Quick Update

Hey everyone - I just wanted to let you know that we're going to be going on a brief hiatus here for the next two months. We will return in October, though, with something new and exciting, so make sure to check back then! Read more!

The House On The End Of The Street

“Looks like this is the place,” Stefan said to his wife as he pulled the car into the empty driveway, “the one here at the end of the street. What do you think? Need to take another drive around the block to get a better feel for the neighbourhood?”
“No, I don't think that's necessary. It looks nice enough,” his wife, Alicia, said as she undid her seat belt and opened the door. “Plus, it looks like the real estate agent is already waiting for us. That's him, right?”
“Yeah, that's him. Bob's his name,” Stefan explained as they both left the car.
“I still don't understand why we just don't get our own agent, to find places for us. Why do we have to keep meeting all these different real estate agents?”
“I'm telling you, we're going to get a better deal this way,” Stefan explained. “Just trust me on this one, okay?”

“Hey there, Stefan, Alicia,” Bob said as he approached the couple, sticking out his hand for them to shake, “how is everything with the two of you today?”
“Uh, we're good,” Alicia said, seemingly put off by Bob's excited attitude. “So, is this the place?”
“Sure is,” Bob said. “It's a great place, isn't it?”
“Yes, it's very interesting,” Alicia said, “it'll be a nice change from the little one-bedroom apartment we have downtown right now.”
"Oh, it sure will. Well, why don't we go and have a look at the house?" Bob said, flashing the biggest grin that he could, and motioning towards the house as he did.
"Uh, sure," Stefan replied, taking his wife by the hand and starting to walk up the cobblestone steps with her as he did. "I must say, this house looks quite fascinating, but I'm not sure that it really fits in well with this neighbourhood."
"Well," Bob explained, fumbling in his pocket for the keys to the front door, "that's simply because this house has been around a lot longer than any of the other houses on this block. I think it'd be safe to say that it has a lot of history."
"So it's really old, then?" Alicia asked as she crossed the threshold into the foyer. "Would we have to worry about drafts or anything like that?"
"Oh, definitely not," Bob explained. "Old World craftsmanship, that's what this place has. It's really well built, and really solid. It can get surprisingly warm at times, to be perfectly honest with you, especially with the nice big fireplace in the living room. Imagine being able to sit down around the fire after a long day of work, relaxing to the sound of the logs crackling in the blaze."

Bob continued his sales routine, and Alicia and Stefan started to tune him out, peeking their heads into the various parts of the house that they found interesting.
“What's this over here?” Alicia asked, walking over to one of the closed doors that stood at the base of the main staircase to the second floor.
“Oh, that?” Bob said. “That's just a storage closet. There's nothing really exciting about that – just some extra space for you to keep stuff in.”
“Can we have a look at it?” Alicia asked, grabbing the door handle.
“Well, if you really want to, I guess it'd be okay,” Bob said. “Although, I have to say that it's not really interesting in there. Nothing like the rest of the house, which I think you'll find is a lot more impressive than this.”
“Well, I'm sure that we'll get around to the rest of it, we have plenty of time,” Alicia said as she turned the door handle. She pushed at the door, but nothing happened.
“Is it locked?” she asked in surprise.
“Uh, it shouldn't be,” Bob said, sounding equally surprised. “As a matter of fact, as far as I'm aware, there shouldn't even be a lock on that door.”
Alicia tried to jiggle the handle again, but with no effect. “It's turning,” she explained, “but the door won't open. Maybe there's something blocking it or something like that?”
“I guess that's a possibility, but there really shouldn't be anything there,” Bob said, sounding perturbed as he made a note of the locked door on the notepad he carried with him. “I'll make sure to have someone come and have a look at that as soon as possible.”
“It sounds empty, though,” Alicia said, knocking on the door with her ear against it.

From upstairs, there came a sudden creaking sound of floorboards. "Speaking of sounds," Stefan said, "what was that?"
"What was what?" Bob said, suddenly sounding defensive. "Are you sure you heard something? Maybe it was just the wind blowing through an opened window or something like that."
“It sounded like a creaking floorboard,” Stefan said. “Is there someone up there?”
“There shouldn't be,” Bob said. “But, we were set to be heading up there anyways, so why don't we have a look?”
They proceeded upstairs, Stefan curious to learn where the creaking sound was coming from. As he walked onto the landing, he could hear the floorboards creak underneath him again. He stopped moving, but the creak continued for several more moments, echoing through the empty halls of the house. "Are you sure that's normal?" Alicia asked hesitantly.
"Oh, it's fine," Bob tried to explain, "a little creak here and there never did anyone any harm, did it? Gives the place character, I would say. Allow me to remind you, however, that the building has recently been inspected, and that it is fully up to code in all areas."
“What can you tell us about the current owners?” Alicia asked.
“”Well, it's currently owned by the Magnus family, although with Mr. Magnus' recent death, the family is looking to divest itself of some properties,” Bob explained. “The house itself, however, hasn't been lived in for a long time – they were, uh, just sort of holding on to it until the time was right to sell.”
Stefan had already stopped listening to Bob, and was wandering into the master bedroom. As he entered it, Stefan couldn't help but notice the image of a young woman standing in front of the open bay windows. “Hello?” he asked, a little annoyed, as he walked towards the window. The girl did not respond; however, as Stefan reached the window, she faded away, as if she had never been there at all.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, turning towards Bob.
“I'm sorry?” Bob responded cluelessly. “What was what?”
“The young girl that was here,” Stefan said. “When we walked into the room, there was a young girl standing at this window. Where did she go?”
“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, sir,” Bob explained. “There was no girl here when we entered. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, or the breeze, or something. You saw the curtain blowing, and the light shining off it, and thought you saw a girl, maybe.”
“Well, I guess that's possible,” Stefan admitted, although he was clearly not happy with the answer. “It was the weirdest thing, though.”

Stefan started to search throughout all of the corners of the room, finding nothing as he did. “Hey, this place isn't haunted or anything like that, is it?” he asked.
“Haunted? Why ... why would you say that?” Bob stuttered in response.
“Don't worry, Bob, I was just joking,” Stefan said, taken a bit aback by Bob's response. “I mean, I don't really believe in hauntings or anything like that, anyways.” Immediately after he said that, Stefan, and Bob, were both shocked when they heard Alicia's scream from the next room, and rushed next door to investigate. “Honey? What's wrong?” Stefan called out as he ran into the room, where he found Alicia laying on the ground. A thick, viscous red liquid dripped down from the wall that she lay in front of, collecting into a small pool where she lay. “Honey, are you okay?” he asked as he reached down to help his wife up.
“I think I'm going to be okay,” she said as she stood up, being careful to avoid slipping on the liquid pool again. “I just slipped and fell, but I'm okay.”
“What the hell is this?” he asked, pointing towards the red liquid.
“What, this?” Bob said, sticking his finger into the liquid as it continued to run down the wall. “This is just, uh, some paint that must have been left behind when the painters were working on the place to get it ready to sell. I'm really sorry about that. If you end up taking the place, I'll make sure that gets taken care of before you take possession.”
Stefan paused for a moment, trying to process what Bob was telling him, and comparing it to what he saw before him. “But there isn't anywhere in this room, or the whole house for that matter, that's painted red,” he said.
“Gee, you know what, you've got a point there,” Bob admitted.
“And another thing – if this is left over from the painters, then were are the drop cloths, and paint cans, and all that?” Stefan asked pointedly.
“Well, I'm sure there has got to be some good explanation for all this,” Bob said with a nervous laugh. “I mean, just because we find an odd liquid on the wall here, that doesn't mean it has to be blood or anything like that!”
“Wait up a second,” Stefan said, “who said anything about blood?”
“Didn't you?” Bob asked, nervously trying to pat down the hair on the back of his head. “I could have sworn you'd mentioned it at some point.”
“Come on, honey,” Stefan said, grabbing his wife's arm and starting to walk towards the staircase out of the house, “there's something really strange going on here. We should leave.”
“Wait, no, don't go!” Bob said, starting to sound nervous. “You still haven't seen...”
Suddenly Bob was cut off by a deep, demonic-sounding voice that seemed to come from nowhere, and yet everywhere at the same time. “Get. Out.” it commanded, reverberating through the inner ears of all three of the individuals. For a brief moment, it seemed as if the entire building shook, and then it was quiet again.
“Okay, now that, there is a perfectly normal explanation for,” Bob said, sticking his hands out to silently dissuade the couple from leaving. It was a fruitless attempt, however, as the young couple were already on their way out the door, back to their waiting car.
“Goddamnit, I'm never going to get to sell this place, am I?” he said to no one in particular, leaning with his hand against the bloodstained wall as he did. Read more!

Gold Mars

“I'm sorry, could you repeat that?” Hoshiko said into her suit microphone, adjusting the receiver settings as she did.
“Readings are clear,” the static-filled voice came in over the speakers, “drill automation is complete. We can go home now, Hoshiko.”
Hoshiko breathed a sigh of relief as she started to climb out of the mine she had established. Already, the drill had started to chew through the red rocks, working its way below the surface. Particles of dust had started to make their way into the planet's thin atmosphere, illuminated by the reflected light of Mars' two moons in a beautiful pattern.

“So, how long until this thing starts producing refined metal?” she asked into the microphone as she walked back to the transport.
“Shouldn't be very long. A couple of weeks at the most,” her engineering partner, Danica, said from inside as she opened the entrance hatch to the transport. "The automated systems have all been set to refine the raw ore, box it, and then transport it back to the settlement. There's nothing more for us to do here."
They were both silent for the next several minutes, as they waited for the transport to repressurize after Hoshiko's entrance to it. Once it was completed, Hoshiko quickly shed the space suit she had been wearing, and took her place beside Danica.
“You know, it seems kind of silly to have to travel out so far to mine,” Hoshiko said once she was settled into the transport's cockpit. “Why didn't they build Aeropolis closer to the ore deposits? They knew they were going to need iron.”
“They were worried it would interfere with people's instruments when it was on. This way we still get the benefit of it, but still get some piece and quiet.”
“Piece and quiet?” Hoshiko said with a laugh. “I can tell you're not quartered anywhere near aeronautical sciences, then!”
“No, I can't say I am,” Danica replied as she noticed Hoshiko fidgeting with the transport's controls. “You're anxious to get back, then, I take it?” she asked.
“Oh, gods, As, you have no idea!” Hoshiko said. “I mean, you've been great company and all, but six months of spending eight hours a day in those atmospheric suits is no way to live! It's going to be great to get back into the city, where we can breath fresh air, and feel the sun lamps on our skin.”
“If you say so,” Danica replied, moving the transport into second gear as she did. “I've kind of liked it out here; it's been so quiet, and peaceful. It's going to be hard to go back to the bustle of the settlement.”
After several more hours' worth of travel, the two found themselves climbing the last hill before Carter's Plain. Hoshiko felt a twinge of excitement as the reached the crest of the hill – once they were over it, they would be able to see the settlement of Aeropolis on the horizon, which would mean that home would be only hours away.
As they climbed over the crest, however, Hoshiko's excitement turned to dread. Where there should have been only the red dust and rock of Carter's Plain, she instead saw two large buildings that filled the horizon. One of them stood tall into the sky, and was still under construction, its empty iron frame rising up through the thin Martian atmosphere. As a result, Hoshiko couldn't tell exactly what the purpose of the building was. Next to it, though, was a shorter building, already finished, with distinctive golden arches that alerted everyone to its identity.
“Oh, what the hell have they done?” Hoshiko asked, slapping her face against her palm. “Danica, can you adjust the course of the transport? We need to get over there.”

The transport drove into the parking lot of the smaller of the two buildings. "Environmental readings are showing thicker atmosphere out here than in the surrounding area," Danica reported. "It looks as though we should be able to leave the transport directly, without requiring atmospheric suits."
“What?” Hoshiko said, leaning over Danica's shoulder to get a view of the same readings, “how is that possible?”
“It shouldn't be,” Danica replied. “They must be expending an incredible amount of energy to maintain it.”
Fury started to fill Hoshiko's eyes as she left the transport, walking intently towards the building. As she did, a wrapper that had once contained a burger flew into her face, ketchup still smeared across its surface. Shocked and unsure of what to do with it, Hoshiko mindlessly rolled it into a ball, and started to search for a receptacle for it. Finding none, she shoved the balled-up wrapper into
one of her many pockets, and continued her march into the building.

“Welcome to McBurger's, can I take your order?” the young man behind the counter tonelessly asked as Hoshiko approached.
“What the hell is going on here?” Hoshiko asked, her frustration revealing traces of the Australian accent that she normally sublimated.
“Can I take your order?” the young man asked again, this time a little more nervously.
“Is this really a McBurger's?” Danica asked, interrupting before Hoshiko had a chance to say anything else. “Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've had a Mega Burger with Cheese?”
“A Mega Burger with Cheese?” the man behind the counter said, his voice regaining its composure. “Would you like that in a combo?”
“Don't answer that,” Hoshiko said to Danica. “Look,” she said, turning to the young man, “there must be some kind of mistake here. How can we have a burger joint here? We're on Mars! When we left Aeropolis six months ago, they'd only started having grain surpluses. How could they support cattle farming?”
“Oh, don't worry,” the counter jockey said, eager to participate in the conversation, “it's all vat-grown cloned meat. No cows were harmed in the making of your burger.”
A look of shock came over Hoshiko's face. “What do you mean?”
“Uh, that it was cloned. In a vat. I guess.”
“But the Reilly Accords ...” Hoshiko started to say, before realizing it was hopeless to continue, “Listen, is there a manager or someone like that here that I can talk to?”
“Oh, that'd be Mr. Stevens,” the counter jockey said. “He's in the back. Let me get him for you.”
A few minutes later, Mr. Stevens, a balding, blustering man, came out into the main area of the restaurant. “Good morning, and welcome to McBurger's,” he said, offering his hand to Hoshiko, “what seems to be the matter?”
“This whole place is the matter! We came home from six months out in the field, and the first thing we see is a McBurger? Who approved this?” Hoshiko asked.
“The American government did,” Mr. Stevens said, a self-assured smirk on his face. “A bill was passed around six months ago for more funding for the Martian settlements – the only condition on it was that people were concerned that, for all of the American investment in Mars, there wasn't enough reflection of American values and culture in the settlement. As a result, they opened the doors for more corporate investment in Mars. McBurger and the Nova hotel chain jumped at the chance to make an investment on Mars.”
“I bet they did,” Hoshiko said disdainfully. “You know that Aeropolis doesn't have the resources to support a place like this.”
“For now,” Mr. Stevens replied. “We've been lobbying the settlement's government to make certain changes to the infrastructure. We expect that they'll listen to us, especially once the hotel is open for business.”
“This is madness!” Hoshiko said, throwing her hands into the air. “This is supposed to be a science colony!”
“It still will be,” Mr. Stevens assured her, “well, the applied sciences, as least. You were one of the teams drilling for iron ore, won't you?”
“Yes,” Danica offered, “they needed ore to build some new scientific facilities on Olympus Mons.”
“Well, that was the original plan,” Mr. Stevens said. “The new plan is to use half of the ore for the science facilities, and the other half to build several tourist attractions in the area. Just think of the type of amusement park we could build with gravity like this!”
“We're on Mars,” Hoshiko said through gritted teeth, her eyes like daggers into Stevens' forehead. “Does the majesty of that not faze you? What would we need tourist attractions for?”
“Well, you can't expect tourists to come all this way just to stare at a bunch of rocks, can you?” he asked her.
Hoshiko started to storm out of the restaurant, heading back towards the transport. “I need to talk to the Aeropolis government about this,” she called out as she left. “This isn't over!”
Danica watched her partner storm out of the restaurant, and then walked up to the counter. “Can I get a Mega Burger with Cheese combo?” she asked.
“Danica, what are you doing?” Hoshiko called from outside. “Let's get out of here!”
“Can you make it to go?” Danica nervously asked the cashier.

Read more!

And Yet, It Turns ...

The first thing that Rick experienced as he awoke was the cold wind that bit at him where he lay, followed quickly by the smell of salt water in the air. This was a unique and surprising sensation for Rick, especially as he could definitely remember falling asleep in his bed after a Fourth of July celebration in Atlanta.

Rick rose up as quickly as he could, wanting to get his bearings. In doing so, he almost knocked himself over again - unbeknownst to him, Rick was on a boat of some kind, and his quick motion seemed to nearly tip the boat over. His arms flailed out, and he silently hoped that he remembered how to swim – it had been years since the last time he'd been in a pool.

Luckily, the boat quickly righted itself, allowing Rick to regain both his balance and composure. As he did, Rick took a moment to look around at his surroundings. The boat that he was traveling in appeared to be on a dark sea, and wherever they were, they were far from land – he looked in all directions, but could see nothing but blank, empty sky on the horizon in every direction. At least, he thought he could see the horizon – the sky appeared to be nearly as dark as the water was, and there were no stars or moon to give it light. In fact, the only thing that prevented total darkness for Rick and his fellow travelers appeared to be at the stern of the boat. A hooded figure stood there, staring out into the blackness.

Desperate to understand what was going on, Rick started to march towards the stern, determined to speak with the hooded figure that appeared to be guiding the boat to its unknown destination. If nothing else, he reasoned to himself, he might learn where it is that the ship was heading.

“That's not such a great idea,” one of the other passengers said, his arm grabbing firmly ahold of Rick's.

“What are you talking about?” Rick asked, pulling his arm away from the other man's. As he did, a burning sensation seemed to course up his arm, beginning where the man had grabbed him but continuing up until it reached his shoulder. Rick hurriedly threw his coat off, rolling up the sleeve of his shirt. There was, however, no mark to match the burning sensation, which began to fade.

“Talking to the ferryman up there,” the other passenger said, moving towards Rick as he did, “would be a very bad idea.” As he did, his face moved into the light. Deep-set cracks and wrinkles ran their way across the man's face, covering it so completely that it was impossible to tell exactly how old he was. What shocked Rick most, however, was the man's eyes – they looked like little more than glass orbs, with no life held within them at all.

“What's going on here? Where am I?” Rick asked, turning away from the old man as he felt the revulsion start to rise up into his throat.

“We are the low men, the dead men,” the old man exclaimed, reaching for Rick again. Rick was able to pull back this time, however, forcing the old man to stumble forward.

“That can't be,” Rick said, his voice full of determination. “I can't be dead!”

“And why not?”

“Because ... when you die, that's it. You're dead. Game over. Your body lies in the ground, and rots away. You don't ride some weird ferry! That's just ridiculous!”

“And yet here we are,” the old man said. “I know that you believe what you're telling me – you believe it with every inch of your soul. And yet, we have died, and here we are, riding on this ferry. Would it make you feel any better if I told you how I died?”

Rick broke away from the man again, moving as quickly as he dared to the front of the ship. Despite the small size of the boat, it seemed to take forever to reach there, the stern continually out of grasp. Desperate, Rick tried to get the attention of the ferryman. “Hey, you!” he screamed out, the ferryman not responding. “I need to talk to you! I'm not supposed to be on this boat!”
Rick heard his fellow passengers start to chuckle at his protestations, their voices filled with the suggestion that they, too, had once been in his position. “Okay, listen,” he then said, trying his best to ignore the laughs of those around him, “maybe we can work a deal out. I have money, you know, and connections as well. Whatever you want, man, just name it, and it's yours.”
The ferryman remained unmoved, giving no hint of contemplation or even of comprehension of what Rick was saying. It was only the slow, rhythmic movement of breathing that gave any indication that it was, in fact, a living form.

“Oh, what's the point,” Rick said, waving off the still-unmoving form and turning back towards the rest of the boat. “It's not like I have a whole lot waiting for me back home, anyways.”

“Oh, don't say that,” his companion from earlier countered, walking up to where Rick was standing. “You must have somebody who's going to be missing you!”

“You think so, but no,” Rick said. “I have a few acquaintances, but none I could truly call 'friends', and a whole bunch of co-workers, but that's about it. Life at the top of the corporate food chain never really left much time for socializing.”

“Oh no, just wait until you see your funeral – you'll be surprised by the turnout, I'm sure.”

“My funeral? Am I supposed to be at that? How can I be there and here at the same time?”

“I don't really know,” the other man said, shrugging his ephemeral shoulders. “Everyone here is, if you'll pardon the expression, in the same boat as you. Nobody really knows much of what's going on. But there was one fellow here who died a day earlier than most of us, from what we've been able to put together. He had his funeral a couple of hours ago, just before you woke up, and he said it was a really lovely service.”

“So he left the boat?”

“No, it was more like – he was still here, but he was there at the same time, from as best he could explain it.”

“So does anyone know where this boat is headed?”

“No really. It looks Egyptian, though, which means we're probably going to be judged by Osiris and, if found wanting, our souls devoured by a serpent. If I remember correctly, that is.”

“What?!” Rick shouted out. “How can you say that so calmly? You can't be serious!”

“Oh, I am serious, and it absolutely terrifies me,” the man said in a dry, flat voice, “but at the same time, what can I do about it?” With that, he turned and walked away, leaving Rick to himself, to ponder what would become of himself.

Read more!

Creeping Death

The sun was burning high into the sky by the time that we arrived at the mall. Lately the sun lacked its traditional glowing warmth; instead, the heat from the sun seemed searing, as if it was trying to burn us off the face of the planet.
No one's really quite sure how or why, but two weeks ago a plague began to spread across the city. The cause of it is still unknown; all we've been able to figure out is that it's transmitted via saliva. After the death of the victim, the body becomes re-animated, and has a strong desire to consume the flesh of humans. Rigor mortis doesn't set in, and the only way to stop them seems to be the massive disruption of brain function. Put more simply, they turn into zombies.
We were lucky that we lived in Denver; the mountains meant that these plague-infected zombies hadn't really gone beyond the city limits yet. There wasn't much time left, though. As a result, the four of us had put together a plan, one that was hopefully going to stop this plague before it spread any further.

The neighbourhood shopping mall is where we decided to make our stand. Armed with a shotgun and an axe, I stood in the main corridor of the mall and shot as many zombies as I could see. One of them came as me from the side; it was upon me before I had a chance to bring my gun to bear. My only hope was to rely on the axe at my side. I swung as hard as I could. The blade sliced easily through the zombie's decaying flesh; his skeletal structure had started to decompose as well, so I managed to slice through the entire corpse in one swipe. The two halves of the zombie fell to the ground, and I resumed my firing at the zombies walking in through the entrance.
The fallen zombie had managed to crawl up behind me, and sunk its teeth into the tendons on my left ankle. As I stifled my screams, I turned around and reloaded. A single blast from my shotgun, right into the zombie's putrid face, was enough to blow it apart. The remainder of the corpse fell by the wayside, no longer animated by whatever forces that had animated it.
I looked around for my comrades. Ray and Robert were still down in the basement, setting the charges that were going to topple the building onto the zombies. Lucy was nowhere to be seen; I could hear her gunfire, however, so I knew that she was still handling herself well. It also meant that I was going to have to dress my wound myself. I unstrapped my medikit, and began to tie a tourniquet onto it. It was going to slow me down a little, but beyond that I should be fine.
“Jack, are you okay?” Lucy called over one of the walkie-talkies we'd brought with us. “I haven't heard you for a couple of minutes, except for that one blast.”
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I called back. “Just got a little tangled up with one of the beasties. How are you holding up?”
“Doing just fine. I managed to get myself up to the second level, and I'm practicing my sniping skills. You?”
“Oh, I'm getting down and dirty with them. Still holding my own, though. How much longer before they should be back?”
Lucy started to talk, but I had to put the walkie-talkie down for a second. Another zombie was closing in on me. Another blast of the shotgun put it down quickly. I was getting frightened at how easy I found it to destroy what had, only days ago, been a living breathing human.
“I'm sorry, you're going to have to say that again,” I quipped, picking the walkie-talkie back up.
“I said that you should probably go get the truck ready. They'll be back in a minute, and then we'll want to get out of here in a hurry.”
I headed towards the south end of the mall, where our getaway vehicle was parked. Robert's plan had worked; he somehow figured out that certain musical frequencies could be used to attract the zombies towards us. For some reason, the 1812 Overture seemed to work best, so we set up some speakers at the north end of the mall. We assumed that the zombies would all come piling in, we'd blow up the mall, and everyone would live happily ever after. So far, the plan had worked perfectly. Well, except for the two friends that we'd lost along the way, but we'd have time to mourn for them later. After everyone else was safe.
The south end of the mall was fairly zombie-free. There were a few there, who must have heard the music from far away and had come to investigate. Like Lucy, though, I had gotten fairly good at distance shooting, and the zombies there quickly fell by the wayside. “Okay, the south entrance is clear,” I radioed to the others. “We just about ready to go?” Suddenly, I felt a sting of pain shoot through my ankle, right where the zombie had bitten me. It lasted only a second, though, so I was able to assure myself it was nothing.
As my three compatriots stormed out of the shopping mall, I fired up the engine of the van and they hopped into the back. “The bomb's going off in under one minute,” Ray explained, “so you'd better floor it!”
As we sped away from the city, the bombs in the basement of the mall exploded, and the building collapsed on the zombies. We weren't sure if the explosion would be sufficient to stop all of those monsters, but we figured they would at least be incapacitated until their bodies started to decompose.

It had been several days since the explosion of the mall, and we had not yet heard any any more zombie sightings. It was just as well, as my wound on my leg had not yet started to heal, either. Aside from that one small annoyance, life in Denver was beginning to return to normal. If anything, the business at my medical clinic had improved drastically, although I was trying not to enjoy that fact. “Nurse Denton,” I called out as I left my private office, “has that new shipment of medical supplies come in yet?”
“No, sorry, doctor. Everything's a little delayed from all of that nasty business earlier this month,” the nurse replied.
“Well that's just not good enough,” I snapped back at her. “How are we going to run a clinic if we don't have any supplies?”
“I don't know, doctor, but they're doing everything they can,” the nurse shot back at me. “Also, sir, I have to say that I know you've been under a lot of stress since the recent tragedy, but that's no reason to take such a rude tone.”
She was right. We'd worked together for a long time, and there was no reason for me to snap at her like that. It had just been this anger that has swelled up inside me. Even now it was still there. A small part of me seemed like it wanted to just reach over and punch Denton for standing up to me like that. “Nurse Denton, cancel all my remaining appointments for this afternoon. I need to take a walk and clear my head a little.”

That night I was doing some grocery shopping when I ran into Lucy. “Hey there, stranger,” she said as I grabbed some tomatoes.
“Hey there,” I said, feeling a certain degree of discomfort. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, pretty good, just trying to settle back down into a normal sort of life,” she said, picking at some of the tomatoes.
“I know what you mean,” I replied, “I've just been trying to keep a pretty low profile, myself.”
“Yeah. I think next time zombies attack, I may just have to leave on the first train out of town.” She finished her sentence with a small amount of nervous laughter, which I found odd. After all that we had been through, it was the type of thing you would think would no longer be necessary.
“Hey, are you doing anything tonight?” I asked her.
“Uh, not really,” she said with hesitation.
“Care to join me for dinner at my place? I make a mean risotto, you know.”
“Sounds like it could be interesting. Why not?”

We ended up not having the risotto. As soon as we reached my apartment, I was overcome with a sudden desire for steak. Luckily, I had some thawing in the fridge, and I whipped up some mashed potatoes to go with it.
After dinner, we sat down on the couch with the intent of finishing the bottle of wine we had started with our meal. After a few glasses, I began to feel a little light-headed, and desire started to well up inside me. It wasn't enirely sexual, either; while a large part of me did want to take this woman back to my bedroom so that I could ravish her, another small part of me wanted something different. It wanted to kill, to smash, not even her specifically, but whatever it was that was in front of me right now. Lucy seemed absolutely oblivious to this; in fact, she was inching closer to me on the couch.
“Listen,” I said, “don't take this the wrong way, but I really have to call it a night early tonight,” I said, faking a yawn for added effect.
“Uhm, okay,” she said, a little confused by my sudden change of mood. “I guess I'll give you a call tomorrow, or something?”
“Sounds good,” I said, handing her jacket to her and ushering her out the door. “Tomorrow yeah.”
She left, no doubt wondering what was wrong with me. I was wondering what was wrong with me, as well; here was an attractive young woman trying to spend some time with me, and all I could think of was seeing her pretty young face smashed against a concrete wall. For some reason, I decided that the best way to clear my head would be to punch one of the walls in the apartment. The wall suffered no damage, but a sharp, shooting pain coursed its way up my arm. There was a sort of detached curiosity to the way that I observed this; almost like it wasn't happening to me directly, but rather like I was watching it happen to my own body.
Hours later, I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a walk through the deserted city streets. All cities are the same at four in the morning. At first they seem like ancient labyrinths, the buildings rising up to box you into the asphalt pathways. The more you walk them, though, you get a feeling for their individuality. The left-on neon signs, the smells coming out of the few twenty-four hour restaurants that you come across, and countless other factors all congregate into a unique urban stew.
And then you hear the scream of someone being victimized, and all of that is torn away. The normal protocol for a situation like this is to just ignore what's happening; to pretend that what you heard was some teenagers misbehaving, or someone making a movie, or that it was somebody watching television too loudly. Ultimately, that's what keeps you sane, right? If there's no problems around you, you don't have to worry about what you're not doing to put a stop to them.
This time, however, something in me caused me to react differently. I started to walk, slow yet determined, over in the direction of the scream. I still can't remember what happened over the course of the next twenty minutes. What I pierced together afterwards, with the help of the victim, was that I walked into a darkened alley, where three thugs were beating and about to rape a young woman. I lit into them like a fiend, apparently, punching them and ripping into them with my fingernails. One of them managed to escape, but the other two... the one thing that I clearly remembered was tearing into their flesh, having it taste like the sweetest fruit that I'd ever eaten. The second one wasn't even dead when I started to eat him.

The next thing I knew, I was back in bed, waking up. I was still in that daze that accompanies an early rise – the memories of a bad dream of death and dismemberment clung to the corners of my mind. The sun blazed into my room through the open curtains. I sat up, my eyes involuntarily closing themselves until they could adjust to the light, and I realized I was not alone.
“Wake up, we've got a bit of a situation,” Ray started to explain. I quickly yet subtly brought my leg fully underneath the covers, hoping that no one had seen the as-yet unhealed bite on it.
“What's that?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
“Well, it appears that the collapse of the shopping mall didn't work as well as we had hoped,” Ray said. “A few hours ago I came across a police report about a woman who was attacked by three young punks in an alleyway. She said they had been planning on raping her, but that another man came into the alley and attacked them, brutally murdering them. On top of that, he apparently started to eat two of the would-be attackers, but ran off when she started to scream.
“H-how can we be sure that it was a zombie?” I stammered, hoping that the nervousness in my voice wasn't audible. “Couldn't it have just been some sort of cannibalistic vigilante?” As the words left my mouth, I realized exactly how ridiculous they sounded.
“Well, I guess that could be a possibility,” Lucy said, “except that two of the corpses are missing from the morgue. The one that's left is the one that didn't have any bite marks on it. I think that's a slightly large coincidence, don't you?”
“Good point,” I conceded. “Okay, how about the three of you give me a few moments to get dressed, and then we can figure out what we're going to do about this.”

And that brings us to where we are now. After I got dressed, we all piled into Ray's pickup truck, on the lookout for any zombies that may be wandering the city streets. I'm sitting in the back of the cab, and we're listening to some god-awful music that Robert had shoved into the CD player. I just want to reach over into the front part of the cab, place my hands around his head, and squeeze until his brains run through my fingers. It's taking everything I can to not try to kill him – my bones are itching at the idea.
“Jack, are you feeling okay?” Lucy asks as she looks at me through truck's rear-view mirror, “you don't look so hot.”
“I'm fine!” I said curtly. “I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Hey, I think I see something over there. Stop the truck.”
A pair of legs were sticking out from behind a dumpster. As we approached it, I could feel the bile rise out of my stomach. There was a body laying behind the dumpster, face-down in the alley. There was something about the body that seemed extremely familiar.
Well, there were two things about the body that seemed familiar. The first was the smell – in the past several weeks, we had all gotten far too used to the smell of rotting, dead flesh. This time, however, the scent smelled somewhat different to me, in a way that I couldn't exactly place. I was horrified when I realised that there was a small amount of saliva collecting in my mouth, mixing with the bile that was rising from my stomach.
Lucy started to lift the corpse up, using a long piece of wood that she had found laying in the alley. She turned the body over. Everyone's eyes immediately went to the corpse's throat, where there was a large gash and a smattering of bite marks. My eyes, in contrast, went straight to the woman's eyes. They were glossed over, as rigor mortis had started to set in. There was something disturbingly familiar about them.
Ray noticed something leading away from the corpse. “It looks like a trail of blood,” he said, kneeling down to examine it. “It might be from the body of that woman, but it doesn't look like it. We'll have to go further into the alley in order to make sure.”
“There's probably no need to do that,” I stammered out. “Whatever happened here, I'm sure there's nothing left behind that could help us.”
They all ignored me, and continued to walk further into the alley. As Robert walked past me, I got the strangest sensation. A pang of hunger coursed through my stomach. I felt hungrier than I think I'd ever felt before in my life. The feeling didn't confine itself to my stomach either, however. It rippled through my entire body, and it felt as if my skin contracted all over my body at once.
“Are you okay,” Robert asked me. “You're looking really peaked. Why don't you go lay down in the truck while we check this out?”
I didn't protest his assessment, and slowly walked towards the truck. “I guess it might be good to have someone keeping watch in case any bodies show up.”
I started noticing a headache as I got back to the truck, so I laid down in the back. There was an old newspaper laying there as well. I picked it up, hoping that having something to concentrate on would take away from my headache. It didn't help, though. The words were a complete blur. I frantically turned the page, just to make sure that there wasn't something oddly wrong with the printing of that one page. The next page was the same. I started to feel extremely frightened. What had gone wrong with my sight? Why couldn't I comprehend what was on the page?
I didn't have much time to think about the question in detail, however, as I heard a noise come from the alley. I didn't even need to look up to know that it was the woman, her body slowly attempting to right itself and adjust to its new supernatural state. After a moment, it started walking in my direction. I was paralysed with fear. There weren't any weapons left in the truck, or anything that I could defend myself with. But then the strangest think happened. The woman just passed by the truck. I know that she had looked in my direction, and must have seen me, but for some reason I didn't register with her as a potential food source. As she walked into the street, I was reminded of Oscar Wilde, and that as with people, the only thing more terrifying than being wanted by the undead was not being wanted.
A few minutes after the corpse shambled past me, my compatriots came back up the “What happened to the body?” Ray asked, his voice equal parts concern and curiosity.
“She started to walk,” I said. “She just got up and headed down Charles St.”
“She just walked past you? Didn't try to take a bite or anything?”
“No, not at all. Strangest thing.”
“Are you sure she just left, Jack? You're not looking so hot,” Lucy added.
“Yeah, I'm sure,” I snapped back at her, jumping down from the back of the truck, my gaze boring a hole into her. “Just drop it, okay?” The rage was building up in me again. I had a sudden urge to take her pretty little face, with its annoying little mouth, and smash it into the nearest concrete slab that I could find. I paused momentarily to calm myself. Lucy had always been so nice to me; why did I want to hurt her?
I didn't have a chance to think about it any further. A loud bang rang out from the left of Lucy, where Ray was standing. After a moment, I realized that smoke was rising out of the barrel of his handgun. I took a step forward, and was surprised when it felt awkward to place my weight on my left leg. Looking down, I noticed blood spurting out of what was obviously a gunshot wound. Why hadn't I felt anything when he shot me? My synapses started firing as quickly as they could, trying to come up with a logical conclusion for what was happening.
Ray's synapses were apparently working faster than mine. “Shit, he's become one of them,” he said, lifting his gun up and aiming it at me. “NO!” I yelled back, walking towards them. With every step I took, the trio took an equal step backwards. If only I could get closer to them, I could convince them I wasn't a threat. Hard to walk, though, with the hurt in my leg. Ray fired again, the bullet hitting my jaw and bouncing off behind me. I tried to open my mouth, to talk to them and calm them down, but it didn't work. All that came out was a low, gutteral sort of noise, my now-broken jaw unable to communicate properly.
“Stop where you are, man, this is hard enough as it is,” Ray yelled again.
I'd had enough. I tried to run towards them, thinking it would help prove that I wasn't what they thought I was. It didn't work, though, as I tripped over myself, and fell to the ground in front of Lucy, grabbing at her clothes to steady myself.
“Oh crap,” Robert said as I fell. Almost immediately, he kicked me in the midsection, hoping to knock the wind out of me. Curiously, it didn't affect me at all. Why didn't it hurt me?
“It's too late, he's too far gone,” Ray said. I tried to get back onto my feet, but my sense of balance seemed off, and it took longer than I thought to get back up. By the time I did, Ray's pistol stared me in the face. “I'm really sorry it had to end like this, man,” he said. Then, the loud boom came again, and the world went dark. Read more!

The Shaman Of The Streets

"Excuse me miss, but would you like to see a magic trick?" was the first thing I remember him saying to me, on that cold Monday in November.

"No, I'm sorry, I don't have any cash on me," I instinctively replied, at the time assuming that he was just another bum, in a long line of bums, who was going to try to get a hand-out.

"I'm not asking for your money," he replied, in a tone of voice that assumed that taking money from someone was the last thing that he would ever consider doing. It wasn't pride that filled his voice, though; rather, it was this sense that Other People's Money was something that he would have absolutely no use for.

"Would you like to see a magic trick?" he asked again, a sense of earnestness squeaking out from his gruff old-man voice. "You see, I'm a magician by profession. It seems, though, that lately people have no interest in filing into a concert hall in order to see the latest magic tricks, so I have to resort to flagging down strangers on street corners."

"Uh, sure, I'd love to see a magic trick," I said, taken a bit aback by what he was saying. My journalistic background had taught me that everyone has an angle; everyone had something that they're trying to get, even though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what this guy's was. "Okay, so what's the trick?"

As if he'd been waiting for my cue, he immediately thrust a hand into one of his pockets and pulled out an old deck of cards, fanning them out in front of me. I have to admit that the cards looked a lot cleaner than I would have assumed they'd be, although the drawing of a bare-breasted, horned, nymphet of a demon on the back of the cards left something to be desired.

"Pick a card, any card," he said, with the type of grin that one would only see on an old showman working his way through his regular routine.

After hesitating for a moment, I reached into the middle of the deck and pulled out one for the cards. "Am I allowed to look at it?" I asked.

"Of course you are," he replied. "Look at your card very carefully, and then place it back in the deck somewhere. Anywhere you'd like."

I took a quick, sideways glance at the card. The queen of clubs - an appropriate pick, given the number of nightclubs I frequented in my youth. I stared at the card for a moment, trying to look for any markings that might separate it from the rest of the deck, but couldn't see any. Finally I put the card back, and watched him as he shuffled the queen back into the deck.

"Now, let's see if we can't find your card," he said, starting to work his way through the deck. As he made his way through it, his pace quickened, until he finally reached the end of the deck without pulling out my card. "I'm terribly sorry, madam," he said, looking up at me, "but it appears as though your card has gone missing."

I pulled the deck out of his hands and searched through it myself. Sure enough, the queen of clubs was nowhere to be found in the entire deck. "If you'll excuse me," the man said, in a tone that suggested he'd just remembered an important engagement, "I must be on my way. I'll see you around, however." With that, he grabbed the card deck out of my hands, and shoved them back in his pocket hurrying across the street as soon as his legs could take him.

It was the sort of random experience that I would usually have forgotten shortly after it occurred, and it would have, if it had not been for what happened to me that evening. I went online that night, intent on purchasing some tickets for an upcoming concert that I'd wanted to see. As I reached into my wallet to pull out my credit card to pay for the purchase, I was shocked to discover, wedged in between my credit and debit cards, a queen of clubs. Frantically turning the card over, I saw the same demonic nymphet that I had seen on the street corner earlier that day. Intrigued, I vowed to return to that neighbourhood the next day to see the old man again, still not fully aware of what it was that I was getting myself in to.

"Excuse me," I said to the clerk the next day, desperate to get the young man's attention. "This may be a total longshot, but I'm looking for the man who was hanging around outside here yesterday. Do you know if he hangs out here a lot?"

With a blank stare staring back at me, I pressed the question further. "He was a short man, kind of balding? Was wearing a long, dirty-looking trenchcoat? Did magic tricks?"

Finally a light bulb seemed to go off in the clerk's head. "Oh," the man said, "you must mean the Shaman. Let me tell you something, though, girl, those were no tricks he was doing. That was bona fide magic that you were observing."

"Okay," I said, looking at the man incredulously. "Do you know where I can find this ... Shaman, was it that you said he was called?'

"Yeah. The Shaman of the Streets, we call him. He just kind of comes and goes wherever he feels he's needed. He usually stops by here a couple of times a week, though."

"Why do you call him a shaman? He didn't look Native to me."

"He's not, far as I know. That's all anyone around here knows him as, though."

"Well, fair enough, I suppose. Do you think you could do me a favour? Let me leave my card with you - when you see this Shaman character again, give it to him and tell him to call me. Collect if he has to. Could you do that for me?"

"Sure, no problem," the clerk said, taking my business card.

It was three days later when I finally got the call. "So, I take it you got my card, then," I said as I answered the telephone.

"And I take it that you found mine, as well," he responded with a chuckle.

"Yes, I did, and that's why I was trying to get a hold of you. I'd love to find out your secrets."

"Well, my good lady, I'm afraid that secrets are in rather short supply as far as I'm concerned. If you'd like to meet for dinner - tonight, maybe? - I'd be happy to discuss my art with you."

I consented, and we made dinner reservations, meeting on one of the many patios that littered Queen St. on the west side of town. After our appetizers were ordered, I pulled the queen of clubs out of my purse and handed it back to him. "So, how'd you do it? How did you get that into my purse?"

"Magic," he said, answering in a matter-of-fact tone, as if no other explanation were possible.

"Oh, I understand," I replied, sipping my martini, "a good magician doesn't reveal his tricks, right?"

"No, that's not it at all, I'm afraid," he replied. "There was no trick involved at all. It really was magic."

"There's only one problem with that," I said as the food arrived, "Magic doesn't exist. For you to dematerialize that card, and then somehow re-materialize it within my purse. It violates the laws of physics. It's all just done with smoke and mirrors, isn't it? Misdirection? Sleight of hand?"
He laughed, putting his hand to his face as he did. "Ms. Weiss, those are the tools of charlatans and liars. The fact that some people have to rely on those tools doesn't mean that magic doesn't exist."

"But doesn't what you'd suggesting violate the laws of physics?"

"Well, I am a simple man. I know little of the laws of physics. But I do know magic, and I know that that's how I got that card into your purse."

As we ate out meals, he told me more about his life - how his father had been a stage magician, and had taught him the real secrets of magic. "You talked earlier about the laws of physics," he told me, "what magic is is simply bending those laws. Finding loopholes. This means, of course, that there are practical limits on what I can do; I simply have to understand what those limits are and work around them."

"If you don't mind my asking," I said as our plates were finally being cleared, "how did you end up on the streets?"

"Well,I started out trying stage magic, like Father did. I had no taste for it, however - I couldn't help shake this feeling that I was prostituting the one true love of my life in exchange for a few pieces of silver. So I stopped performing, and took my magic to the streets - to where everyone who passed by me could enjoy it. It's been a rather wonderful experience."

"So, forgive me for being rude, but are you homeless, then?"

"Well, that depends on your definition," he told me with a smile. "I consider the streets themselves to be my home, so how can I be homeless?"

I was slowly starting to realize that, regardless of the reality of what he was telling me, what I had in front of me was going to make for a good human-interest story. I mean, sure, the guy was a bum, but he was a charming, well-spoken bum that seemed to have a fairly good head on his shoulders.

"Listen," I explained to him, "I really have got to get out of here. I'm interested, though, in your story, and I'd like to write an article about you. Would it be possible for us to meet up again tomorrow, perhaps?"

"That would be delightful," he said, getting out of his chair and preparing to leave. As we both walked out of the restaurant, I felt his arm grab a hold of mine. “You know,” he said, “the night is far too young, and far too nice, for us to bid it goodnight quite yet. Why don't we finish off the rest of that interview tonight?”

I wanted to say no to him. Every instinct that I had told me to say no to him. When I looked into his eyes, however, there was a mesmerizing charm to them, and I found it impossible to say anything but yes.

“So, this is your idea of a nice night?” I said, shivering as I did, after several minutes' worth of walk.

“Well, don't get me wrong, I never said it wasn't a cold night,” he said with a chuckle, “but it's a nice one all the same. The wind's down, at least, and there's a great positive energy out tonight.”
I silently shook my head, refusing to believe that the cold could be anything other than oppressive. When I looked up again, I realized that I had absolutely no reference to where we were. “Where are we?” I asked him.

“We're in High Park,” he said. “There's something here I'd like you to see.”

“High Park?” I asked incredulously. “How is that possible? Weren't we just on Queen St a moment ago?”

“We were,” he said in a completely calm, rational voice. “Let's just say that I made a little shortcut for us.”

I told myself that my mind must have wandered off, and that we had been actually walking for a lot longer than I had thought we had. That had to be the case, because the other possibility – that I had just been involved in a case of honest-to-goodness magic and had completely missed it – wasn't the type of thing that I wanted to admit to myself.

“Okay,” I said, turning to him, “so what are we doing in High Park?”

“There's something here I think you need to see,” he said to me, the tone in his voice at once soothing and commanding. Without saying another word, he led me into a small enclave of bushes in the middle of the park. It was the type of place that I shouldn't have wanted to go into – it was incredibly unsafe, but like I said, there was something about him that made it impossible for me to say no to him. “Look at this,” he said, pointing into one of the bushes.

“Look at what?” I asked him. I couldn't see anything. He remedied that with a quick snap of his fingers, which caused a small ball of light to appear next to my face. “Okay,” I said as I peered into the bush, “so what exactly am I looking for?”

“Be patient,” he told me. A moment after he did, I saw several small lights work their way out of the bush.

“Usually they try to hide from people,” the Shaman explained, “but this fairy light I've got always brings them out.”

“You're saying those are ...”

“Yes. Fairies. Marvelous, aren't they?”

As I stared at them, their shapes started to coalesce, taking the forms of tiny, flying people. “It's amazing,” I said.


I don't remember how long I stood there, staring at the fairies. I don't remember getting home, either, but when I woke up the next morning, I knew that I needed to see the Shaman again, to talk about what had happened the night before. I quickly dressed myself and headed back onto the street, constantly scanning it for him.

“Have you seen him?” I nervously asked the store clerk as I burst into the store that I had first seen him in front of. “Has he been around today?”

“I'm sorry, who are you talking about?” the clerk asked, obviously startled by my entrance. I quickly scanned the rest of the store, looking for the woman that had told me about him the day before.

“You know who,” I said in an exasperated tone. “The Shaman. Has he been here?”

An old female customer at the cash desk let out a slight laugh. “I'm afraid you've missed him,” she told me. “This city isn't the only place he makes his home, you see. I'm sure he'll be back soon enough, however. You'll know when he's back. You'll feel it in your bones.”
Read more!

ATC

What the hell is going on? Lucas asked himself as he spun himself around, trying to get a better look at his surroundings.
Something was very seriously wrong; of that, he was at least fairly sure. It had all started when he'd left the nightclub, desperate for a cigarette. As he'd walked into the empty alley beside the building, it had filled with some bizarre kind of light show. It was difficult for him to exactly process what the light had looked like – wisps of light and energy, azure and magenta. At the same time, though, it had seemed to react almost like a living thing, trying to wrap itself around him and smother him. Then, with a loud band, it had all disappeared, and the alley looked somewhat different. Had that all been some sort of hallucination?

Lucas realized that, at least, he was going to require some more air, so he walked further out, into the street. As he did, he saw something that completely shocked him. As he stared out into the New York skyline, he saw the outline of the World Trade Center along the night-blanketed sky.
Lucas felt his knees go weak. He had just recently started to get used to the lack of those two towers from the skyline. What was this, then, that he was seeing?
Lucas looked around for a bench and, upon seeing a bus shelter, proceeded to sit down. What was happening to him? Was it possible that he was suffering from some sort of mental breakdown? He supposed it was possible – he had been under a considerable amount of stress at work lately, although he had assured himself that he had been able to handle it all. Could he have been wrong?
Lucas tried to think of about what could have happened to cause this breakdown, if that was in fact what it was. He had been sitting in that bar, thinking about Lisa and her decision to leave for Europe. He had been saddened by that, but not so much as to affect his thinking. If not that, though, he thought to himself, then what?
A moment later, the bizarre nature of the issue was further compounded as a tall man, dressed in a black trench coat approached him. “Excuse me,” the man said, looking at a small notebook that he pulled out of his jacket pocket, “but is your name Lucas Petroff?”
Lucas' head snapped upward, staring at the man without recognition.
“I'll take that as a yes, then,” the man said, placing the notebook back inside his coat. As he deposited it, he pulled out an exceptionally large and menacing looking gun.
As the man fired, Lucas ducked down, an act borne of pure instinct. As a hole was punched into the shelter behind him, Lucas started to run. He went directly out into the street, hoping that any oncoming cars would be able to stop before they hit him. It definitely seemed safer than staying there to be shot at. Luckily, he was able to dodge between the cars, the Manhattan traffic crawling along at its typically slow pace, despite the late hour. As he ran between the cars, the man fired again, a deafening boom forcing him to duck once again, and also to look back at the sidewalk where the shooter was. Lucas came to the realization that it wasn't bullets that were being fired at him – instead, the gun shot out a beam of bluish-white light, which reflected off of the windshield of the car directly behind Lucas and went into the sky. Lucas continued to run, the man in the trench coat running behind him. Frantically, he ran into the subway station, hopping over the turnstile and running into a train that, luckily, was waiting at the station as he jumped. As the doors of the train closed behind him, and the train started to pull away, he could see the man in the trench coat run into the station. He was safe.
“I hope you realize you're not safe,” one of the other subway passengers suddenly said to him.
“What?”
“He will find you again. The man that chased you on here. It's rather unavoidable.”
The subway slowed to a stop as it reached one of the stations. “What makes you say that?” Lucas asked. “It was just some sort of crazy, random happening, wasn't it?”
“You know that's not true. After all, he knew your name, didn't he, Lucas?”
Lucas ran out of the subway station as fast as he could.

It was over an hour before the man from the from the subway had caught up with him. Lucas was sitting in a diner, enjoying his twenty-four hour breakfast, as the man sat down across from him.
“See, if I found you this easily, how hard do you think it will be for him to find you?”
“What the hell is going on here?” Lucas angrily whispered through gritted teeth. “I know I've been under some stress lately, but I'm not crazy!”
The man looked a little confused. “Crazy? Lucas, who said anything about you being crazy?” He tilted his gaze skyward. “Why do they always assume they're mentally ill?”
Lucas started to form a reply, but the man continued to talk before he could say anything.
“Lucas, what do you know about time travel?”
The question shocked the young man, forcing him to sit back in his seat. “You mean like in the movies? Crazy scientists building machines so they can find out who's going to win the next World Series, and stuff like that?”
The man chuckled and pulled a crumpled up page of newsprint from his pocket. “I'm afraid it's a little more complicated that that.” He handed the page to Lucas. “This is from today's edition of the Times. Look at the date.”
Lucas' eyes moved up toward the masthead, past a headline announcing Nixon's approaching visit to the city. The date on it read October 12, 1971. “That's impossible,” Lucas said. “It's not 1971, it's 2008. I wasn't even born in 1971!”
“No, it's not 2008. For you, it was 2008 this morning, but now it's before then. In the future, you might be able to return to your present, but for now you're in your past. The grammar gets a little confusing, but stick with me, okay?”
“How did this happen? I don't remember seeing any sort of time machine. Just that weird light that I saw earlier.”
“And there's our culprit. Normally, you would need some sort of device to travel in time. However, every once and a while, fissures and holes appear in the fabric of space-time. You fell through one of these holes.”
“That's amazing!” After a moment, Lucas' natural sense of skepticism took over. “How do you know so much about all this?”
“I was wondering when you were going to ask that. I'm from the future. I'm what will one day be known as an Agent of Temporal Change. No, don't give me that look, because it's true. With everything that's been happening to you today, is that really so hard to believe?”
He took Lucas' silence as agreement. “The situation is this – around 200 years from now, the science of time-travel is perfected. This happened as a result of the time-fissures, like the one that you found. When the people of my time started to learn about people being trapped in different time periods, we decided to take humanitarian action, and start traveling back in time to rescue them.”
“That's what this is? A rescue mission? Is that why your buddy was trying to shoot me?”
“He's hardly what I would call a 'buddy'. What started to happen was that some of our philosophers started to argue that it was no good sending people to their home-time if that time wasn't at all livable. So, we set about making changes to the past, in order to build a better tomorrow.”
“You can't do that! Aren't time travelers supposed to not change the future?”
“Oh god, you sound like one of them.”
“Them? Them who?”
“Them like our friend with the trench coat and the plasma gun,” the man said, “naturalists. People who said that we should use our knowledge of time to prevent changes to the timeline, rather than making them ourselves. Conservative idiots, the lot of them.”
As Lucas started to formulate a response, the door of the diner opened and a familiar face walked in.
“Oh, crap,” Lucas' companion said, standing up and drawing an energy weapon of his own. “Lucas,” he said, “get out of here. There's a door in the back, through the kitchen.”
As Lucas started to run, he saw his new friend lift his weapon and fire at the man in the trench coat. When he reached the back door, however, he realized there was no point in going any further. Either his new friend would fend off his attacker, or Lucas would end up dead.
Several minutes later, Lucas' friend burst out of the door, panting. “He should be out of our way for a few hours, at least,” the man breathlessly explained. “Now,” he added with a smile, “why don't we get out of here?”

After a complex walk through a series of side streets and back alleys, Lucas and his companion finally came to a stop. “This should be fairly good,” the agent explained, “we should be able to keep away from him now until we're ready for the endgame. Now, what was I saying before he interrupted us?”
“You were explaining about people changing history,” Lucas explained.
“Oh yes,” the man continued. “The naturalists started accusing people of 'playing God' by changing history. What they failed to realize is that, once technology like this exists, you're as much playing God by not act as you are by acting. The only question is whether you want to be a caring god or a spiteful one.”
“I'm sorry, this all seems so completely out there,” Lucas said. “I don't know if I can believe all this.”
“Here, let me show you something, then,” the agent said, taking a small pad, similar to a PDA, out of his pocket. He pressed a button on the face of it, and the light show that Lucas had seen earlier was back, sucking him into a small void that appeared in front of the agent.
When the world came back to normal, Lucas found himself in a dimly-lit room, dark except for a bank of computer monitors against one wall. The agent stood beside him, his arms crossed.
“Where the hell are we now?” Lucas said, looking around the room.
“We're in the future. This is my 'home base', so to speak. Before you even ask, you've not leaving this room. I've already broken protocol just by bringing you here. What I want you to see is right here, though.”
The agent walked over to one of the computer monitors, tapping against the screen. It immediately came to life. After the agent tapped a few more menus, the screen came alive with silent video of the agent, stalking his way through darkened streets.
“Where is this from?” Lucas demanded to know.
“You've heard of the Paul Revere?” the agent asked as Lucas watched the younger version of him stepping between two men who appeared poised to fight. “That's him on the right. The other man is an operative of George II, dedicated to stopping Revere from delivering his message about the coming British army.”
“I never heard anything about a meeting like this in history class,” Lucas objected.
“This is why,” the agent said, and they watched as the version of him on the screen took out a pistol and shot the British agent. “Originally,” the agent explained as Revere rode off, “Paul Revere was murdered, and the democratic republic was regarded as a failed experiment until almost the end of the 1980s. The cost of one life is more than enough to make up for advancing all that, wouldn't you say?”
Lucas felt his mind start to explode with possibility. “What about parallel worlds?” he asked. “When you time travel, how do you know that you end up back in the same reality that you started in?”
“Parallel worlds?” the agent said, slightly confused. “Forget all that. There's only one true reality, and that's the one that we're in.” As he said that, Lucas could see him scanning his face, hoping for a glint of agreement in Lucas' eyes.
He didn't find any. “What? I thought there were all kinds of evidence that...”
Lucas was cut off mid-sentence. “Nothing more real than a dream. Everyone knows... no, I guess you wouldn't know that yet, would you? The half-invented wishes of scientists and science fiction writers, and nothing more. Alternate realities are no more real or different than Robin Hood or Long John Silver. What we have to do is what humans have always done – we try to make the world as good of a place as we can in the time that we have.”
Lucas stood silent for a moment, weighing his possibilities. “So if I help you change the future, you'll let me go home, right?” he finally asked. The man nodded. “Well, that's all I really need to hear,” Lucas said. “Let's get this thing done!”
“Excellent! Our mission is to stop the assassination of the president!”
“Wait a second,” Lucas said. “It's 1971. Nixon's president right now. He was never assassinated!”
“Exactly! Which means our success is guaranteed!”

Leo Jenkins received a giant surprise as he finished preparing his dinner. He had set up what he believed to be the perfect crime – he'd painstakingly covered all of his tracks, and no one knew about the murder that he'd planned.
The thought of murder frightened him, but he knew, in his soul, that this needed to be done in order to get the US out of Vietnam. Future generations would see him as a hero.
Then the two men appeared in his living room. They were on him in an instant, forcing him down to the ground. “You wanted to be famous, Leo,” one of them, who was brandishing a large, exotic gun, said, “but I'm afraid that that's not going to happen.” With that pronouncement, he shoved the barrel of the gun into Leo's mouth.
“You're planning on killing Nixon,” one of the men said. “Now, in principle, I'm not really opposed to that. However, you need to look at the long view here. If he dies, then he becomes wildly loved, the Watergate investigation never happens, and the American people never learn a healthy distrust for their government, which trust me, will have horrendous results in the future.”
Before he had the chance to fire, though, there was a loud bang, and Leo saw his would-be assassin fall to the ground. A third man, dressed in a black trench coat, stood in the living room, smoking gun in his hand.
“Don't you understand?” the one holding him down yelled, “This needs to be done! For the future!”
“No,” the trench coat-wearing man said. “He's wrong. You can feel it in your soul. It's not our role to meddle with history, no matter how well-intentioned we may be.”
The man detected a note of hesitation in Lucas' eyes. “It is not our place to command the future,” he repeated. “All we can do is learn how to adapt ourselves to the reality that we see around us, the same as a leaf cannot control the river that it flows down.”
Lucas tried to make sense of the man's words. How could he do that? Surrender himself so completely to the world around him? Without saying another word, Lucas took the gun, its barrel still lodged in the mouth of Leo Jenkins, and pulled the trigger. As he did, he slumped down beside the newly-made corpse, tears filling his eyes.
As they returned to 2008, the agent, still not fully recovered from his gunshot wound, tried to console Lucas. “You did the right thing,” he told him. “Trust me, the world is a better place with the time-line being the way it is. We're building the best of all possible worlds, and you've played an important role in it.” The worlds rang hollow in Lucas' ears. He knew that he had done something that had to be done – something that, logically, he didn't have much choice in doing. He hoped that someday that would make it a little easier for him to look at himself in the mirror.

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