They had been running all day. Sweat dotted his brow. His breath coming in ragged gasps. She was practically dead on her feet. Her eyes long since closed in concentration at the effort of placing one foot in front of the other. There was no going back. She carried in her hand the seed they had taken from the valley of light.

In the crisp cool morning air the guardian mother had entrusted it to her. Floating as a spot of light, swirling downy feathers circling around the pulsating dot as she spoke. Not privy to what she had said to her, he knew at least that it was of utmost importance that they make it through before the last rays of light from sun left the peak of the mountain in shadow. She had told him the guardian mother had said that they must be out of the valley before the onset of night, or they would lose the seed.

He had watched entranced as the glowing orb had flashed green before emerged from it a gem so pure he thought he might weep at the sight. An emerald of the same green glow that had shone the light of the orb. It still held softly to this glow as it sat curled lovingly in her fingers. It seemed to glean its glimmer from the sun, always matching perfectly the radiance currently illuminating the ever-darkening forest they charged through with reckless abandon. He knew with utter certainty that if they didn’t reach the foot of the mountain soon, that radiance would be gone forever; the stone crumbling to dust in her hands. He couldn’t let it happen. He would give his life to ensure it’s safe passage. That is, of course, why she had chosen him.

Their feet were bleeding. Panic was beginning to rise in his chest. He glanced back at her tear-strewn face. Her eyes still tightly closed as she clutched the stone to her breast. She trusted him. Maybe she shouldn’t have. He had gotten them lost. Then the deartch-den-whites had found them. She was no help in the fight. How could she be? He knew the pain it caused her to grip the stone. How it burned her flesh. Such was the price they paid. Such was the price that all paid to bring a new soul into the land of the living.

The guardian mother had bid him to fill his water skin from her well. They had spent the morning walking happily through the valley dripping the cool water over her fingers to keep the stone from heating to the point of pain. Their happiness had quickly turned to staggering fear as they realized they had lost the path in a broad field in the vast valley. They had gotten confused and begun following a dear path instead. That was when the beasts had begun to chase them.

His sword now covered in dried blood, as well as his left arm. Two of his fingers there were broken and he had a nasty gash from where one of the beasts’ claws had torn his flesh while ripping asunder his shield as if it were kindling before he had lopped it’s nasty head off. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be quick and relatively easy. But as sometimes happened, they had become lost. They should have been out of the valley hours ago, before mid-day even. Now they were being pursued hotly by an enemy intent on not only eating their flesh, but on burying the seed in the valley floor, where instead of metamorphasizing into a youngling, it would twist into a gnarled beast. Then it too would become intent only on preying upon others trying to make the sacred journey. Better to let the light extinguish in her hand than allow that.

He knew, however, that if the sacred glow did dwindle to nothing clutched that way in her fist, it might well take her with it. The despair at having failed the sacred stone entrusted to her, could well break her heart; literally causing it to fail. He’d always feared such a thing might happen. No one liked to talk of such things, but it was a warning solemnly spoken of when such matters were brought up and advice was being given.

He could almost see the light moving up the mountain towards the peak. The sun having disappeared from his view some time ago. It’s lustrous rays moving steadily towards the peak; towards the mark of the dimly glowing seed’s doom. Already the line of light was reaching the tree line where disappeared the towering evergreens that climbed the mountain to where the air was too thin to any longer sustain them. The orange glow made the shrubs that dotted the mountain glow as if on fire. The fiery colors a warning beacon to him, urging him to quicken his pace, to hurry.

She cried out in pain. They heard her. They were coming. He could hear their lusty growls for his flesh. Their slobbery teeth chattering as they salivated to gnaw on his bones. Then he saw it. The marble stone archway. Glimmering in the dusk light, lit mostly by the torches ensconced on either side. Beckoning him with a warm glow, delicately framing the well of life, lit and waiting for their safe return and the conclusion the journey. It was their goal, and the safe harbor for their precious stone.

He set his teeth in resolve and with what strength he had left gripped her hand. They were almost there. If they could just reach the gate before the deartch-den-whites got them. The guardians there waved to them, beckoning them onward. Still too far away to clearly see that he was wounded and desperately fleeing for his life.

She cried out again, this time stumbling and going down. The gaping maw of a deartch-den-white filled his vision as it leapt from the brush at the side of the path behind them. It’s fangs on a collision course with the exposed flesh at the back of her neck.

Not on his watch.

He let go of her hand for a better grip on his hilt and stepped into the swing. His whole body committing to the motion of his attack. Blade level with his shoulders, sword cocked sideways as he twisted and dedicated all of his will and strength to the cleaving blow.

Contact.

It sliced cleanly with nearly silent deadly accuracy. Catching the beast square at the hinge of it’s jaw and happily separating the top of it’s head from the hideous body below before sailing free from it’s quarry into the quickly cooling valley air with a swiftness that almost didn’t give time for a trail of blood to follow it’s beautiful deadly arc as it rounded from it’s masters right side to his left.

He marveled at the delicate beauty of what he had done with his sword, nearly without thinking, for a fraction of a second before the world again exploded with the menace of new threat. Death was almost upon him.

“Go!” He screamed, as the whole of the valley floor cried out with a deadly wail of the triumphant cry of the beasts that had now, finally, found them again. She, gasping sobs back, stumbled to her feet, fleeing down the path. Those waiting guardians had gone from happy calls of beckoning to terrified urgent cries for them to flee.

She would make it. He thought he would not. He stood to fight. Happy in the knowledge that she would be safe. He, committed now, and acceptant of the fact he would die, set about the grim task of reaping down her foe with a certain solemn satisfaction of the work set before him. His mind finally, and for the first time, cleared of all fear. Time slowed down as he saw to the killing with almost lazy certain strokes. He thought he would fail in the end of course, but with a quite confidence also he knew she would reach the gates.

Time to stand. Time to fight.

He could feel them coming. The bushes again exploded into a tangle of leaves, claws, fangs and death. He didn’t even give the monster time to clear the brush before running it straight through with his blade. It yelped in surprise before falling flailing on the ground as another came charging directly behind it. He flicked his blade from the side, catching it in the arm-pit and pivoting around letting it’s momentum carry it into another of his quarry coming flying down the path for him. They collided into a furry bloody mass as he lunged forward running the first the rest of the way through sliding the sword cleanly between the second’s ribs. This is the fight he had been preparing for his entire life.

She cried out. He looked back, newly stricken with terror. There between him and her, tearing with mad abandon toward her back, was one of the fell beasts. He shot like an arrow towards it. Urged on by her frantic screams. There was no way he was going to get there in time. The creature leapt through the air landing heavily on her back, knocking the cries from her lungs with a heavy thud as she tumbled to the ground.

His vision went red. Rage filled his mind. She would not die this day. Not while he yet breathed.

His legs churned. His lungs screamed. His arms ached. He watched in horror as the beast crouched on her back. It’s claw coming up in the air, pausing (it seemed for an eternity), then plunging down to rip flesh from her back. She gasped and coughed. The wind still knocked from her lungs preventing her from crying out. The beast tipped its head back in triumphant laughter as it brought its now bloody claws up for another torturing swipe. It was toying with her. That was it’s last mistake.

He slammed into the nightmarish creature with all of his might. They sailed off the path and into a tree. The beast bearing the brunt of the impact. His sword went flying. In his rage it only took three swift motions to render the creature unconscious and beyond recovery. It would not rise again.

He turned to see her bleeding and stumbling towards safety. He glanced toward the mountain. To his horror he saw the shadow now beginning to swallow the bottom of the snow line. They had very little time, and very little chance.

He grabbed her behind her shoulders, sweeping his arm and his ruined hand beneath her knees, gathering her in his arms. He staggered under her weight. She was light, but he was dead tired. He could still hear them coming. The rest of them were charging through the woods toward them. Placing one foot in front of the other with all the strength and swiftness he could muster, he trudged towards the arch with a pace that surprised him. Fear, adrenaline, and resolve adding strength and swiftness to his exhausted legs. If the nightmarish monsters caught him now, they were both dead.

They were almost there. They still had time. They could still make it through the gate and plant the seed in the sacred well. Arrows sailed past him, thunking into their quarries with deadly accuracy. Bringing them down smoothly and surely. They would make it. He and her both. He couldn’t believe his fortune.

They stepped through the archway and the gate came slamming closed behind them as the watchmen grasped his and her arms helping them on toward the well were she would plant the seed. They had but moments before the icy peak above plunged into darkness.

Her eyes opened as she stood at the brink of the ring of stones surrounding the mystical soil waiting to accept the stone from her tender hands. He looked at her expectantly and she stared at the flames below. Flames! He reached for the water the guardian mother had given him from her well. He was to throw the icy water on the flames to give her the moment she needed to plunge the seed into the soil without being burnt.

The water was gone. Sometime in the fight he had lost it. His moth dropped open. Anguish gripped his heart.

He could tell by the set of her jaw, the resolve in her eye, that she was determined. She drew a deep breath into her lungs before dropping swiftly to her knees punching the ground in the center of the ring as she came down. That breath that had so quietly and calmly gone in, came out in a blood-curdling scream as her fist sank into the burning soil mixed with coals. The flames licked and danced up her arm to her elbow, crisping the fringes of her sleeve. Her scream chilled his blood and seemed to freeze the moment in eternity. He realized he had fallen to the ground with her as she came down and was now looking up at her crouched figure framed against the peak as the last light of the day glimmered from the icy mountain tip, and then was gone. She quickly withdrew her hand and collapsed beside him.

Had they made it?

“I want to be a dog” the little sheep said to the shepherd.

This pictures goes along with a little story I’m working on…

My first thought upon seeing this paper was that in 20 years, when you get to work in the morning, you are going to be required to put on your “thinking cap” which will literally track your thoughts to make sure you are focusing a required (say… 75%) amount of time on work related things.

When you get your performance reviews, they could say, “Now, Bob, we know your personal life has been a little hectic recently”.

You would respond, “Yes, but I’ve gotten all of my work done, and even done on time”

Their retort could be, “Sure, bob, you have, and we appreciate that, but the thing is… Well, you could have done more. And we know this for a fact, Bob. You see, we know that you spent 34% of your time thinking about your house (currently under construction) and another 7% thinking about your kid, and 13% thinking about your wife. And actually, Bob, we’re sad to say you apparently only spent 23% of your time on the Petterman account. Now, Bob, tell me you couldn’t have gotten it done even quicker, and better, had you spent a full 75% of your thoughts on the account.”

“But I billed 7 hours a day on that account, and I worked on it every one of those hours!”
“Sure, Bob, we know you did, but the thing is, your mind wasn’t really on the account. You were off thinking about your house while you were laying out the prototype designs rather than in the zone (as we like to call it) that we want our employees to be in while on task.”

“Well if Shelly didn’t have her music on-”

“-Bob, please, we know how much that distracted you. 1.3% of your focus was disturbed by Shelly’s music. I’m only measuring a .4% increase in blood pressure there as well, which brings up another thing. What’s your problem with Frank? It seems that you dislike him a lot. Any time he comes by your desk we pick up some really… negative thoughts…”

You can see where this is going, and it really isn’t good. I toyed with writing an entire short story on this, but I just don’t have the time.

This is part 1 of a multi-part time-travel short story. Enjoy.

=========================================

Gene did not trust Seth. (Chapter 1)

If it weren’t for the top secret nature of the project, he would have fired Seth three years ago. The problem was that Seth was a highly trained air force pilot with nothing to lose. No kids, no wife, no life whatsoever. So he was perfect for these experiments, and it was too late to find someone else.

Thirteen years ago the IRS notified the FBI that the US had been bleeding money to the Kremlin through a spy in the First United Methodist Church of Russia in America. The Arch-Pastor of the Church (who was at the time living in Manhattan) had moved to the US in 1965 with the mission of infiltrating and overtaking the Church to the highest level possible. The Russian government saw the quickest way to large amounts of cash as being the willing docile Christian American’s generous spirit. Through a string events stemming from an arrogant disregarding of American tax laws, the church failed to be fiscally transparent and responsible. The Arch-Pastor had been sending millions of dollars to it’s “sister church” in Russia. When one of it’s rich beneficiaries visited Moscow to see the cathedral/orphanage he had donated 30 million to fund, he found a gymnasium attached to a small chapel sporting 30 cots filled with starving children and one old saintly nun trying desperately to keep the pneumonia-ridden orphans from dying.

The anonymous millionaire’s shock turned into outright rage when the plaque stating that he was funding this debacle fell off the wall. It turns out the “church” had taken a neighborhood center, dressed it up as a church, and placed a magnetic plaque over a hot air vent and tried to play the whole thing off as the millionaire’s investment. Condensation building behind the plaque as the air tried to flow out caused the thing to come sliding off at just the most expedient moment to the horror of the Russian “Monk” (KGB Agent) who, in his shocked excitement, almost pulled out his gun and shot the millionaire on the spot, but thought better of it at just the last moment seeing as the man was holding a wheezing child at the time.

When said millionaire got home, he started looking into things, and three years later the whole church fell apart, ending with the Arch-pastor being placed in prison for tax evasion, fraud, money laundering and theft amongst other things, with a 230 year sentence.

With such a large amount of money, the FBI got involved, and through some plea bargaining the Arch-Pastor revealed that the money had been going to fund some sort of military project that the Russians had been working on for the last 40 years. The CIA got involved at this point, and apparently (to the CIA’s extreme astonishment and dismay) the Soviets were messing around with time travel. Successfully.

At the time Gene learned this, he was the second to top nuclear physicist working in the country. Since everyone at this point realized that nuclear war was never going to happen (as long as Iran or some other crazy rogue nation didn’t get their hands on nukes) energies were being moved towards more promising weapons possibilities. In fact, for a while Gene had toyed with a wave gun that emitted a noise so obnoxious it reduced it’s victim to a whimpering mass laying in their own puddle of vomit and other unmentionables. The problem was that you had to wear really thick ear-plugs to use it, and it just wasn’t feasible for combat situations. What if the enemy was wearing ear-plugs as well? It was too easily counter-acted.

So, as I said, Thirteen years ago it was discovered that the Russians had been toying with time travel. Roger, now Gene’s lab assistant, had been a spy in the Kremlin, and was able to steal designs for the actual time travel device. It was amazing.

Apparently when the Soviet Union fell, it was because half of the entire army and government had gone 50 years into the future after placing all of the government’s money into the US stock market. The plan was; they would pop out one day, withdrawal the cash, us it to mass-produce the new weapons their scientists had created over the last 50 years, and suddenly become the richest most well armed country on the face of the earth.

It was Gene’s job to make sure this didn’t happen. He had to replicate the process and find a way to block re-entry by the soviets into the timeline, silently and effortlessly killing 1.3 million Russian soldiers (and the US government would “claim” the stocks of course).

Gene and Seth had been perfecting the time travel technology over the last 10 years. At first they were equal partners working under one Dr. Endlyn. But upon the good Dr.’s sudden demise four years ago, there had been a power struggle for one of them to take over the project.

Seth had always been closer to Endlyn, because (as I said) Seth had no family. Neither had Endlyn. They spent hours in the pub after work drinking and dreaming. Gene had a wife and kids, and thus did not have the time to waste his life away in the bottom of a pint glass. Despite the fact that Seth was closer to the doctor himself, Gene was even closer to the doctor’s work.

The night the accident happened, the doctor disappeared and the almost working equipment was destroyed. It was presumed that the doctor had been drunk, and had actually (insanely) tried the machine out. He had apparently crossed a few wires, and six years hard work had been obliterated.

Seth was devastated. Or at least he should have been. However, he had just seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. He took a week off of work (as expected… well, forced), but then was back with a vengeance. He took all of the energy he had wasted on drinking and dreaming and poured it into the machine.

Gene was a natural leader. He was level headed and competent. Despite Seth’s newfound work ethic, Gene was the obvious choice for project lead now that Endlyn was gone. Gene hired an old colleague from the ever shrinking Nuclear Physicist dept. to take over his position and began to head up the Time Travel effort much to Seth’s indignant consternation.

Today was the day. (Chapter 2)

Seth had lumbered into his space suit and was adjusting his respirator. No one knew what happened when you went through time, so (despite Seth’s cocky protestations) they made every effort to compensate for any scenario. Gene thought that it was perfectly plausible that you went into dead space and waited until the desired time came for you to re-enter the timeline, and he wanted to make sure that Seth wouldn’t die of decompression if he was placed in a vacuum to be held for re-entry. They supplied Seth with enough oxygen for one week (as well as food). He looked like a goofy turtle with everything he needed being held in this massive shell on his back. He could barely walk. He hated the thing, and always seemed a little too willing to try the jump in plain-clothes.

Gene was tempted to let him try it. After all, it would get rid of him if it didn’t work, which Gene liked to think would make him happy because it would make his life much easier. But Gene wasn’t about to be responsible for sending someone (even someone he didn’t like) to his death.

They had agreed to send Seth one week into the future. No real rhyme or reason for the week long increment, it just seemed like a good amount of time. Long enough to be amazing, but short enough for it to be a bearable wait. Really, it came down to that that is how long Seth had insisted when Gene told Seth that we would be sending Seth on his first jump today. Fine, no need to have another screaming match, and Gene would be happy to be rid of Seth for a full week, plus (as I will explain) Gene (unfortunately) could not control when or where Seth went when he jumped.

Once they powered up the machine it would be possible for Seth to go to the future and have himself sent back to the moment after he stepped through the gate the first time, making it appear as if he were simply stepping through a door and coming out the other side. Meaning that if the future Gene were so inclined, he could send Seth back to the moment after he left. That would mean it would almost appear the whole thing did not work, but since then in one weeks time Seth would have to jump over the time he had jumped into the future to keep from ripping apart the very fabric of the space time continuum (or possibly just killing himself) by having his soul exist in two locations at once, they had all agreed that was a bad idea. Seth would go, and would stay in the future. One week.

The whole thing was controlled by a satellite, and really the door that the traveler was to walk through was only symbolic and didn’t actually do anything. The traveler had a microchip implanted in his head just behind his ear, which interfaced with his brain through electrical impulses that humans are constantly leaking and absorbing. The traveler simply concentrated hard enough on an exact date, which the microchip picked up and broadcasted to the satellite (This is why Gene had no control over Seth’s jumps). The satellite would pick up the signal, home in on the traveler and translate forward motion through physical space into forward motion through time to the specified re-entry date. Walking through the door was the psychological trigger that the traveler needed to initiate the time jump event. To jump back in time, the traveler (once in the future) simply turned on their heel (while concentrating hard enough) and popped back out the other side of the door. The satellite was designed to drop you anywhere in the world going forward, but only one place when going back. Kind of a stupid design, but it was a prototype so it was fine.

Roger finished plugging in the final wires and they all held their breath as Gene pressed the big red “power” button. The whole machine hummed to life. The new software successfully uploaded to their satellite with the final patches and bug fixes, and a little green light indicated all systems were a go.

Seth sneered at Gene and began lumbering towards the door. Just before he stepped into the door, he sarcastically called out “beam me up Scotty!” and then stepped through.

It’s an odd thing to describe watching a person, lumbering in a giant turtle-like space suit through a granite door-frame standing all lonely in the center of a dimly lit room, not disappear when you expect them to. That’s not to say nothing happened. It was like watching some sort of bad computer animated splice job. As the front of space suit Seth went in, so the front of sun-burnt, blistered, emaciated, bruised/scratched/beaten Seth came out, until all of Seth was lying unconscious on the other side of the doorway.

Roger and Gene hollered out Seth’s name and ran towards the crumpled body on the floor. Roger got there first, and cradled Seth’s head on his leg. Seth’s eye rolled open and looked lazily up at Roger. He opened his cracked lips and gasped “thank goodness… I’m finally back…”.

Roger and Gene looked astonished at each other. It had obviously worked, but something had gone terribly wrong.

Seth constricted his dry throat trying desperately to swallow, squeezing his eyes closed in pain. Then, abruptly, his eyes snapped open with clarity and urgency. He looked right at Gene and said “All of you are going to die from a nuclear holocaust sometime in the next week, and I have no idea why or how to stop it.” Then Seth passed out.

Ever wonder what happens to the stuff you throw away? It’s kind of magical isn’t it? You put stuff in this box, it gets taken away to… Well, you really have no idea unless you are able to follow it all the way to the landfill/incinerator without someone noticing (because if they noticed you following, they’d make sure you saw what they wanted you to see). I thought of this story over the last week as I tossed stuff in the trash. Happy reading…

=====================================================================================

Another day, another pile of trash.

Ron sifted through the garbage on the table in front of him. He picked out an interesting drawing that had been crumpled up and tossed there. It was a doodle of different bladed implements being “stabbed” into the very paper they were drawn on by disembodied hands. The paper was bleeding. It appeared that at some point the blades had carved “Bad Paper” into the paper.

Classically trained as a Psychologist, Ron found his job pretty stimulating. Sure he was sifting through trash at a “junk mail” company unbeknownst to it’s employees (reporting his psych evaluations to the CEO) but there was something about the detective work he had to do that he found fascinating.

Ever since the “Big Sister” act of 2013, government regulations stated that Ron could not data mine into the employee’s personal files or computers. In 2010 there was a huge lawsuit from a Microsoft employee against his company for wrongful termination over some “Open Source Manifestos” he had written on his work computer over lunch. These had started as rants jotted into legal pads during many of the horribly meaningless meetings he was forced to attend for six hours a day. His boss found the manifestos, and an investigation was started. His “My Documents” folder on his computer was opened and dug through, as well as his drawer in his file cabinet which was marked “Personal”. Microsoft argued that these things were on company property, and therefore belonged to the company.

The courts disagreed. They said Microsoft was behaving in an Orwellian fashion, and that it’s “Big Brother” tactics of invasively scrutinizing employees were illegal. After a three year legal battle, the courts (in a ruling titled the “Big Sister” Act) decided that companies only had rights to access areas explicitly designated as “work” areas on the employee’s computers, and physical files that were not explicitly marked “personal”. When an employee quit, they were allowed to take home any physical files marked “personal” (after they had been combed over by legal to ensure they did not contain any corporate secrets) and the employee’s computer was to be completely “wiped” after the “work” folders were copied to the central server.

Of course Ron’s company had found ways around this. Junk mail was a very competitive business, and Ron’s company wanted to be sure that there was no under-handed activity happening.

According to the law, anything anyone placed in the “trash” became unclaimed public property. This meant that anything an employee threw into their waste basket at work was fair game for corporate scrutiny, and anything they placed into the “Recycling Bin” on their computer was automatically copied to a secret secure numbered directory on the server corresponding with that employee.

Ron’s job initially started as just going through all of this “trash” and making sure the employee was on the “up and up”. Three employees conspiring to quit and take 30% of the clients with them were immediately identified and fired within the first month of Ron joining the company. Funding was added and Ron’s services expanded to psychoanalysis of employees.

Ron could, with alarming accuracy, diagnose employees and identify “leaders” and “losers” within the company. Placing glass ceilings over, or elevators under, “subjects” rather quickly.

No one realized Ron was doing this. Or no one should have. Then Ron discovered that someone did.

A month ago Ron found some alarming threatening letters in a rather annoying girl’s trash. They were written in all CAPS and were just absolutely insane. They talked about how much they hated the CEO, and how they were plotting to kill him. Ron immediately reported his findings, and she was unceremoniously fired for “tardiness and poor teamwork”.

Then this week Ron found what appeared to be correspondence between one co-worker and a competitor. At first Ron was sure they had another breach, except there was something fishy about it. There was no way this employee could ever have known the things they were saying to the competitor. The correspondence was about a top secret company project in another department un-related to the employee’s. The correspondence indicated that the employee was “selling” secrets to the competition, but Ron happened to have a friend working at the competition, and knew they were in no position to buy, or even use these secrets. In fact, the competition was moving away from junk mail entirely, and as of the fourth quarter would drop it all together. The facts just didn’t add up.

Someone was toying with Ron to get people fired. And if they could fake information to get someone fired, this also meant they could groom their own “trash” to get themselves promoted.

A week ago Ron would have begun psycho-analyzing the blades and the “Bad Paper” lettering in the crumpled doodle he held in his hands. He would have decided that this employee was extremely bored and hated meetings. The “doodle” was on the sort of paper that everyone used to take notes during meetings. Ron would have decided that the person was redirecting their anger about the meetings and transferring it to the paper. Punishing the paper by “killing” it and branding it as “bad”. Ron would have passed this information on to the CEO, who then could evaluate the number of meetings and decide if the person was right, and decrease the meetings, or if the person were wrong, and fire them.

Now Ron wasn’t so sure. Could this be another plant? With someone toying with him, all of his trash was now suspect.