Author: M G Kizzia

Avalon 5.0 Invading Armies, part 4 of 6

M G Kizzia 1 Comment

The travelers and their Hyksos companions stopped for lunch, and Hebron finally had a chance to do some explaining.  “We first encountered the gas in Egypt.  We assumed the Egyptians made it, but discovered the Hatti, people from back home, were selling it and stabbing us in the back.  Lord Balor volunteered to return and end the gas making.  He wished to take only his twenty rangers—that is what he calls them—rangers, but the king insisted he take a whole company.”

“How many?” Katie asked.

“Ten fingers,” Hebron said.

“One hundred,” Katie translated.

“Or two fists,” Hebron agreed.

“But what about the Anazi?” Artie asked, anxious to hear about her own people.

“Well, young lady,” Hebron said, with a fatherly kind of smile for Artie who he imagined was a young woman.  “We found them first, lucky for the whole world, Lord Balor says.”

Artie grinned and turned to Katie and Alexis.  “He called me a young lady.”   She said it like she got a medal, or won a trophy.

“And you are,” Katie said.  Alexis just hugged Artie.

“I do not understand,” Ed took the tender moment to interject.  He looked at Lincoln and Lockhart.

“Don’t look at me,” Lockhart responded.  “Apparently, I don’t understand anything.”

Katie gave him a sour look, and he returned the same, but Decker interrupted before they could share words.

“So, what is the situation now?  Where do things stand with the Anazi?”

Hebron shifted in his seat and glanced at Decker.  “Basically, they watch us but leave us alone because they know we can take down their air ships.  They don’t know about our smidgen friends, but most of their smaller ships have been crashed, and one of their three great ships as well.”

“Wedge says with the right sort of magic you can kill any machine,” Cherry spoke up from where she was commiserating with Boston and Alexis.

“Lord Balor ordered the gas used on the invaders.  He had his girl, Anath, clean the area as quickly as possible, but after, he says there may be only three Anazi still able to give orders.  There are still a couple of hundred machine men…” Hebron paused to point at Edward.  “Like your friend.  They have set a circle around the great ships and keep a good watch.  We are in something like a standstill.”

Decker said nothing, but nodded that he understood.  Lincoln and Lockhart stared at Edward, and looked uncertain before Edward opened-up.

“There are more than three remaining, but the others are sick, and some have died.  They are waiting for the invasion force.  Please.  I saw my people suffer because of the gas.”

Artie looked upset until Alexis spoke.  “And did you see humans suffer as well?”

Ed looked at Artie and both dropped their heads when Artie spoke.  “All life is precious.”

“So, what can we do?” Decker asked.

“Nothing,” Lockhart answered.  “I imagine the Kairos has something in mind, or will think of something.  And he will probably tell us to move on while we can.”

Artie turned to Katie, her face showing clear distress.  “What should I do?”

“Nothing,” Katie answered, echoing Lockhart.  “Wait and see first.”  Artie slowly nodded, and Ed nodded with her.

“Pack it up,” Lincoln shouted to the crew.

“Wait, wait,” Elder Stow objected.  “I’ve almost got the program right.”  He pressed a button on his scanner, and Artie looked startled, but Ed stiffened for a few seconds.

“What was that?” Artie asked,

“Nothing yet,” Elder stow answered without looking up.  “I think I’ll ride in the back on the catapult wagon so I can keep working.”  He whistled, and his horse came.  He tied the horse’s reins to the back of the wagon and found a space where he could sit and work, undisturbed.

An hour later, in the afternoon, an Anazi transport came into view.  People imagined it would fly over their head and pick up the remains of Ed’s fighter.  People stopped moving and bunched up to watch.  When it looked large, overhead, the ship opened fire.  People screamed.  People ran.  One shot exploded in the front group, tossing a dozen men in the air.  A second shot exploded by the wagons and killed two of the mules.  The third shot ran into an invisible wall and reflected back toward the clouds, just missing the ship.

Elder Stow had the scanner in his hand, and threw the switch to put up the screens.

The ship moved higher in the sky and aimed, but the fourth and fifth shots did not penetrate.  They made only a yellow spot with a hint of orange, briefly, where they struck.

“Smidgens, wait,” Lockhart yelled.

“Wedge, Cherry, come back here,” Boston yelled at the same time.

Katie added, “Let the ship go.”  She noticed the ship had already passed over them and moved on.

Alexis yelled from the edge of the group.  “Elder Stow.”  The wounded men were outside the screens and she could not get to them.  Lincoln and Artie followed Alexis, and Ed trailed Artie.  Elder Stow turned off the screens, but only when the Anazi ship disappeared over the horizon.

Lockhart, Katie, Hebron, and Wedge all agreed.  They buried the three remaining gas canisters, and thanked God none of them had cracked open when the Anazi blast killed the mules.  They put the half-dozen dead in that wagon.  The half-dozen wounded rode in the catapult wagon with Elder Stow, after they trashed the catapult.  Alexis insisted on riding with the wounded as well, which freed Misty Gray along with Elder Stow’s horse to trail behind.

“The thing is, these horses are not trained to pull a wagon,” Lockhart apologized to Hebron.  He understood, and said he had twenty men who volunteered to pull the wagon by hand.  He said, the dead men deserved a proper burial, and they dared not take the time there, in the desert.  If the Anazi had broken the unspoken truce, they needed to get back to Lord Balor as quickly as possible.

Lincoln agreed to ride alongside the wagon that carried the wounded, Alexis and Elder Stow.  Decker also stayed with the wagons, as he said, to ride shotgun.  Wedge, Cherry, and most of the smidgens stayed with the wagons, but the rest of the travelers and smidgens followed Hebron and his two chariots.  They moved quicker than the lumbering wagons and arrived an hour before sunset, or as Hebron guessed, an hour or two before the others.

Avalon 5.0 Invading Armies, part 3 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“I have monitored the prevailing wind for the last six hours,” Elder Stow reported.  “The mustard gas will stick to the ground for a day, perhaps many days where it fell and where it spread, but we should be safe enough in this one direction.  We should keep an eye on our horses’ legs and hooves for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but then we will be in the clear.  Under no circumstances get down and walk.  Try not to touch the trees, grass, or bushes.  Are we ready?”

Several eyes went to Artie up on her horse, Freedom, where Ed sat behind her and held on, looking uncertain about the whole idea.  Artie nodded, and Elder Stow turned off the screens.  They waited for a minute while they heard several trees crash into other trees or fall or slide to the ground.  One medium-sized tree blocked their intended path, but it would not be difficult for the horses to step over.  Everyone got warned again not to step on the ground.  The androids, with their plastic-semi-organic flesh were no exception.

“And stay in line,” Lockhart added.  “The further you move to the left or right, the less safe you will be.

“The sulfurous gas residue will eat through your flesh in no time,” Elder Stow explained to the androids.  “The humans will just develop blisters.”

“What about me?” Boston asked.  Elder Stow merely shrugged.  He had no idea how the gas or the residue might affect elf-kind, though he pointed out that it was no friend to the environment.

Lockhart and Elder Stow took the front.  Katie and Artie, with Ed holding on, followed.  Lincoln and Alexis came next, while Decker and Boston brought up the rear.  Decker insisted on the rear-guard position where he could have some firepower to protect the group from whatever might follow them after they reached the open field.  Boston tended to straggle at the back when she did not urge her horse, Honey, to ride wild through the meadows.

The horses walked, and made no objection.  The path appeared to be residue free.  Alexis and Decker covered their mouths with fairy weave, though the gas itself had long since dissipated on the wind.  Katie said she could still smell the mustard.  Lockhart said it smelled more like garlic.

Elder Stow stopped at the edge of the trees where the way became blocked by three thick, old trees and plenty of underbrush.  Lockhart pointed.  Elder Stow nodded.  They went left around the roadblock and broke out into the grassy field.

“All clear,” Elder Stow said.  “But we would be wise to quickly move out of the area.”

They trotted toward Edward’s wrecked fighter craft, not a direction they would have chosen if they had a choice.  Fortunately, Decker had checked the sky with his eagle eye, and Elder Stow had double-checked with his personal scanner, and neither saw anything overhead.  Lockhart wondered if perhaps the Anazi wrote off the fighter as a loss when the homing signal quit.  Boston wondered if the glamour fooled the machines after all.  Ed shook his head, as he had learned to do for ‘no’.  Like some humans, though, he had not yet realized that a head shake was ineffective when people could not see his head shake.

“It is not the Anazi way to leave salvageable material unaccounted for,” he said.

“I can confirm that,” Artie added, and leaned back to smile for Ed.  “I like having your arms around me,” she whispered, and clearly, Ed did not know how to interpret that.

“We should be completely in the clear by now,” Elder Stow answered a question Lincoln asked.  Several people got down to take another look at the crash.

“Anything you can find to recharge your equipment?” Lockhart asked Elder Stow.

“Good thinking,” Elder Stow said, and he immediately joined them on the ground and began to rummage around.

Ed spoke when his feet once again touched the ground.  “There are not many Anazi left,” he said.  “We came here, an advanced group to prepare for an invasion, but the humans used the gas on us.  Many androids melted, as Elder Stow suggested.  Most of the Anazi became sick and died.  I do not know what message has been sent to home-world, but I saw that the conquest of this world would not be as easy as some said.”

“But mustard gas should be beyond the ability of the locals to produce,” Katie still insisted.

“Like gunpowder,” Boston countered.  “It is not a complicated compound; it just has to be discovered.”

“I suspect the Kairos,” Lincoln said.

“Or the Masters,” Lockhart said and frowned.  “The Kairos would not likely make something that could disturb the flow of time and history, but the Masters would.  Remember, their intention is to change history to make it come out more to their liking.”

“I would think establishing the kind of scientific lab and secure procedures to produce the gas safely would be the hardest part,” Boston said.

“And the most potentially damaging to history,” Alexis, the nurse agreed.

“I don’t know,” Katie hedged, and they all turned to listen to the doctor in ancient and medieval history and technologies, to hear what she had to say.  Katie cleared her throat.  “The Egyptian physicians in this age had labs and safe and secure procedures good enough to mummify the kings.  They knew and practiced certain form of surgery, successfully.  Their procedures had to be good.”

“So, the Egyptians are suspect,” Lincoln thought out loud.  “Maybe the Masters wanted to repel the Hyksos invasion.”

“Maybe,” Alexis and Katie agreed, when Decker interrupted.

“Company.”

Eyes naturally went to the sky before they returned to the ground where they saw men, and several wagons and chariots approaching.

“Stow,” Lockhart got the Gott-Druk’s attention before he got up on his horse and pulled his shotgun.

“Coming,” Elder Stow responded.  “I found something that may work for a few time zones.  It is primitive, but the Anazi do quality work, so it may last a couple of hundred years.”  He stuffed some pieces in his saddlebag and mounted with the others.  They walked the horses to meet the oncoming group.

“Friend,” Lockhart shouted when they got within range.  “Where are you headed?  Are you searching for someone?  Perhaps we can help.”

Boston reacted.  “Hey!  Stop that.  Leave our equipment alone.”  Several flashes of light, like little explosions appeared around the horses.  They looked like they were insects driven back by some force.  Alexis’ Misty Gray and Katie’s Beauty startled and bucked.  “Get big so everyone can see you,” Boston ordered.

A male fairy in armor appeared, floating in Boston’s face.  He asked a question that came out like a statement.  “You are not the Masters?”

“No way, Jose,” Boston answered.  “We belong to the Kairos, and we are looking for him…”  She checked her amulet and pointed.  “That way.”

A fairy woman appeared next to the man.  “You are the red-headed elf who travels with the yellow hair woman and former elf, and the men who ride on the big horses from the future.”  It was a mouthful.

“I’m Boston.  Who are you?”

The male fairy answered.  “My name is Wedge.  We are the smidgens made by our lord to interfere with the workings of the alien machines.  We took down the fighter plane, but we have been strictly charged not to harm the androids that pilot such machines.”

“This is your big size?” Lincoln asked.

“It is,” Wedge answered.  “But it is our normal size.  When the Lord made us, he made us so we don’t get big, we get little.”

“Little?” Katie asked.

“Smaller than the human eye can see,” Alexis and the female fairy spoke at the same time.

“Hi, I’m Alexis, the former elf.” Alexis smiled.

“Hi, I’m Cherry,” the female fairy said, as she fluttered up to face Alexis.

The men, like soldiers, arrived at that point, and the chariots stopped, and the men watched while the rest of the smidgens got fairy big and introduced themselves.  Lockhart looked at the man in the chariot who appeared to be the head man.

“Lockhart,” he said.

“Hebron,” the man responded.

“Should you lead, or should we?” Lockhart asked.

The man shrugged, split his group in two so some could lead and some could follow, and started out with a word.  “We should arrive at the great ships by sundown.”

“I do not understand,” Ed admitted as he turned his head back and watched Cherry get comfortable sitting on Alexis’ shoulder.  He saw Wedge sit in the mane of Lincoln’s horse.

“The universe is more alive and full of life than the Anazi can imagine,” Artie said.

“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Katie added.

“I do not understand imagine, or philosophy, but I do not doubt what you say is true.”  Ed responded, and he paused to think.  “I believe you, but there is no explaining it.”

“It is called faith,” Artie said with a big smile.

“I think it is called trust,” Katie offered another word.  “By his own free will, he is willing to trust what we say.”  Artie nodded in agreement.  Ed shrugged, like he saw the human shrug.

“The visual evidence helps,” Alexis spoke up from behind.

“It does,” Cherry agreed.  “I heard of you all my life, but I never thought to see you.  You seem very nice… for a human.”

Avalon 5.0 Invading Armies, part 2 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Alexis, Lincoln, Boston, and Lockhart stayed up with Ed and Artie while the others slept and the sun went down.  After sunset, Boston wandered the perimeter of the camp now and then, to let her refined elf senses reach out into the dark, just in case.  They half expected an Anazi rescue ship in the dark.  Elder Stow set the screen device in his scanner to deploy impenetrable screens as soon as something came in overhead.  Organic material, like birds, would be ignored, but anything else in the air would trigger the screens.  Boston and the others felt safe enough, but Boston walked all the same.

Artie, with a little help from Alexis, explained everything she could think of to Ed; too much, really.  She talked, sometimes rapid fire, and everyone saw plainly both how human, and in a way, how female Artie had become in the months since being liberated from Anazi control.

Apart from many questions, and not grasping certain concepts, Ed seemed most taken by the idea that he should be male.  Lincoln and Lockhart tried to fill in things from a male point of view, including when they confessed they did not understand how women saw some things the way they did, either.

“I think I best be male,” Ed admitted at one point.  “It seems much less complicated.”  Then he offered a free thought, something he just started to learn how to do.  “I accessed the program in my system that includes your faces and specifications on several occasions, since we came here to your earth.  Most of it made no sense, even when I had contact with humans like you.  But now, having met the living images, and having scanned you, and most of all, having spoken to you…” he paused before he continued.  “…and listened to you, freely, it begins to make sense.”  He paused again, and everyone waited, having seen that same expression on Artie’s face.  He was thinking, or reviewing data as Elder Stow insisted.  Even Artie waited patiently for him to speak again.  “I say, I felt more attracted to Lincoln’s face and form than any others.  There is no explaining it.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Decker interrupted as he came out of his tent.  “It was bad enough when the Shemsu among the Olmec people carved my helmeted head in giant blocks of stone down in the Yucatan.  Now, to have a bunch of androids running around the universe bearing my image.  No.  That would be too much.”

“Did we wake you?” Alexis asked by way of apology.

“Shift change,” Decker said.  “Midnight.”  Decker cradled his rifle and pulled up a seat by the fire.

“Well, I’m tired,” Boston said with a yawn.  She had become a light elf, not given to night hours like a human.  But then, she slept alone in her own tent, since her husband Roland went missing, and her father Mingus disappeared in that great flash of light, and Katie opted to room with Artie.  Sometimes, the prospect of being alone kept Boston awake.  Lockhart, Decker, and Elder Stow also slept alone.  Elder Stow, in particular; at first because no one trusted the Gott-Druk, but later because he snored so badly.

Boston imagined she would be rooming with Artie.  She had thought Katie and Lockhart would be together by then.  She watched when Katie got up to take Alexis’ place beside Artie, even though Katie and Artie did not have to be up until the three to six in the morning shift.

“I suppose I better get to bed as well,” Lockhart said, and looked at his tent.

“So, where are we in the discussion of life, liberty and all?” Katie asked, looking at the fire.

“Goodnight,” Lockhart said, turning toward Katie, but making a general statement.

“Goodnight,” Katie said, more-or-less in Lockhart’s direction, but just to add her voice to the chorus.

Katie and Lockhart appeared to pause, but then Lockhart went into his tent, Katie sat by the fire, and Boston, an empathetic elf, went to bed, sad.

###

Around three, Katie walked.  She had taken up Boston’s routine of walking the perimeter now and then, just to be sure.   As an Elect, a one in a million-warrior woman, designed by the goddesses in ancient days to protect the home and families when the men went off to war, her senses and intuition were highly refined.  She could sense danger and an enemy at a great distance, and what she senses at three triggered a red flag in her mind.  She yelled.

“Incoming.”

In only minutes, something buzzed overhead.  Alexis and Boston got up, groggy, but managed to combine their magic and form a magical disguise around Artie and Ed.  They had no idea if the glamour would fool the Anazi scanners.  Alexis suspected it would not.  She suggested it would fool an Anazi’s visual perception, but probably would not even fool other androids.

They waited.

The ship, a transport looking thing, stopped overhead.  It got a good look at them and their camp, though Elder Stow had activated the particle and energy screens around the camp in case the Anazi ship took a shot at them.  Everyone felt surprised when the ship rose in the sky, turned around, and left the area.

Something crashed through the treetops.  It landed some distance from the camp.  Artie shrieked.  Elder Stow tuned his scanner quickly to examine and study the crashed object.  He swore, something he never did, and adjusted the screens accordingly.

I made the screens extra-large and solid,” he explained.  “I sliced through some trees on the outer edge, but made it tall enough to take in the camp, horses and the trees in the immediate area.”

“Won’t those cut trees on the edge fall on us when we turn it off to begin moving in the morning?” Katie asked, as she moved several steps in one direction, but heard what Elder Stow said.

A second something overshot the camp.

“We won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Elder Stow said, and frowned

“Gas.”  Ed said the word a moment before Artie could identify it.

“What you call mustard gas,” Elder Stow agreed.  “It will fall to the ground and creep along for several hours before it dissipates, but the screens should easily keep it out.”

A third something fell behind them all.

“Not very good shots,” Artie concluded.

“They don’t have to be with mustard gas,” Katie said.

“Let me look,” Decker suggested.  Katie pointed in the direction she sensed was the source of the gas.  Decker nodded and stepped aside to a place where he could sit and meditate.  He let his spirit rise-up, carried by his eagle totem.  He saw no sign of the Anazi ship.  It had vacated the area.  From overhead, he spied a small catapult, moon lit, and a dozen men using it.  He saw the wagons, but as he circled around, he saw other men, more like thirty with chariots, about to charge the catapult.  Decker figured the catapult men were shooting in the dark, assuming the campfire belonged to their enemies.  They were in for a rude awakening when the chariot men charged.  Decker came back to earth in time to hear Katie squawk.

“Who the hell is making mustard gas in seventeen hundred, BC?”

“Not the Anazi.  We may never know,” Decker said, to verbalize Elder Stow’s shrug.

“Should we wake the others?” Artie asked.

“Why?”  Decker responded with the question, while Katie retook her seat beside Artie and spoke.

“The others need a chance to rest, and as Elder Stow said, we won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

“You ask these humans and do what they say?” Ed sounded surprised, even if he had not yet figured out what surprise was other than in a military context.

“Oh, yes,” Artie said.  “I have learned.  We act as a team.  Everyone has things to contribute, and these humans have knowledge and abilities that we do not have.  The best judgment is not always a simple weighing of the facts.  There is wisdom in listening, and these people have much experience that again, we do not have.”

“But to do what someone else says?  Is that not slavery?”

“Not when it is a free choice,” Artie responded.

“Only an immature child always wants his or her way,” Katie added.  “Elders can be wrong at times, but wisdom says the young should listen to their elders, and not resist them, especially those that care about you.  That is how children learn.”

“I have over fifty years of experience to draw on,” Elder Stow said.  “I understand Lockhart has seventy years of experience.  We have determined that Artie has about five years of experience, though she does not count the four years she lived under Anazi domination.  I suspect you are also about four or five years old.”

“Young soldiers listen to their seasoned sergeant and their commanding officer,” Decker added.  “Not only because they have pledged to listen, but because listening to their experienced words, and obeying orders, is the way young soldiers stay alive.”

“And you have not listened much to Lockhart, my mother,” Elder Stow spoke to Katie who he called the mother of the group, after his Neanderthal fashion, as he called Lockhart the father of the group.  “It seems he is an elder worth listening to.”

Katie said nothing, so Decker mumbled, “Only a child always wants her way.”

Katie stood.  “Excuse me.  I have a perimeter to walk.”  She left the fire and Artie spoke.

“Love is something I am still working on.”  She turned to Ed.  “It is very, very complicated.”

Avalon 5.0 Invading Armies, part 1 of 6

M G Kizzia 2 Comments

After 1700 BC near the Saini.  Kairos 59: Balor, Captain of the Hyksos

Recording…

The ship hurtled toward the ground as it spun out of control.

“Pull up,” Decker yelled.

“Pull up,” Lincoln echoed Decker’s words softly, as he reached for the reigns of Alexis’ horse.  Alexis buried her face in her hands.  She did not want to watch.

“There.”  Elder Stow took his eyes off his scanner long enough to point.  Someone ejected from the craft.  The man had had something like a parachute, though it looked more like wings.

The single person craft hit the ground and made a big ball of flame.  The person with the parachute-wings caught the updraft, and hopefully not too much of the explosion.  He managed to use the wings to steer away from the wreckage and fire, but he did not look too steady.  He came down too fast.  Maybe the wing-parachute got some holes in it.  Lockhart put down his binoculars when the person fell behind some trees.

“Hey!” Lockhart yelled.  Artie rode all out toward the downed pilot.  Katie and Elder Stow followed hot on her trail.  “Boston,” Lockhart called to the girl.  She had wandered out on the wing to get a better angle on the crash, but she had already started riding like a maniac to catch up to Artie, Katie, and Elder Stow.

Lockhart said no more.  He started after the maniacs at less than breakneck speed.  Major Decker, Lincoln and Alexis followed him.

Artie rushed through the woods and dismounted at the edge of the tree line.  She had not gone mad.  She understood the risk and calculated it was worth it.  The pilot landed not far away, and looked to be trying to sit up.  He looked broken, but her own sensors suggested he still functioned.

“Over here,” Artie yelled back to the ones behind her.  She did not wait for Katie to arrive.  The pilot looked at her through mist filled eyes.  He blinked before he moaned and collapsed to his back.

“Not human,” he said, before his eyes closed.  Artie could not be sure if he saw that she was an android, like him, or if he thought she was human and he was warning her about himself.

“Elder Stow, hurry,” Artie yelled back, but the elder hurried as much as his short Neanderthal legs could hurry.  Artie knelt beside the pilot and extended her sensors to examine his insides.  He did not appear to be badly damaged, but he looked different on the inside.  He had some systems she did not recognize.  “Hurry,” she repeated softly.  Ever since her obedience crystal burned out, Artie had come to understand things like pain, fear, and helplessness.

Katie arrived and took Artie gently by the shoulders.  “Let Elder Stow work.”  She lifted Artie to her feet and held her back while the Gott-Druk took her place, kneeling beside the pilot.  He had a disc in his hand which he quickly applied to the android’s temple.  One twist of a button, and the android stopped making noise.

“Is he dead?” Artie asked Katie, tears forming slowly in her android eyes.  Boston rode up, not stopping at the edge of the trees.  She dismounted like the rodeo rider she had been before she became an elf.  She spoke like the technological genius she remained.

“No,” Boston answered Artie, having heard the question with her good elf ears.  “That’s the same disc Elder Stow used to help you rest and heal after your own crash.”

“This one isn’t so badly broken,” Elder Stow reported, as he opened the android’s chest.  “I believe he just caught the shock wave of the explosion and hit the ground rather hard.”  The elder worked and thought a moment before he explained in terns the humans could understand.  “Like being thrown into a brick wall by a concussion grenade.  Some systems are in shock, but they will come around shortly and consciousness will return… A-ha.”  Elder Stow used his sonic device to disconnect something.  “The long-range detonator, in case the android obedience crystal ceased to function.”  He flipped it to Boston.  “Dispose, please.”

Boston caught the detonator, but gave the elder a mean look.  She raced off a hundred yards at elf speed, about sixty-miles-an hour, and heaved the detonator as far as she could.  It took a second to race back to the others.

Artie turned into Katie’s motherly arms and tried to keep her composure while Elder Stow worked.

“An improved model,” Elder stow said.  “The Anazi are learning.”

Katie spoke around Artie.  “According to Lincoln, it has been around a hundred and twenty years since we found Artie.”

“Yes.  I imagined something like that,” Elder Stow said.  “Many systems have been miniaturized and enhanced, and some new abilities have been added.  This time, though, I think I best wait until the android can tell me what is not working properly.  On Artie, I did a lot of guesswork.”

“What?” Artie looked up and stood on her own two feet again.

“I mean, even this one is still a very primitive construction compared to what I am used to.  I fear that in the course of fixing your systems, I may have improved and enhanced a number of them, unknowingly.”

“But I am functioning just fine,” Artie insisted.

“Good, good.”  Elder Stow closed-up the android on the ground and got his scanner to scan the android’s head.

“You didn’t like, awaken her, did you?” Katie asked about Artie being sentient and self-aware—a true artificial intelligence.

“Eh?”  Elder Stow paused to consider what he got asked.  “No, no.  Her brain casing remained intact, as it is with this one.  She had the capacity all along.  Her abilities for many things were just depressed by the obedience crystal.  I burned the crystal on this one as well, by the way.  We will see when he wakes up.”

“Can we be as lucky a second time?” Boston asked, and smiled for Artie, who returned the smile.

“It isn’t luck,” Elder Stow insisted.  “It is science.  I had a long talk about it with Yu-Huang in the last time zone.  He suggested that the Anazi are very human-like in their perceptions of reality.  They are just far more obedience oriented, in general, than humans.  They have the capacity for freedom, but they have not been inclined to pursue it.  Once Artie became free of compulsory obedience, she chose freedom.  There is no reason to expect any other android will not choose the same.  But even if this one should choose slavery to the Anazi, there is no reason to suppose we are in danger, setting this one free.”

“He,” Artie said.  “I feel as though he is a male.  I don’t know why.”

“We can’t take him with us,” Lockhart said as he walked up with the others, their horses trailing behind them.  “It took Lady Alice nearly six months to phase Artie out of her natural time zone so she could travel with us without prematurely ageing every time we moved through a time gate.  We can hardly ask her to do that with every Anazi android we come across.”

“No, I understand,” Artie said.  “This male needs to help set the other Anazi androids free.  We are not ready to become our own people as long as so many of us remain slaves to the Anazi.”  Artie looked at Lincoln and Alexis.

“All life is precious,” Alexis said with a nod.

“But slavery is not a life to be wished for,” Lincoln nodded with his wife.

“Freedom!” Artie thought to call to her horse, the one she named freedom.

“Beauty,” Katie called hers Black Beauty.  Elder Stow whistled.  The horses came trotting up to join the herd.

“So, this one needs to go back, like Andy, and help set the others free,” Boston paid attention.

“Oh, but what can you do if the Anazi realize the obedience crystals are burned out and hit the factory reset button?” Katie asked.

“Or just detonate them,” Decker added.

“Reset button?” Lincoln asked.

“Elder Stow said in the homing device there was a program to reset the android to factory specifications.”

“Not exactly,” Elder Stow explained.  “It will wipe the memory and reset the mind to original specs, effectively wiping out whatever personality may have developed and opening the mind to new programming.”

“You mean, complete memory loss?” Lincoln asked.

“Person deleted,” Elder Stow nodded.

“But that would be worse,” Boston said.

“Worse than death,” Alexis agreed with the young elf.

“But I believe I have found a way to hack the reset program and set up a firewall against it without removing the homing device or interfering with its other functions,” Elder Stow explained.  “I am still working on the hack for the detonation device.  I am afraid removing it will be noticed, but for now it is too dangerous to leave it in place if you want the android to live.”

“But he must live,” Artie insisted.  “My people are enslaved, even to the point of willing suicide, if necessary, to achieve their mission.  I need this male to set others free, but I don’t know how he can if the Anazi notice he is missing his detonation device.”

“Is that what I am to do?  Set my people free?” the android spoke in a metallic sounding monotone, surprising everyone.  They had all turned to focus on each other and the conversation.  “Why did you call me a male?”

“Are you not?” Artie asked, and she smiled at her thoughts.

The android looked at Artie and commented in his flat voice.  “You are a primitive.  Most of your kind have been rebuilt or put on minimal service.”

“I am Artie,” Artie said.  “Do you not like the way I look?”

The android sat up and looked thoughtful.  “I have heard of you.  You have made yourself look like these human females.  I do not understand the word, like in that context.”  He spoke, while Boston snuck around behind the android and read the serial number printed on the android’s shoulder.

“ED8573W2426.”

“Ed—Edmund?” Katie asked.

“Edward,” Lincoln responded.  “There was a ‘W’ in there somewhere.”

“Edward,” Artie said, and broadened her smile.

“I do not understand the word freedom,” Edward said, then he asked a curious question.  “Why do I recognize all of your faces and forms?”

“Maybe Andy got a sub-program into the system a hundred and twenty years ago.” Boston suggested.

“Likely,” Elder Stow agreed.

“We need to make camp,” Lockhart decided.  “But not here.  Back in that clearing in the woods—the one full of boulders.”

“They will come for him,” Decker surmised what Lockhart obviously thought.

“They will come for me,” Edward agreed, in not quite his normal metallic tone.

“I can delay that,” Elder Stow suggested.  He played with his scanner and explained as he worked.  “I have disabled the distress and homing signals on the crashed ship.  Now, I have covered the android—Ed’s signal as well.  They may think he has stopped functioning, but in any case, they may not rush to recover the remains.”

“What magic is this?” the android asked, at least cognizant of the concept of magic.  Who knew what human interaction he had prior to his crash?  “How do you disable such things without connecting to them?  How can you do that with a little box?  What kind of magic box is that?”

“We have much to talk about,” Artie said, and patted Ed on the shoulder.

“Not magic,” Elder Stow yelled, as Boston and Artie helped the android to his feet.  “Not luck and not magic.  It’s science.  Just science.”

The people all walked back into the woods to get under the cover of the trees, and the horses dutifully followed the ones to whom they had been magically tied.

Avalon, Moving into the Future

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Avalon is a television series in written story form.

I only have one general rule: that anyone who reads a story/episode, for example, from the middle of season three, they should be able to pick up on what is going on and basically how it all works.  If you want to start with the episodes that appear on my website, mgkizzia.com, and then want to go back and read the earlier adventures, that should be fine.  Of course, reading them in order will enhance the experience, but I hate accidentally picking up book two of some trilogy and being totally lost.  Especially for a TV show, a person ought to be able to come in the middle and still get a good story.

***

Aha!  Notice how I snuck the season two and season one covers into the last post of the pilot episode… Well, here they are again, in case you missed them:

***

Look for Avalon, Season One, Avalon, Season Two, and Avalon Season Three at your favorite e-book retailers.  Thirteen Episodes from the beginning of history in each book detail the adventures of the travelers from Avalon.  Thrown back to the beginning of history, the travelers struggle to work their way through the days of myth and legend.  They face gods and demons, gothic horrors, fantastic creatures and ancient aliens in this romp through time.  They also quickly realize that they are not the only ones who have fallen through the cracks in time, and some of the others are now hunting them.

Seasons 4, 5 and 6 are blogged in bite-sized pieces on my website: mgkizzia.com as of this writing.  These stories bring the travelers face to face with the worst monsters of all: the human monsters.  As they move through the days before the dissolution of the gods, they get caught up in the rise of empires, and the birth of the great civilizations.  It isn’t what they think—a grand adventure of discovery.  It is never what they think.  It is dangerous around every corner, and troubles rise directly in their path.

Seasons7, 8 and 9 will bring the travelers into the common era where the human capacity for violence and destruction increases exponentially.  The spiritual terrors and aliens fade into the background, without ever going away, as the world turns to the history of humanity, and eventually world war threatens the travelers with every step of their journey back to the twenty-first century.

***

Look also for Avalon, the Prequel: Invasion of Memories, where the Kairos comes out of a time of deep memory loss and realizes he is the only one who has any hope of stopping an alien invasion.  To keep from being overwhelmed with the sudden influx of so many memories from so many lifetimes stretching from the deep past to the distant future, the Kairos tells stories from various times in his own life when he remembered who he was; the Traveler in time, the Watcher over history.

Invasion of Memories is both a collection of short stories and a novel of the men in black who struggle to prevent an invasion by the alien Vordan, a species given to shoot first, and that is pretty much it, just shoot first.

All of these books are reasonably priced at your favorite e-retailer.  You can find them under the author name, M. G. Kizzia.  And here, I am supposed to say, Pick up your copy today! or some such promotional doo-dah…

I hope you enjoy reading the Avalon stories as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Happy Reading.

— MGKizzia

PS:

The Pilot Episode will be reposted for free as an e-book by the first of November, so unless you want to buy it for a whopping 99 cents and support the author (much appreciated) you might want to wait until it is free.

Also, on the first of the year–so after Christmas, in case you were thinking of Christmas presents for someone who might enjoy these stories–the price for seasons 1, 2, and 3 will be going back up, not to the 3.99 where they began, but to 2.99, a compromise price.  So, if you want to get them at the low 1.99 price, now is the time to buy.

************************

Monday on the Blog we begin Avalon, Season 5

It’s okay to start in the middle… Remember?

If you are a newbie, just remember to read a full episode to grasp the full concept.  That is normally Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, for 2 weeks, which for those who hate math, that is six posts per episode.  Enjoy…

 

Guardian Angel-23 Family Ties, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Ethan rushed to Jill’s side.  “You’ll get better,” he said.  “We can heal you, can’t we?”

Jill shook her head.  She was not sure.  Her left arm, part of her abdomen on the left side was missing.  The bleeding had more or less stopped, but there was not much hope.  “I can’t regenerate so much from scratch fast enough.”  She tried to lift her good hand and she smiled at him as he knelt beside her.  Ethan caught the hand and pulled it to his cheek, and kissed her hand through his tears.  “We all have to die sometime,” she said.

Ethan tried to get hold of himself.  “But I can’t lose you.  We just found each other.  Please, don’t leave me.”  He pleaded and did not care how it sounded.

“You’ll find someone, someday,” Jill responded.  “I did.  And when you do, you must love her with all your heart.  I will not be happy if you love her less for my sake.”

“But I want to marry you, for real and forever,” Ethan said.  “I love you.”

Jill tried to nod as her smile grew.  “And I will marry you.  Kiss me.”

Ethan leaned over and put his lips to hers.  She hardly had the strength to kiss, but he gave her his personal chit and she gave hers to him.  “Once more,” she whispered, and he kissed her again, and she passed him her work chit, which had integrated all of Lela’s unfinished work.

“Do you mind?”  She asked.

“I’ll do it,” he said.  “I’ll make you proud.”  He kissed her hand again with his lips and tears.

“I was so lonely,” Jill said.  “For centuries.”  Her voice could barely be heard, but her smile would not quit.  “Now I am so happy.”  That was the last thing she said as she passed into unconsciousness.

###

“So I rushed over and grabbed Dominic’s key as fast as I could.  He didn’t exactly hide it.  I scooped up Jillian and got her in stasis.  She is still alive, technically, but I don’t know if I was fast enough.”  He paused to take several deep breaths before he continued.  “Then I went back for everything and everyone else from the Company floor so the Elders wouldn’t come along and get mad.  Then I encoded Dominic’s battleship to my pattern and put Dominic in the morgue.  You know, this ship is almost a little city.  It has everything.”

Ethan paused for one more deep breath and he looked away before he finished his thoughts.  “Well, I didn’t know if it was safe to go to Jill’s world—to go home, even if I figured it was the only place where she might be saved.  I did not know what else to do.  Since I got the contact information that you passed to Jill when you hugged her at the house, I thought I might find you.”

Diana looked up at him with the saddest green eyes.  They were eyes, which Ethan knew, usually overflowed with life.  “I’m glad you did,” she said.  “I don’t know if it is too late either.  She is safe for the moment as long as we keep her in stasis, but the heads back home will be the only ones who may know how to save her, if she can be saved.”

Ethan sighed.  “Dominic’s spare key is where it belongs, but I scrambled the key frequency for the ship in case someone like Archon made a copy.”

“You are not supposed to do that, you know.  The army keeps a copy of every key.”

“I know, but I also did a search for tracers in case Dominic’s father had a trace on his son’s activities.  I didn’t find anything, but I am not sure an internal check would catch anything,”

“It’s alright,” Diana said, and she did smile a little, like she could not help it.  “I scanned the ship before I pulled into docking bay one.  I didn’t find any tracers either.”  Ethan’s look prompted her to explain.  “I’m sneaky, and I don’t trust everyone or believe the best of them like my sister.  She gave too many people the benefit of the doubt.”

Ethan understood.  “Doctor Augustus, you don’t mind that we have parked on this side of the Hudson?”

“Not at all,” Doctor Augustus said.  “It gives me something to look at besides the ruins of New Rome.  That was really beginning to be an eye sore.  Besides, from what you tell me, this is not the normal sort of world to park Gaian ships.  The only way anyone would find your ship in my world would be by complete accident.”

“I think I will,” Diana said suddenly, and everyone looked at her and wondered what she was talking about.  “I think I will leave my ship in dock one and travel the worlds from there.  That way, if I run into trouble I can always call on my big brother and his big battleship to help me out.”

Ethan looked at the Doctor.  “She is four hundred years old but I’m the big brother.”  They laughed a little, even if Ethan did not feel like laughing.

“Coffee sir?”  Manomar came in with a tray, and there were cookies.  It had been a struggle, but Ethan finally got Manomar to stop calling him master.  Getting him to stop being a servant, though, was going to take a bit more effort.

“Only if you join us,” Ethan insisted.

“Hot coffee with a little cream,” Manomar said.  “It really is quite good.”  He took a seat.

They sipped in silence for a minute before Ethan spoke again.  “So now what do we do?” he asked.

“We take Jillian and Dominic home,” Diana said.  “Archon will not dare interfere with the meds if there is any chance of saving her.  He won’t be happy to learn that she killed their only son, and he might want her dead, but I don’t think he will be able to do anything.”

“Her son killed her first.”  Manomar growled.

“But will it really be safe?”  Ethan asked.   “Jill said Archon was never good at playing by the rules.”

Diana shrugged put down her cup and changed the subject.  “I know where the rebels are operating underground, now that Jillian’s house is closed up; but you might reopen the house.  That would be pretty cheeky, but it is your right, and it might give Archon something else to focus on for a little while.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said.  “Not just now.”  He would have to think about it.

“Still.  It would be good for you to meet the planners and coordination team and I know they will be happy to meet you”

Ethan was not going to argue.  He could not hold on to Jill forever in cold storage.  Besides, he had her inside now, in her personal chit.  That was Jill in every meaningful way, and that would never be taken from him.

“But now, about my world.”  Ethan changed the subject.

“Level twenty-four multinational.”  Diana described it.  “A tricky call.”

“You have to establish a guardian for my world,” Ethan said.  “I’m too close to the situation to make an objective choice.”

“I like your sister.”

“What?  Not Melanie.”  He made a face.  “Besides she is too young.”

“She’ll grow,” Diana said.  “She is very nice, and smart, too.”

“Say!  How do you know my sister?”

“I told you.  I’m sneaky.”

“Hmm.”  Ethan looked at his new sister, presumably his new little sister.  He fully expected Diana and Melanie to start teaming up against him.  It was inevitable, but he thought that maybe he could locate Devon somewhere and even the odds a little.  Ethan imagined Devon had all sorts of information on Diana, and Viviane, too.  “Viviane.”  He said the name aloud as the thought just occurred to him.  “She will have to be told, especially if Jillian is, you know.”

Diana actually grinned, a sly, mischievous grin.  “Poor Archon will have his hands full if Viviane is the eldest.”

“I’m sorry?”  Doctor Augustus was trying to follow the conversation, but he did not know Viviane.

“Middle Sister.”  Ethan said.

“And, well.  As Jill’s husband, Ethan is technically the eldest, but you can be sure Viviane will give it a good run, him being from the worlds and all,” Diana said.

Ethan sat back and sipped his coffee.  He might have stayed there for a while.  He might have sat and sipped his coffee and cried for days if Diana had not jumped up.  She dragged him to the Main.

“Time to go,” she said.

Ethan wanted to argue.  He did not want it confirmed that Jillian was dead.  He wanted to put it off and keep his hopes alive, but if he had argued, Diana would not have argued back like a normal person; she would have just given him that “he has a hole in his head” look, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

“I am looking forward to seeing what I can of the Gaian home world.”  Doctor Augustus said as he moved to a nearby view screen.

“Hurry up.”  Diana nudged Ethan to activity and mumbled a last thought, “And Melanie will make a great Guardian Angel.”

END

Monday

Prepare for the retelling of AVALON, The Pilot Episode, in the newly revised and expanded second edition (version 0.4).  It will be posted, three posts per week over a seven week period.  Hopefully, you will enjoy the expanded version, and find it less jarring then the previous telling.

The pilot episode originally followed the prequel, Invasion of Memories, a book worth reading, but to be fair, the pilot jumped right into a bunch of characters–names and all that sort of thing, without the proper build-up.  Sorry about that.

As a writer, I try to make things as perfectly clear as I can.  Even so, the questions and comments I get sometimes makes me think I am speaking Greek.  For example, three posts per week means a post on Monday, a post on Tuesday, and a post on Wednesday.  A person should not expect to read only the Monday posts and keep up with what is going on……………..sigh.

On the other hand, I like to think reading (like watching) one full episode is enough to understand something about the characters, what motivates them, and how the story-line basically works–a journey through time, where people lost in time travel from one time gate to the next, slowly working their way back to the twenty-first century.  It isn’t all that complicated.

After, I say again, after the revised and expanded pilot episode posts on this blog, two things will happen.  One, the pilot on Amazon, Smashwords, B & N, Apple, Sony, Kobo, etc., will be reduced to Free: that is, Zero dollars and Zero cents.  I would appreciate you picking it up on a legitimate site, rather than a pirate site, so I can keep track of numbers.  (That’s my OCD talking. Don’t mind me).

Second, Avalon, Season 5 will begin posting on this blog.  That’s okay.  You are allowed to start with season five if you have not read any of the earlier seasons.  One episode is enough to follow along, remember?  Enjoy.

 

 

 

Guardian Angel-23 Family Ties, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia 1 Comment

“The explosion was within two hours of our leaving.  Whoever did it must have had a plant in the room, like Diana’s plant in the house.  Obviously, they noticed when we escaped out into the worlds,” Jill explained.

“And after that they followed, and the gunfire started,” Ethan said to remind her of the attacks in Ali Pasha’s and Alexander’s worlds.

“And at the house,” Jill added.

“But is the tracer still there?”  Ethan asked.  “Will they know we have come back here?”

“I don’t know,” Jill said as she backed up for a second and pulled two stick pens out of her pocket.  They were energy weapons, and Ethan knew how to use them the minute he saw them.  “I pulled these out in case we needed them against those soldiers that I thought might come to the house.”

“Good of you to share,” Ethan said.  He took one and looked at it closely.

“I didn’t want to worry you in case my fears turned out to be groundless.”

“But these are empty.  There is no charge in them.”

“What?”  Jill took back his and then examined her own.  “Damn!”  She swore.  “It must have happened back in the house.  Whoever blew up Lela’s ship must have seen them on my person and drained them from a distance.”

“They can do that?”  Ethan asked, and he immediately knew that someone could do it with the right adjustment on the projection device.

Jill looked up at him and might have smiled if she was not so upset about the loss of Doctor Grimly.  “They still have their back charge,” she said.  “All you need to do is tap the end against something hard and a single charge will load, so make it a good shot.”

“Eh?”

“They were developed for travelers as a precaution against sticky fingered locals or a world with a technology that might try to drain them like they have been drained.”

“One shot?”

“Tap and shoot.  Lars might have called it a seven shooter, only the expected six bullets have already been spent.”

Ethan nodded and put his in his pocket.  He took Jill by the arm again and went back to the elevator.  “The best thing for us to do is leave this world altogether, just to be safe.”

“Absolutely,” Jill agreed, and they tried not to think about having left an injured Manomar with the equipment down in the room where the tracer would be located.  They hurried, but tried not to panic.

They got as far as the hallway that opened on to the reception area outside the research and development doors before Jill halted their progress with a sharp tug on Ethan’s arm.  Someone stood lazily outside the R & D doors, waiting for them.

“Hold it right there.”  They heard the voice behind them.  Randy was there with Tahsa, Big Mary, several others, and a security guard, and the guard had his gun out.

“Damn.  Randy moves fast,” Ethan whispered.

“Down!”  Jill dragged Ethan to the ground.  The man by the research and development doors pulled out a pen-weapon of his own, but his was fully charged and a baby blue light went over their heads.  The security guard vanished, and they heard the killer speak as they scooted behind the reception desk.

“I hate the police.”  The killer stepped out from the doors but kept his weapon pointed in their direction.  He maintained about ten feet between them, and seemed to want to talk first.  “Out of there,” he said, and Ethan could not help looking.  He recognized the man.  He was not surprised to see that it was Dominic.

Jill stood up beside him as Ethan pulled his own weapon and pointed it at their assailant.  He thought the man might not know, but that thought got dashed when the man laughed.  “Not much good an empty pen is going to do you,” Dominic said.

“What are you doing here?”  Jill stepped out from the desk and spoke boldly.  “Does your father know you are here?”

Dominic laughed.  “No way, mom.  Dad wants you dead.  He tried three times, but your Elder buddies kicked his butt.  Now I had another idea.”

“How did you change my destination code?”  Suddenly, everything in Jill’s mind made sense.

“Easy,” he said.  “I had your spare key.  It told me what dead world your ship was hidden on and everything.”  He laughed.  “Boom.”  He indicated what happened to her ship.

“Dominic!”  Jill scolded him with her voice as surely as Ethan’s mom had scolded Melanie when she kicked the table.

“Hey!”  Dominic spoke defensively.  “Dad wanted you dead.  I was being nice stranding you on a world, junky though it was.  I even checked on you from time to time.”

“Bingo.”  Ethan breathed, and Dominic laughed again before he turned deadly serious.

“But then you started tinkering with that Grimly guy and it looked like you might eventually find your way out of the trap, so I found your buddy Lela and fed her to the Nelkorian while I made a copy of her spare key.  I figured you would come and find out what happened to her, and if you survived the Nelkorian, you would take her ship.  With my key copy, I followed you everywhere.”

“Including to the house in Lyoness.”  Ethan said in a more normal voice.

“So who is the jerk?”  Dominic did not appreciate the interruption.  “Your latest squeeze?  Mom, you’re a slut.”

“Ethan is my husband,” Jill said.  “He is my real husband.”

“Real husband?  What?  As opposed to my father?  You are nothing but a whore.  I think dad was right.”  He fired.  Jill shoved Ethan and twisted, but the blue bolt disintegrated her left arm and a long scrape off the left side of her body.  It was a wonder that she did not die instantly.

“And now for the jerk.”  Dominic said.  “Ow!”  He yelled.  He had a long knife in his shoulder.  He turned and Ethan saw Manomar collapse in the research and development doorway.  He turned again toward Ethan, his face distorted in anger as he reached up to pull the knife out of his shoulder.  Ethan did not hesitate.  He tapped his pen against the reception desk and fired where he thought to do the most good.  Dominic’s forearm vanished, and the hand holding his pen-weapon fell to the rug.  Dominic howled, but calmed after a moment, and he held Manomar’s long knife in his good hand.  He grinned at Ethan.

“Didn’t mom teach you anything?  I can heal these wounds, and in a couple of days I’ll have my arm back, good as new.”  He brandished the knife in Ethan’s direction to keep him away while he bent down to get the weapon out of his own decapitated hand.  He kept his eyes up and on Ethan, and he only looked at Jill when he heard a “click.”  She had her pen weapon in her remaining hand and it was pointed right at Dominic’s head.  It was a good thing the man was leaning over, because Jill could not lift her arm any further.

“Mom?”  Dominic mouthed the word before his head vanished.  His body fell to the rug.

Guardian Angel-23 Family Ties, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The ceiling fell on Manomar’s back.  He had pushed Jill and Ethan down and covered them with his body, and now, to avoid crushing his master and mistress, he screamed and stood which strained and almost broke his back in the process.  The bits of ceiling fell to the sides, but he collapsed.  Ethan checked.  There was still a pulse, but it was light.  He turned and saw Jill with the transitional watch in her hand and the laptop open and booting.  Fortunately, the watch was still wired and only needed plugging in.

“Damn software.”  Jill whispered in her softest voice before she began to type furiously.  Ethan heard someone in the room, rooting through the rubble.  A blue streak of energy shattered the glass in the case over Jill’s shoulder.  Ethan and Jill ducked to escape the flying glass

“Ready, set, go.”  Jill grabbed Ethan by the arm, just like the first time they hopped from one world to the next, and Ethan still held Manomar by the hand.  He expected the light flash this time, but instead, he found himself floating in a kind of space or non-space.  He felt squished to a pin and a hundred feet long, not tall.

“The house.”  Jill spoke in a dreamy voice.  “My instructions were to send us back to the Company location if my ex-husband sent troops and blocked our passage to Lela’s ship.”

“I thought you said there were some things he dared not do.”  Ethan countered.  He listened closely to his own dreamy sounds, which he hardly recognized as his own voice.

Jill shrugged not unlike her sister, except Jill’s shrug rippled across Ethan’s mind.  “Archon was never good at playing by the rules.  God willing, he will get in trouble for this.”

“Is he behind this?”

Jill shrugged again even as they landed on someone’s front lawn with a thump.  “Maybe.”

“What did we just go through?”  Ethan asked, ready to stand up and look around.  She kept him seated.

“Worm hole,” she said, and she let go and began to type again.  “But they will trace it and be on us in a second.  Hold on.”  She grabbed him by the elbow once more while he continued to hold Manomar and then she hit the enter button.  Ethan heard the words.  “Dimensional shift is much harder to trace,” and then the light came and they landed.

Ethan got up this time.  They were in Doctor Grimly’s lab room, or one just like it.  Evidently, she had planted those coordinates in her chits and pulled them out when needed.  “But how can we be on the third floor?”  Ethan asked the obvious question.

“The transitional unit has some capacity for spatial movement,” she said, as she stood more slowly with Ethan’s help.  She had held the watch.  “Keeps us from appearing inside a tree trunk or in the middle of a wall.”  Of course, Ethan had not realized that before.  He was sure his own nano-chits would have told him as much, but he felt there was so much he still did not know because he did not know what to ask.

Manomar moaned, and Ethan bent down while Jill turned on the lab lights.  It was near enough to the end of the day, so they were not surprised to find no one in the room, but then they did not expect to find the room empty and spotless either, as if no one had been there in weeks.  Jill paused.  She did not understand what she was seeing.

“Are you alright?”  Ethan asked Manomar.

“My back.”  Manomar winced as he tried to sit up.  Ethan helped the big man lean his back against the lab table.  He wanted to help Manomar stand, but Manomar was in no condition for that yet.

“This isn’t right.  It’s eerie,” Jill said.  “We need to find out what is going on?”

“Won’t Grimly find us?”  Ethan asked.  “If he is the guardian of this earth, he has to have noticed our shift into this world.  Shouldn’t we just stay here and wait for him.  He won’t be long if he is in the building.”

“No,” Jill said.  “This isn’t right.  Something happened here, and we need to find out what.”  Ethan questioned her with his eyes, so she explained.  “The man never kept a neat office, certainly nothing like this.  It looks like no one has worked here in some time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t either,” Jill said as she bent down to Manomar.  “Your chits will have you back on your feet soon enough,” she told him.  “We won’t be gone long.  Just enough to get some answers, depending on who is still at work.”

Manomar grabbed her by the wrist.  “Be careful, my Lady,” he said.  She nodded as he let go and she captured Ethan’s hand.  Ethan was thinking about parading around the company halls dressed in a mini-skirt.

They found no one in the hall outside Doctor Grimly’s door, and that actually made Jill feel a little better, to think that it was not just the Doctor’s room that was empty.  The other research and development lab rooms were all empty, too.  She checked.  It was Wednesday and not a holiday.  Still, she could not imagine where everyone went until Ethan suggested that maybe someone had something ready to show.  That usually attracted a crowd.

“Like Doctor Martin and her light processor,” Jill said and understood.  If everyone was off seeing some demonstration, that might explain some of it.

When they walked past the reinforced research and development doors and into the main part of the building, they heard some conversation down the hall by the nearest restrooms.  Jill got ready to head straight for the voices, but Ethan grabbed her.  He did not have a good feeling about things either, and he thought he might go up to Marketing where he could access a computer in more private surroundings.  He guided her to the elevator and waited for the doors to close before he spoke.

“Something is not right.  Grimly should be on our trail by now if he is anywhere near, unless his chits are damaged or something.”

“Not possible,” Jill said as the elevator doors reopened.  Ethan looked first, and then he guided Jill to the copy room beside the break room where a computer sat in a back corner.  He sat her down.

“Try the bulletin board and then the internet,” he suggested.  “I’ll be right back.”  He had caught sight of someone out of the corner of his eye.  He saw Randy Marlow, the office gossip and all around jerk, and trapped the man in the back of the break room.

Randy backed up and banged into the refrigerator with a very curious comment.  “You’re supposed to be dead,” he said.  “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Why would I hurt you?” Ethan asked.  “I’m just looking for a little information, that’s all.”

“Just because I took Susan out on a couple of dates, that doesn’t mean there is anything between us.”  Randy spoke fast to save his own skin from some perceived retribution on the part of Susan’s jilted lover.

Ethan shook his head.  “What are you talking about?”

“But what are you doing here?”  Randy asked.  He lowered his voice to a whisper.  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Randy.  I am not dead.  I have just been away.  What made you think I was dead?”

Randy relaxed a little, as much as any office gossip on the edge of the story of the year could relax.  He started to guess.  “Toga party?  Go to the Islands?  Some uptown sex club?  Man, look at you.”

“Randy.  What made you think I was dead?”  Ethan had to repeat the question.

“The explosion.”  Randy blurted out even as Jill walked into the room and Randy’s eyes almost fell out of his head.  “Woah!  Hill, how did you manage that!  Jesus!  Wait ‘till Susan hears.”

“There was an explosion the day we left,” Jill said.  She completely ignored the little man.  Her eyes were red and Ethan reached out and held her while she cried for the man she had known and cared for over all those years.

“Jeez!”  Randy could hardly take his eyes off the beauty, but he scooted past them and shot off down the hall before Ethan could stop him.

Guardian Angel-22 Paradise, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

It was nearly noon when they selected a case for the laptop and dimensional watch.  Ethan was reluctant to part with the equipment, but he understood that it ought to be preserved as a piece of history.  No one had ever done such a thing before, and Jill said she wondered if her baby brother Devon might still be out there somewhere, only in a world that was not advanced enough for him to escape.

“Isn’t there a way to contact him?”  Ethan wondered as he pulled the dimensional watch from the briefcase.  Jill had explained that she came up with the idea for the dimensional watch by considering how the elders moved around by tapping their wristwatches.  This was a technology no Gaian ever tried before, but it worked, Ethan was happy to say.

“Now there would be, yes.”  Jill answered the question about contacting Devon.  “I can leave a chit with the coordinating committee and contact them if I get stranded somewhere.  Their chit will download the necessary information to pinpoint the exact Earth.  But that is something that has only been developed in the past fifty years, or so.  We could contact ship to ship, or ship to home, of course, but a general wave direct contact person to ship, or to person, or to home never came to mind.  I guess we thought no one would ever be foolish enough to be out there separated from their ship.  Personal tracking did not exist when I was stranded on your Earth, and it certainly did not exist when Devon disappeared nearly two hundred years ago.  An incredibly obvious oversight, I am sure, but no.  There is not any more chance of contacting him than there was to contact me on your world.”

“But the guardians can contact their Gaian, like Kera Ann contacted Lela,” Ethan said

“On a single direct wave only.  It was an oversight.”  Jill spoke sharply, before she took Ethan’s hand and calmed herself.  “No one thought that way until Devon got lost, and then me.”  She changed the subject.  “You know; I was not even supposed to go to your world.  It was not on my route.  I was sidetracked, somehow.  I don’t know how.  Of course, that meant that no one could find me by tracing my route, which is the way they tried to do it, because I was not on my route.  When my ship exploded in the London blitz, though I still cannot understand how that was possible, I got stuck until I could repair the transitional unit.”  She held her hand out and Ethan gave her the watch.

“Sounds like someone wanted you out of the way.”  Manomar suggested the obvious.

Ethan nodded and pointed at Manomar.  “What he said.  Someone has certainly been following us and firing at us, and they might have gotten us, too, if the Elders had not shown up.”

“Yes, that did happen once,” Jill agreed.

“Twice,” Manomar corrected.  “The Elders were first on my world and then on Alexander and deMartin’s world.”

“Yes, twice,” Ethan agreed again as he took the laptop from Manomar and turned it toward Jill.

“Still.”  Jill shook her head.  She touched the laptop, but she did not take it.

“Someone blew up your ship, and I doubt it was the Germans.”  The idea of that was absurd, given the fact that the ship was in another dimension and shielded by screens powerful enough to ward off an atomic blast, or several atomic blasts and then some.

“But who would do such a thing?”  Jill pulled her hand back from the laptop.  “And how could they find me when no one else could?”

“I would guess it was the same person who misdirected you,” Manomar said.

“Exactly,” Ethan agreed again and held out the laptop again.  “The person that misdirected you would be the only person who knew where you were.”

Jill touched the laptop again and pulled her hand back again.  “But that is impossible,” she said.  “The ship was keyed to my person.  No one could enter alternate coordinates, at least not without me knowing.”

“Unless your ship had two keys like Lela’s ship.”  Ethan thought out loud.  Jill’s eyes got big and they heard a voice echo through the room.  It said, “Bingo,” before there was an explosion and fires everywhere.

Guardian Angel-22 Paradise, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“Jillian.”  The woman spoke first in a rather haughty voice.  “Can’t say as I’m surprised.”

“He had me declared dead!”  Jillian shot the accusation as sharply as any weapon ever thrown or fired.

The woman’s eyes turned just as sharp.  “Your son.”  She started to speak, but Jill interrupted.

“I’m not talking about my son.  This is about Barf-on,” she said.

“Jillian!  You should not talk about the Tyrant in that manner, especially now that he is a poor widower.”

“He is nothing of the sort!  We were formally divorced!”  Jill’s anger reached a peak.  Ethan wanted to hold her, to help her calm down, but he feared for his life.

The blond woman shrugged.  “You know people.  Most people believe what they are told and reality rarely interferes with that.  Who remembers your divorce?  That’s ancient history.”

“But it hasn’t been a hundred years.”  Jill’s approach turned from anger to clever.  “I can’t be declared dead until I am missing at least a hundred years.”

The woman shrugged again.  “The Senate went along with it.  I suppose you could take it to court.”

Jill picked up a vase and threw it at the woman.  It went through and shattered against the floor and far wall while the woman merely shrugged.  “Still the same old Jillian.  You were always one for physical violence.”

“And don’t you forget it or I’ll find where you are and come and knock your brains out.”  Jill waved her fist at the woman and Ethan finally felt it was time to move.  He caught her in his arms, and she turned into his chest and cried a little.

“And you are?”  The woman looked at him, and Ethan was not about to be nice to her even if he figured out who she was.

“Ethan Hill.  Jill’s husband for real and forever,” Ethan said.  “And that makes you my little sister, doesn’t it Viviane?”

The woman was almost fazed by that.  It took her a second to regain her haughty composure.  “I suppose, if marriage to a non-person can be counted as valid.”

Jill swung around again, a lioness defending the pride.  “He is one of us by every chit of adoption and inclusion.  That case was decided by the courts ages ago, and if I choose to marry him, what is it to you?”

The woman shrugged a third time as if to say it meant nothing to her.  Then there was another shimmering image, and a younger woman, dark haired like Jill but with bright green eyes came into focus, and this one took on some substance, ran to Jill to hug her, and cried as she ran.  “Jillian.  I knew you would come.  I never quit hoping.  Oh Jillian.”  The poor young woman wept.

After a minute of Viviane rolling her eyes at the domestic scene, Jill introduced her youngest sister, Diana.  Ethan said hello and he was going to shake hands after his fashion, but he decided a hug was better.  As he hugged this little sister, she whispered in his ear.  “Don’t let Viviane bother you.  She is really a witch in disguise, you know.”

Ethan nodded.  “I figured that out.”  He returned her whisper.

Diana turned, then and took both of Jill’s hands.  “I am so happy for you.  He seems very nice.”  She hugged her sister and cried some more until Viviane had enough.

“Is there anything else?”  Viviane interrupted.  “I mean anything important?”

Jill set Diana in Ethan’s hands and stepped up to confront her sister.  “Yes,” she said.  “I have restored my presence in the house banks and sent my presence to a large number of friends with instructions to catalogue the truth so no amount of cleaning the house banks will change things.  You go back and tell Ass-on that he has ninety days to have me declared undead or I will take his throne and give it to Ethan.  And you know me, Viviane.  I don’t make idle threats and I don’t kid about things like that.”

Viviane drew herself up to her haughtiest height and vanished.  She left only a smoky image for a second before she was gone altogether.  Ethan swore he could smell the sulfur in that smoke.

Jill reached back for Ethan’s hand, which he gave, even though he was going to have something to say later about this throne business.  Diana faced her sister again and spoke first.

“Did you really mean that?  Do you really love him?”

“Yes,” Jill said.  “To both questions.”  She came close to Ethan and touched his cheek.

“Maybe someday.”  Diana sighed, and looked longingly at Ethan.

“But where are you?”  Jill asked her sister.

“Ah, I left the house bugged for your return.  Right now I’m on another world.”  She rattled off the information like a machine gun in operation.  “And you were right.  You were very, very right.  There is so much going on in the worlds, and some of it is very bad and needs to be stopped.  I am almost finished with my trip line, but I am going to go back for more.  So far, you should be proud of me.  I have only had to remove two guardians who turned the wrong way.  That’s not bad at all.”

“I am proud of you,” Jill said without comment on the removed guardians.  “But I worry about you, too.  It is dangerous out in the worlds.”

Diana nodded and looked serious for all of a second before her perfect smile popped out again.  She was just too happy to contain herself.  “I have to go, but I’ll be here in ninety days.  Did you really mean it?”  She asked again.

“Yes, sweet.  I really meant it.”

“God!  I can’t wait,” Diana said, and she vanished too, though Ethan imagined the smell of rose petals in her mist.

“Bundle of energy.”  Ethan described the woman as Jill turned into his arms.  With that, all thoughts of the sisters vanished.

“You said you were my husband already,” Jill softly reminded him.

“I will be, as soon as football season is over, if you will have me,” he responded.

“Football season?”  She looked up into his eyes.

Ethan nodded.  “I thought you might let my dad give you away, unless you have a favorite uncle or something.”

“Oh, Ethan.”  She spoke in a rather foolish voice, and the two became lost in each other’s arms while Manomar looked quietly out the parlor doors and studied the gardens.