Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

December 27, 2022 · 3:46 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 2

Canto 2 – Astrophel and Stella

Rogelio met Maria at the bus stop on the corner of Mockingbird Lane and Brookriver Drive just as they had planned in Mrs. Broadbent’s English class at the end of a long high-school day.

“You see it?” Rogelio asked, pointing across the street.  “The toy store is right there, just like Fernando said.”

“Yeah, but nobody proved that it was the place where Yesenia disappeared.”

“They found her bloody clothes in the alley behind it.  What more proof do you need?”

“Well, I’m going in to look around.  Are you brave enough to go with me, Roge?”

“Anything you can do, I can do.”

The two high school freshmen walked across the street at the stoplight.  The building was spookily in shadow in spite of the gray-white sunlight trying to penetrate an overcast sky.

As they entered the shop together, the old storekeeper looked up from his old, leather-bound ledger at the front checkout counter.

“Little old for toys, aren’t we?” the white-haired loser asked.  It made Rogelio a bit angry.

“We came because of the disappearance of Yesenia Montemayor a month ago.  We need to look around.  They found her clothes behind this place.”

“So, here to solve a Hardy Boys’ Mystery, are we?”

“Do I look like a boy?” Maria said, now angry too.

“Hard to tell nowadays.  Nancy Drew, then?”

“You are just so old and out of date!” said Rogelio.

“Why do you really want to look for clues in my store then?”

“Yesenia was his former girlfriend.”  Maria’s glare was defiant.

“And you’re his new girlfriend?”

“Well… yeah, I kinda hope so.”

“Then you probably don’t want to go digging up his old girlfriend, eh?  Not in your best self-interest, I’d say.”

“We need to find out what happened to her,” Maria said matter-of-factly.  “…So people don’t keep saying one of us had something to do with it.”

“Hated her that much, did you?”

“No!  I didn’t kill her and eat her or anything!  And I intend to prove that.”

The old man looked at Maria with eyes magnified by his thick glasses.  He looked like a Lechuza, a soul-stealing barn owl, that one.  Rogelio gritted his teeth.

“Can we look around your store, or what?” he said.

“Help yourself.  If you want murder clues, there’s an old decorative Day of the Dead skull by the back door.  Pick it up and ask about the missing girl.”

“Tell the cops to do that too, didja?”

“Yep.  They didn’t take me seriously though.”

Rogelio simply turned and walked towards the back of the store.

“Do you believe that guy?” Maria mumbled as she followed him.

“I don’t know.  I don’t know if I believe you either.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“Well, that remark about digging her up and you talking about killing her and eating her.”

“I said I didn’t do that.  You believe me, don’t you?”

“Let’s see what that skull has to say.”

Eerily, the skull was right in front of them as he said it. It was a sort of Halloween decoration for the Hispanic holiday of the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos in Spanish.  It was a white papier-mâché skull with brightly colored flower blossoms painted on it for eyes, and an intricate vine design all over it in bright pink and orange outlined with green and dark blue.

“Hola, mi sabio amigo, ¿qué me puede decir sobre el asesinato de Yesenia Montemayor?”  He used the Spanish because he knew Maria didn’t understand very much of it.  She was raised in an English-speaking house with an Anglo stepdad.

“Ella no está muerta. Ella un juguete con el que juega Imelda.”  The skull seemed to be speaking with no moving mouth.

“What?  She’s a toy?”

Maria looked horrified.  “Who are you talking to?  And what’s this all about?”

“I… I don’t know.  The skull says she is not dead.  She’s a toy, being played with by someone named Imelda.”

“Ahora, Steven jugará contigo,” said the skull.

“Roge, the skull didn’t say anything.”  Maria was as white as a ghost.

Rogelio’s mind, however, was being invaded.

“I am Steven, Roger.  I will be playing with you until we find out what Imelda’s game really is.”

“Get out of my head!” Rogelio shouted.  But his lips didn’t move.  And he couldn’t put the skull down either.  Instead, he walked to the back door and opened it.  It did not open into the alley as it was supposed to.  There was a dark room there, with a staircase going upwards, and at the foot of the staircase was Yesenia, naked as the day she was born.  And her dark-brown hair was all bleached white like snow.

“Steven!  No!  You cannot be here.  Not now!” shouted Yesenia.

“Stay where you are, Imelda.  I am coming to you!” Rogelio heard his own voice say.

“No, Roge!  Don’t go out there!” cried Maria.

Rogelio shut the door behind him so Maria couldn’t follow.

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December 20, 2022 · 5:09 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 1

Covid has thrown me for a loop this month. I am forced to rely on my Work in Progress for the NOVEL WRITING post for this work. My writing time has been seriously curtailed for a while, and I will get back to projects in their proper order as soon as I recover.

Canto 1 – The Toy Store on Mockingbird Lane

Hannah was ten, looking more like her Asian-born father than her Texas-born mother Brittany, but she definitely had her mother’s passion for things that were exotic, unusual, or simply out of place.

“Look at that spooky old toy store, Mom!  Doesn’t it look like a haunted house?  Can we go in there and look?”

The little building on 1300A Mockingbird Lane in Dallas was built like a Victorian house from the 1800’s.   It was hard to tell if the place had been painted white so long ago that the peeling paint made it look like that, or if someone had intentionally painted it light gray with black speckles.  Brittany’s curiosity was peaked.

“That store has been there for as long as I can remember.  But I’ve never been in there.  They used to tell me it only sold old, antique toys.”

“I don’t wanna buy anything,” pouted Hannah.  “I just want to look for ghosts.”

Brittany laughed as she pulled into the parking lot that served the two office buildings that surrounded the toy store and kept it in perpetual shadow all during the sunniest of days.

“We don’t have long to do this.  We have to meet Daddy at five so we can go to the movie this evening.”

“It won’t take long.  I can almost hear the spooks calling to me.”

Brittany laughed again as she collected the parking ticket from the lot’s operator in his little booth.

“Businesses are closing soon, Ma’am.  You don’t have long.  I close the gate for the night at six o’clock.”

“It won’t take us that long.  We are just going to look in that old toy store.”

“Aunt Phillia’s Toy Emporium?  You don’t want to go in there.  Nobody hardly ever goes in there.  And when they do, sometimes, the police have to show up later for something bizarre that happened.”

Brittany looked at the old Hispanic-looking guy over the top of her sunglasses.  He looked serious.  But that really only made her want to have a look inside even more.

“I hope something happens that makes the parking fee worth the money.”

“You are braver than I am, lady.  I remember when I was a kid, some white boy disappeared in there.  They never found him.”

He was seriously trying to scare her out of going in.  But Hannah was hopping in her seat, anxious to get out of the car.

“The parking spot is F13, over there in the southwest corner.  You have to be out of here by six or your car is locked inside the gate.”

She laughed.  “No worries!”

She managed to park, and Hannah burst out of the passenger seat, headed for the store.  By the time she got to the front door, Hannah had already disappeared into the store.

Inside the front door, there was a man sitting behind the check-out desk.  He had an antique-looking cash register there, and his clothes were definitely long out of style.

“That house monkey was yours, I take it,” said the man.  He was apparently old… or old…ish.  Somewhere between forty and a hundred and forty.  He had a flattop haircut, white hair, and super-thick lenses on his glasses that magnified his eyes, making him look like an eerie sort of owl-man.

“That was my daughter, Hannah, yes…”

“She took off for the wooden toys in the back of the store.  I’ve got nobody back there to supervise her, but what trouble can she get into surrounded by wood-goods?”

That struck her as funny.  She laughed.  “We’ll soon see.”

Looking around the store, she was fascinated by what she saw on sale there.  One wall was covered by marionettes, all of them with unusually large and roundish eyes, and all of them hanging from their control strings.  There were shelves of costumes and masks, stuffed toys that looked threadbare and poorly sewn together, metal wind-up toys that walked or rolled on wheels, bows with sucker-tipped arrows, porcelain dolls whose eyes looked positively real and alive, staring as if they wanted or needed something from Brittany, and a far wall lined with books, children’s books, classic books, and encyclopedias.

“Hannah?  Remember, we were just supposed to be looking for a moment.  Hannah?”

There was no answer.  So, Brittany walked down the metal wind-ups’ aisle towards the wood-goods in the back.

Suddenly a child’s voice was screaming.  “I’m on fire!  My dress is on fire!  Mommy!  Help me!”

Brittany was instantly panicked.  But it wasn’t Hannah’s voice.  And Hannah had been wearing a Miley Cyrus t-shirt and blue jeans.  Still, she ran to the back of the store.

Standing there in front of a wall of wooden cars, trucks, trains and train cars, carved wooden boats, and baseball bats was Hannah, completely naked, her black hair now completely snow white.

“Where are your clothes?”

“I had to tear them off.  They were burning.”  There were ashes and bits of burned rag on the floor around her.  And most alarmingly, the voice coming out of naked Hannah was not Hannah’s voice.

“Hannah?  What is going on here?”

“Oh, I am not Hannah.  My name is Molly Beeman.  I just have her body now.”

“What?”  She also began to realize that her own clothes were different.  The dress she now wore had puffy shoulder things on it.  It was made of a patterned material that she thought was called “gingham.”

“Hannah, let’s get out of here.”

She pulled the naked girl to her, picked her up and carried her to the front.  There she saw the same old ghost of a man, sitting and staring with his magnified eyes.

“I see you found what you were looking for…”

“What have you done to my daughter?”

“…Molly, you only have three months to play with it.  Be wise and you may actually get your mother back.”

“What?” cried Brittany.  “What are you talking about, you… you… crazy old man!”

She burst out of the store through the front door.  But she was horrified to see that her car was no longer there.  Neither was the parking lot, or the office buildings it served.  In fact, there was now what appeared to be a linoleum store and Mexican Cantina where those things used to be.  Then she saw an old-timey newspaper stand.  It was abandoned and  empty.  She ran to it.  There were newspapers there.  She saw a headline about how the U.S. Eighth Air Force suffered the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission.  That happened on the 17th of August.  World War II?  The paper was dated August 24th, 1943!

Hannah cuddled against her, still naked in her arms.

“Just hold me, Mommy.  Nobody has held me since I burned to death.”

Brittany stared at the pale Asian-American face with snow-white hair.  This thing in her arms was no longer human.  It was a porcelain doll, cuddling her with jointed, porcelain arms.  It’s porcelain face smiled at her.  This thing in her arms was no longer her daughter.   

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December 13, 2022 · 4:22 am

AeroQuest 5… Adagio 24

Adagio 25 – Pirates and the Importance of Words

Now you finally get to sample a bit of my genius at historical analysis.  I will lay on you one of the theories of history that I created, and which has had a profound effect on the whole debate over whether History is a Science, or merely a gathering of talking idiots and puppets of the governments who won the wars.

The theory is this; History is always about pirates.  I know that statement probably alarms you, or makes you simply dismiss me as a loony, bald-headed goofball who just likes to talk and is meant to be ignored by you.  Don’t be alarmed, and I am NOT a goofball.

History is never really written about the builders and creators who craft a society or a civilization.  The occasional Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Gragg of Mars, or Googol Marou gets mentioned in a history book, but it is always the man, men, or peoples who see the civilization, want the civilization, and then either take the civilization for themselves or totally destroy the civilization who ultimately get the notice and the credit for making History happen.  History is not about making something, but about taking something that is already there.

Consider how this played out in the history of the Orion Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy.  It truly began with the Ancients who colonized the entire galaxy and then, for reasons unknown, totally disappeared from it, leaving only powerful and dangerous artifacts behind.  They were creators and makers, so the story could never really be about them. 

The story then would have to proceed to the gentle alien folk called the Sylvani.  Now, they may actually be the Ancients, we have no way of knowing, but they don’t actually make History happen either.  They created jump drives and interstellar travel, particle readers and material synthesizers (as well as the Skortch beams and disintegrators that can be derived from them), and anti-gravity technology.  They did not colonize the stars.  They had the bad sense to leave everything as they found it and live their lives in relative peace.  The fools!

The amphibianoid people known as the Tellerons were the first to colonize and make an empire in the Orion Spur.  These prolific frog-men of Telleri spread their form of civilization to eleven worlds.  They wouldn’t have been able to do this, however, if they had never made contact with the Sylvani people while the latter were peacefully exploring the world of Telleri.  The frog-men imprisoned the Sylvani explorers and forced them to yield up the all-important space travel technologies they had created.  It was an act of space piracy.  They basically stole all the knowledge and equipment needed to make a star empire.

Now, the Tellerons were basically fools themselves.   They were ruthless explorers and conquerors but were a bit shallow in the thinking end of their gene pool.  They were not adaptable and had to carefully recreate their swampy home-world environment everywhere they went.  Thus, they were easily conquered themselves when they met far more adaptable races like the Galtorrians from the Delta Pavonis star system and the Earthers from the Sol system. 

Words are what basically conquered the Telleron Star Empire.  When they reached the Galtorrian homeworld of Galtorr Prime, they got themselves hooked on an alien cultural anomaly caused by TV broadcasts from Earth.  The Galtorrians had been receiving and decoding the television signals of Earth for twenty years.  A virulent black market existed there for pirated episodes of a TV show called “I Love Lucy”.  Reruns of that TV show became a model for both the Galtorrians and the Tellerons who tried to conquer them.

Truth be told, the Tellerons began worshipping the character of Fred Mertz being played by an actor named William Frawley.  Frawley’s frog-like mouth and toad-like wit made the fin-headed frog-men think Fred Mertz was a god.  The Galtorrians had already adapted the English Language from the show because it was similar in sound patterns to Galtorr-speak.  It had become the language of, not only entertainment, but of commerce and diplomacy.  Now, English is a twisted and demented sort of language, capable of double meanings, puns, and irony.  There are no sacred rules of grammar, word-formation, or spelling, and so the language can be shaped to suit the nefarious purposes of those sinister professionals known as “writers”.  Galtorrians were able to trick Tellerons with the so-called “Word of Fred Mertz” into giving them the secrets of space travel, Skortch rays, and material synthesis.

So, space travel and the Telleron Empire fell into the hands of the Galtorrians by piracy.  They stole the empire from the rival alien race.  They then ruthlessly expanded their new empire.  Being a pirate was the thing that created the History.

Now, a very similar process also happened on Earth.  Tellerons, easily tricked by Earthers, also lost control of their stolen technology when they tried to invade Earth in about the year 1990 A.D.  They tried to invade using invisibility technology acquired by showing their Sylvani slaves old episodes of Star Trek with Romulans in them.  The Sylvani succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of Gene Roddenberry.  Of course, this backfired, because it is hard to intimidate someone you are trying to conquer with armies and weapons that cannot be seen.  The Tellerons managed to lose their devices and Skortch themselves during an invasion that almost no one knew was happening.  Again, the technology was pirated from them.  I firmly believe that it was one of my own ancestors, a genius named Orben Wallace who reverse-engineered all the alien devices and brought the technology to Earth.

The empire of all humanoid and intelligent life forms in the Orion Spur would be taken and retaken using the stolen technologies and the stolen words of what would become known as “Galanglic,” Galactic English.  So, you can see, I have brilliantly proven my theory.  All History is about pirates.

William Frawley, the actor who first uttered the “Word of Fred Mertz”

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December 6, 2022 · 2:32 am

AeroQuest 5… Canto 156

Canto 156 – The Return of Tara Salongi

Ged and his students burst through the doorway to Raylond King’s private suite.  Phoenix and Rocket Rogers were both blazing in fire-form.  Projectiles whirred around Shu Kwai in accelerating orbits.  Jackie had brought little Freddy to join the strike team, and the dark-skinned boy was now transformed into were-cat form, half boy, half black panther.  Ged himself was there as himself, waiting to see what might be needed before he transformed.

What they burst in upon was easily as disconcerting as anything they might’ve expected.  Tara was dressed in luxurious purple silks and holding in her arms a tiny baby, possibly a girl.  In fact, Ged immediately felt the baby’s mind probe into his head.  It wasn’t just any baby.  It was his daughter.  Next to Tara, and clutching her right hand like a love-sick puppy, was one of the three rulers of Mingo Sector, Raylond King.  King, of course, was nothing like you’d expect from the macabre rulers of a mechano-zombie world of rot warriors and ruined palaces.  He wore black eye make-up to make his pale face slightly sinister, but this dark lord had an innocent-looking cherub’s face in so many ways.  The horned helmet he wore on his head was in many ways more of a child’s toy than a warrior-king’s helm.  He was also dressed in a purple silk robe.

“Prepare to die, King!” growled Emperor Mong from a spot safely behind Ged and his student-warriors.

“Ged!” cried Tara, confused.  “You’ve come!  But…”

Ged’s eyes grew immediately sad and dark.

“I am not trying to hurt her!” insisted Raylond King as two human torches, a telekinetic ninja, and a cat-child all closed in around him.

“Stop!” ordered Ged.  “You don’t require assistance, do you, Tara?”

“No.  Not now, I don’t.  Where were you all when those Monopoly Brigade pigs were torturing me and having their way with me?”  The bright mental fire of Tara’s recent pain burned into Ged’s mind with humbling accusations.

“I’m sorry, Tara.  I should have come immediately.”

Ged knew she could read the self-blame and self-loathing that consumed him.   Her anger softened like butter on a hot skillet.  He could feel it happening, and he felt the baby responding to it too.

“Ged, you know I still love you, but…”

Ged’s mind flitted to the beautiful Lizard Lady.  “I love you too, but…” he stammered.

Tara began to laugh a soft, tittery laugh.  “We have been foolish,” she said.  “Both of us.  I want you to get to know Lord King here.  He’s a very special man, and he rescued me when my life was at an end.”

Ged stepped forward and bowed to the young ruler.

“I owe you a great debt for saving Tara,” he stated simply.

Raylond King’s eyes dipped downward.  He blushed delicately, like a woman.  “I didn’t do it for you…”

“It’s all right,” said Ged.  “She never was mine to be jealous over.  I am honored to meet the one who will be her partner in life.”        

King now took a turn at bowing.

“What will you do with the child?” Ged asked Tara.

“She will be yours, more than mine,” said Tara.  “As soon as she is old enough to be independent of me, we will send her to you.  The planet Gaijin?  Is that right?”

Of course, she already knew it was right.  She only asked that of Ged to be polite, sensitive to the fact that she automatically invaded the privacy of his mind every time they were both in the same room.

“I am happy for you,” said Ged sadly.

“I am happy for you, too,” said Tara, almost as wistfully.

“Waitaminnit!” cried Mong in frustration.  “He’s a leader of your enemies!  Kill him!  I demand that you kill him now!”

“Actually,” said Ged, “He’s my new ally.  He will administer this planet for us, and I will gladly turn you over to his custody.”

Emperor Mong fainted dead away.  Rocket and Phoenix extinguished their fire.  Shu Kwai let all his small swirling stones settle to the ground.  Freddy actually began to purr.

“Thank you, Ged Aero,” said King.  Ged smiled.  He knew this man was the perfect choice to take care of Tara.  The planet would change dramatically under his stewardship.

“Oh!  Ged!” cried Tara suddenly.  “I found the most terrible thought in Mong’s evil head!  Your brother Ham was trapped by Admiral Tang at the battle for the planet Coventry!”

“Ham has found a way out of serious situations like that on his own in the past.  I am afraid I have to depend on him to do it again.  I have these responsibilities to care for… as well as a doomsday device from the Ancients to deal with.”

While the adults were talking, Jackie had sidled up near Tara where she could look at the baby.

“She’s beautiful,” Jackie said.  “Can I hold her?”

Tara handed the baby to her almost without thinking.  Without talking aloud she said to Ged, “You must spend some time consulting with us about the planet, the joining with the New Star League, and what to do with Mong.  We will also talk about how we are going to help you complete your quest with the doomsday thing.”

“What is the baby’s name?” Jackie asked.

“Amanda King,” said Tara aloud.

“Amanda Aero-King!” declared the baby loudly in everyone’s mind.

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November 22, 2022 · 5:30 am

People in My Head at the Moment

Anita Jones

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.

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November 22, 2022 · 5:22 am

AeroQuest 5… Canto 155

Canto 155 – The Killer Clowns of Mingo

“Let me introduce myself.  I am Smiley Creaturefeature, Imperial Harlequin of the Triumvirate now present on Mingo!”

A second Harlequin also stepped through the ruined doorway.  “And I am Sharpwhistle Crackplatter, his second in command.”

The two costumed cyborgs both switched on a feature of their armor simultaneously and immediately sent the entire hallway into chaos.  Flashing and strobing colored lights along with barely audible sonic waves warped the senses of all the Psions the cyborgs faced, and Emperor Mong even couldn’t get his pants pulled back up.

Phoenix and Rocket both ignited their fire forms, but neither was able to see through their own flames because of the constant color-changing lights.

Jackie was unable to concentrate enough to teleport. The sonic waves kept her from using her inner eye.

Shu could pick up rocks and debris, but his telekinetic senses were fooled enough by the lights that he couldn’t accurately target anything.

Ged’s senses also were overwhelmed.  But he took a moment to think, letting Smiley and Sharpwhatsit cartwheel around him and his distressed students.  He didn’t particularly care what they maybe wanted to do to Mong.

Now, the Blind Kraken of Jargoon was a creature with no sense of sight or capability of hearing.  It’s tentacles were guided by a superb heat-sensory organ that could identify shapes and locations of both hot and cool things  And the amphibious creature had no problem being completely out of the water for long periods of time.  And Ged had both hunted and eaten one more than an Earth decade ago.

“What is that blobby white thing?” Smiley said to Sharpwhatsit.

“Dunno… but it don’t look bullet-proof.”

Both Harlequins whipped out slug-throwing weapons called machine guns and filled the air with projectiles.  Ged used several of his twenty tentacles to shift his writhing students out of harm’s way while his gelatinous body absorbed and digested all the slugs that hit him.

“It seems to like that!” shouted Sharpwhatsit as he did a handspring and cast the machine gun aside.

“Lasers, then?” asked Smiley.

“Lasers, yes!” answered the other clown.

The medium-laser pistols they both pulled out fired hot laser light at Ged’s shape-changing body.  He not only absorbed the attacks, the extra heat energy he absorbed made his tentacles quicker.

The first catch was Smiley Creaturefeature’s right ankle.  The second catch was Smiley’s gun hand.  Then he poured megajoules of heat energy into Smiley’s limbs, completely melting his muscle-control circuits. He was completely immobilized though he was still alive in the way that cyborgs are alive, He was out of the battle.

“I will avenge you, Smiley,” hollered Sharpwhatsit.  He cast away the laser and pulled out a vibro-sword.  Each tentacle that Ged reached out with was immediately lopped off and rendered useless.

But the Electric Coil Monster of New Spain had once been hunted by Ged and his brother, and then dissected for the scientist that hired them.  Ged knew it inside out.

When Sharpwhistle Crackplatter’s blade embedded itself in Ged’s coil, he sent a lightning charge of electricity coursing through the surprised dancing clown.  He fell writhing to the floor, all his circuits shorting out, making him as dead as an undead cyborg can technically be.

The students, no longer incapacitated by the Harlequins, stood around Ged as he transformed back into his human form.

“I hope we don’t have to overcome any more of those things,” said Phoenix.

“You should go after the Triumvirs that have your girlfriend right now before they call up any more of those terrible monsters,” whined Mong, still sniveling.

“Lead us there,” Ged commanded.

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November 15, 2022 · 3:52 am

AeroQuest 5… Canto 154

Canto 154 – Mingo Mix-It-Ups

The fight had been almost boring as the waves of rot warriors shambled forward, trying to aim their various spears, guns, and lasers, and then being disassembled by the student Psions of Ged Aero’s Dojo.  Shu Kwai had been the most destructive, able to rip out electronic controls with a mere thought.  Phoenix had also laid waste, melting the circuitry out of the Mechanoid-zombie army of Mong the Unmerciful.  The minions of Mong had melted like margarine in a microwave.  Ged had found himself in his armored cat form with nothing to actually do.

The invaders soon found themselves virtually in control of the Ruined Palace of David King.  Jackie teleported back to the Celestial Dragon and picked up Gyro.  The little Neulon whiz kid hooked up some software in an injector device he had pulled together by rearranging molecules with his mind. He then linked it to an uncrushed rot-warrior skull and pulled out a map of the complex through the skull’s control link to the building’s computer system.

“What’d you find there, Smurf?” Phoenix asked almost immediately.

“I am finding Emperor Mong in his suite surrounded by rot-warrior generals trying to destroy two guys called Triumvirs with an even bigger horde of rot warriors than we just polished off,” said Gyro, grinning at his own manipulative genius at controlling computers without relying on Junior’s special Psion power.

“What?” said Phoenix, frowning.

“He’s telling you he found the Emperor in his private living quarters focusing his attacks on somebody besides us,” said Shu Kwai with an icy superiority.

Phoenix frowned at the nearly naked boy in his white loincloth.  Ged could feel tension building again between the two.

“Okay,” said Phoenix, “so what do we do now, Ged Sensei?”

“We go pay Mong a little visit,” Ged answered, now back in human form and dressed in the jumpsuit and fedora hat he had brought with him.

“Has he detected us?” Rocket asked Gyro.

“I don’t know for sure, but maybe not.  He is in… I don’t know how to say it in Galactic English.  The kapooiac.”

“I have a feeling that means the fresher… or restroom… probably,” suggested Phoenix.

“Let’s go quickly,” ordered Shu Kwai, “so we can maintain as much surprise as possible.”

Gyro led the way through bone-littered corridors.  The whole place had the feel of an old black-and-white monster movie.  This wasn’t surprising, since the Galtorrians had based much of their culture on the TV programs they intercepted from ancient Earth in the 1950s and 1960s.  In fact, Galactic English had become the norm in the Orion Spur due to the fact that the Galtorrians worshipped the TV comedy I Love Lucy.  Through artificial cobwebs and gray stonework, they wound their way down into the bowels of the palace.  Finally, Gyro stopped them before a blank stone wall.

 “There is a secret door here,” he said with a sweet blue smile.

“Good,” said Phoenix.  “I’ll open it!”

A wall of flame swelled outward from Phoenix’s fingertips.  The wall of artificial stone and plasticrete melted away before them, revealing Mong on his personal throne.  It was not his throne of office, either, but rather the natural place one goes when he can no longer keep his bowels from emptying from fear.

“Eeuw!  Gross!” cried Jackie, staring at the emperor with his pants down.

Mong was cringing while staring out from under his golden skullcap with the carved dragon as its crest.  His Fu Manchu moustache was wet with tears of fear.

“Oh, great Ged Aero!  You are the one my agents have been telling me about, aren’t you?”  Mong’s voice was squeaky and timid, surprising from so sinister a caped figure, even with his pants down on his throne and toilet paper in hand.  Shu Kwai, Rocket, Phoenix, and Gyro all laughed about this man they had so recently dreaded.

“Mong, I have come for her,” said Ged.  “I want Tara Salongi back.”

“What?  I don’t have your young lady!  But you have to defend me!  Protect me from those clowns and I will gladly give her back to you!”

The pitiful evil emperor was pleading in such a sniveling, groveling manner that Ged couldn’t bear it.

“Do you have her?  Or don’t you?  All I require from you,” said Ged, “is to lead me to Tara and then flee this planet for your pitiful life.  If I don’t get her back, I will hunt you down and tear you to pieces.”

There was a large, startling crash as someone tore the fresher door on the opposite side out of the wall.

Ged’s eyes flashed with anger, an emotion that none of the students present had ever actually seen in him before.  It chilled them all to the bone.

An armored clown stepped through the hole.  He was obviously a cyborg, but far more sophisticated than any rot warrior they had yet encountered.

“So, Mong is not out of champions yet!” declared the Harlequin menacingly.

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November 8, 2022 · 5:33 pm

AeroQuest 5 – Canto 153

Canto 153 – Stealth

The corridors of the Ruined Palaces were empty and still.  Much dust danced through an empty-hall ballet as the stillness of disuse filled the place.  Then, as suddenly as a star goes nova, there was a loud crack as Jadalaqstbr brought Ged Aero into the palace by teleportation.

Ged’s brown fedora fell from his head and began rolling away. 

“Are you all right, Ged-sensei?”  Jackie’s brown face showed concern even though recently Alec Songh had led her to be a bit disrespectful and defiant.

“I didn’t know teleporting left you disoriented like that,” said Ged, trapping his hat with a foot before it rolled too far.

“It doesn’t do that to me, but Alec says it bothers him.”

“We may need to be quieter in a place we have invaded.”

“Yes, sorry,” Jackie whispered.  “Are you ready for me to go back for the next one?”

“Yes.”

At the word from the master, another thunderous crack marked Jadalaqstbr’s departure.  Ged used the moment to begin his planned transformation.  He changed his head into a tiger’s head for the sensitive nose, but it was not an earth tiger.  It was the head of a large black Talosian tiger.  And Ged did not settle for the mere body of a tiger.  The cat-form he created was sheathed in armor plates much like the armored auger-creatures of the planet Nix, supple yet impenetrable.  It also had wings like the great war-eagles of Barad Allamar, large enough to carry a ton of creature mass through the air.

When Jackie cracked the air next, it was Phoenix she carried.  She set him down and immediately imploded through space again.

“Ged-dono?” asked Phoenix, hesitation in his sarcastic voice for the first time that Ged was aware of.

“Yesss, thiss iss mmmme.  New formmmm.”  The tiger’s tongue was thick and slurred in his huge mouth.

“Good trick,” said Phoenix, nodding.  “I have one to show you, too.”

Phoenix’s transformation was even more alarming than Ged’s.  Fire started around his hands, and then began to crackle around his entire form.  He seemed to become a boy of living flame.

“RRRRrrrr?” questioned Ged.

“I call it fire-form,” said Phoenix.  “I am intact under here and able to breathe normally.  I’m really just wearing fire like anyone else would wear clothes.”

Ged nodded his massive head.  It was a good trick that might serve Phoenix well.

Jackie burst onto the scene once again with Rocket Rogers in her grip.  She dropped the cowboy-hatted boy onto the floor tiles and vanished yet again.

“Wow!” said Rocket, “I’ve been missing quite a party.”

“Look into my mind, Rocket,” said Phoenix from within the flames.  “You can do this too.”

Ged had been impressed during lessons at how willingly Phoenix would teach his skills to Rocket.  The cowboy fire-starter was a quick learner, too.  Ged wasn’t entirely sure he was comfortable with Phoenix becoming a better instructor than Ged himself.  He couldn’t deny, though, that Rocket could learn more effectively from someone who shared the same skills.

Jackie disappeared yet again.

Rocket burst into flame, his cowboy hat sizzling away to cinders.

“Dang!” said Rocket.  “I goofed.  I burned up all my clothes and my best cowboy hat.”

“Did you burn yourself?” said Phoenix’s fire-form to Rocket’s fire form.

“No, I’m okay.  I get the part about a cool layer just below the flame.  I can do the temperature layers just the way you pictured it for me, but I have to learn to get the thicknesses right.”

“You learrrn fast,” remarked the Ged tiger.

“Thank you, sensei.  Phoenix is a good teacher, just like you.”

 When Jackie reappeared she carried Shu Kwai, the final member of the strike team.  He was dressed in a white leather vest, tooled with interlocking spider designs, a white loincloth, and white tabai boots.  He carried a pearlescent trident with three wickedly sharp tines.  For a boy of twelve, he looked formidable.  He had learned enough martial arts skills from Ged and from Alec Songh to be deadly, even when he didn’t enhance his blows with telekinesis.  Like Ged himself, though, this boy was dedicated to winning any battle without causing any injury or death.

“Are we ready?” asked Phoenix within his fire-form.

“We will find our way easily,” said Shu Kwai with that quiet confidence that made him so spooky.  “The mission will be no challenge.”

Ged had to wonder if the Gaijinese boy was trying to reassure himself and the others, or was simply stating what he knew to be a fact.  Ged knew one of these three boys would end up being the leader of the entire group.  He simply didn’t know which.  But the time had come for action.  Ged’s tiger nose detected the approach of rotting flesh and circuitry.  Rot warriors were headed their direction.

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November 1, 2022 · 2:47 am

AeroQuest 5… Adagio 23

Adagio 23 – The Planet Mingo

Mingo was one of those most worrisome of things, a cartoonish bad guy world full of grotesque evil dudes and shambling undead Mechanoids.  You could tell just by looking it was evil.  The skies were polluted a dark, rusty orange from industrial waste and the foul stench of death.

If you couldn’t tell its evil nature by looking at it, as Emperor Slythinus no longer could, you could also tell its rank foulness from the never-ending smell of the place, something Slythinus also couldn’t do, because he was not only blind, but also stone-cold dead.  The Mechanoid industry of recycling used flesh gave the place an air of death and decay.  The air was artificially regenerated, but no one bothered with purification.  The denizens of the planet, for the most part, loved it the way it was. The cityscape was endless, crusting over even the planet’s ample oceans.  The concrete-gray and soot-blackened features of the place were oppressive.  The most impressive sights on the planet were the well-known Ruined Palaces District, once the site of the Imperial Capitol, before the Galtorrian Jihad had removed Imperial rule back to Galtorr Prime.

The majority of the vast population of the place was now Mechanoids, the crusty re-animated remains of humans and Galtorrians remade into a deathless life-form of rotting flesh and robotic circuits.  Oh, there were human and Galtorrian people there who were living, but the effort to create deathless soldiers and an ageless workforce had emptied every graveyard and charnel pit to a point where the once-dead outnumbered the living ten to one

The ruler of the planet preferred to call himself an Emperor instead of a Duke or Prince.  Emperor Mong was a cartoonish bad guy in all the clichéd ways that cartoonish bad guys are always portrayed, only cartoonier.  I know that isn’t a real word in galactic English, but you get the idea, and after all, I am a scientist, not a poet!  Mong wore his pointy little Van Dyke beard in the fashion of Mephistopheles.  He loved helmets with fancy carved dragons on the crest and silk robes in bright colors, complete with a melodramatic cape and cowl.  He was a brooding, evil, and thoroughly stinky bad guy who only got his jollies from coming up with really elaborate and fiendish tortures for his arch-enemy Brash Gordon.  Unfortunately, the heroic Brash had long ago expired in Mong’s prison, and Mong had nobody to turn his terrifyingly terrible attention to but the whole rest of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Weren’t we lucky!

The standing orders on Mingo were that anyone who died was, by law, transformed immediately into a rot warrior.  These were the brainless Mechanoid soldiers that Mong maintained as his standing army, well, leaning-shambling-drooling army.  They were all controlled by that infamous intelligent computer known as the Master Cylinder; Mong’s most evil of numerous evil henchmen.

Now, Slythinus, when he was in actual control of the Galtorr Imperium, had greatly feared the machinations of Emperor Mong.  He knew that Mong would one day try to challenge him for Imperial rule.  Mingo, after all, was one of only four planets that had ever been the Capitol of the Thousand Worlds.  Galtorr Prime, Earth, and Regina were the other three.  It had a long tradition of rulership.  Each of the standing Ruined Palaces represented a former ruler who once held and lost power in the Imperium, and was a native of the wicked planet Mingo.  So, Slythinus had craftily set up a triumvirate of rulers in the Mingo Sector of the Imperium to divide up and dilute the power.  He had appointed Ancillus King and Karg Hardretter as co-rulers.  These two black-bearded villains had a vicious and aggressive character that easily matched Mong.

Still, Mong would win out in the end.  A famous assassin Mechanoid by the name of Ace Campfield got the better of both King and Hardretter, leaving their young sons to fill their empty thrones.  These Mong tolerated as long as they presented no real threat to his rule.  When Slythinus was himself out of power, Mong was free to do away with both Raylond King and Smoky Hardretter, a thing he hadn’t gotten around to doing since both boys were soft-natured and lacked the evil streaks that ran through both of their fathers.

So, all in all, the planet Mingo was a very, very terrible place, in a way that probably needs six more verys, though I know that that’s not a good word either, especially if you use it too much.

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October 25, 2022 · 3:41 am

AeroQuest 5… Canto 152

Canto 152 – Ged on Mingo

The Ancient Red Dragon starship  popped out of jump space to find the planet Mingo bustling with activity.  The spaceways around the heavily industrialized planet were crammed with merchant ships of every kind, from gargantuan, cigar-shaped mass haulers to the smallest of independent beetle-shaped personal transports.  It wasn’t that no one noticed the dragon-shaped vessel as it arrived from the complex gravitic web of outer space; it was more a matter of everyone being too busy to care.

Three system defense boats came out to look over Ged’s Ancient spacecraft, but as they scanned it and found it was not alive, they quickly lost interest.  It had no weapons that registered on any kind of detector.  The human signatures on the routine life-scan would tell the transport police that nothing about this unusual craft suggested it was hostile in any way.

“Ged-sensei, we have arrived at the place your girlfriend is hidden,” said Billy Iowa, coming out of his clairvoyant trance.  “I see her in the palace below, the one called David King’s Hall in the Ruined Palaces District.”

“It is a shame we don’t have any computer database available on this ship,” remarked Ged.  “I suppose even if it did, it couldn’t tell us anything about Emperor Mong or his planet Mingo.”

            “We have to get down to that palace and save her,” asserted Junior, looking determined.

“Don’t get ahead of us, Smurf,” growled Alec.  “What are the Ruined Palaces?”      

            “It’s a place where the buildings have all been attacked at one time or another,” said Billy, looking with his inner eye.  “Their damage has been preserved as a part of the decor of the buildings.  David King’s Hall is one of the three biggest ones.”

            “Whoa,” said Alec, half-laughing, “why would they rebuild something and make it look like it’s still ruined?”

            “An evil sense of humor,” said Phoenix.  “It’s like something Bres might do.”

            “You put Bres down too much!” said Alec, suddenly hot.

            “No, he can’t be put far enough down, Alec,” answered Phoenix coolly.  All could see the air begin to sizzle around the Phoenix.

            “Yeah, whatever.”  Alec backed off from the subject.

            “We do have to go down there,” said Ged at last.  “We need to be prepared to use our Psion powers.  We know what rot warriors are, but we have no experience of what they can do.”

            Taffy King, who had only been looking at the back of Rocket Rogers’ neck before, spoke up.  “I grew up around them.”  Her blue snake’s eyes glowed with angry fire.  “They are like robots who don’t work right.  They lurch around and stumble into things, but when they are ordered to fight, they do it one hundred to one.  They overwhelm the opponent with bone-headed force.”

            “What are they really?” asked Sarah innocently.

            “Re-animated skeletons,” offered Rocket.  “I’ve seen them before on Bradalanth Colony.  They are bones and circuits and some patches of leathery skin.  Mechanoids with no brains.”

            “Monsters!” moaned Hassan Parker.

            “Remember, young ones,” said Ged, “they are easily defeated because they cannot think for themselves.  As long as we work together and let no one get overwhelmed by numbers, we should be able to overcome them.  I worry more about what other problems may arise as we try to get past Emperor Mong’s living minions.”

            “Geez, you sound like an old holo-cartoon show!” remarked Phoenix.

            “You disagree with something?”  Ged was suddenly a bit annoyed.

            “Oh, no.  You are right.  It just sounds so cartoonish!”

            “So, what will we do, Sensei?” asked Junior carefully, afraid of rousing more ire from Ged.

            “Sarah?  Can you help us see the distant places Billy can sense?”

            “Yes, Sensei.”  Sarah was capable of transferring images from one mind to another.

            “Jackie, if you see the place, can you teleport us there one by one?”

            The pretty, brown-skinned girl smiled at Ged for the first time in a while.  “You know I can!”

            “Well, then, that’s our way in.”

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