and they keep on fighting, blow out their kneecaps and they crawl after you.  But, when it comes to, say, opening doorknobs, they're totally useless.  So, every time the boss sends out a squad of zombies to take out the opposition, the squad has to have a babysitter along, someone who can open doorknobs as necessary."  He held out the special skull-shaped medallion he always wore around his neck.  "This says 'don't kill me, I'm on your side' to an angry zombie.  Well, to a moving zombie.  Zombies don't get angry.  They don't get happy, or sad, they just move forward, and tear apart anyone who moves.  Except me."

He still wasn't quite sure what he had done to end that relationship, but now that he was single, he was available for a bunch more zombie missions.  Like this one.  Somehow, the gang up on the seventieth floor had seriously ticked off the boss.  Since the boss was supposed to be some hot-shot wizard with gobs and gobs of super magical powers, Stan wasn't quite sure why they didn't just, you know, snap their fingers and teleport the zombies up there.

No, this was a job for the zombie wrangler; and Stan, supposedly the best one there (actually, the only one who had survived more than the first four months since the job was created), was now standing in an elevator, watching as a dozen or so shambled in, all facing the back of the elevator.  He hit the button, got it moving, and then started shouting orders, trying to get them all to turn around and face the door.  Half of them still hadn't gotten the right idea by the time the elevator arrived, but they were dragged along by the rest of them when the doors opened.  He delivered that load, and dropped back down to ground level for the next batch.

Yeah, Stan was pretty sure it was definitely approaching time for a career change.  Granted, he'd probably have a really hard time putting "zombie herder" on his resume, but maybe if he exaggerated just a bit, he could still figure out a way to apply it.  Camp counselor, maybe...?  He was still debating possible fibs when the next load stepped on.

When he arrived with this batch, the doors opened, and people with guns began blasting away as soon as targets were visible.  Stan dove to the floor, fingers in his ears, feeling a steadily deepening of layers upon layers of muck and gore piling up on him.  Then the doors closed, and he reached a shaking hand up to take the car back to the ground floor.

Stan had just barely managed to stand back up again, on shakey knees, when the doors opened and another batch of ready zombies tried to pile in.  About halfway through the load, though, he heard something land on the roof of the elevator car with a loud clunk.  Without even stopping to think, he shouldered his way past the mindless zombies and dove for cover behind the security guard's desk.  He was just in time; the elevator car exploded, shredding most of the remaining zombies, and splattering Stan with another layer of flying muck.

He strode to the door, dropped his skull medallion in a trash can just outside the revolving door, and headed for the local bus station.  Camp counselor in Alaska, that sounded like a decent change of pace.


"I don't get it," Lewis said, as the elevator doors closed again.  "I mean, if he's this super-hotshot wizard and all, why is he sending them up here in tiny batches like this?"

"Unless he's trying to keep our attention," Trevor said.

"A diversion?" Tesla asked.  From what?"

With a horrible sinking feeling, Trevor dashed away from the elevator door.

Days of Nano Past: From Nano 2009 - Dragon Nightmare!

Days of Nano Past

...in honor of Nano this year, he’s a clip from last year’s Nano, about an attack by an undead dragon.

-=ad=-


It took hours to fill them in on where he had been.  He told them about the ball of foil, and the various scenes he had witnessed.  Then, there was the Zen garden where Meroving had died, and after that, the separate garden that supposedly existed inside Trevor's head.  He even told them the deep, dark secret that had so fooled the Necromancer.

"So, Meroving sent him on a wild goose chase," Lewis interjected.

"Exactly," Trevor agreed.  "Meroving hoped it would keep him so busy hunting for a mythical item that he wouldn't have time for all the world-conquering stuff."

"You've learned a few mystical tricks, then?" Kiriana said with half a smile on her face.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to showing them to you," Trevor said.

"We're not going to have any time for that," Tesla said, his face serious.

"Why?" Dorian asked.

"Because the Necromancer is here," Tesla said, with a hard edge to his voice.

Across the room, standing exactly in Tesla's contemplation point at the plate-glass window, stood the Necromancer's puppet-figure.  It was eight feet tall and appeared to be molded shadow, a cloak like dark mist hovering a few inches off the ground, eyes of fire blazing from the shadows of a hood that was itself shadow.

"Your time is up, boy," it said, in a voice from the grave.  "You will bring it to me.  NOW."  The dark figure took a step towards the group.

Kiriana began chanting her defesive spells, and Tesla and Dorian both moved to interpose themselves between Trevor and the Necromancer, but Trevor shouldered his way between the two of them.  He stood, thirty feet from the dark shadow that was the Necromancer's herald, and said simply, "No."

"You dare refuse me, child?"  The shadow grew larger, nearly ten feet tall now, and the fires in the hood blazed white-hot.  "There isn't an entity on this planet that would dare to challenge me.  I could slay all of your defenders between blinks of your eyes.  Do not defy me!"

"Of course I defy you!" Trevor shouted.  "You're nothing, just a magical puppet sent out because you're too afraid to take us on yourself!  If you had any guts at all, you'd be standing here in the flesh, challenging me to a duel in the aetherial instead of sending this stupid dime-store animated Halloween costume!"

Tesla, standing just slightly behind Trevor's left shoulder, muttered, "damn, I really hope you know what the hell you're doing..."

Trevor held up the crystal that had been Meroving's spell.  "It's right here.  In the words of 300, you want it?  Come and take it."

The shadowy figure held up a finger, a long semitransparent digit that pointed at Trevor like an arrow of doom.  "You...will die," the shadow said.

"You've been saying that for a long time, but I'm still standing right here," Trevor said.

The black shadow figure vanished, and they all started to breathe a sigh of relief.  But barely a moment later, the plate-glass window smashed inward. Shards of bullet-proof glass scattered across the room, sending them all diving for cover.  And from behind the glass, slithering its way into the room, coated with silvery shards of broken window, was an enormous black dragon's head, with one horn broken off, screaming in rage and fury.



Threosh circled the city, moving quickly, but he couldn't get a clear picture of where he was supposed to be.  He had been charged with protecting the boy, but if the boy disappeared, how could he protect him then?

This task was getting harder by the moment.

He still had heard nothing through the aetherial from the other dragons, though that wasn't necessarily a bad sign.  Elder dragons took forever to discuss and deliberate their plans; it sometimes took weeks for them to reach a consensus on what the best approach to a problem would be.  Threosh, who was still centuries away from developing the exacting patience of an elder dragon, had to remind himself of that fact; he was fretting about word that may not come to him for days...perhaps even weeks.

Threosh was beginning to consider the various humans and beings he was forced to associate with as his friends, though, and he still couldn't understand why a friend would vanish like that.  It left a very human hole in his draconic heart, and it was an unfamiliar pain to such a young being.

He went into a long, gentle arc, meaning to fly a third lap around the city.  He knew Trevor was gone, probably to another realm; he had even considered the possibility that Trevor was dead, and his mission was an absolute failure.  There was no way he was returning to the elders with that message, though, until he had seen Trevor's body for himself.

Would that be his curse, then, unable to return to the realm of his birth because he was unable to locate the body of the human he had been assigned to keep alive...?

Threosh wrinkled his nose in disgust.  That scent--that horrific odor of diseased flesh, commingled with the stench of unbridled ambition and cruelty--that was the smell of the Necomancer.  The monster was here, in the city.  That meant that the humans and Tesla were under attack, and if the Necromancer was around, then...

...then Threosh heard the noise he had been dreading...the strangled, half-dead cry of a dragon that should have been laid to rest long ago.



The dragon rammed its entire head and neck into the museum, scattering heirlooms everywhere.  Poisonous acid dripped from the burned patch on the side of its face; the Gutenberg bible caught a stray drizzle, and disappeared in a puff of flame and caustic smoke.

Lewis and Tina, both knowing they had no real chance, tried to dash for cover, but everywhere they ran, the dragon's thrashings threw wreckage in their path.  Tina screamed as the Hammurabi tablets barely missed them.

Dorian leaped into action, jumping forward and striking the dragon across the snout with his practice sword.  The blade shattered, and Dorian himself wound up being flung to the far end of the room when the dragon lunged at him in retaliation.  The dead dragon screamed in pain and triumph.

But while Dorian had kept it occupied, Tesla had managed to unlock a specific cabinet.  He pulled out a strange-looking firearm, sighted down the barrel, and fired.  A net lashed forward, opened in flight, and wrapped itself around the monster's mouth.  Several of the cables hooked over the dragon's horn.  Mouth tied shut, the dragon growled, a deep-throated noise that would have terrified an enraged grizzly.

"That won't hold it long!" Tesla shouted.  We need to do something!"

"I'm open to ideas!" Trevor shouted back.  The dragon was lashing its head back and forth across the room, smashing more and more of the museum's exhibits into expensive fragments. Trevor caught sight of Kiriana launching a magical attack of some kind, but then dodging away from flying computer components, shattering her concentration and breaking the spell.  He couldn't figure out how to attack it in the aetherial, either; his lessons with Meroving had not yet reached the point of dragging a being into the aetherial for combat, only defending oneself when they were pulled in.

The net snapped from the stress.  The dragon opened its mouth, shrieked in triumph, and shoved a table off of Tina and Lewis.  She screamed, he flinched and closed his eyes...

...and something small and greenish-brown latched onto the back of the dragon's neck.



Threosh followed the scent of the Necromancer all the way back to the god Tesla's home and museum.

There, he could see the dead dragon, claws hooked deeply into the facade of the building, head and neck buried to the shoulder through a hole in the wall.  Threosh thought long and hard about what he needed to do, and as he reached the building, he came up with an answer.  He stooped like a peregrine falcon, as fast as he could fly, trying to land his attack before his enemy could spot him.

But he couldn't do it.  The soul-mind of the elder dragon spoke to him before he was halfway there.  Little one, it said, I told you to run.  Now I must slay you as well.  The voice was morose, depressed beyond all measure, a mere passenger on a body that was no longer his to command.

Surprise lost, Threosh slowed down, rethinking his attack--and then hit on it.  He redoubled his speed, diving between the dragon's slashing wings, and planted his claws deep in either side of the dragon's neck.  Over the horns, he could just see the humans struggling to get out of the reach of the dragon, but it was no longer paying any attention to them; it was solely concerned with the interloper attached to the back of its head.

It lashed wildly to one side and the other, trying to flip him off.  Threosh hung on, doggedly, refusing to allow himself to be thrown free.  The dragon smashed Threosh against the ceiling, scattering light ceiling tiles all over the already wrecked museum, and still Threosh kept his grip, while cables and wires and bits of wreckage dangled from his wings.

I will get you eventually, the dragon's soul said to him.  You cannot help me.  I must do as my master commands.


No, Threosh answered.  Your slavery is at an end, elder one.  I will not allow the Necromancer to torture you any further.

Threosh allowed the flammable bile to lather up in his mouth, and mix with the acid-poison there.  Without releasing his grip, he reared back, spat forward, and delivered a long, thin, napalm-stream of liquid fire directly to the hollow at the base of the dragon's skull.  As it burned away the outer skin and the skull, Threosh fired again, and then again, though the heat and flames were beginning to recoil into his own face.  Only when the dragon screamed in agony and began to thrash aimlessly did Threosh finally relent, and release his grip.

Threosh allowed himself to be flung across the museum, to safety; he rolled twice and came up beside Dorian, who was unconscious and lying still, body bent all in angles that did not appear to be natural for a human.

Thank you, little one, came the voice, one final, fading time.

The flame-poison had reached the brainstem, and severed the spinal cord.  The dragon was losing all control of its extremities, and was thrashing about, slicing great rents of flesh out of the neck scraping against the sharp edges of the bullet-proof glass.  Then, it lost it's grip on the wall of the building, and begain to slide backwards, out the hole.  It thrashed sideways once, catching the neck against the edge of the window, slicing the head almost completely free; the half-decapitated head caught there, in the window, for a long moment, before the weight completed the task of breaking the window free.  The dragon fell, and as it fell, the foul magic that had been keeping it alive and corporeal far past it's time began to fail.  The fingers and toes began to crumble, to scatter into dust at the touch of the wind blasting by.

By the time the dragon had fallen twenty stories, the wings were gone.  At forty, the ribs were visible.  And at ground level, nothing remained, except a fine ash that smelled distinctly of gunpowder and brimstone, caught on the morning breeze and swept into drifts against the curbs and windshields of cars parked nearby.



Deep in his lair, the Necromancer screamed in rage and pain.  Rage, because his best and most powerful weapon was now nothing but ashes in the wind, and pain, because he had invested a lot of power into animating that dragon, and its death was now causing a backlash effect that would have blown a lesser man into molecules.

But the Necromancer was no lesser man.  He held his hands against his temples, as if keeping his head from exploding by sheer force of will.

They will pay, he screamed at the pain within his skull.  Oh, yes, they will pay!

Zombies!

...if you've never been to a Zombie Walk, you have no idea what you're missing.

Well over ONE THOUSAND zombies cruised downtown Lincoln Saturday night.  They started at Pershing Center, wandered past the shops and mystified (and some terrified) onlookers, worked their way down UNL's Sorority Row, past the Broyhill Fountain, and then back to Pershing Center for a block party.

Yes, I was there, and yes, I survived the zombie onslaught...though it was close...

Many thanks to Randy and Pete, for doing the whole "combat journalism photography pool" thing; I can't claim credit for all of these pictures, there were way too many zombies to stand still and shoot!

-=ad=-

Hey, didn't you write for the Friday Challenge a couple months back...?

...you know, when a zombie baby is ready to be born, there's just no keeping him down...

...some zombies are as afraid of you as you are of them...

Preparing for the upcoming zombie-copalypse...

Sometimes you gotta be thankful for chain-link fences...

Hey, isn't that Wil Wheaton...?

Just strolling along...splashing blood all over the town...

I think she wanted to rewrite the ending to Carrie.

...sometimes...just sometimes...you get red-eye without a flash...

Hey, there's a zombie behind--oh, never mind.

Zombification.  A Family Affair.

There's just nothing like the scent of fresh flowers from a freshly dug grave..

I turned into a zombie and I just didn't have a thing to wear...

The most popular zombie there.

Can't you see I'm having contractions here...?

BRAINZZZZZ...

...makes you wonder what's on her mind...

Keeping my EYE on YOU!

...hey, you, with the camera, lend us a hand here...?

...it's all about the attitude...oh, and the BRAINS!!

Friday Challenge: Road Trip to Heck

This post is an entry into The Friday Challenge. This week's challenge: The Road Trip.

I. Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

"How would you like to take a photography trip? All by yourself?"

This was quite a surprise. I was actually speechless for a moment, and so shocked that I missed a chunk of the description. "...and he's going to sleep on our couch for a few weeks until he gets on his feet. I thought, just maybe, you'd like to take a day to drive out to meet him halfway, and bring me lots of nice pictures along the way."

"Are you sure we can do this? I mean, money is tight, and..."

"It's a three-day weekend," she said, "immediately followed by payday. We've got enough to get you to the Colorado Springs bus station, and he'll have enough to get you back. We can do this."

"I don't know..."

"Pack your camera," she said.

I packed my camera.

II. Choose your route very carefully.

My friend--I'll call him Paul, to protect him from vengeful commentary--lives near Flagstaff, but has family in Denver. He makes the trip several times a year. I told him what the plan was.

"Don't take Highway 40 across New Mexico," he said. "It's all under construction and will add a couple of hours to your trip. Take 70 across Utah instead, there's no construction there and the scenery is even better. The distance is about the same, too, about twelve hours total."

I trust Paul. If this is the best route for a photo journey, then it was the route for me.

Isn't there a fairly famous Klingon proverb that says, "Trust...but Verify...?"

III. Anyone want a good deal on a slightly used Mustang...?

Time to leave.

Checking the inventory, I had my laptop, several sets of batteries and camera chips; a quick store trip gave me a cooler full of road munchies. She handed me her "secret stash" of money just in case things got really tight. I napped for two or three hours after work, intending to drive through most of the night, and left home right around midnight.

Barely an hour out of Phoenix, I was passed by a speeding white Mustang. Here, the word "passed" is used in a generic sense to mean "nearly sideswiped and spun off into a ditch by an absolute lunatic who had no respect for the stripes down the middle of the road." But I kept my temper, and as my blood pressure returned to normal, I saw what looked like a small fireworks display up ahead.

The Mustang had taken the next exit, misjudged the turn, run off the road, and hit a lightpole. The pole was lying across the roof of the car, and the upper end was extending most of the way across the now-dark off-ramp.

I pulled over. I left my blinkers on, and went to see if everyone was okay, and found a couple wandering around in the dark. He was trying to talk to her, calm her down, while she shrieked and screamed in two languages. As I walked up, they went up over an embankment.

...and I was alone. With a dark, blocked, off-ramp.

I did the Good Samaritan thing. I stood near the pole, waving cars around it, wondering just how much of my trip time I was going to lose to this. The fourth car I waved at blinded me with the lights on top, and I explained everything to the cop inside; while we were talking, the couple from the Mustang drifted back into view.

They went to an ambulance, a wrecker was called, I went back to my car...and needed to ask the kindly policemen for a jump start, because an hour sitting idle with the blinkers going had killed the battery.


IV. Crossing the Border

Photo opportunities abounded as I neared the Utah border. The territory around Lake Pleasant is fascinating.

Just across the border, I found a place I can't recommend enough--a fenced off park that looks like nothing more than a pull-off beside the road. Two other cars were pulled off there, and one guy was getting camera gear out. That caught my attention. Something worth taking pictures of? I pulled off and grabbed my tripod.


I started shooting the hills near the highway, and was getting some okay shots. The guy with the camera saw me, and said "are you going to walk the whole trail? There are much better formations at the far end."
"Umm...trail...? I don't know, I'm on a schedule...maybe..."


He said "You don't know what you're missing," and headed back to his car.


I shot three more pictures, and a guy walking his dog went by. He also told me to walk the trail. Okay, I can take a hint. "How far?" I asked.

"Maybe a mile. Twenty minute walk, there and back, if you walk fast, plus time spent taking pictures." I threw the tripod over my shoulder, and started hiking.

I wish I had gone back to the car for spare filmchips and batteries.

It's called Paria Rim Rocks, and has some fantastic rock formations a mere two or three miles off the freeway. I killed at least an hour there. I could have blown several more hours if the batteries in the camera hadn't died--which reminded me that while the schedule was loose, it was still a schedule, and I needed to get back on the road.

The sights from the car all along that stretch of freeway were amazing, and it was all I could do to stay on the road and not waste the whole day wandering around with my camera.

Music was a problem. The radio stations in the middle of Utah must be fairly well scattered and remote, because all I could get was static. That was fixable, though. I propped open the lid if the laptop an inch, started up the DVD I had accidentally left in the drive, and cruised across Utah with the music from Fantasia blasting as loud as the little speakers could do.

The road stretched out ahead of me, and no matter how far I drove, it felt like I wasn't making any progress. I figured I should be nearing the Colorado border by now. I found this beautiful reflecting lake somewhere near that border, and stopped for a few pictures. Colorado was beautiful. I wondered to myself how far it would be to Denver...


...and something clicked. Paul had said "I drive from Flagstaff to Denver all the time, it's the same distance."

I didn't drive from Flagstaff. I drove from Phoenix. That's an extra two hours.

And I wasn't going to Denver, either. I was going to Colorado Springs. That's another two hours at the far end.

I was barely going to get there on time.

Here ends the visually-assisted portion of our tale.


V. Hell is a cold place...

I had told She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed that I would stop and call often. We didn't have a cell phone back then, so it was a trip to a pay phone at every fill-up or leg-stretching exercise.

Something bizarre happened when I crossed over into Colorado. The pay phones refused to dial all the way through to Arizona. Multiple phones at multiple stops. I couldn't call and explain that my schedule was shot because of my directions. There was no point in turning back, and I continued on.

(Note for those who do not believe in psychic abilities: My wife sent an email to a friend at about this point. It said "I haven't heard from him for a while, but he probably got sidetracked by a big field of flowers, or pulled off to take a nap and overslept. Everything is fine, and I'll hear from him when he's ready.")

Something else strange happened in Colorado. The road started rising.

Okay, so, maybe this wasn't so strange. Perhaps a better word would be "slightly unexpected."

Paul had neglected to tell me that my route would go up...and up...and over Vail Pass.

The drive up, of course, was completely uneventful. I reached the top with just barely enough time to reach Colorado Springs by my deadline, and barely enough gas, too.

The first snowflake hit the windshield at the very top of Vail Pass.

Within half a mile, visibility was reduced to a minimum. And by "minimum", I mean "can just barely make out the two red dots that are the taillights of the semi truck fifty feet ahead of me." And with the drop in visibility, there was also a slight reduction in speed...and by "slight reduction," I mean "if I push the gas pedal another millimeter past 21 miles per hour, the back wheels will fishtail and I'll get to the bottom of this freaking mountain a hell of a lot faster than I would really prefer."

I passed a sign. A very terrifying sign, for a guy who had lived in Phoenix for the last seven years and central California for ten years before that. The sign said "Steep downhill switchback curves...Next Eighteen Miles."

I stayed fifty feet behind that eighteen wheeler, barely noticing that my last chances for arriving at the bus station in time were rapidly disappearing, because my full and total attention was being paid to those two tiny little red lights that marked the road in front of me.

Finally, the road leveled out. Finally, I could break my hands free of the steering wheel...which was nearly impossible, I had gripped the wheel so tightly that the muscles cramped. I took a deep breath, and realized that I had been holding it for the last half hour.

...and I'm sure the trucker in front of me heard me when I passed a sign that said "Steep uphill switchback curves...Next Thirteen Miles."

(Note for those who do not believe in psychic abilities: It was about this time that my wife called every police station and highway patrol number in Utah and Colorado to see if anyone had reported a blue Taurus with out-of-state plates overturned at the bottom of a snow-covered mountain somewhere.)

I put the last of my cash in the gas tank in Denver, after sitting in the gas station parking lot for ten minutes waiting for my heart rate to sound a bit slower than a Def Leppard drum solo. I followed snowplows into Colorado Springs, and wasted half an hour hunting for the bus station, and finally pulled in at three o'clock in the morning...a full five or six hours after his bus arrived. The bus station itself closed at midnight, and they unceremoniously kicked him out into the snow; when I arrived, he was a miniature snow-covered mountain made of dark green sleeping bag. Twenty minutes after he jumped in, we were pulled into a gas station and dropping the seats back for a nap.


VI. Deer in the taillights

We woke with the sun, and brushed six inches of snow off the car before setting out.

My first inclination was to point the car towards Phoenix and not stop until I hit the garage door. But She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed had told me, specifically, that she wanted pictures of Garden of the Gods. That was the whole point of routing the trip through Colorado Springs in the first place. So, while he slept in the passenger seat, I took pictures of Garden of the Gods.

...and by "took pictures," I mean "I stepped out of the car in a Phoenix winter windbreaker, which was absolutely useless against a Colorado Springs spring snowstorm, giving me exactly seventy-two seconds to snap a picture before my hands started shaking so much my pictures would look like they were finger-painted, before jumping back into the car to spend ten minutes warming back up again."

I snapped twelve pictures before pointing the car towards Phoenix. But that twelfth picture became one of my wife's favorites.


That storm followed us. That blizzard stayed right behind us all the way out of Colorado Springs, becoming a huge dark thunderstorm down through New Mexico, and finally petering out as it tried to climb the mountains that ring Phoenix. And amazingly enough, though there was some construction, we didn't see any point along the way where the opposing traffic slowed down by more than a few seconds.

Once outside of Colorado, the phones started working again, and I was able to call and explain what happened. Though, when we finally pulled into the driveway, and she came running out of the house, I wasn't quite sure whether she was going to kiss me or kill me.

I'm not even sure she knew, either.

-=ad=-

The Girl, The Box, and Entropy

This story is an entry in the Friday Challenge. This week's Challenge? Take a well-known fairy tale, and rewrite it as a science fiction story...

Jack held the ladder tightly, with his cold left hand, the box gripped in his right. He dangled over a hundred foot drop, while his opponent smirked against a backdrop of stars and raised the slugthrower. "You shouldn't have messed with me," he said, and Jack could see his finger tightening...

"You did WHAT?" Jack's mother's voice echoed around the small apartment.

Jack carefully peeled the synthskin back from his artificial left arm. The whine of micro servos, freed from the sound-deadening insulation, seemed awfully loud in the small kitchen. He wiggled his fingers, watching the lines pull back and forth for a few seconds, before rolling the skin back . The pressure and power lines were draped across the metal bones to appear like veins, but any close examination would reveal that the arm wasn't a real one. "Some rich dude in orbit got his sliced off in a vaccuum leak, and the chopshop offered me big bucks because I've got the same blood type and genetic markers."

"So, you sold an arm..."

"And a kidney, and spleen." His mother blinked at him, shocked into silence.

"...and what did you get for them?" This was Jack's brother pitching in, and the tone of his voice made it clear that Mick didn't like the idea any more than their mother. Jack didn't answer; he threw a handful of plastic chits on the table.

"That's three month's worth of food. Maybe." Mick turned a cold stare on Jack, the same stare his mother was giving him. Jack threw the ticket onto the table too, and Mick recognized it at once. "I know what that is," he said, with just a trace of excitement creeping into his voice. "Charlie showed me hers before she left. That's a ticket up the Stalk!"

"So, you swapped body parts for a one-way trip to Hell?" Jack tried really hard to ignore the tears in his mother's eyes.

"I'm going up there," he said, "to find my fortune. There's more than just gangsters and drug dealers up there. I'm going to hit it rich, come back here, and move you off to Luna." She sputtered, turned her back on him, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door behind her.

"Jack," Mick said, "hold on." Jack didn't answer; he picked up the ticket, stuffed it into his pocket, and shouldered his bag. "This is crazy," Mick continued. "Like the night you spent in the bar, blowing a week's wages buying whiskey for that spacer." Jack made it three steps to the door. "This isn't one of your stories," Mick said, in a last, desperate attempt to talk sense into him. "You aren't going to rescue the girl, kill the bad guy, and live happily ever after. That doesn't happen in the real world."

When he saw that Jack wasn't going to stop, he gave up, and offered him the traditional spacer's farewell: "Never gamble against a Vornock'kk."

Jack paused, and looked at his brother with half a smile and a raised eyebrow. Then he mumbled a farewell and headed out to face his destiny.

The Stalk beckoned.

The space elevator was the first stage in getting humanity off the planet, but that was decades ago. Most everyone rich enough to leave...had. Most of the planet was a high-priced slum, with few jobs and fewer prospects for the future. The lucky ones got into space, to hire on with a starliner or colony ship. The slightly less lucky went on to prospect in the asteroid belts, hoping for a huge strike of tungsten or uranium and settling for nickel and iron. How many people spent a life's savings on a ticket up the Stalk, to the orbital station that was the first stop--and the only escape--from Earth?

Lots of them.

It took Jack hours to work his way through the line, but he refused to allow discouragement to creep into his outlook. The line shuffled slowly forward, while the thick trunk of the elevator towered overhead, seeming to get thinner and thinner in the distance, until it finally vanished from view. It was hot, and humid, and uncomfortable, but the sight of that metal cable disappearing into the sky gave Jack hope for the future. Ahead of him, he watched as a family was turned away because of illness. They shuffled past him, discussing how long it would take to scrape together the reschedule fee. Still the line creeped forward.

When his turn came, Jack submitted to the various indignities required of a trip offworld. The station above their heads was a confined space, with recycled air and water, and the signs on the walls announced how certain germs and pathogens couldn't be allowed off-planet. He was scanned, walked through a decontamination unit, scanned again, and challenged when the metal alarm went off. He had to peel the entire covering from his arm before they would clear him to go on.

Finally, he was through. He stood with the crowd, having been counted, measured, weighed, screened, and approved, while the pod sank to the ground. The Stalk was so big he couldn't even tell if anyone stepped off. Very slowly, the car shifted, pivoting around the massive base of the Stalk, until the open hatch yawned wide in front of him.

He barely paid attention to the safety briefing; he knew if there was a disaster the odds of survival were slim, but he did buckle the safety harness. All around him other people did the same. The air went cold as the hatches were sealed and the car pressurised. The upward car was a bean-shaped elevator attached to the north side of the Stalk; the downward car was similarly attached on the south. The safety checks seemed to go on forever, but he paid no attention, and finally, the elevator leaped off the ground and headed for space.

Life on the station was not easy. Jack found a job, dirty, menial, and uncomfortable, pushing boxes onto departing ships, but it allowed him plenty of time between shifts--time he used in attempts to figure out how he could land his break. He found the perfect place to contemplate; it was an observation room, with a huge window looking out over the Earth. He would spend long hours here, watching the planet, spinning steadily below them. The room was circular, with the window taking up most of one side, and it had obviously been repurposed--because the old lift-shaft yawned wide behind him, with nothing but a small safety chain and signs warning people away. Perhaps that deep dark pit was the reason so few people ever intruded on his solitude.

It was during one of these quiet moments that he heard her voice.

There was no mistaking Charlie's--Charlotte's--voice. They had grown up together, and when she signed up for the planet-wide talent contest that had ultimately gotten her off-planet, she had decided that "Charlotte" was much more mature and professional than the "Charlie" they had always known her to be.

She had been barely sixteen when they waved good-bye to her, at the base of the Stalk, and they had both assumed she had made it to some distant planet, striking it rich. Obviously, she hadn't even made it past the top of the Stalk. She was singing in a nightclub, a very exclusive place at that, as Jack learned when he tried to enter. Two hulking bouncers stood beside the door and blocked his path with a raised arm.

"Members only," one grunted, with a glare that was meant to intimidate. Jack didn't push his luck, but he stayed nearby, and saw Charlie being escorted from the club by a squad of four bodyguards.

"Charlie!" he called. She saw him, and her eyes went wide, but the entourage kept her moving into the lift. The last bodyguard stayed behind, talking into his wrist. Moments later, Jack felt the crushing grip of the bouncers on his upper arms.

"Come on, kid," one of them mumbled, in a surprisingly squeaky voice. "Mr. G wants a word with you."

Jack was led into the club, and into an ornate--and overdecorated--office. Paintings decorated the walls, mere inches apart, and shelves around the room were cluttered with expensive knickknacks. The room felt like it was decorated by someone who had no clue how to show off and highlight treasures, but merely wanted to advertise how many treasures there were. Jack was roughly and unceremoniously helped into a rather uncomfortable hard wooden chair, facing the back of a very large and ugly padded one. The bouncers stood silent, behind Jack's shoulders, for several long minutes, until finally the chair slowly swung about.

The man in the chair wasn't that much taller than Jack, and dressed in a suit that was visibly worth four or five tickets up the Stalk. He sat there, staring at Jack, fingers steepled, and finally said "Have you got a problem, kid?"

"Charlotte," Jack said, grudgingly. "I just wanted to talk to her. We grew up tog--"

"Ain't gonna happen, kid." He stood up, walked around the desk, and sat on the corner, arms crossed, eyes drilling into Jack. "Do you know who I am?"

Jack shook his head.

"My name," he said, with a deep breath and a sigh, as if he was tired of repeating himsef, "is Anton Grossman. This is my club. In fact, you could say, this is my station. Nothing happens on it that I don't know about. You wanna listen to her sing, well, you go rake in some big money, pay the doorman, and come back as a customer."

"What if she wants to leave?"

Grossman laughed, an ugly, little bark. "Leave? No way. She's indentured to me for another five or six years. She's gonna be singing for me for a very long time."

"Indentured? That's illegal!"

"On Earth, maybe," the man answered. "Different rules here, kid." As Jack sat, and fumed, and chewed his inner lip, Grossman walked to his desk, and picked up a deck of cards. "I'll tell you what. I'm a gambler, that's how I got rich. Maybe you're a gambler too?" When Jack didn't say anything, he set the deck in front of him. "Here's the deal. We'll cut the cards, high card wins, you know how to play that game, right? You win, I let her out of her contract, she goes away with you, no bad feelings."

Grossman leaned in close. "But if I win...she stays with me. And if you ever set foot in here again, Brutus and Titus pitch you out an airlock. Oh...and they'll probably beat the snot out of you on the way out of here today, too."

Jack stared hard at the cards. "All or nothing, kid," Grossman said, with an evil grin on his face. "What's it gonna be?"

Jack reached out, moving quickly to keep from losing his nerve, grabbed a third of the deck, and flipped over the Queen of Diamonds. He couldn't help but smile a bit as he put the cards down.

Grossman reached down, squared up the cards, cut the deck, and held up his card, all without taking his eyes off of Jack. "I win," he said.

Jack glanced down, tearing his eyes off of Grossman's just long enough to see the Ace of Clubs in his hand. Grossman's laugh echoed in his ears as the two thugs dragged him out of the club.

In the weeks it took for the bruises to heal, Jack did his homework, and found out everything he could about Grossman. He had suspicions but nothing he could prove; he stayed away from the club, but still hung out in the observation deck where he could hear Charlie sing without being seen.

Then, one day, he heard the unmistakeable sounds of a struggle, and Charlie's voice the loudest one. He fought the urge, for just a moment, and then dashed out into the concourse. The bodyguards were obviously moving her against her will. But there were six of them, and anything he did would be suicidal.

As it was, he didn't have to do anything. The doormen saw him, and as Charlie went out of sight, his view of the lift she disappeared onto was blocked by the hulking bodies of the two doormen.

"You again?" said the larger.

The smaller one joined in. "I thought Mr. G made it clear you weren't welcome around these parts."

"It's a free station," Jack said, through gritted teeth.

"No, it's Mr. G's station," said the larger man, "and he said if we saw you to teach you a lesson." He punctuated the remark with a sweep of a ham-sized fist that knocked Jack against a wall. When he turned around, blood dripping from his mouth, the smaller one was closing in fast; Jack threw a wild punch with his mechanical left arm, landed it with an audible "clank", and watched as the thug went down.

The remaining goon raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. He caught Jack's arm, twisted it, and slammed him into the wall again. Two more punches, and Jack was on the ground, curling up, trying to hide from the flying boots that were pummeling his ribcage. The thug lifted his leg, aiming for Jack's face--and then collapsed, mumbling and foaming at the mouth. Jack had to scramble to get out of the way of the falling body.

Mick was standing there, with a shocker in his hand. He cast an expressionless gaze on his younger brother. "Taking good care of yourself, I see," he said, while offering a hand. "I've been hunting for you for two days."

Jack started searching the pockets of the two thugs while Mick kept talking. "Mom got worried about you, you know," he said. "She finally found an off-world collector who was interested in Dad's old antiques, and bought me a Ticket. Did you know Dad had battle-flags from the big wars back in the Twenty?"

Jack paused in his search, but only for a moment. He stared at the weapon in his hand. What idiot brings a slugthrower onto a space station?

"So, what's next?" Mick asked. "Oh...let me guess. Kill the bad guy, rescue the girl, and live happily ever after...?"

"Nope," Jack said. "Charlie always liked you better." He handed over a security key card from the pocket of the squeaky-voiced goon. "You rescue the girl."

They split up in the main concourse, Jack heading for the club, Mick heading for the lift and living quarters. Jack wished his brother luck and strode confidently into the unguarded club, the antique pistol leading the way.

He found Grossman in his office, but the man was waiting for him, hiding behind the door. Grossman grabbed the gun, and the two men wrestled for it, out the office doorway and across the club floor. The bigger man kicked and struggled while Jack tried to get the gun free, and they both lost their footing at the doorway of the club, rolling across the concourse. He lost his grip on the gun, but managed to grab hold of something more important, and then felt open space below him. Panicking, he reached out, blindly, and caught hold of something.

He was hanging over the open space in the observation deck, his mechanical arm and a ladder rung the only things saving him from a very long fall.

Grossman hadn't gone over the edge, but he did have the gun. He scrambled to his feet, chuckling, and walked around the pit. "I always win, kid," he said with a sneer. "The breaks always fall my way." He brought the gun up, lined it up with Jack's eyes.

"That would be because of this," Jack said, holding up the small box with his human hand. He knew he was right as soon as he saw Grossman's eyes widen with rage.

"How...?" The man was so furious he was speechless.

"Never gamble against a Vornock'kk, right? I found out why last year. Drunk old spaceman told me that Vornock'kk's carry these little boxes that tweak entropy. They always get the lucky breaks. When you pulled the ace, I knew you had to have one. You gonna risk losing it?"

"I'll pull it off your body," he said with a snarl. "You never should have messed with me!" He aimed, and fired before Jack could say another word.

The antique cartridge exploded, pushing the lead projectile out the front of the gun barrel. It blasted across the little room in a fraction of a second, and caught Jack in the left eye.

...in some other, parallel, reality, featuring a Jack that had lost his grip on the Vornock'kk box.

In this reality, the gases inside the barrel of the gun were stronger on the right side of the barrel, driving the bullet a fraction of a degree to the left. The surprisingly loud noise caused Grossman to flinch just a little bit, forcing the bullet even further to the left. The air molecules bent the bullet's flight just a bit more, and the slug missed Jack's face by a fraction of an inch, careening off a ladder rung with a loud SPANG! It rebounded off two more walls, missed Grossman by less than a foot, and embedded itself in the glass wall behind him.

Both men heard it at the same time; the high-pitched, sibilant whistle that every spacer recognizes...as a death sentence. Grossman turned, the gun falling from nerveless fingers, and saw cracks spreading from the bullet. He took one terrified step backwards.

Jack cursed, stuffed the box down his pants, and began tearing at the synthskin on his hand.

Three more cracks appeared. The whistling grew louder. Grossman finally broke through his panic, turned, and ran.

He made it two steps.

The glass shattered, and Grossman disappeared.

Jack tore through the synthskin, grabbed the micro-hydraulic line, and ripped it free. He felt the mechanical fingers clamp down on the rung; without pressure to counter, there was no way the hand was coming loose. As his body was stretched towards space, he fought to grab a rung with his other hand, trying to make sure that the artificial arm itself didn't rip from his shoulder. Luck was with him, though, as the blast doors inside the observation window slowly came down. It seemed like hours, but was probably less than a minute or two, before the winds died down.

It took ten minutes and assistance from the station crew to force his hand to release itself.

Charlie and Mick were smiling as he stepped out into the concourse. Jack noticed that she was holding his hand.

"Can we go home now?" Mick was saying.

Jack felt the reassuring lump in his pocket, and allowed a smile to creep over his face. "Definitely," he said. "I think I found what I was looking for."

-=ad=-