Category Archives: Excerpt

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 8 Part 1

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The week following Lucas’s visit was relatively uneventful. The Olympics began in Surat and Mike spent as much time as possible watching them. He wasn’t much of a sports fan, but the Olympics were different. You didn’t get to watch weightlifting, kayaking, and water polo any other time. Mike’s favorites though were the track and field events, and those wouldn’t be held until the following weeks. On Friday he got up with the expectation of watching beach volleyball and equestrian events in the morning and swimming in the evening.

He woke up at eight, shaved, and then showered. When he climbed out of the shower, he was mildly surprised not to find Patience waiting with a towel in one hand and breakfast in the other. But it was not as if he didn’t have a towel. There was one right there on the rack. After he had dried off, he stepped on the scales. He had already lost ten more pounds. Looking through the closet, he found a new pair of khaki pants, a new brown belt, and new brown shoes. He put them on along with a light blue camp shirt, and then went skipping down the stairs to the kitchen.

He found Patience at the kitchen counter, putting the finishing touches on what looked like Eggs Florentine. She was wearing gauzy, sky blue teddy that barely covered her perfect ass. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good in it. She would have made a cardboard box or a barrel look good. It was just it didn’t quite seem like Patience’s style. When Mike approached her, Patience turned and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. This too was not quite normal. She usually gave him a quick kiss before breakfast.

“What’s all this about?”

“I have made you a delicious breakfast, Dearest.”

“Dearest? You’ve never called me that before.”

“If you don’t want to be called dearest, then I will not call you that.”

“Well, I don’t know. It’s fine, I guess.”

Mike sat down and ate. Breakfast didn’t quite seem right either. Patience immediately began cleaning up after herself, a task she usually saved until after the meal, preferring to sit with Mike while he ate. The food, while delicious, was far richer than the health-conscious meals that she usually prepared. Mike finished only about half before he was full. As Patience gathered his dishes, he walked into the living room and turned on the vueTee. He flipped through the browser to the Daffodil site. Pressing the small flower symbol at the bottom of the screen brought the man in the blue jumpsuit onto the screen.

“Good morning,” said the man. “This is Daffodil Tech Support. For a list of known issues, press one. For a computer diagnosis of your problem, press two. To be contacted by a Tech Support representative, press three.”

Mike pressed one. Just as he had on the previous time that Mike had checked the tech support page, the blue clad man on the screen was replaced by a long list of text. The topmost line this time said “minor software upgrade”. Mike moved the curser over this line and pressed.

“A small service software update was pushed through the InfiNet 05:25 7.12.32,” said the next screen. “A small percentage of Amonte models my experience slight behavioral quirks. This is a known issue.”

Mike touched the screen to turn off the vueTee. When he turned back around, he was startled to find Patience’s face only a few inches from his.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“I was just checking on something,” replied Mike. “Are you having a problem?”

Rather than answer, Patience punched him in the stomach, so hard that he was doubled over with all of the wind knocked from his lungs. Then she grabbed a fist full of his hair with her left hand and bent his head back, so that he was looking up into her right fist as it slammed into his face. Blood fountained from Mike=s nose and he felt his head smack on the living room floor.

“Christ, Patience! What the fuck…“

Patience cut off Mike=s exclamations by stomping on his mid-section with her bare foot, once again knocking the air from him. Then she clasped the front of his shirt and lifted it and him up into the air as easily as he could have lifted an empty shirt. She looked into his wide eyes.

“You didn’t need to check anything at all,“ she said.

She threw him against the wall. The edge of the arch between family room and living room dug into Mike=s back and his head whiplashed into the wall. He thought he could feel blood running down the back of his neck as well as down his face. Something in that download must have scrambled Patience’s brain. She was a robot gone berserk.

Mike knew he had to get away, but Patience stood between him and the front door. He made a dive into the family room, thinking that he could cut around into the kitchen and out the back door. Before he had gone more than two steps, Patience caught him by the back of the neck and threw him across the family room. He hit the far wall so high up that he landed on top of the upright piano. He crashed down first upon its top, then rolled down to hit the keyboard, rolling again down onto the wooden piano stool, and then finally to the floor.

Mike looked up just in time to see Patience crossing the room toward him. With every ounce of his strength, he kicked out, making contact with her right leg just below the knee. Though this attack would have shattered the tibia (and if the weight was just right, the fibula too) of any human, Patience took no notice, and with her left leg, kicked him viciously in the side. Mike flopped over onto his back, and was sure that he could feel several broken ribs spearing his internal organs. He was sure now that he was about to die.

Then from the corner of his eye, Mike saw a figure moving across the living room. Patience kicked him in the side. He rolled over. He looked again toward the archway. From his new position, on his back, everything he was seeing appeared upside down. Standing at the entrance to the family room was Patience. Another Patience. She wore a pink, pleated mini-skirt, a tiny white spaghetti-strapped top over a slightly larger red, spaghetti-strapped top, and her four inch, pink wedge sandals made her look about seven feet tall. Even from upside-down, the look of fury on this second Patience=s face was frightening to behold.

“Shit,“ thought Mike. “The first one was killing me and she wasn’t even angry. What‘s the pissed-off one going to do to me?“

It seemed to Mike, lying on the floor, that the second Patience simple flew like Supergirl, but his brain corrected him. She had dived across the room, into the first Patience, and the two of them crashed past him into the piano. Mike closed his eyes and tried to get up, but it seemed that his family room had suddenly turned into a vacuum. He couldn’t manage to suck any air into his lungs. He lost consciousness for a moment, but returned amid fire and white light when one of the Patiences rolled over him. He closed his eyes and willed himself to roll up into a ball, but his body made no attempt to follow his directions.

In the meantime, the two women, identical in everything but their apparel and perhaps purpose fought. They made no shouts or curses or cries. They did not speak, though there was plenty of sound. When one picked up the piano and hit the other with it. When one shoved the face of the other through the wall of the family room and into the living room. When one kicked the other=s body so high that it broke off three of the four blades on the ceiling fan. Mike thought about trying to crawl out the front door, but again, his body failed him, and he lapsed into unconsciousness once more.

When he opened his eyes again, Mike was looking up into Patience=s face. At first he tried to pull away, but her beautiful, smiling eyes told him that it had all been a horrible dream. Then he took a deep breath and felt the burning in his chest and realized that it hadn’t been a dream at all. Looking around the room without moving his head, he thought idly that the room resembled the video of those homes hit by Hurricane Kirk. Patience gently brushed his face with her hand.



The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 12 Excerpt

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He cried out in pain and was suddenly sitting in the corner of the supply closet where he had been when he had rubbed the White Visio on his eyeballs. His eyes were tired but that was not why they were watering so profusely. His nose hurt like hell, and he looked down to see a huge amount of blood running down onto his shirt front.

Getting up, he grabbed a white towel from a stack on a shelf nearby and pressed it to his face. It was quickly turning red. It was the only bit of color in the room of white and grey. Still holding the towel to his bleeding nose, he opened the supply closet door and peered out into the hall in both directions. There wasn’t a person in sight. He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He moved quickly away from his hiding place. He had to take the towel away from his nose in order to climb a ladder up to the next deck. The blood began to drip quickly again as he climbed.

On the next deck, he pinched his nose with the towel to try and slow the blood flow, but winced in pain. He looked around for a moment and then realized where he had to go. He stepped quickly along forward, but had to stop after a moment and lean against the wall because he was feeling lightheaded. He took a few deep breaths and continued on. At last he came to the cabin door he needed, and knocked. The door popped wide open and the broad body, big stomach, and round, rosy face of Father Ian appeared.

“Good to see you, Captain Dechantagne!” boomed Father Ian’s voice. “Don’t stand out in the hallway. Come in. Come in. Good gracious, what has happened to you?”

“I cut myself shaving,” said Terrence, pulling the towel away from his face. “I was hoping that you could help.”

“I should say you have!” Father Ian let out a long whistle. “Sit down. As a matter of fact, I have just the help you need right here. Sister Auni here is just the person to set you right again.”

In the corner of the room, unnoticed by Terrence until this moment was a very thin woman in the long white robes of a church acolyte. Her jet black hair was cut straight across her forehead, and hung down low in back. She had deep set grey eyes and prominent cheek bones. She stood up from her seat and was several inches taller than Terrence, though only about half as wide at the shoulder. When she spoke, it was in breathy tones.

“I’m very please to make your acquaintance, Captain Dechantagne,” she said. “May I take a look at your nose please?”

She placed long thin hands on either side of his face and tilted his head upward so that she could look at his injury.

“Razor slice,” she said. “I would expect to see an injury like this in a tavern brawl.”

“Sorry. No taverns available,” said Terrence.

“In the name of the Holy Father I see your pain,” she said. “In the name of the Holy Savior I heal your wounds.”

Terrence felt life flowing from her hands. Not only did his nose stop stinging, but the pain in the back of his head and in his shoulders that he hadn’t even noticed before went away. The residual stinging in his eyes also went away. He was sure that any redness caused by the White Opthalium was gone now. Sister Auni pulled her hands away from his face and smiled.

“I knew I came to the right place,” Terrence said.

“Of course you did, my boy,” said Father Ian. “Perfect timing, too. The sister and I had just finished our prayer session. You are just in time to see her back to her cabin.

“You couldn’t be in any safer hands,” he said to Sister Auni.

“Oh indeed,” she said. “I know that already.”

Shrugging, Terrence offered his arm to the acolyte and led her out of the room.

“Good night to both of you!” Father Ian called out in his thundering voice, and then he closed the cabin door behind them.

Walking through the narrow halls of the ship, Terrence usually found it difficult to escort a lady and had to walk in a sort of shuffling sidestep to make room, and if the woman was wearing an evening gown, it was pretty much impossible to walk side by side in any case. This was not so with Sister Auni. Not only did her clerical robes flow straight from her shoulders to the floor, her entire form was scarcely as wide as his two hands splayed out side by side. Her shoulders seemed almost too narrow to hold up her normal sized head.

“Sister Auni!” A young woman Terrence didn’t know came running down the hall toward them. “Sister Auni! Mrs. Duplessis is having her baby, and the doctor wants you there as quickly as possible.”

“Lead the way, child,” said the acolyte.

The three of them made their way through a series of hatches and corridors until they came to a closed cabin door. A group of several women and girls were standing outside in the hallway. The door was quickly opened and the young woman who had fetched her, led Sister Auni inside. As she turned to close the door after her, she looked into Terrence’s face.

“Thank you, Captain Dechantagne,” she said in her breathy voice. “But I think I shall go on from here alone. Have a pleasant evening, and watch out when you are shaving.”

Terrence stood thinking for a moment. Then he gradually noticed that he was being watched from all sides by the six or seven females around him. He felt as though he had stumbled onto a stage without a script, or stepped into the middle of some savage ritual whose codex he didn’t understand.

“Ladies,” he said, and slowly backed out of the hallway, and then turned and made his way up to the topside of the ship and out onto deck.

He was surprised to find that the sun had already set. It seemed that he no longer really had any concept of time. His stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in a while. He had porridge for breakfast, but wasn’t really sure if that was this morning’s breakfast or some day in the past. This was just about dinner time though, and he decided to take his sister up on her standing invitation to dine. So he stopped by his cabin to change into a clean shirt, then went and knocked on Iolanthe’s cabin door.

The salad had already been served when he arrived, and the wait staff were just setting out the main course of roasted chicken, creamed potatoes, and pea fritters, which was just fine as far as Terrence was concerned. The waiter set a very manly portion in front of him and the other staff member, a waitress in this case, poured him a large glass of sparkling white wine. He didn’t waste any time tucking in.

“So what have you been up to?” asked Iolanthe.

“Mmph,” he shrugged non-committaly, his mouth full of food. He looked around the table. Iolanthe, Lieutenant Staff, Wizard Labrith, and an empty chair faced him. On his side of the table, Terrence’s was the only one of the four chairs occupied. He swallowed his mouthful of chicken.

“Loosing some of our popularity, are we?”

Iolanthe wrinkled her nose, but didn’t answer.

“There seems to be a medical emergency that requires Mrs. Marjoram and Dr. Kelloran,” said Lieutenant Staff. “I believe they were all invited to dinner this evening.”

“Oh yes,” Terrence said. “Mrs. Duplessis is having her baby.”

Iolanthe blinked in surprise. She had evidently not expected for him to have any idea of what might be going on. She no doubt had assumed that he had sequestered himself away somewhere, which of course he had, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

“Yes, I’ve just come from there,” he said. “Sister Auni is there as well. I’m sure they will take very good care of the woman.”

He smiled to himself and took another large mouthful of chicken, then followed it with a pea fritter, mashed up peas dipped in batter and deep fried. He would have recognized the flavor of Mrs. Colbshallow’s batter, even if he hadn’t known that she did all of Iolanthe’s cooking.

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 13 Excerpt

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“Yes, and my name is Nicohl Messonar.” She arched an eyebrow. “It is impolite not to use both names. That is only for husbands and wives, sharing an intimate moment.”
“Well, that’s certainly good to know,” I said, looking sidelong at Malagor.
“There are a great many things you will need to know, if you are to continue to live among us,” she continued. “That is why Norar Remontar requested my help in tutoring you.”
She reached into her bag and removed a square touch pad, and handed it to me. Across the front of the device, were displayed a collection of the Amatharian letter, many of which I remembered seeing in the book on the shuttle train.
“Do your people have a written language?” asked Nicohl Messonar.
“Of course.”
“Do they use a phonetic writing, or a pictographic one?”
“It is a phonetic system of writing,” I explained. “though we have some anomalous words that maintain forms from long ago.” Looking at Nicohl Messonar, I was reminded of the word “tough”, which sounds nothing like the way it is spelled.
“Good,” she said. “That also precisely describes Amatharian writing. In your hand, you have a display of our alphabet. There are thirty six letters. Press that one with your finger.” She indicated the figure that looked like a predatory animal. Almost all of the Amatharian letters resembled something recognizable. I have heard that the letter “A” is based upon the shape of a cow’s head, though I have never been able to see it myself. Here were animals, and clouds, and mountains, and a sun, all clearly recognizable for what they were. I pressed the letter.
“Buh.” The touchpad made the sound of a letter “B” in English.
“You will memorize the sounds of the alphabet and decipher these simple texts,” the teacher handed me several plastic pages of Amatharian writing. “Have it completed by the time I return. I will be back in 10 city-cycles.”
“City-cycles?”
It was then reminded that, in spite of Norar Remontar’s assurances that there was no such thing as a uniform length of time, that the Amatharians did have a measure of time. Nicohl Messonar explained the system in more detail. Long ago they had discovered an electro-magnetic pulse that reverberated through Ecos. Later they had determined that it was a result of the artificial gravity in this created world. The Amatharians had digital time pieces throughout the city– there was even one in Norar Remontar’s main room– which were all tied together and maintained a uniform measure of time. They used this time measurement for allotting work details and making appointments. However once outside the city, it meant little to them. The real difference between city-cycles and hours on Earth, were in how they were perceived by the people. If all the clocks of Earth were to go blank, hundreds of scientists would work weeks or even months, to find the correct time down to a fraction of a second. In Amathar, if the city-cycle were to fail, someone would take their best guess as to how much time had passed, and start it up again. As near as I have been able to pin-point it, the city-cycle is somewhere between two and four hours long. The Amatharians don’t even believe that it is a regular interval, though I suspect that it is.
So, after promising to, or rather threatening to return in ten city-cycles, Nicohl Messonar left. I was somewhat put off by her attitude, but then I recalled that upon first meeting, Norar Remontar had been somewhat stern, but in the interim, we had become good friends. In any case, I threw myself into an examination of the Amatharian alphabet.
Since I already knew the spoken language fairly well, the sounds produced by the letters were familiar. They were the same sounds found in English, though they were represented differently. For instance, the sound of the letter “N” as it would be used in “north” was represented by one letter, while the sound of the letter “N” as it would be used in “song” had a different letter. I was so engrossed in my little toy, that I didn’t notice that Malagor had left until he returned bearing a large meal for both of us. By that time, I was beginning to master the letters of the alphabet and their sounds.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 11 Excerpt

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Tea with Miss Lusk presented a welcomed change for Zeah. Each day seemed to be just like the day before it. Almost all of his time was spent organizing activities for the passengers, which would provide the necessities of life or a change of pace to prevent boredom or depression caused by long confinement on the ship. The first two days after their departure from the island of Enclep, he had been occupied seeing to the inventorying and storage of the supplies purchased there. The following day, he had to arrange for the priests onboard and Dr. Kelloran to deal with a fungus infection that had broken out on various parts of the bodies of a great many passengers and crew. The day after that had been washing day, which always kept him busy. It had ended with the death of Miss Kilmurray and the summary execution of Mr. Murty by Master Terrence. Zeah would have liked to have seen Murty tried for his crimes, but he was as loud in his laudation for Master Terrence as anyone who else on the ship. His daughter could have easily have been Murty’s next target, or Miss Lusk. The following day, Zeah had organized a memorial service for Miss Kilmurray. Two days after that, when Lieutenant Staff had completed his investigation, Murty’s body, which had been kept on ice, was dumped unceremoniously over the side.
It was surprising to Zeah, who had expected that there would be a somber mood among the passengers following the memorial, but the atmosphere on the Minotaur actually seemed to lighten. There had been a cloud hanging over the lives of everyone onboard since the murder of Miss Astley, though most had not realized at the time that the murder was one of a series. Now with the murderer dead, people were much freer with their smiles, their attitudes, and their actions. Zeah had originally planned a series of games and activities to slowly raise people’s spirits, but had changed his plans and instead scheduled a dance. It took place the evening of Pentuary ninth, ten days after leaving Enclep.
The danced proved to be a great success and everyone who was there seemed to have a wonderful time. Miss Dechantagne surprised everyone by attending. She wore a beautiful royal blue evening gown with large balloon sleeves and a white satin belt with embroidered blue and silver silk flowers. She had a bouquet of fresh flowers at her waist and atop her curled auburn hair. And the bare expanse of her shoulders and the choker of pearls she wore made her long, thin neck look even more so.
Everyone admired Miss Dechantagne’s beauty, but Zeah found Miss Lusk’s charms even richer. She had arrived in a buttercup yellow gown with butterfly sleeves. The skirt had little pleated waves of fabric falling straight on the sides, and was trimmed with vines of embroidery in gold and beads extending down each side of the front. It was ornamented on one side with a velvet panel, and on the other with two large velvet bows.
Zeah had not yet spoken to either of the two women, when Master Augie arrived with Dr. Kelloran. Lieutenant Dechantagne was dressed in a fine cutaway coat which exposed a red vest embroidered with a dragon motif. He had a new grey felt derby, which he must have purchased just before leaving Brech, with a red carnation in the band. Dr. Kelloran’s Thiss-green silk gown might not have stood out as much as those of yellow or royal blue, but it was equally fine in an understated way. Decorated with beads of jade and tiger-eye, it was wonderfully offset by her long white suede gloves.
Every passenger attending, especially the women, came in their finest clothes. It seemed less like a simple dance staged rather quickly aboard a crowded naval ship than the social event of the season. More than a few officers and sailors attended as well, and all of them wore their dress-whites. Notably absent was Lieutenant Staff, who was on duty that evening. Master Terrence was not in attendance either. Zeah thought that this was a shame, as seventy four unmarried women, and more than a few who were married, all seemed to be looking for him.
The two most talked about entrances were the wizard Suvir Kesi and Sorceress Zurfina, whom Zeah thought must have been meeting for the first time. Kesi wore traditional Mirsannan garb—a long brown robe, lined all along the open edge with ferret skins, and reaching to short, black boots. Beneath the open robe, he wore blue silk pantaloons and a yellow and red striped silk shirt. His ever present yellow fez with blue tassel made him visible from anywhere at the dance. Zurfina wore, or Zeah would have said ‘almost wore’, a black dress that was cut much like the togas worn by the ancient coastal cultures. It was loosely draped across her front, continuing to cover her breasts only through the use of magic or perhaps some kind of glue. Between her breasts, it fell to her naval and there were no sides at all above the waist. Below her waist, the dress went all the way to the floor, but there was a slit cut up one side that reached to her mid-thigh. It was the type of garment to be worn only by someone who had no care what other people thought. Zeah noticed that while many scandalized looks were aimed in the direction of the sorceress, almost no one at the dance mentioned her dress, or lack there-of. The story of her having turned a dressing maid to stone had lost nothing in the telling.
As it turned out, there was no need for Zurfina the Magnificent to be the subject of conversation. There was much to talk of. Earlier in the day, many aboard had watched a small fleet of seven ships, Enclepian Junks, sailing west toward the land that the Minotaur had so recently left. They were probably on their way back from the Mullien Islands to the feudal lands in southern Enclep, with holds full of spices and strange trade goods. Zeah was rather peeved because he had been busy at the time and had not been able to reach the deck before the square-rigged, double-ruddered, wooden sailing vessels had passed out of sight. He always seemed to miss the great sights. He had missed both the Freedonian dirigible and the school of giant whales which many passengers had noted before they had reached Enclep’s port. Despite not being able to participate in the gossip about the many strange things that had been observed from the deck of the Brech battleship, Zeah thoroughly enjoyed the dance. He danced the night away in the presence of Miss Lusk, missing only one piece, when for some unknown reason Zurfina had insisted upon his accompaniment on the dance floor.
“Mr. Korlann, you seem distracted,” said Zurfina, in her deep, sultry voice.
“I am always distracted,” said Zeah. He was in fact, trying very hard not to stare at the vast expanse of skin which the sorceress had left uncovered. Though the two star tattoos above her breasts, which were often seen by many, were now covered, a new one around her naval was now clearly visible.
“You aren’t afraid of me, are you Mr. Korlann?”

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 12 Excerpt

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The transport dropped lower as Bentar Hissendar guided in to a landing at a large installation just within the wall of the city. On a large tarmac, surrounded by several buildings, sat a dozen transports just like the one in which we were flying. When our craft came to a stop on the ground, a crew of Amatharian men and women ran out onto the field to service the vehicle. They were wearing bodysuits very much like those the knights wore, though these were light blue rather than black, and they were worn without the tabard over them. Bentar Hissendar turned and spoke to one of them.

“Send word to the Kurar Ka, that we have returned with his grandson,” he turned to Norar Remontar. “It is best to send word before you go showing up at the door of your home. Give everyone a chance to realize you are alive.”

Norar Remontar replied, but I was too busy looking around to pay much attention to their conversation. The wall over which we had passed to come to this airfield was about two hundred feet tall, and was constructed or at least covered by a copper-colored metal. It looked to be thick enough for a truck to drive over. If fact, as I stared at it, some sort of vehicle running slowly along the top of the wall, passed by. The way it sat on the top, hugging the sides, reminded me of the monorail at Disneyland, though this vehicle was a single unit rather than a train, and had no windows, so therefore did not appear to be a passenger craft.

“That is the automated sentry,” said Norar Remontar, breaking into my observations. “Come, you have much to see.”

Malagor and I joined the returned son of Amathar, as he walked across the tarmac to one of the buildings at its edge. Inside, we were greeted by more Amatharians wearing bodysuits in a variety of colors. I asked Norar Remontar about the difference in clothing, and he informed me that different occupations within the city had traditional colors associated with them. Among those colors were black for soldier, light blue for mechanic, white for food preparers or servers, grey for doctors, and red for record keepers. The tabard was essentially an Amatharian uniform, worn by none but soldiers.

I was still thinking about this system of color coding, when the familiar black suit with white tabard appeared before me. A young woman, dressed in that very garb, stood with arms folded beside a desk just inside the terminal building. Her tabard bore the same crest that Norar Remontar’s did– a flaming sun with wings. When I looked up into her beautiful flawless face, for a moment I was in shock. She was my princess, rather I mean, she was Norar Remontar’s sister. But the impression lasted only a moment. This young woman had much shorter hair, a slightly smaller nose, darker skin, and larger, rounder eyes, that made her look much less serious. Admittedly the only time I had seen the Princess was during the height of battle. When the female knight saw Norar Remontar, she smiled broadly and reached out to grasp his hand.

“Word of your return precedes you, kinsman, though not by much,” she said, in a melodic but surprisingly strong voice. “I have just heard the good news, and here you are.”

“You are as beautiful as ever, Vena Remontar,” replied my friend. He then turned to Malagor and me.

“This is Remiant Vena Remontar, my cousin.” He used the word for mother’s sister’s daughter.

“I am soon to be related to you in other ways as well,” the young woman said. “I have agreed to let Tular Maximinos announced our intention to marry.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess – Chapter 7 Excerpt

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Chapter Seven: Wherein my story is interrupted by goblins, thereby explaining why it might not seem as good as it really was.

Goblins are nasty little blighters. They remind me of my cousin Gervil’s friend called Rupert. His name was Sally, which explains why he was called Rupert. But like goblins, he was short and had a big, round head. I don’t know why goblins have such large heads for their little bodies. Of course I don’t know why Rupert did either. There doesn’t seem to be much advantage in it. On the other hand, goblins have excellent night vision, making it very easy to sneak up on people in the dark. And they have abnormally large mouths with an abnormally large number of teeth in them. This was very unlike Rupert, that is to say Sally, who as I recall had only five or six teeth, though he made up for that by having an extra toe. In addition to which I don’t believe his night vision was all that it might have been, for once he kicked me in the head when he was on his way to the outhouse. Of course that could have been on purpose. Rupert was a bit of a nasty blighter too.

“What are you doing?” asked the orphan, as Hysteria took a step back.
“Thinking about a fellow called Rupert,” said I.
“Well stop it, and get us away.”
I said that Hysteria took a step back, but what I should have said is that she took two steps back, one on each side. I could tell she didn’t want the foul little creatures around her feet. She’s very particular about her feet, as most horses are wont to be. As they approached still nearer, she reared up a bit—not enough to bother me, but just enough for the orphan to slip off her haunches and land with a “poof” on his seat in the snow. The goblins cackled grotesquely and I’m sure that they thought they had secured for themselves a snack. They stopped laughing though when I kicked my leg over Hysteria’s shoulder and dropped lightly to the ground.
With a quick motion, I pulled my knife still stained red from crabapple pie, from my boot. It was a small enough weapon to face off six attackers and I would have much rather had a sword, but I had been forced to sell my sword in order to get a fellow out of prison. I didn’t really know him, but he was the beloved of a poor but beautiful farm girl. In retrospect it would have been better if he had not turned out to be a werewolf, but that is another story. If I ever write this down, maybe I’ll say that I sold it to get the poor but beautiful farm girl out of prison and that I slew the werewolf. Yes, that’s a much better story.
“What are you doing?” asked the orphan.
“Recalling the time I slew a werewolf,” said I.
“Finally something useful!” he exclaimed.
The two foremost goblins looked at one another. While six or seven goblins might sneak up on a man when he was asleep, or might chase down a maiden who was alone and defenseless, they would have to be extraordinary members of their species to take on a seasoned warrior with a weapon.
“That’s right potato head!” shouted the orphan, jumping to his feet. “Werewolves, vampires, giants; he’s killed them all.
“Gree yard?” said the first goblin.
“Grock tor,” said the second goblin.
“I don’t think they understand us,” said I.
The first began to skirt around me to the right and the second began to skirt around me to the left. The others were following along. I don’t know whether their intention was to surround me so that they could attack from all sides at once, or to skirt around me to get to the boy, but I wasn’t going to let either of those things happen. I took a quick step to the right and kicked the big round head of the second goblin, which flew almost as far as the kickball I kicked as a child, and of course the rest of the goblin went right along with his head.

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 7 Part 1

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The remainder of June shot by. Each day Mike got up and showered, to find a warm, dry towel waiting for him. This was followed by breakfast, which he had gotten used to. Mike began to follow Patience’s example and usually did a bit of light home improvement work before lunch, but as the month progressed and it became far too hot to work outside, he thought more and more about doing some writing. On Monday the twenty-first, he cleaned up the desk that had been sitting unused in the south bedroom and went to Wal-Mart to purchase a new wriTee, which he quickly set up. Within a few days, he had the first chapter of his book done, though after that it became more of a strain to remember all the stupid things that the kids at school had said or done. Afternoons were almost always a time for relaxation in front of the vueTee.
Evenings had used to be the same, but right about the time that Mike began working on his book, Patience began dragging him out after dinner. They went to the movie theater, the city event center to listen to the philharmonic, and even went dancing. Mike couldn’t dance, but as with everything else, Patience was programmed and ready to go and she guided Mike through it.
For her part, Patience didn’t really have any down time. She went to bed with Mike, but within an hour or so, after he had fallen asleep, she was back up. She used the night time hours to clean and maintain the house and by the middle of the month there wasn’t a spot anywhere that the most fastidious person wouldn’t have been happy to eat off of. This left the daytime hours free so that she could take care of all of Mike’s needs. She waited upon him. She served as his accountant, personal trainer, and expert chef. She was mother, friend, concubine, confidant, and upon occasion taskmaster.
On the thirtieth, which was a Wednesday, Mike stood on the scale at the gym and marveled that he had lost sixteen pounds. Actually he was marveling that he had lost only sixteen pounds, because he thought that he looked at least thirty pounds lighter. It was, he supposed because muscle weighed so much more than fat, and he was putting on a bit of the former as he was losing the latter. He flexed his arm to make his bicep bulge and smiled to himself.
He and Patience climbed back into the car and returned home. A nice hot shower awaited him, and he didn’t take long before climbing into it. He had his head bent down beneath the steaming spray, when he heard Patience outside the shower door.
“What do you think about going to Knott’s Berry Farm?” she asked.
“Why?”
“This 150-acre theme park has many exciting rides like the Jaguar, Montezuma’s Revenge and Calico Thunder as well as many fun attractions like the Buffalo Nickel Arcade, Camp Snoopy, and the Mystery Lodge.”
“Are you reading a brochure?” asked Mike, sticking his face out of the door.
“I memorized the ad on the vueTee.”
“Why do you want to go to Knott’s Berry Farm?”
“It is not that I want to go. I thought you might like to go.”
“I took the kids when they were little,” Mike said, as he climbed out of the shower and took the warm dry towel that Patience held in her hand. “I don’t think I would want to go now. Besides, last time I went, I didn’t fit in half of the ride restraints. If I was going to go somewhere, I’d… I don’t know.”
“June is over,” said Patience. “You have less than a month and a half before you have to return to school. We should do something that you would enjoy.”
“Alright, let me think about it for a while.” Mike went upstairs to his den and began typing away, writing down as many anecdotes about school as he could recall.
Around noon, Patience arrived at Mike’s elbow with his lunch. She had constructed a near perfect club sandwich on toasted whole wheat bread and arrayed it on the plate with a cup of tomato salad. A large diet Pepsi accompanied it. He had no sooner accepted the tray and opened his mouth to thank her, when the front door bell rang. She turned and bounced out of the room. Mike could hear her going down the stairs. A moment later he could hear a conversation going on downstairs, though not the words. He also heard the door to the garage opening and a few minutes later, closing. Mike didn’t get up to see what was going on because he already knew. For the past week, the FedEx man had arrived every single day with boxes of merchandise that Patience had bought on eBay. She usually had at least one package going out too. A few minutes later she entered the study carrying a very large and very heavy looking box.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a desk,” said Patience.
“I don’t need a new desk. This one works just fine.”
“It’s not for you, Mike. It’s for me.”
“What do you need a desk for?”
“I’m going to use it when I keep track of my shipping and sales. I’m going to get a little vueTee and set it up here too, so that I can buy and sell on eBay right from here. Then I’m going to set up shelves in this closet and store my smaller merchandise right here. I can continue to keep the bigger things in the garage.”
“Alright.”
Patience tore the end of the box open and began pulling out pieces of a black and white, assemble it yourself, desk. She was still examining the parts that she had pulled from the box, when the doorbell rang again.
“Don’t get up,” Mike said. “I’ll get it.”
He skipped down the stairs, to the front door, and opened it. A tall man in a green army uniform stood at the steps. Mike stared at him for a moment and then stepped outside to clasp him around the shoulders.
“General Smith! How are you?”
“Dad, you know I could get court-martialed for impersonating a general. Why don’t you let me in? It’s got to be four hundred degrees out here.”
Mike leaned back and looked at the thermometer just inside the door. “Not a bit over one forty eight. Come on in. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming, Lucas?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Mike closed the door and ushered his son into the living room. Lucas was a younger taller version of his father. His hair was shorter and thicker, but already had the trademark Smith grey temples. He cut a fine figure in his uniform with four stripes on each sleeve.
“How long are you staying for?” asked Mike.
“I’ve got a week. I could stay with Harriet if you’d rather.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m turning your room into an exercise room, but Patience has made a really nice guest bedroom out of Harriet’s old room. I’m really glad you showed up. I was just starting to get bored.” He paused. “They’re not sending you to Antarctica, are they?”
“No.”
Mike sighed. “That’s a relief.”
“I wouldn’t mind going actually. But they don’t need many accountants down there.”
“You never know. They might want someone to inventory snowballs… or body bags.”
“Yes, well, they might at that. So where is your robot girlfriend?”
“Patience!” Mike called up the stairs. “We have company.”
Patience came bounding down the stairs. Although Mike new that she had been clothed, because she had made her daily contact with the delivery man, he didn’t remember what she had been wearing. She had on a pink halter top, a pair of low-rise sky blue shorts with a two inch wide matching belt, and a pair of pink buckle sandals with a cork wedge heel so high that a person shouldn’t have been able to walk on them. Of course Patience wasn’t really a person, at least according to the state of Nevada. She stopped with a bounce in the living room.
“Hello Lucas,” she said, and gave him a great hug.
“Wow, Dad. Nice selection.”
“Thank you,” said Mike and Patience at the same time.
The three of them sat down in the living room and just talked for quite a while. Before Mike or his son knew it, the afternoon was waning. Patience went to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner and Mike gave Lucas a tour of the house, showing him the many improvements and repairs that Patience had completed. He showed him the guest room, now complete with new bed and furniture, new curtains, and new paint. Lucas’s luggage was already there, having been brought up by Patience earlier.
“So you turned Harriet’s room into a guest room. Let’s see this exercise room that you made out of mine.”
The exercise room had been improved quite a bit. It had been painted and had new blinds over the windows. The exercise mat on the floor was still there, but it had been joined by a treadmill, a stationary bicycle, and a rowing machine. There was also a large vueTee on the other side of the room.
“Nice,” said Lucas, when he looked in the door.
“And across the hall here is the study,” said Mike. “We’re still working on it. I’ve got my old desk over there. Patience is setting up her own desk right over here.”
“What does she need a desk for?”
“She’s making a bit of extra money selling old junk on eBay.”
“She’s not selling my Star Wars action figures, is she?”
“Of course not,” assured Mike. “Those aren’t worth anything anyway. You should have sold them back when everybody was still collecting them.”
“They have sentimental value,” said Lucas.
“They’re boxed up down in the garage.”
“Well, I see you have a new wriTee,” said Lucas. “What are you doing with it?”
“I’ve finally started that book I was always planning to write… about school. It’s coming along pretty well too. I’ve spent more time in this room in the past too weeks than I ever spent here. I don’t even know why we had an extra bedroom.”
“Sure you do, Dad,” said Lucas, with a strange look on his face.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 10 Excerpt

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Senta watched from the deck of the H.M.S. Minotaur high above, as Iolanthe Dechantagne paced back and forth on the dock, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Senta clasped her own hands behind her back and paced back and forth across the deck, all the while keeping watch on Miss Dechantagne from the corner of her eye. Miss Dechantagne’s older brother, Captain Dechantagne, walked up to her and Miss Dechantagne stepped close to him and spoke, emphasizing whatever words she was saying by poking her index finger into his chest. Senta walked over to the small tiny steel dragon sitting near her. He had a tiny chain fastened around his ankle, attaching him to his carrier box. She poked her finger at the dragon.
“You listen to me,” she said. “I’m very important and you are only my brother, and I am the boss, and you’d better not do anything I don’t like.”
The dragon half-heartedly snapped at her finger, which she pulled out of the way.
“Don’t tease our boy, Pet,” said Zurfina, appearing behind her.
“He doesn’t want that chain on,” said Senta.
“We can’t let him loose right now,” said the sorceress. “He’s liable to fly off into the forest and not come back until well after we’re gone.”
“He can’t fly very good.”
“That’s just what he wants you to think. Now bring him inside. I have something for you.”
Senta opened the door of the animal carrier, but the little dragon just looked at her.
“Go on,” she said. “Get in.”
The dragon made a noise more like a cat yowling than a reptile. Senta reached out and rubbed the scales on its belly. The dragon bit her on the wrist, not hard, though its needle sharp teeth still drew blood.
“Owe!”
The dragon made an apologetic noise and then crawled down into its chamber. Senta closed the carrier and then sat down. The ship was starting to spin around her. She looked down without real comprehension at her wrist and watched as the blood flowed freely down her palms, down her fingers and dripped into a puddle on the deck.
“Cheeky twonk.” said Senta, woozily.
“Oh good grief,” said Zurfina.

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 11 Excerpt

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Malagor, Norar Remontar, and I stepped out of the elevator and into a room lit just like the one from which we had left. This room had no geometric video controller in it however, and it was triangular in shape, with the elevator opening in the middle of one of three equal sides, and an open doorway on the wall to our left.
“This is peculiar,” said Norar Remontar.
I nodded my head at the understatement. “I would be willing to bet that this elevator, these rooms, the lighting, and the controls for the video images, are all artifacts of the Elder Gods, or whomever it was that created Ecos.
“I am inclined to agree,” said Norar Remontar.
We looked around this new room for several moments, but found nothing of interest. Finally Malagor voiced the opinion that we really had no other alternative but to head down the hallway and see where it led us. I was toying with the idea of suggesting that we try our luck one more time in the mysterious elevator, but I decided that Malagor was probably right. It was time to continue on our way. That is just what we did.
The dark hallway beckoned us like a gaping maw, but I tried not to think of it that way. It really doesn’t take too long to adjust to continual daylight. I think it would be much harder to adjust to continual darkness. Norar Remontar turned on his small flashlight; I unsheathed my sword, and the three of us with a quiet look between us, started down the long hallway. This time the hallway continued straight for what must have been five miles before opening into any type of room what so ever. At last it did, and as soon as we stepped into the room, I knew we were in for trouble.
A sudden wave of stench assaulted my nostrils. It was the smell of several dozen bodies which had not seen a bath in a long time, mixed with the smell of bodily waste accumulated over a period of several generations. I wasn’t the only one to smell it. Malagor immediately began coughing and gagging, to the extent that I feared he would pass out. A look of disgust crossed Norar Remontar’s face, but otherwise he remained characteristically stoic.
Malagor had just regained his own composure, when a horde of creatures burst screaming toward us from the dark. There were a score or more of the short, bipedal, four armed rat-like creatures, and they attacked using stone axes and razor sharp teeth. Screaming like banshees, the Kartags literally fell upon us.
I skewered the first creature to reach me on the end of my sword, turned, and threw my shoulder into the next one, sending it flying backwards into its fellows. At that moment the entire room was lit up by the incredible brightness of the Amatharian sword unsheathed. It sizzled and sparked as Norar Remontar used it to cut through the bodies of three of the Kartags. At almost the same moment, Malagor let loose with a burst of light rifle fire which cut a nice round smoking hole in the chest of another rat. This display of destruction was all that was necessary to convince most of the beasts to retreat. I quickly lopped off the head of one who apparently was having difficulty making that decision.

Eaglethorp Buxton and the Elven Princess – Chapter 6

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Chapter Six: Wherein I begin to tell the story of the Queen of Aerithraine

Hysteria clomped along slowly down the snow covered road for some time. The orphan was so quiet that for a while I thought he must have fallen asleep. But at last he stirred and shifted a bit in his seat, which is to say upon Hysteria’s flank. I myself had been quiet as I remembered the events of that horrible night.
“What are you thinking about?” asked the orphan.
“I’m thinking about that horrible night,” I replied.
“Did you never find your family?”
“No, though I searched for weeks. My mother was to make me a blueberry pie that night, and I not only have never seen my mother since, I did not get to eat that pie either.”
“I’m sorry I brought up such a painful memory,” he said, then paused. “Do you suppose that the purple drops on the floor could have been from your blueberry pie?”
I felt the heat rising up within me.
“Fiends!” said I. “To rob a man of his mother and his pie in the same night.”
“Perhaps it were best that we think on something else,” said he.
“Perhaps,” I agreed.
“If you are really such a great story-teller…”
“The greatest in the world.”
“And if the story of the Queen of Aerithraine is a great story…”
“Wonderful. Exciting. True. Profound.”
“Well, maybe you could tell me the story.”
“I get half a crown for that story in Illustria,” said I.
“I have a shiny penny,” said he.
“The story begins in Aerithraine, far to the west, along the coast of the great ocean sea. From storied Illustria, its capital, to Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills in River County, Aerithraine has been a great and powerful country for some seven hundred years more or less. By more or less, I mean that it has been more or less seven hundred years that Aerithraine has been a country and that it has been more or less great and more or less powerful during those seven hundred years. But about fifty years ago, it was less. Then the old king died, and as is the way of kings, a new one was crowned. He was King Julian the Rectifier.
“He was called Julian the Rectifier because he was chiefly interested in rectifying. He spent most of his time rectifying. He rectified all over the place. And he was good at it. He rectified like nobody else.”
“It means setting things to right,” said the orphan.
“Of course it does and that is just what he did. Under his reign, the kingdom was prosperous and wealthy. And as he wasn’t so interested in warring as in rectifying, there was peace throughout the land. King Julian had only one son, and he passed to that son the strongest and wealthiest kingdom in all of Duaron, and if it had only remained so, Elleena would have become a minor princess perhaps or might not have been born at all.”
“Which would not have made a half-crown story,” pointed out the orphan.
“That is so.”
“Carry on then.”
“King Justin was the son of Julian. I hear tell that he was once called Justin the Good and Justin the Wise, though now when story-tellers refer to him, they usually call him Justin the Weak or Justin the Unready.”
“What do you call him?”
“I just call him King Justin,” said I. “Though I truly believe he may deserve the title Justin the Brave, that is not what the listeners want to hear.”
“Go on.”
“King Justin married a princess from the faraway land of Goth. The Arch-Dukes of Goth, which is to say the rulers of that land, have for generations, maintained power through a tightly woven web of treaties with its mighty neighbors. Their chief barter in this endeavor is the marriage of the many female members of the family. I hear the current Arch-Duke has but four daughters at least as of yet, but his father who was Arch-Duke before him had seventeen, and his father nineteen.”
“That hurts just thinking about it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“It must have been quite a coup of diplomacy for the Arch-Duke of Goth to make a match with the King of Aerithraine, but he did, marrying to the King his daughter Beatrix. And though I hear that the women of that country wear too much make-up, she was known as a great beauty with pale white skin, raven hair, smoldering eyes, and a gold ring in her nose, as is the fashion in the east.
“King Justin and Queen Beatrix had four strong sons, the eldest of whom was Prince Jared. He was particularly beloved of the people. I saw him once when I was a child of four or five, sitting on my poor old father’s shoulders as the Purple Knights passed on their tall white steeds, that is to say, I was seated on my father’s shoulders and the Prince was not. I don’t remember why they were in River County. It was too long ago. He would have grown to be King upon his father’s death if it was not for…”
“Goblins!”
“Yes, that’s right. You didn’t say you had heard the story before, though I’ll warrant it wasn’t told as well…”
“No!” screamed the orphan. “Goblins! Right there!”
He pointed straight ahead, and sure enough, stepping out of the shadows and into the moonlight were a half dozen creepy little man-things. They were no more than three feet tall, their over-sized round heads, glowing eyes, and gaping maws giving away their identity. As they came closer those mouths widened into grins filled with jagged little teeth, looking far too much like the teeth on the blade of a cross-cut saw for my taste. They brandished what weapons they had, mostly things they had picked up from the ground—a stick, a length of cord with a knot in it. But a couple of them carried old, discarded straight razors.