Canto 69 – Coffee Time on the Shadowcat (the
Blood-Red Thread)
My first meeting
with Ham Aero and the crew of the Leaping Shadowcat was in the Trophy
Lounge on the lower deck of the Shadowcat herself. The charming white-furred Lupin boy, Sahleck
Kim, led me there when I arrived from the White Duke’s shuttle.
“So, you’re the
cabin boy?”
“Oh, yes, Dr.
Marou. It’s hard to believe, I
know. I’ve gone in a matter of a few
weeks from Count Nefaria’s dungeons where I was destined to die, to working
aboard the space ship of the great Safari Master and adventurer, Ham Aero. My future is suddenly bright.”
The child’s eyes
glistened like an excited puppy’s as he told me his tale of rescue. He led me to a seat in the Trophy Lounge
where I could sit and eat one of Sinbadh’s sumptuous meals. There was a stuffed head of a dragon-mouthed
pakoollie beast from the planet Samothrace looking directly down on my plate,
trying his hardest to ruin my appetite with his ugliness.
“My
boy, do you have any coffee?” I asked.
Sahleck grinned
in a wide-mouthed way that only Lupins can manage. “It’s one of Commander Sinbadh’s
specialties!” He said.
“Bring me
some. Please.”
The boy hurried
to the mess. At that same moment, Ham
and Duke Ferrari entered.
“I
guess, with Cloudstalker’s departure, you are the Captain of the ship again,”
said Ferrari of the curly moustaches.
“Oh, I think you
still out-rank me,” answered Aero modestly.
“Hello… You must be Professor
Googol Marou.”
Ham offered his
hand to me and I gladly shook it. “Yes,
I’m honored to meet a man who has traveled almost as much as any explorer.”
“The
reputation has not entirely been earned,” said Ham.
“This
is YOUR ship, Ham,” said Ferrari, frowning slightly. “I think you should be the captain.”
Ham smiled. “I won’t argue that now, Han. Have you met Dr. Marou?”
“No, no… Nice to make your acquaintance, Doctor.”
“I too, am
honored,” I said. “I am not used to
meeting such powerful inter-planetary politicians.”
Ferrari looked at
me as if he were slightly annoyed. “You
know the White Duke. He’s a bigger light
in this galaxy than I am.”
“Well, if you say
so.” I know I must’ve been grinning ear
to ear to hear my own friend being praised in this way. I wonder how Ferrari actually took that.
Ham looked at me
quizzically. “Professor, what’s in all
the boxes you had installed in the skinning and mounting lab?”
“Oh! My invention!
I have to tell you about it.”
Gleefully I related everything they needed to know about the Marou
Ancient Light Holo-Assembler Telescope and maybe a tad bit more as well. I explained how my sheer genius had allowed
events to be viewed from light years away, and thusly, years in the past.
“Umm, that’s very
good, professor,” Ham said. “I guess
that will come in handy…”
He didn’t speak
with enthusiasm, but I knew he was actually quite impressed with me.
As a writer seriously immersed in a particular work in progress, I find myself talking more and more to certain people who exist only in my head. They are the characters in my novel, The Boy… Forever.
The novel is itself an epistolary novel. That means, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it is made up of letters, notes, diary and journal entries, and other personal writing of the central characters. It also means that I have to become the different people who write these things. At least while I create each individual artifact that goes into the mosaic of first-person narratives.
Anita Jones, pictured here, is the letter-writer who starts the plot in motion when she gets a very disturbing letter from her cousin, Icarus Jones.
Icarus writes about his problem with becoming a midget, and his response to it being a plan to kill himself. It seems that he simply stopped growing at the age of ten. Now, being a fifteen-year-old in the body of a ten-year-old, he writes a suicide note in the form of a letter, and then goes to jump off a bridge into the Mississippi River. But when he does, he survives. Or, rather, he succeeds, but cannot remain dead. He doesn’t know it, yet, but he has become a human mutation known in the secret world of unknown things as an Immortal.
Tian Long, the Celestial Dragon
Icky’s problem becomes worse when it is discovered he is being pursued by another immortal, a sort of vampiric immortal who needs to consume the essence of other immortals to stay alive. He is a three-thousand-year-old Chinese Celestial Dragon who is able to assume a human form.
Neither Icky Jones nor Tian Long the dragon, though, really needs to be in my head. Icarus himself only writes the first and last letters of the book. Tian Long, the villain, does not have a say at all in telling the story. The only part of it he writes are the wizard spells he uses to confound everyone, and most of those are in Chinese.
Milton John Morgan, the Wizard of the Norwall Pirates
Besides the letters that Anita Jones writes to her cousin in Dallas, Dot Jones, the story is also advanced in the journal entries of Milt Morgan, one of the leaders of the boys’ gang in rural Iowa known as the Norwall Pirates. He has been asked by the Freshman English teacher to keep a daily journal and write every day in 1976. This he struggles to do, but gains writing and typing skills as he goes along, especially when he befriends Icarus and learns about the dragon pursuing Icky.
Milt is full of imagination and a sense of adventure, a thing that makes him an unreliable narrator, not above embellishing the truth as he writes his not-so-much- daily-as-infrequent journal entries.
Brent “the Cat” Clarke
The story is also taken up by Brent Clarke, the leader of the Norwall Pirates. Brent wants to be a policeman or a detective or something like that when he grows up. He takes careful investigation notes on everything, and he is the first one to become suspicious of the Chinese man and his step-daughter who pick a house in the town of Norwall that they want to live in right before the actual owner and occupant of the house mysteriously dies in a falling accident. Brent befriends the local Sheriff’s Deputy and sets out on a serious possible murder investigation that yields some very disturbing results. His notes are very detail-oriented and generally fact-based. He carefully records his own eye-witness accounts of everything.
Sherry Cobble, the nudist, calls herself the smarter and more beautiful twin.
Sherry Cobble, the more outgoing of the identical twins known as the Cobble Sisters, is a happy nudist with a very positive body image for herself and her twin sister. She is a very positive person over-all. She and her sister Shelly had started out keeping a “Lovely Nudist’s Diary” between them, but Shelly is not nearly as interested in writing and storytelling as her sister. So, Sherry takes over the diarist duties with the same sort of glee and enthusiasm she has for promoting nudism to her friends, especially the Norwall Pirates. It is her goal to eventually see all of the kids in Norwall naked and happy just as she and her sister Shelly always are.
Those four different character voices are the main voices I have to work with in telling this fantasy adventure story in much the same way as Stoker tells the story of Dracula.
So, if I begin to seem like I have a disordered mind full of multiple personalities, it’s because I am a novelist, not a mental patient or a vampire or even a Chinese dragon in human form. I am simply trying to tell a story by allowing four distinctly different characters to live inside my head.
I have been working on a new story that I have been writing in my head for at least twenty years. The novel was originally untitled. But I started working on it by calling it the Forever Boy. But that made it sound like a super-hero sort of comic-book story. So, I adjusted the title to The Boy… Forever.
I had the idea for a cover when I turned the villain’s primary hench-person into a character formerly used in a Dungeons and Dragons game.
Her name is Firefang, but as she enrolls in the Belle City High School freshman class, she is known as Fiona Long, whose name the gang shortens to Fi. The reason for the name change is that Fi is actually a red Chinese dragon disguised in a human form, a teenage girl.
Her stepfather is secretly a thousands-of-years-old Chinese Celestial Dragon disguised in human form. His name is Tian Long. And in order to stay alive for another twenty years, he must consume the essence of an immortal human being. That immortal happens to be Anita Jones’s young cousin Icarus who became immortal at the age of ten.
So, I tried putting those last two images together to make a cover. As you can plainly see, that didn’t work very well. The dragon seems to be coming out of Fi’s hair like a giant cootie. So. I tried to make it more of a collage.
That was still not good enough. So, I tried even harder to make it look like a collage.
I added the main character, Icarus Jones, and some color contrasts.
To me, that’s better. You are welcome to criticize. It will still be a while before the story is done. I may still change it more. But I am basically satisfied… not Forever… but for now.
When Tron sent a
message to Frieda’s Starbase at Don’t Go Here, he requested Ged himself
come to Outpost for little Artran.
Frieda, however, knew that Ged was at Gaijin with Xavier
Tkriashav. She sent a courier in a brand-new
Express Boat to Gaijin. It was
listed for Tkriashav or Ged Aero only, but somehow it got delivered to Vince
Neill aboard the Megadeath.
Scarpigo Snarcs
wore an X-boat officer’s uniform as he gave the message to Vince.
“All right,
dude! I’ve heard of this kid-dude. It’d be an honor to serve Ged-dude and the
pirate-dude at the same time. We leave
immediately!”
“Thank you,” said
Scarpigo in his guise as Bill the Postman.
“I will just be hitching a ride.”
“Wha…?” said
Cold Death, his bright green Mohawk shaking in confusion.
“ME RIDE WITH
YOU!” said Scarpigo in that extra loud way you normally talk to stupid people,
as if they were deaf rather than merely mentally impaired.
“Okay, Bill,”
said Vince. “You can ride if you try to
be just a bit quieter. That gnarly voice
of yours can surely give me a headache.”
Nikki Sixx looked
over the coordinates to Outpost, tried to figure out the navigational
logarithms in his head, and then gave up; inserting the computer crystal with
the jump program that Bill the Postman supplied him with into the ship’s
navigational computer. The Megadeath
roared musically to life.
Now, travel
between the stars is a miracle of physics and mathematics that only takes place
in certain narrow corridors of gravity and space. A space ship creates a field around itself
that alters the fabric of space nearby. Space
will actually fold itself around the matter the star ship is made of. It appears to disintegrate in one place, and,
after a period in which the space-time continuum percolates around it, reforms
itself in the new location. The location
could be anywhere within a range of six parsecs, even empty space. But spacers only found it useful to travel
from star system to star system. Fuel
would eventually be necessary and none was available in empty parsecs of space.
Twenty-seven
hours after they had taken flight from Don’t Go Here, the Megadeath
arrived at Outpost. Immediately
they were surrounded by Pinwheel Corsairs.
“Alien ship of
unknown design!” called the nearest corsair, “state your business here.”
“Yo, Dude!”
warbled Vince Neill from behind his mirrored shades. “We come on a mission of mercy from Ged
Aero. We come to pick up little dude
Artran and take him to Gaijin.”
“We don’t
recognize you and we don’t know any Gaijin. Prepare to be atomized.”
“Whoa, not cool!”
said Neill into the communicator. He
immediately threw the Megadeath into maneuvers that the corsairs had
never seen attempted, let alone being able to catch up with them. The highly efficient ship made with Ancient
technology danced out of reach of all Pinwheel weaponry.
“Is this an attack?”
rasped Tron’s voice over the communicators.
“No, Dude. I just don’t want my biscuits fried by you!”
“Stop, then, and
prepare to be boarded,” said Tron.
“Whatever you
say, Dude.”
Despite everything
that was sensible, the Megadeath and her Rock-and-Roll crew had fallen
into the hands of a desperate pirate who faced total annihilation at the hands
of the Galtorrian Imperial Fleet.
The planet Hyde
Park was different than most planets in the Thousand Worlds of the Galtorr
Imperium. Where most life in the Orion
Spur was made up of carbon-based life-forms, Hyde Park was rife with
silicon-based life-forms.
Instead of
forests of trees or plants, the countryside was overgrown with gardens of
living crystal, quartz, and harmonic stone.
The wildlife was made up of electro-energy creatures with crystallized
bodies, or even no bodies at all. The
amorphous stone men of Hyde Park communicated with no one but each
other, taking whatever shape struck their weird fancy. They could constitute and dissolve themselves
with the speed of thought.
Nert Cooblegooble
felt ridiculous in his red-and-white-striped pajamas. His blond hair was tied up in random pony
tails, and red freckles had been added to his face with a paintbrush. He stood next to a table advertising
fish-skin socks for sale.
“Stop fidgeting,
Nert!” said Mr. Crushcracker, waving his fat, smelly cigar. “You have to look business-like to sell these
things to tourists.”
“Why do we have
to play these silly pretend games?” complained Nert Cooblegooble, secretly
Arkin Cloudstalker. He looked dubiously
over at Madame Prong, who was obviously an ugly man in drag wearing a tight
blue dress over an overstuffed body and wearing gobs of makeup on his… er,
her eyes and cheeks.
“We calls ‘em as
we sees ‘em,” said Phineas Crushcracker, secretly Scarpigo Snarcs. “These rubes and yokels are used to seein’ us
like this. These secret identities are
critical to our roles as agents of the Thin White Duke. Now be quiet, or I’ll buy a supper club and
beat you over the head with it.”
Madame Prong,
secretly Zero Snarcs, put a swollen white finger to her badly painted red lips
and pantomimed shushing Mr. Crushcracker for saying the TWD-word out loud where
any stone could hear.
“There are no
humans about anywhere!” moaned Nert.
“Why the need for secrecy?”
“The rocks have
ears,” said Mr. Crushcracker.
“What is that
supposed to mean?”
In answer to Arkin’s
question, a man walked up to the fish-sock table. He was not like any other man either Arkin
Cloudstalker or Nert Cooblegooble had ever seen. He was made entirely of stone, a living
statue looking out apparently through carved stone eyes. He was an eerie, zombie-like figure that
moved and talked without expression, always a degree or two off of what would
be natural for a human man.
“Well, well!”
gushed Mr. Crushcracker. “So nice to see
you again, Mr. Lazerstone! How have you
been? How’s the missus and all the
little pebbles?”
The cold stone
voice that came from the hollows inside Lazerstone chilled Arkin to the bone
with dread.
“I don’t pretend
to understand your need for charades, Snarcs.
I do understand the position of the White Duke. I am ready to render aid. I can do far more than even Duke Keyser
himself realizes. Don’t mock me. I get tired of the human need to maintain personal
fictions.”
“Have you met
Nert Cooblegooble?”
“You know that
this man is different from the last human who you introduced as Mr.
Cooblegooble. Don’t play games with me
again.”
“Oh, you take all
the fun out the whole spy thing! This is
the Pirate King, Arkin Cloudstalker.”
“Yes. A noble reputation among those who travel
through the Hyde Park starport. I
believe you use the Knights as a privateer band working to liberate the people
of the Galtorr Imperium, do you not?”
“I do. I like your directness.”
“We are many, Mr.
Cloudstalker, but we are one.”
“Wait, I don’t
understand again. Is this a riddle?”
“No. It is merely a factor in the differences
between your kind and mine.”
“I don’t
understand.”
“Of course, you
don’t. You are like these
ephemerals. You do not have the Wisdom
of the Stones.”
“Oh!” interjected
Mr. Crushcracker, “You mean like, I can’t get no… satisfaction!?”
“Shut up,
Snarcs.” Lazerstone turned cold,
sightless eyes on Phineas Crushcracker.
“This meeting is important.”
“Help me
understand,” pleaded Arkin.
“Very well. The crystals of this planet are all
alive. They are all capable of
thought. In fact, they all share one
vast consciousness. We, the Lazerstone,
are capable of understanding everything about your kind and what they are doing
in our shared galaxy. We have seen the
unnatural evil and crimes of your Galtorr Imperium. We understand the need to put an end to
that. We also realize that only men like
you, Ged Aero, and the White Duke are capable of making your kind turn away
from violent animal ignorance and start harmonizing with the galactic symphony
of life.”
“That is all very
poetic,” said Arkin, still not fully comprehending, “but how are you going to
help us?”
“I will fight for
you. Soon you will see how important
that is for your future Empire.”
“My Empire?”
“Your Democracy
if you prefer.”
“Yes, that would
be better.” Arkin tried to use mental
x-rays to pierce the colorful stone of that impassive face. “Can you see me through those stone eyes of
yours?”
“He can see
through you, Nert,” said Scarpigo Snarcs.
“He’s an all-powerful monster from outer space. Booga-booga!
He can even tell what color underwear you have on.”
The humorless
stone face turned towards Snarcs.
“At least I have
enough respect for his underwear that I don’t feel the need to reveal what it
looks like. Not like the silk shorts with
printed pink bunnies on them that you have on.”
Snarcs turned
stone white. “How did you know about
those?”
“Lazer-vision,
funny boy. I see by using my perceptions
of relative density and wave-lengths of gravitons. Don’t cross me, or I might eat you in the
night!”
Phineas Crushcracker and Scarpigo Snarcs both cringed. Madame Prong held a rubber chicken in her hand with less than the usual gusto.
“By the way,” added Lazerstone, “Booga-booga! Scarpigo Snarcs!”
I have now re-written about sixty percent of the old novel AeroQuest. I published AeroQuest 1 : Stars and Stones in September. AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider was published yesterday in October. AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets will probably take longer than either of the other two. The story has to be elongated. The growing rebellion of the pirates and smugglers trying to establish the New Star League need time to grow their rebellion. In the previous edition of this book the flower blossoms almost before the shoots are out of the ground. I need to develop the rebellion with more planets and systems with reasons why they want to leave the icky old emperor and establish a space-born democracy. And this novel series isn’t merely a parody of Star Wars or an imitation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is also its own version of a space opera with unique characters and plot-lines that are entirely Mickian in their non-sensibility.
Ged Aero, the main character and most important protagonist, is revealed in AeroQuest 2 to be the new White Spider, a prophet-like teacher fulfilling a century-old prophecy by leading twelve young disciples into the state of near-perfection of their psionic mind powers. Adventures where these twelve student-disciples learn stuff they need to know need to be added to the original story.
Each of the first two re-written books is about 35,000 words. The original novel is about 120,000 words. I will need to add a lot more than just the re-write of 50,000 more words. And I want to keep the books approximately equal, so I will be aiming to increase the total to at least 140,000 words by writing two more 35,000-word stories. And it may be enough more than that to fill five total books.
If my run-away cancerous imagination is not reigned in, I have at least three more book-length story-tumors to add in beyond that.
So, I have enough to do. My Tuesday blog plan will still be going for a while.
When the space
ship called Megadeath, the Rock and Roll Starship, docked at the now
prosperous spaceport of the planet Don’t Go Here, they interrupted a solemn
ceremony. Administrator Bam-Bam Salongi
was about to be buried in space. His
body, encased in a glass torpedo pod, was on display in Frieda’s central
administration hub. The relatively new
crew of the space port was gathered around for testimonials and remembrances.
Frieda’s
Metalloid form stood guard over the office.
The Dion girl named Taquira was kneeling by the foot of the makeshift
coffin and Tabitha Blue Arrow, in Lady Knight armor, stood over the head of
Bam-Bam’s final resting place.
Xavier Tkriashav
entered the office first, shock registering on his dark, inscrutable face. Behind him stood Captain Tommy Lee, Pilot Vince
Niell, Nikki Sixx, and slack-jawed Cold Death.
All removed hats and became silent mourners.
“What has
happened here?” asked Tkriashav.
“Fez Amin and the
Monopoly Brigade,” said Frieda. “He came
here and killed Mr. Salongi and kidnapped Tara.
We killed one of his Lieutenants, but he used Tara as a shield to make
his escape. I’ve tried to organize
pursuit, but we lost him completely in the Imperium.”
“We should not
have left you vulnerable to attack,” said Tkriashav, shaking his head.
“We were
unprepared for treachery,” said Tabitha, the Lady Knight. “It will not happen again.”
“We have ships
now to defend our home,” said the Dion, Taquira. “We just don’t have any pilots to fly them.”
“We are outward
bound now, to places where I know we will find a large number of willing spacers
ready to come here and help get that problem solved, at least,” said Tkriashav.
“I have places to go where I know all
kinds of Psions. We might even see if we
can strike an accord with the Nebulons we believe are migrating in mass towards
this part of the Orion Spur.”
“You know,” said
Tabitha, “you are opening your arms to all the peoples the Imperium loathes?”
“Yes,” said
Tkriashav. “That was the idea. All us rejects will band together to make
something far better than what Imperial Space has to offer.”
“You are a
hopeless idealist, Psion Master,” said Tabitha Blue Arrow.
“Does that mean
you will leave us and go back to the Imperium?” he responded.
“Of course not,”
replied the Lady Knight. “We need
idealists as leaders. It’s the reason I
joined Cloudstalker’s Corsairs to start with.”
“You are good
man, Psion Master,” hissed Taquira the Dion. She switched her brown lizard’s tail. “We like you a lot!”
“Tara wanted us
to tell Ged Aero that she loves him,” said Frieda. “I fear those may have been the last words
we’ll ever have from her.”
“I will have some
students I have to deliver to Ged on Gaijin,” said Tkriashav. “I will tell him the grave news.”
An emerald-green female
Galtorrian walked into the main office at that moment. “Ged Aero, you sssay?” she hissed. She was beautiful in a serpentine way,
snake-eyed and tressed with flowing green hair.
She wore the uniform of the Imperial Scout Service. “I must find Ged Aero.”
All eyes turned
suspiciously to her.
“Why do you seek
Ged?” asked Tkriashav.
“I must find the
fulfiller of the Prophecy of Zhan! I
have sssearched for him for yearsss. I mussst
find him if it costssss me my life!”
“We shall
see. You will surrender all weapons and
travel with me under guard,” said Tkriashav.
“Yesss, whatever
I mussst do. But, I mussst find him
before hisss enemiesss do.”
The pheromones she gave off at that moment made every male present feel as if he must fall in love with her. Xavier couldn’t help himself from feeling it too. He tried to probe her, but she was apparently a Psion too, though not a type he recognized.
Gaijin is one of the most beautiful worlds in human space according to those humans who have visited enough of them to compare. Its lush, tropical-sea environment is pleasant always and fully climate-controlled by old Sylvani technology. It has far fewer cold places than an Earth-like world such as Talos III or Martin Faulkner’s Dream. It has more resources than an ocean-world like Dancer or Design where no land masses are present. And its greatest features are the people themselves. They are disciplined by the Bushido code, and beautified by the natural Sylvani grace. It was no surprise, then, that Vince Niell and the crew of the Megadeath did not want to leave.
“I have to go to
at least three other worlds,” argued Xavier Tkriashav. “I have important missions to complete. You have the only available spaceship on the
planet.”
“Dude, like, we
don’t got no orders from Ged boss-man,” said Vince Niell. “This ship is his.”
“Ged is very busy
now. I am his friend and agent. I tell you, I have important things to do for
Ged Aero!”
“And we tell you,
Psion Dude, that we don’t go to space for nobody but Ged Aero.”
Xavier smiled. “Can you call him and ask?”
“Dude, we have
commo units on board. Did he take a
walkie-talkie or a commo dot?”
“No.”
“Then ain’t no
way we’re gonna move from this spot.”
Tkriashav looked
at the stubborn rock-and-roll starship pilot.
He saw only two angry reflections of himself looking back from Vince’s
mirrored sunglasses. The hippie freak
had started wearing a pair of red Moko-bird feathers in his hair as if he were
some kind of Native American from ancient Earth.
“I am going to go
and disturb Ged now, and get him to write a note to let me use this starship
while he is training to be Gaijin’s new White Spider.”
“Sounds good to
me, Daddy-o.”
Fuming, the
turbaned Psion stalked back into the city, making his way swiftly through crowded
streets to the Palace of One Thousand Years.
Ged was on the
practice field with Junior, teaching martial arts.
“You were
impressive in the arena,” Tkriashav said when Ged acknowledged his
presence. “Tell me, how is it you already
know the martial arts they teach here?”
“It’s not
something I’m proud of, but I absorbed it by eating the flesh of the man they called
the Black Spider. I inherited the
ability to alter myself into the patterns of his finely trained muscles. Muscle memory is the key to absorbing the
skill. Just like the instincts I’ve absorbed
from animals I’ve eaten.”
“Did you actually
eat one of those invisible cat things?”
“It was during an
episode of survival training on the planet Samothrace when I was young. I guess I had my powers even then, though I
didn’t know it until the last few years.”
“It’s that kind
of knowledge I need you to pass on to other Psions, Ged. Do you mind if I use your starship to round
up a couple of students for you?”
“I would be
honored to serve,” said Ged with a bow.
“Teaching seems to come naturally too, though I don’t ever remember eating
a teacher.”
Xavier laughed. “I need a note for your crew, Ged. They don’t want to leave this place. They won’t take my word.”
“No problem. Will you revisit Don’t Go Here?”
“Yes. After completing the missions I have in mind.”
“Check on Tara
for me. Tell her I miss her. And tell Ham about what’s happened here. I want him to come here and learn about this
place too.”
“I would be happy
to. You like it here, don’t you?”
“How could I help
it? I’m not a monster here. I’m a hero to these people. But I have to say, I don’t understand the
praise any more than I understood the fear.”
The message was
quickly written, and within the hour, the Megadeath roared out of
Gaijinese orbit, headed directly into trouble.
An infinite number of monkeys with and infinite number of word-processors will supposedly eventually type out everything I have ever written and everything I am going to write… As well as everything I will ever write with a random word misspelled or replaced with the wrong word. It would be an infinite mess. After all, infinite monkeys and infinite word-processors would fill infinite space and leave no room for infinite bananas. The monkeys would all starve after the initial typed manuscripts are completed, and any surviving monkeys that randomly evolved an ability to eat word-processors would die from exposure to infinite rotting monkey corpses. The whole thing gets gruesome after a while.
But let’s get serious for a moment. (Something that is generally difficult for Mickey.) Monkeys with type-writers will not solve my essential problem. I will not run out of stories before I run out of time for story-telling. And I find it totally creditable that my time is almost gone.
I am ill again, with a viral infection that gives me headaches, low-grade fever, and a wicked cough. I feel horrible. I had chest pains last night that led to a serious debate yet again. If it had been a heart attack, that would’ve been the end. I cannot survive economically another hospital bill. So, I have to go on the theory that since the last heart-attack scare was only arthritis in the ribs and the strange effect that has on EKGs, this one must also be the same. I can’t afford any other conclusion. And since I am still alive to write this, it was obviously the correct conclusion to draw.
The titles I have listed above, still in my stupid old head, are eleven more books I will add to my growing list. This is, of course, entirely dependent on how much longer I have before the darkness claims me for all time. I have writing to do. No more days off. And if I get five more years of two books a year, I just might make it. But last night convinced me that the effort may end at any time. So, though I am sick, I better get busy and write something.
Ged, Junior, Tkriashav,
Naylund, Sara, and Friashqazatla were all gathered in the office of Shen Ming
inside Akito House.
“Honorable Ged
Aero-sama, we are here to determine the course we must follow to honor the prophecy.” Shen Ming smiled his unnerving crooked smile.
“So, what
prophecy are we talking about?” asked Ged.
“The prophecy of
Shan,” answered Naylund.
“The prophecy of Xan,”
answered Tkriashav.
Shen Ming
chuckled. “Ah, so… a matter of spelling,
ha? It is the wisdom of my ancestors
that the two prophecies are the same.”
“How do you know
this, Shen Ming-sensei?” asked Naylund.
“What does the
prophecy of Shan say is the White Spider’s first task?”
“He will teach
students the Way of the Spider.”
“And what does
the prophecy of Xan say he will do first?”
“He will teach Psions
to use their inborn powers,” said Tkriashav.
“Is this not a
similarity rather than a difference?”
Neither Naylund
nor Tkriashav was able to dispute that.
“Well, then, I
will discuss this first with the Black Wolf.”
Shen Ming smiled at Friashqazatla.
“Who is the Black
Wolf?” asked Naylund. Ged looked
confused as well.
“I am the Black
Wolf,” admitted Friashqazatla quietly.
“And how do you
know this to be true, little Freddy?” asked Shen Ming very patiently.
“I see the Black
Wolf in my inner eye. He constantly
tells me, Come and be me.”
“Do you know the
process to become the Black Wolf?”
“I do not. It distresses me.”
Friashqazatla, or, more simply, Freddy, was a very comely and attractive child. His skin was a rich, reddish brown in color. His hair was jet black and shiny. His eyes were two glowing-blue sky-colored sapphires.
“The Way of the Spider is to look within,”
said Shen Ming. “The Way of the Spider
is self-fulfillment and the honing of personal skills and moral strengths. Can this Way not also mean the development of
Psion powers?”
“Yes, honored Shen
Ming-sensei. I understand how to teach shape-changing
power like my own,” said Ged. “But how
can I teach the Way of the Spider if I do not know it?”
“Have you a
personal code of morality and honor, Ged-sensei?”
“Yes.”
“Then teach that
as the Way of the Spider, for the White Spider is you.”
“And is that all
that I must teach?”
“I believe in the
combat with Ginjiro, the Black Spider, you actually consumed his flesh, did you
not?”
“Shamefully, I
did.”
“And your Psion
power allows you to change into any living creature you have tasted or
otherwise genetically analyzed, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Way of
Combat will be easy for you to teach, for Ginjiro, though evil, was a master of
powerful martial arts.”
Ged was a bit stunned
to learn that part of what he was to teach was knowledge he had gained by
eating a teacher of martial arts.
“Who will I be teaching the Way of the Spider to?”
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
“I see three students here. Lovely Sara, the daughter of Naylund Smith-sama. Your own little blue nephew, Junior Aero. And, of course, the Black Wolf, whom I will always refer to as Freddy because of the lack of ease I have saying his birth name without bruising my tongue and cracking my few remaining teeth. And there is one other we must add to this dojo. We have reason to believe he is a Psion also, a telekinetic. His name is Shu Kwai.” “I accept this assignment, Shen Ming-sensei.”
Ged bowed to Shen Ming humbly. He had become a teacher, complete with the necessary class to be one.
