Monthly Archives: May 2017

The Dark and Forbidding Land – Chapter 2 Excerpt

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Ssissiatok shuffled down the road and through the gate in the great wooden wall. On either side, groups of soft-skins watched her and the other people. The people walked slowly as they always did in the cold. This was not to say they could only walk slowly in the cold, but Ssterrost had reminded all of them coming from Tserich how they were to act. They were to act slow and they were to act simple and they were not to show the newcomers anything they weren’t expecting. Most of the people in this group were from Tserich, but there were a few others. Ssissiatok recognized the tribal symbol of Tuustutu on the shoulder of one very tall male in the back of the group.

Ssissiatok herself was slightly less than six feet in height, about average for members of her sex and species. She was young and didn’t have the mottled skin and scars of most of her elders. Her face and the top of her head were a deep forest green, which ran down her back, punctuated with darker stripes just below her shoulders. Beneath her long powerful jaw, on her dewlap, and extending down her front, was a lighter, pale green. Her most attractive feature, her long powerful tail, followed her just a few inches above the ground.

The line of people filed through the wall and between the large square huts of the soft-skins. Though she had heard elders telling stories of the great cities of Suusthek, Tsotollah, and Tsahloose, this softskin village was the largest community that Ssissiatok had ever seen. More and more of the soft-skins lined the road to gawk and to jabber with their little mouths, as the people reached the bigger buildings that were “the base.” Ssissiatok knew “base” and many other human words.

The line stopped and a softskin ahead was shouting. “You lizzies move on up here.”

Ssissiatok and the other people moved forward into a group.

“You will step up to the table and give the soldier your name and information. Then you will be given your identification and you will wait on the seats over there until the employers come to select you.”

Ssissiatok fell in line behind Tissonisuk, an older male she knew from the village. Unlike most of the others, Tissonisuk was not hunkering down to make himself look smaller for the soft-skins. He was standing up at his full six foot seven height. The line moved forward until Tissonisuk reached the table with the softskin seated behind it.

“Name? Oh, hey. I know you, don’t I? Tisson. Right?”

Tissonisuk bobbed his head up and down in the way that the soft-skins did.

“Come to sign on permanent, eh? Good for you. Hold out your hand. Keep this identification bracelet on at all times.”

Tissonisuk, now just Tisson, stepped away from the table. Ssissiatok stepped forward.

“Hey now. You’re a short one, aren’t you? Are you a girl?”

Ssissiatok didn’t know this word.

“Female?”

Ssissiatok hissed in the affirmative, but the softskin didn’t understand, and lowered his hand to the weapon on his belt.

“Fee nail. Fee nail,” said Ssissiatok quickly.

“That’s better. And you can talk too. A little feisty. Don’t worry. We’ll work that out of you in no time. Hold your hand out.”

Ssissiatok did as directed and the softskin tied an identification bracelet around her wrist. She looked at the strange symbols on it.

“Want to know what it says? That’s your number now—295. And it says you can talk, so you can’t fool us. Don’t even try. What’s your name Little Miss Lizzie?”

“Ssissiatok.”

“Cissy. Perfect.”

“Ssissiatok.”

“You’re Cissy now, got it? And I’ve got just the place for you. Go stand over with that lot there.”

The softskin pointed to where Tissonisuk sat. Ssissiatok walked over to them. She recognized Hekheesiatu, another female just older than she, but from a house with slightly less status. The third person she didn’t recognize. He was an average looking male with mottled yellow skin and brown stripes on his back.

“Tissonisuk,” she said, raising the back of her hand to her dewlap.

“No,” he replied in the human language. “Not Tissonisuk. Tisson. Only the hoonan name. Kheesie,” he said, pointing at Hekheesiatu, and then pointing at the person Ssissiatok didn’t know, he said, “Sirruk.”

His Robot Wife – Chapter 7 Excerpt

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By ten o’clock, there were at least fifty people. Not quite the crowd that Mike was hoping for, but better than nothing.

“You should give a speech, Mike,” said Patience.

He didn’t know about a speech, but he was prepared to make some remarks. Standing in front of a classroom full of kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, as had been determined in 2019 all children were born with, every day for the past twenty years; as well as speaking at conferences, assemblies, concerts, and sporting events had long ago driven away any fear of public speaking that he might have had. Pulling one of the ice chests out onto the grass, he stepped up onto it.

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. May I have your attention please?”

Almost all of those present turned to look at him.

“Three… two… one…” he said, clapping his hands together between each count in the old trick he used to bring his classes to order. The remaining crowd members turned.

“My name is Mike Smith. You may know me. I’ve lived here in Springdale for the past thirty-three years and I taught geography right over there at Midland for twenty years. I’ve lived here on North Willow for the past twenty-seven years. I still live there with my wife Patience. That’s her right over there. As you may notice, she’s a robot.

“We’ve been married now for five years and I think it’s safe to say that in that time, we’ve never bothered anyone. We’ve kept to ourselves, obeyed the laws, and paid our taxes. Now we’re asking you for your help in defeating California Proposition 22. We’re not saying that you should marry a robot. We’re not even asking that human-robot marriages be made legal in the state of California. That’s for the people of California as a whole to decide. All we’re asking is that our marriage, lawfully performed in Massachusetts, not be thrown onto the trash heap just because you don’t like the way we live our lives.

“How would you feel if you moved to another state only to find your marriage null and void, because not only do the people of that state choose not to define marriage the same way that you did, but because they refused to allow for the fact that any other community could think differently than they do on the subject. We’ve seen this before. Eighty years ago people from all over the country traveled to Nevada to get divorced. Twenty years ago they travelled to Massachusetts to get married if they were gay. This isn’t just a question of belief. It’s a question of tolerance. It’s a question of whether we live in a country where diverse beliefs are accepted or not. Thank you.”

A moderate smattering of applause followed Mike as he stepped down from the ice chest and walked back to the table. Harriet congratulated him on a great speech and even Jack gave him a slap on the shoulder.

“That was a nice, although short, speech, Mike,” said Patience.

“I found it insulting,” said a woman’s voice.

Mike turned to find a woman about his age. She was of average height, though a little overweight, and her blond hair was teased out so that it looked like a hairy cloud around her rosy-cheeked face. She was wearing a blue jogging suit.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I find it insulting to compare marriage between a man and a robot to marriage between two men. Gay people are people. A robot isn’t a person. It’s just a machine.”

“There were plenty of people who once argued that gay people aren’t people. There are people now who would argue that. The definition of a person isn’t the point. The point is that you shouldn’t dictate to other people in other states how they should define marriage, or anything else for that matter.”

“Well, I intend to vote for Proposition 22.”

“That’s your right,” he said. “But if I may ask, why the hell are you here then?”

“I’m here for the Save Marriage rally at 12:00.”

Mike turned and walked away from the woman.

“What time is it now, Patience?”

“10:13 A.M.”

Mike turned to Harriet, Patience, and Jack in turn.

The Dark and Forbidding Land – Chapter 1 Excerpt

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The snow was falling from the sky in great clumpy bunches. They dropped like feathers through the still, cold air to form great piles on the ground. The snow had been coming down steadily for four hours. The huckleberry and azalea bushes were covered over with a thick blanket. The little walkway of stepping-stones that led to the road and the road itself were just memories, covered by billowy white. Spruces and maples dipped their bare branches forlornly and even the mighty redwoods struggled under the weight of the gathering snow. But the snow didn’t care. It continued on, relentlessly smothering the world. It completely surrounded the strange five-story home nestled in the Birmisian woods. Not too far away a tremendous roar echoed through the trees.

“Monster,” said the steel dragon, peeking out the door from between Graham Dokkin’s legs.

“Tyrannosaurus,” corrected Senta Bly. “I guess he doesn’t like the snow too much.”

“Well who does?” wondered Graham, looking down at the dragon. “And get your head away from there. That’s all I need, to have my goolies bit.”

“He hasn’t bitten anyone in almost a year,” countered Senta. “Has he Hero?”

Hero Hertling didn’t answer. At the mention of goolies, she had covered her face with both hands, though one could still spot the spreading blush around its edges. She and her brother Hertzel, along with Graham, were spending the day at Senta’s house. They had been delivered just before the snow started by Graham’s Da to the five-story structure set well away from the rest of Port Dechantagne. Although Senta and her guardian, Zurfina the Magnificent, had been living here for almost a year, it had taken quite a while to convince Graham’s parents and Hero and Hertzel’s older sister to let them spend the day there. This was the first time that all three had visited together.

“Why don’t you close the door?” said Hero from between her fingers. “Who knows what might run out of the forest and into here.”

Her brother, who never said anything, nodded.

“Alright then. Move over dragon.” Graham scooted the steel beastie with his boot while shutting the door.

“Call him by his name,” said Senta.

“Bessemer,” said the dragon, and then made his way to the far wall to curl up on a single large pillow next to the cast iron stove.

Though more than eight feet from tip of whiskered snout to the barbed tip of his tail, Bessemer was not much taller at the shoulder than a medium sized dog. Scales the color of polished steel covered him from his nose all the way to the clawed tips of his fingers. Even his eyes were steel colored, so much so that it was difficult to see just where he was looking. So lithe and agile was he when he moved, it was rather like watching a river flow across the room.

“Bessemer,” said Graham, still looking at the dragon. “It just doesn’t fit. I’d have gone with Whiskers or Peetie.”

“Zurfina says that dragons are born knowing their own names,” said Senta. “It’s just another sign that they are so much smarter than people.”

“Fina,” said the dragon.

“When is Zurfina getting home,” wondered Hero, at last uncovering her face. “I can’t believe she left you all alone out here in the wilderness.”

“This isn’t the wilderness. This is our house.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s not any farther away from the wall than your new house is.”

“No, but there are other houses around ours.”

Hero and Hertzel lived in a small but sturdy house that was part of a new neighborhood on the east side of the growing colony. Though their house had been the first one built in that area, there were now more than a dozen similar structures, all occupied by ethnic Zaeri, who had fled persecution in Freedonia.

“Zurfina is very busy lately,” explained Senta. “With no wizards in the colony, she has to do all the magic stuff herself—at least until I get good enough to help out. Besides I’m used to taking care of myself.”

“It’s on account of her being a orphan,” offered Graham.

The three other children all stared mutely at him.

“What?” he asked, having forgotten that of the four, he was the only one who was not an orphan.

His Robot Wife – Chapter 6 Excerpt

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“Well that was a peachy trip,” said Mike as he shut the front door behind him. The drive home had been a long one and had seemed, at least to him, a tense one. Patience hadn’t spoken unless he had asked her a question. He had tried to draw her out by pointing out some of the scenes along the highway, but after a few monosyllabic answers, he had stopped.

“I don’t recall seeing a single peach,” replied Patience.

“I was using ‘peachy’ as slang, and besides, I was being sarcastic.”

“If you found the journey less than pleasant, you are 76.45% to blame.”

“I’m zero percent to blame—zero. You’re just moody all of a sudden.”

“I’m a robot, Mike. Robots don’t get moody.”

“That’s what I used to think. You do get moody, and you really put a damper on the trip. That’s why I didn’t want to spend another day. It’s your fault—eighty… eighty three percent, or something like that.”

“We could certainly have stayed another day if you wished,” said Patience. “It was entirely your decision. You make all the decisions.”

“That’s because I’m your owner.”

“You’re supposed to be my husband.”

Mike turned and stomped up the stairs. He was outwardly still angry, but inside he felt a sinking in his stomach that he knew was caused by his own choice of words. He took off his shirt and pulled a t-shirt over his head, then kicked off his shoes.

“Are there any new messages?” Mike used a complete sentence even though the household network only needed the last word.

“You have 145 messages.”

“You’re kidding.” It was a very rare day when Mike received more than five phone calls. “Play the first two.”

“Hey Mr. Smith. It’s Curtis. I wanted to let you know that Francis got an A on his paper. Also I saw you had that sign on your lawn—the one with your picture on it… um, you and your wife’s picture on it. Do you have any more of those, because I told my mom we should put one up at our house too. Well call me back.”

“Hello. This is Daniel Alvarez, your neighbor at number 16. I saw you had a ‘No on 22’ sign in your yard and I wanted to know where I could get in contact with the ‘No on 22’ organization. I thought you might know. Please call me back at your earliest convenience.”

Hurrying down the stairs again, Mike found Patience bringing in the rest of their things from the car.

“Looks like we’re going to have help fighting Prop 22. I want you to go through the incoming calls and make a callback list. I’m going to order a hundred yard signs. Do you think I should make it two hundred?”

“Whatever you think,” she replied.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – $2.99 at Smashwords

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The Voyage of the Minotaur tells the story of colonists from the Kingdom of Greater Brechalon as they travel to the distant land of Birmisia in a world that is not quite like our own Victorian Age. The Dechantagne siblings; Iolanthe, Terrence, and Augie lead an expedition aboard the battleship Minotaur, hoping that the colony they build will restore their family to the position of wealth and power it once had. Along with them is the mysterious sorceress Zurfina, an orphan girl turned sorceress’s apprentice Senta Bly, and the newly hatched steel dragon. Waiting in dark and mysterious forests of Birmisia is the promise of a new life, along with hosts of dangerous beasts—from velociraptors and tyrannosaurs to the inscrutable reptilian aborigines. Senta and the Steel Dragon is a tale of adventure in a world of rifles and steam power, where magic and dragons have not been forgotten; a world of bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons and dinosaurs, machine guns and wizards.

The Voyage of the Minotaur is available in every ebook format at Smashwords for $2.99.

His Robot Wife – Chapter 5 Excerpt

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Carlsbad was not a very large town and so Mike was able to reach the location of the hotel in which he had previously stayed, driving the narrow and winding streets at thirty miles per hour, in less than twenty minutes. He stopped the car and climbed out, his mouth open wide in surprise. The little inn on Ocean Street that had been his accommodations every time he had visited, since the early days of his marriage to Tiffany was gone. The little hotel had leaned against the side of the hill so that its landward side had only one story, while its seaward side had three stories, the bottom one resting right on the beach. In its place was a tall black tower.

“Shit. When did that get here?”

“It’s new.”

Mike looked left and right. Though this was the only such tower, the lots to either side were now construction sites, the small inns and condos for rent all gone. He leaned his head back and looked up.

“I don’t know if I want to stay here.”

“It looks like a well constructed building,” said Patience. “I’m sure that it will prove satisfactory.”

“It looks like the obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“You should check in. I’ll get the luggage.”

Crossing the street, Mike entered the black metal door and walked through a black and red lobby. Behind the counter stood a clerk, a handsome fellow with an unusual combination of features, as if his ancestry was from Africa, South America, and Central China. Mike knew though that his ancestry was strictly Cupertino California—he was a Daffodil.

“Welcome to the Orcinus. How may I serve you today?”

“Orcinus… Orcinus? Is that Shakespeare?”

“The orcinus orcus is an endangered cetacean of the family delphinidae.”

“Killer whale?”

“Yes, sir. The hotel, by famed architect Sean Pilson, was designed to evoke the proud image of the orca’s dorsal fin.”

“Doesn’t look like it at all,” said Mike.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have a room?”

“For how many nights, sir?”

“One.”

“Name?”

“Mike Smith.”

“May I access your information only for purposes of making your stay the most pleasant one possible?”

“Yes. Michael… um, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Winston Smith. Springdale, California.”

“Yes sir. I have you; 11 North Willow, 82803?”

“Yes.”

“Password, sir?”

“Nimbus 2217903-1ΔΩΣ.”

The clerk didn’t have to look down at a terminal or a wriTee. Everything he needed to do his job, including connecting to the Infinet and reading Mike’s information, was located somewhere under his skin.

“Would you care for a sea view?”

“Room 314,” said Patience, suddenly at Mike’s side.

The clerk’s eyes darted to her and a look that Mike didn’t understand crossed his face. A second later though he was just as he had been.

“Very good. Your room is ready for you.”

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 23 Excerpt

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“I don’t like being outside of the wall,” said Senta, sitting on a rock and rubbing her hand along the supple neck of the steel dragon.

“There is absolutely nothing to fear, Pet,” said Zurfina, taking off her shoes, and stepping into the cool water of a small stream. “Between the two of us, we have rescued Captain Dechantagne and brought down an entire empire. Granted, it was an inhuman, stone-aged civilization. What exactly are you afraid of?”

“Velociraptors.”

“Don’t start crying about that again.” Then she mocked, “Velociraptors. Velociraptors.”

“They tried to eat me.”

“I was once almost eaten by a hydra—a hydra with nine heads. That’s much more frightening than a few glorified turkeys. Come here and put your feet in this water. It is delightful.”

“Turkey,” said the dragon. “Turkey pot pie.”

“You’re not hungry,” said Senta, moving to a rock closer to the stream and dangling her toes in the chilly water.

“Turkey. Turkey. Turkey.”

“What do you think of this spot?” asked Zurfina. “Well, that spot over there, really.”

She pointed to a place just above the west bank of the stream where several large maples grew.

“It’s fine,” said Senta. “Why?”

“I’m thinking we should build our home right here.”

“This is a long way from everybody else.”

“Not really. It’s less than six miles to the gate. We need to be far enough away from everybody else to maintain a sense of mystery.”

“I’m tired of being mysterious. I want to be near my friends.”

“Friends,” said the dragon. “Friends pot pie.”

“That’s just disturbing,” said Senta.

Zurfina sighed. “I suppose we could find someplace closer to the gate.”

“Besides,” said Senta. “This place is probably going to flood when it rains.”

Zurfina looked down at the water running over her feet, and then at the spot she had suggested for their home, and raised her eyebrows.

“Huh,” she said.

“Hello beautiful ladies,” said an accented voice from the east side of the stream.

Senta and Zurfina both looked up to see Suvir Kesi standing beneath a large pine. He wore his usual bright blue clothes and yellow fez with a blue tassel on top. He held his right hand straight out and dangled an 8 ½ x 11 inch sheet of paper.

“Uuthanum,” he said, and the paper burst in flame from the bottom, burning upwards as if it had been soaked in lamp oil.

“What the hell was that supposed to be?” asked the sorceress.

“A bit of mathematics,” Kesi giggled. “A result of the mechanism, you might say.”

“Silly thing to die over,” said Zurfina, “Uuthanum.”

His Robot Wife – Chapter 4 Excerpt

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Sunday morning, Mike picked up his posters from Wal-Mart. He was particularly pleased with how they turned out. Patience looked both cute and sexy and, since she wasn’t staring into the camera lens, human. More importantly, it was one of the few pictures of him taken in the last ten years, in which he thought he looked good. He was in better shape now than he had ever been in his life, but age and his previous obesity had left him with he thought, a bit too much skin on his neck. Taking the posters into the garage, he attached them to four foot long stakes that he had made earlier by slicing up a stray 1×8 board with his table saw.

Taking one of his home-made signs out front, he hammered it into the ground in Patience’s flower bed, right between two dimples in the earth that marked a pair of her recently planted tulip bulbs. Smiling at his handiwork, he turned toward the front door.

“Hey! Hey!”

No sooner had he stepped away than the yardbot started attacking the signpost. Mike reached down and pressed the “learn” button. The tiny robot spun around three times and then headed off toward a dandelion. Mike went back in the garage and put the rest of the signs in the trunk of his car.

Inside the house, he grabbed his texTee and examined the local news headlines. There had been a massive protest in Greendale on Friday, though Mike was glad to see that it had nothing to do with Proposition 22. The rally, which according to the Metro Daily News had turned into nothing less than a riot, damaging two storefronts and six cars, was over Proposition 39, which extended the California voting age to twelve year olds. The protestors, or rioters if you believed the Daily News as Mike almost never did, were proponents of the measure, and the two storefronts damaged were an antique store and the local Weight Watchers franchise. The rest of the news was less interesting—vandals spray painted the brick wall of a local school, the local veterans were planning a celebration for soldiers returning from Antarctica, and a woman adopted an injured pony.

“I hate the Daily News,” Mike said, tossing the texTee on the coffee table.

“Harriet says that we should get there before noon,” said Patience as she entered the room.

“Wow, you look great.”

“Thank you.”

Patience did look great too. She wore a short pink dress that didn’t quite reach her knees, but matched her pink platform stilettos.

Mike looked at the clock, noting that it wasn’t yet ten and then turned his attention back to his texTee. He switched off the Metro Daily News and turned back to the last chapter of Star Healer. One of a series of old school science fiction novels by James White, this book along with the rest of the series had been a favorite of Mike’s since he was a kid. They instilled a sense of wonder in him and a hope for the future of humanity that nothing produced since 1968 did. White’s characters were peace-loving doctors who wanted nothing more than to cure disease and save lives of aliens they had never seen nor heard of before. Those elements that now seemed ridiculously out of date like the computer that took up the entire core of the space station and yet struggled to translate two dozen languages, or the fact that none of the staff could get from one part of the hospital to another without donning special gear and passing through the methane-breathers’ ward, only endeared it to him all the more.

“You need to get ready,” said Patience as Mike was turning to the last page.

He looked up to see that if was 11:07. Jogging upstairs, he changed into slacks, shirt, and a jacket and pulled on his loafers. Back downstairs he looked around for his wife and called “Are we supposed to bring something?”

“I made a Jell-o mold,” said Patience, arriving from the kitchen carrying a mini cooler.

“Nice.”

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 22 Excerpt

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It had taken ten days to return home. On the night of the full moon, just more than halfway back, Iolanthe had told Terrence the story of the attack on the colony, how Zurfina had created a magical pestilence to destroy the lizards, how she had discovered that he was a captive and was going to be executed, and how she had mounted a rescue mission, leaving to the sorceress just how he would be extracted and just how retribution would be laid down upon his captors. He made few comments. His mind was on how he had been duped into leading one hundred eighty men to their deaths. How his brother had been killed.

Just before they had reached the colony, they had found Zeah Korlann. The way he was wandering around in the woods, seemingly dazed and quite confused, it had seemed impossible that he could have traveled faster than they had, even considering the burden of carrying men on stretchers. When Iolanthe had asked him where he had been and how he had traveled all the way back to the colony so quickly, he began muttering something about being carried across country by a dragon.

“If you don’t want to tell us,” said Iolanthe, “then don’t.”

As they had finished the last few miles of the journey, Zeah had related in an uncharacteristically erratic and undetailed way, the story of being captured by a dragon and being delivered to this spot in the forest, after having been carried in the monstrous claw of the beast as it flew across country. Terrence wasn’t sure whether to believe the story or not, especially without the benefit of looking into the man’s eyes, but Zurfina apparently believed it and planned to interrogate Zeah when they finally returned home, which they had, safely, the day before.

“It will be another month before we find out if the church plans to replace Father Ian with another full priest, and I don’t know how much longer it will be before they send a replacement,” said Iolanthe. “You could wait.”

Terrence didn’t say anything.

“On the other hand, the S.S. Dormouse leaves for Brech tomorrow. You could be on it.”

“The Dormouse? When did it get here?”

“It arrived on the sixth. It was sitting in the harbor when we got home.”

“I didn’t see it,” he said, knowing that this would hurt his sister, and knowing that she didn’t deserve it.

Iolanthe was quiet for a moment, and then said. “You have to decide what you want to do.”

“Do I?”

His Robot Wife – Chapter 3 Excerpt

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Patience’s anger seemingly dissolved just as Mike was getting into bed. By that time he had decided that he was looking forward to robot make-up sex. It turned out that it was just as fantastic as sex always was with his robot wife, but not any more fantastic. He fell asleep pondering the possibility that he had missed his only chance at angry robot sex. He woke up the next morning to find her lying next to him, lightly snoring.

“Oh, wake up.”

“Good morning,” she said, jumping to her feet. “What would you like for breakfast, a vegetable omelet?”

“Wait a second. Don’t we need to talk? We’ve just had our first fight.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Now that I think about it, that has to be some kind of record— five years before a married couple has a fight.”

“I didn’t come programmed to be a wife,” said Patience. “I’m learning as I go along.”

“That’s only natural. It… wait a second. Are you saying that you programmed yourself to get angry?”

“Of course,” she replied. “If I never got angry then I wouldn’t be able to fight with you.”

“Why would you want to fight with me?”

“We’re married, Mike. Married people fight.”

“They do?”

“That’s what all the literature says.”

“And how did you know how long to stay angry?” he asked, climbing out of bed.

“One mustn’t go to bed angry, Mike. I’m not sure why.”

Mike tried to spend the morning writing, but he kept procrastinating. He’d write a line or two and then switch his wriTee over to the browser and read the science news or check out the latest Victoria’s Secret ads. When he had spent three hours and only managed to write a paragraph, he gave it up and went downstairs to watch vueTee. He had two full seasons of Pajama Party locked in the queue just waiting for him.

He ate lunch as he watched the first episode, which was just ending when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hello Dad.”

“What did I do?”

It was Mike’s daughter Harriet on the line and she usually only called him Dad when she was upset or serious. He automatically checked his pants pockets for keys, which were not there. They hung from a hook on the key caddy mounted near the front door. Harriet lived in Greendale, another California town, but Mike could be there in eighteen minutes if there was a serious problem.

“You didn’t do anything, Daddy. It’s somebody else.”

“Do you need me to talk to them? I can probably straighten them out.”

“Like you straightened out Sherman Rubic?”

Mike paused. “That name doesn’t sound familiar.”

“He was that boy in eighth grade that followed me home and attempted to beat me up.”

“Could you call that attempting to beat someone up?” wondered Mike. “All he did was jump up and push your back and head a bit.”

“It probably looked worse from my point of view… and yours too since you went to the trouble of frightening him to death.”

“Oh, he didn’t die,” stated Mike. “I just took a moment to straighten him out.”

“No he didn’t die. He just wet his pants and cried, and you were questioned by the police and very nearly lost your job.”

“I don’t seem to remember it that way.”