In other news, Collision has a new Facebook page, and I had nothing to do with its creation save that I posed for a picture last week which I was told was needed for the promotional materials for the upcoming concert.  Meanwhile, I hope I am not saying too much too soon, but I think I have a rhythm guitar/vocalist, and I’m far enough along on that that I will be printing music for him (well, yes, a guy, but his range his higher than mine so I think we can do this).  He suggested it first in jest, I think, but he’s the best candidate I’ve seen, and he’s good.

Eric Ashley is again staying on top of the writing, with two contributions since I was here yesterday.  Practise Bits:  Weak has a bit of an unexpected twist in it.  Practise Bits:  Sacrifice is interesting, but I am not absolutely certain what it is that the character did to achieve his objective.

I have long lists of necessary tasks today, and some of them must be done earlier rather than later, and it’s already getting later, so I’m going to have to attend to other tasks and then return, Lord willing.

–M. J. Young

Without thinking, he was running, and Rover came with him.  Going downhill along the street, they came on a young girl tangled up in green vines, and Rover whined a peculiar note.

“Good boy.” Robert said, casting his eyes out into the unnatural deepening dark of the further slope of the street that led down to the cold, stony beach, and the piers, and small boats.  The girl murmured, but her mouth was caught by a vine, and she could not speak.

Twisting purple strands of energy richochetted down the New England street, enlightening the dark of the moon, tossing ozone into the air to twitch the nose, and halting in a flash of white at the man’s held up palm.  He rocked back and forth in his penny loafers, and wished he’d had the good sense to wear his boots for this night’s  dog walk.

“That’s going to do you no good.” He said, striving to sound calmer than he felt.  A woman in a long black dress, slit up her right thigh, and boat shaped at her neck to display her significant curves walked barefoot out of the shadow.

“A fellow adept.  I thought I felt some working of the Art.” She nodded.  He bowed slightly in response, always keeping his eyes on her, while murmuring ‘heel’.  Rover took its accustomed postion behind his right heel, and crouched down, but the dog’s eyes were bright with fury and keen attention.

“Save me.” The girl muttered, spitting out enough of the entwining vine to beg.

“The girl is mine.  She cast spells, and is a member of my coven, mine to do as I will.” The witch said stiffly noting his interest.

“Ah.”

“Step aside then.”

“I’m not a member of your coven structure.”

“A free warlock then?” The witch’s eyes widened. “Impressive. The Bolts of the Twilight Doom are not easily withstood. And you without formal training.”

He shrugged, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

She looked thoughtful.

“I am a witch of several centuries of life.  I can call spirits from the Astral, from the Ethereal, from the Past, and from the Shadows.  I can bind the dying to life.  I can call storms and wreck ships. Do step aside. It would be a shame to destroy such a gifted newcomer.”

“Well. If credentails are what is wanted. I am a verser, a traveller of many worlds and times, immortal in my own right, and a Worker of Power, and an Adept of the Inner Path, and a minor student of the Outward Spiral.”  He smiled faintly.

“This means nothing to me.”

He shrugged.  She huffed. She frowned. He shrugged.

“Look if you’re immortal, like you say, then you should know that this girl is but a mayfly, a flicker of a candle flame, nothing.”

“I must disagree. She has her life. I have many lives.  It is my duty to protect hers.”

And with that the Witch struck, for she had been gathering power all the while.  And lightning flared in the Heavens, and began to fall.  And the verser ran toward her, and embraced her for in a fatal tenth of a second, he saw that the Witch was truly his superior in the Arts Magica.  And so he embraced her, and the lightning fell on them both, and consumed them in a fury that cracked the stone for ten yards in all directions, and with a boom that was heard all over the small town, and tumbled the sherriff out of bed thinking that a terrorist had unleashed a bomb.

The verser and his dog were elsewhere, and the foolish girl was pulling herself free of now powerless strands, and the church bells were ringing.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead.

“I pay you to work, not to sleep.  You ungrateful….”

I was ungrateful.  This world did owe me.  See, I had come to this universe from another with an advanced PDA with software a decade in advance of everyone else.  So, I found a company in the computer biz, and offered them a deal.  Brilliant new programs, and I get ten percent royalty.  You have no doubt heard of SuperCom, and its remarkable advances.  It’s taken the world by storm.

Its mine. I did not read the fine print, nor did I realize the peculiarities of the law how I had to register a new innovation with the Office of Novel Plans from the local government of all the provinces, each and every one, to have it regarded as mine.  There are twenty provinces.  This law was designed, in my opinion, as a way for large and well-connected, and well-lawyered corporations to mess over some peniless inventor.  Add in a bought and paid for judge, and I’m out of my product, my PDA is seized as I ‘illegally have Supercom’s programs on it’!!, and I have to pay nearly fourty thousand in court costs.

I’ve come to realize that when the strong deals with the weak, the strong will eat the weak.  You may ask me why I do not just verse out?  One, I’m glad to see this world benefit from my technology. Two…revenge is a dish best served dishwater hot.  Right now, I’m working in the kitchen of Supercom under another name.  Soon, I’ll be moved up to chef’s assistant for the executives of Supercom.  Then, then they will regret having crossed me.  For even the weak can bite the foot that steps on them.

I did manage to read Eric Ashley’s latest contribution, Practise Bits:  Sales, in which a brash and arrogant fellow makes a shocking discovery about reality.

It’s too early for me to tire, and I’ve too much to do, so I’d better wrap this and move forward.

–M. J. Young

“First Rule of City Driving, bozos.” He yelled out the open windows as he left his main dragside two story behind.  His brother had taught him the first rule which was ‘aim at the most expensive looking car on the road; they’ll get out of the way’.  Rocking a bit, he pushed the gas, and scooted on down Lawrence Way toward downtown Cane City, named for the sugar cane spreads outside the city.  Ducking right in the two lane to get around a Little Old Lady who drove like her nom de guerre, but gave him a finger like a frat, he began rolling up his windows as the air conditioner turned chill.

Wincing, from the hot metal handles of the door window handles, he slammed on the brakes, and came to a jumping halt behind a white van, tagged with rust.  Seeing that no commando squad was going to jump out, and enliven his day by kidnapping him, he reached over to the right, and began cranking up that window at full extension of his arm while the air conditioning blasted directly   into his face.  Ah, it was good.  But with the window halfway up, he had to tag the gas again, and take off, veering a bit toward the right, and some large brick mailbox that he managed to miss by a sudden jerk of the steering wheel back the other way.

Two more streets, and he had the radio on, and he was caught at Presley and Lawrence so he finished his window uppage, and wiped his neck with a tissue, which he discarded with a violent flick into the passenger feet stowage.  Now all he had to do was worry about being hot, wish that OPEC did not have it in for America, and hope he made the sale.  He really wanted those new sub-woofers.

Arriving downtown in the pre-stressed concrete garage built just two years ago, he parked, dried himself again, marched briskly in suit and tie to the elevator, stopping to get a drink of water, and eye the gang signs graffitied into the concrete block wall of the elevator core with a sense that the world was coming to an end, and nobody in power gave a rip, and then he was down, and heading into New Tech, LTD..

Flirting with the secretary, and with the concession stand girl, he bought an iced drink, and slurped it down as he rode another, smoother, air conditioned elevator up to the tenth floor where New Tech had its hq.  They owned the building, but rented out the other nine floors.

“Marcus.” His boss, Bob called, holding a smooth  and small black shaped object in his hand. “Take a look at this.”

“I thought we were selling the Sheikh on….”

“We are Marcus, but this just came in. Very odd.”

Marcus took it, and saw tiny keys, suited for a child’s fingers, and a screen big enough….hmmm.

“Its a toy.” He said as he pressed the ‘on’ button absently.  It went on. Brilliant colors. Sharp. Clear.

It was a cat, a common orange housecat reaching out with a paw for a ball.  But the detail, the clarity, it was as good, or even bettter than you could get with a zoom camera…

Startled, he lurched.  This was impossible.

The icy water in his cup went up, and out, and down.  It hit the ‘Nokia’.  Marcus had little control over himself, he was so startled, shocked, and amazed, even enchanted by the clarity and power of that little screen. Then there was a flash of light.

Marcus sat up, and blinked. He blinked again.  Why was he imagining himself on a plain of orange grass?

That was not until after I uploaded today’s Examiner article, 11 Minutes Ago:  Cards, obviously in the temporal anomalies category.  It looks at the toughest part of the movie, how it is that Pack can know what card Tim will draw the first time he gets to that point in history.  At least that part is finished.

Collision is confirmed for a concert next Friday evening, at Dutch Neck Village’s outdoor stage at 6:30 in the evening, if my memory is working right.  If you’re in the Bridgeton, Cumberland County, New Jersey vicinity (why would anyone be there?) come see and hear us.  Our part is about an hour; there’s another band after us, with a set change between.  Tomorrow night will be the busiest rehearsal I’ve had in the shortest time, thanks to everyone’s time constraints, and I’m not yet ready for it, so I’ve a lot to do.

Given that there is so much to do I ought to go do it; but last night I managed to print the two recent articles by Eric Ashley, and to read them in the car while waiting to pick up someone around midnight or so, so I should mention them here.  The first, Practise Bits:  Cycling, is a short piece capturing the flavor of a high-speed motorcycle drive.  The second, Practise Bits:  Pallor, is about racism, violence, and redemption.

So I’m done here.

–M. J. Young

I dove backwards off the roof, and did a reverse swan dive to land on my feet on the first story roof of the building across the alley.  It was done well, a moment of perfect stillness, and the shock of landing was done before I realized it, and my ankles hurt not.  Rushing away on the tilted roof, tiles falling, I heard the shouts of the gang of Necki who pursued me, sought my life, for I am an Ork, a half orc, they say, but its not true.  They heard the noise I made and the hideous dogs they owned howled, dogs trained to kill men, for I am a man.

BOOM.

A searing pain in my right calf, and I leap to the next building.  There a hide in the shadow of a parapet, and I see two holes in my right calf.  Nerving myself, I leap to my feet, and bolt across the flat roof, fearing….

BOOM.

The man with the shotgun will be proud of himself for chasing off a half-orc burglar although I am nothing of the kind.

I ran to the far edge of the roof, and saw that the next house over was too far, and behindf me I heard the belling cry of the pursuers.  So, with hope, I jumped, and made to run, but in the shadow of the wall there was a brick loose, and I went down with a snap that drove black dots in front of my eyes, and pushed a curdled scream from my lips.  Rolling over in agony, I saw that my leg bone was clean snapped through, the pale white bone, like that of my hair, pushing out.  Dead, I was dead.  Surviving for two years in Brindisport after the ship had left me here as a ‘no good Pallordian’ because I had been too clever at sleeping with a knife in hand for my Necki shipmates to beat me to submission while I slept, and this was my last night.

Still, I looked about, found the brick, and took it in hand.  I could maybe take one of them with me.

Out of the shadows they came, tall, well-fed (for the poor do not chase Pallordians having more urgent concerns involving food), and a black as midnight, and good toned as the dark, healthy earth that grew all manner of crops for them.  They came on all sides, and their dogs came with them, growling, panting for the kill.

“I’ve caused no trouble.” I said, leaning against that wall of brick with my weapon hid in the shadows at my right leg.

“You enslaved us once.”

“Hundreds of years ago, and I was hardly born then.” I replied, mockery coming too easily to my tongue.  If I could show proper submission, perhaps they might let me live.  If not, I had a rock and a knife.

“You being disrespectful.” I heard the cocky challenge, and saw the half-dozen around me, and rage spawned in my heart.  Yes, by all the gods, I was disrespectful.  My folk had built this town, made the canals, and then repented of their sin in slaving, and given them to the Necki, and in return I, their descendant was called a half-orc, as if I really looked like one of those pale, slimy man-eating monsters.

“Mercy.” I gasped, showing my leg.  But that only brought cruel laughter, and jests, but for one who suggested leaving me be.  But he was overrulled.  And since I was to die, I closed my eyes, and prepared to give them what for so that they would be enraged and rush me, and I might kill one or two and die quickly, but instead I heard the rustling of bird’s wings, and the light step of dancer’s feet.

Opening them, I saw a cloaked man, darker even than the Necki, a full-blooded Drevnecki of the Old Blood that ruled this town, and he stood in front of me with his back to me.

“Go now.” He spoke, and I wondered how I was to go.

“Not you.” He whispered with a slight turn my way.

“Hey, your lordship, you can join in…” Thump. The cloaked man moved, and suddenly one of my pursuers was flung to the ground as if he’d been tossed from a horse.

“You can’t…”

The skirling sound of a blade, a deathblade, full four feet of shining steel, being drawn riveted everyone’s attention in that street.

“I won’t ask again.” The cloaked man said, his voice full of velvety menace.  And they fled, and he turned to me, and I saw a kind face, dark as the good earth, and honest care was in his eyes.

“Why?” I asked him as he crouched down to pick me up.

“Because in another world, I was as they are, but then I met a man who told me of a God who did not see the skin, but only the heart.”

“Sounds nice.” I said, and passed out.

Standing on his breaks, he swerved right behind a truck with a shotgun across the back window.  By this he knew the pick-up truck driver would be cool.  There was something about carrying guns, at least in this society, that settled people down.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  The trucker went to his right in the four lane road, and Paul opened up, letting the heavy bike leap to its higher potential. In seconds, he had bolted down the road, and was tapping the edge of ninety while in a forty mile per hour speed zone.

A clot of traffic slowed him up to sixty, and he slipped in between an irritated businessman in an expensive lux car, probably afraid of him scraping the mirror finish of the paint, and cut left at the first chance to wheel ninety degrees on to Cooper Street at an easy fifty miles per hour with the wind rushing past his neck, bearing the scent of the several dozen rose bushes that guarded the edge of Cooper Street Flowers, and past them he started to sniff scents that rumbled his stomach as he passed Burgeria, and Burrito Panchos, and Patrone’s Pizza on his right.  Regretfully he promised his stomach ‘later’, and ran the bike back up to an easy eighty before being caught by a traffic light.

I am hastening because before I visit Kyler today and deal with car problems, I have to drop someone at a bus stop; and I do not know when I will return, so I want to leave as little as possible unfinished–particularly since after an early morning start and five to seven hours of driving and time at the motor vehicles agency I’m going to be rather tired upon my return.  So this is me, hurrying.

–M. J. Young

It appears that my week now will include a trip north to visit a son with car trouble, which might be tomorrow and might not be easy on any day.  I also apparently have a Collision rehearsal Friday cutting into my time a bit deeper.  So it promises to be a busier week than usual.  Id’ better get to it all if I hope to stay afloat.