Horrible Sci-fi/mystery writing... A Chapter from my latest novel...

Breath of relief. No blood clot. A baker's cist instead... I was told it' something I'll need to learn to live with... (wonderful )

Usually I just go by my real name "Dr R. D. Charbonneau" or DrC if it's available. The Dumb One was the product of being disgusted with a sometimes abusive writer's forum. Of course it was out of the frying pan into the fire, I guess. Writing critics are so often brutal narcissists.

 

("...well it is good to know you're doing to live after all, even if that might detract somewhat from the eventual value of your book now..." joked the goblin thanking the scientist though but then adding "...anyway, I think that if I had ever taken those critics seriously I would be at a total loss for forum readership at this point, but let me guess something else, you're a member of the not so esteemed "banned from writersforums" club aren't you, I mean there does seem to be an awful lot of us who are, and I don't think can ask you this on writersbeat, oh, and if you wish to meet the other vet, you'd be welcome too but I'm only in that section there like I'm only in this section here...")

http://www.christianforums.com/t7800416-27/

 

I'm on the christianforumspariah list, too

 

("...well that was quick then..." smiled the goblin, adding "...sounds like you'd be more suited to the chameleon's den after all...", as the goblin the linked that one instead)

http://www.exulibus.net/showthread.php?262-Random-Stuff&p=102898#post102898

 

As of the moment, I have enough stops to make the daily plate pretty packed. I looked at it briefly. I checked out your cartoon on WB. Thought it was interesting comic art.

 

("...yes the eagle comic was the young boy's staple back just a few year prior to mine, where I think it was the forerunner to "doctor who" even..." mentioned the goblin thanking the scientist anew, adding "...you're right, there are lots and lots of forums out there, yet I like here oddly because it's a forum where one can be pretty explicit contentwise without its being a troll forum, and if anyone starts livewriting here is where I introduce them to practice...")

 

But it's so lonely...

 

("...well where would you suggest then that isn't lonely that let's you post pictures..." asked the goblin)

 

As of the moment, I don't know. Maybe you have some suggestions in thee "hip forums." I have barely 20 posts, so don't know my way around much yet.

 

("...well I'm not anyway else here, I'm only ever in one section of each forum then, I'm here upon here then, writer cafe on writersbeat, etc., in fact, that's is how I can be on most forums because I simply hang out in their off topics section..." mentioned the goblin wondering if the scientist had more of his book on offer then)

 

Chapter Two


Climatch, Chicago Hq., Entry:April 5, 2017


“Bradley!” Daryl's eyes grew to the size of quarters. “Keep your eyes glued to that readout, dude!” The drops of ammonia titrated one by one into the first burette. “That water jacket has to be maintained at sixty degrees, or our day can get real bad, real fast.”


“Sorry, Daryl.” Bradley was sounding stuffed up. “Something's got me needing to sneeze.”


“Great!” He reached over and pushed the red, emergency stop button. The burette flooded with water. He sighed. “At least this time the batch was just started.”


“Daryl, I can build us a motion control system to do the dangerous stuff on a few days notice.” Bradley blew his nose into a well used bandana.


“I know that.” Daryl removed his goggles. “We have to know what every step will need first.”


“The professor has an explosives manufacturing variance.” Bradley was thoughtful. “Why doesn't he just buy some RDX?”


“It doesn't have anywhere near the ergs per molecule. By encapsulating the tri-iodide in the stabilizer the initiator takes up less space. The metacyclothene needs close internal proximity for its implosion phase. The tri-iodide imbedded within the acetate thread provides that, so a kilo of the MCT gives us the same explosion of a one hundred kiloton bomb.”


“Do you really think this is going to work?”


“Professor Hanks has worked on his model for over a decade. Thirty of the fifty kilogram bombs set off in the right sequence begins a redistribution of the deep and upper mantle magma that should return the magnetosphere to the position it occupied in 1940 within a few years. The Alaskan hotspot should resolve itself and cool considerably. It gives us enough time to stop polluting the atmosphere. Once the earth's system recovers the polar ice, we should have a climate closer to what we had in the 60's.”


“What if it doesn't work?”


“Would it matter?” Daryl shook his head. He heaved another sigh. “We are obligated to try.”




**************************************************************




Daniels had satisfied Sanford. He had refused to return the badges he'd earned as a scout, when they stripped him of his honor, fortunately providing the later proof that he had nothing to do with the skull in the tree. He had brought his wife, who was also his lawyer, along as a witness. The only reason he continued to return to the Springfield campground locale during the jamborees was to rendezvous with her. Once the murders had begun, he made certain to keep a watchful eye on her. Courage, not conspiracy. Kathy backed up his story he'd kept to himself all those years, taking the heat to keep the Girl Scouts from disgracing her as well. He proved his own worth in science by pointing out elements the agent could not.


“You keep trying to point me in the direction of this Professor Hanks.” Sanford's profoundly large set of classic, negro teeth reminded Daniels of a piranha preparing to lunge forth at its meal. “I have to admit, it's tough to wrap my head around a faculty member turned serial killer.”


“It didn't even cross my mind till you showed me the photos of that skull.” Daniels opened the folder unveiling the profile of that amazingly well preserved specimen. He pointed to a notch just above the pinion of the jaw. “Look at this. Considering the lucky break that this willow was likely infested with aphids, it provided the sticky sap that protected the skull. There's no sign of flesh being preserved, so the infestation likely occurred long after Scouty disappeared.”


“So get to the punch line.” Sanford's thick gaucho style mustache couldn't hide his impatience. In his mind he was imagining that this cold case he thought was open and shut would be remaining open for years same as it had in the 60's when the first agent was trying to solve it.


“That's what I'm alluding to.” Daniels tapped the photo to draw attention to what he'd already noticed. “This missing section does not seem to have been found anywhere near the specimen. If it had, there would be photos of it. The rest of the bones have apparently not been found either. It's not a bullet entry wound, so it's telling me Scouty's head was likely blown off with a charge. Professor Hanks earned a lot of money for his research as a demolition expert. Do the math.”


“Well I'll be.” Sanford scratched his bald, brown head. “Doctor, I think I misjudged you.” He imagined his promotion for being the agent who found an aging serial killer and closed an aging case. “Would you mind stepping out of retirement into a consultant position?” The fact was that neither Daniels nor his wife fit the profile of serial killers. Similarly, there was no evidence any more to suggest this doctor was anything beside a rebel in his younger days.


Daniels pondered the idea for a moment gave a response that seemed positive. “Well... my wife and I do know the Springfield campground territory possibly better than even the local DNR rangers.”




*****************************************************************




Hanks Estate, Entry:April 7, 2017, 10:00 AM Central Time


Sanford pulled his Hummer III into the lane nearest the guard station. He scanned the view of the picturesque, red brick home barely forty feet beyond.


Surrounded on three sides by high rise, high dollar condominium style apartments, the historical mansion on Astor Street, like Professor Hanks, defied the wrecking ball with unending upkeep. More than once Chicago had volleyed to seek eminent domain rights to acquire more land for skyscrapers. Hanks would enlist the Historical Society's opinion and start making outlandish bids to acquire the surrounding properties with the idea of razing them instead. The final word to defeat Chicago's annexation resolved not only from his tenure at the university, but from that mansion having been held as his primary residence for half of a century.


The agent didn't know or really care about the history of a home clearly beyond his income. All he wanted was to tout his own authority to the gatekeeper and interview Hanks without a hassle. Thirty seconds seemed like thirty minutes waiting for the guard to emerge. Finally a thin, short, pasty skinned man, armed like any cop, sauntered up to the Hummer, holding a walkie talkie held to his ear. Sanford motored down his window, holding up his identification and shield.

“Professor, there's a Federal Agent at the gate.” Thomas Door's name had been a source of irony since he could first remember. From wise cracks, to an early job making doors to a later one installing them, to being told he made a better door than a window, the typecasting was inevitable. He had worked for the temperamental Hanks for most of a decade without any complaints to speak of. He and his two security coworkers were paid well, while enjoying rooms in the Professor's mansion till such time that they would marry and have kids. There he was safe from ridicule. His side arm didn't hurt his ego either.


“Scan his credentials, then let him in, Thomas,” the professor was always willing to cooperate with federal investigations. Why shouldn't he if there was nothing to hide? Why should he even if there was?


“Will do, Professor.” Door accepted the command, then clipped the squawk box back onto his belt. He returned to the guard station, opening the huge gate. The Hummer passed through. The gate swung closed behind him. The agent gathered his composure along the steps up to the front door.


Sanford was a dynamic, stout man. When the massive front door opened, he was back to sporting the same dumfounded look that might have one expecting a drop or two of drool to escape over his slightly protrusive, lower lip. The professor's butler was not only an even darker skinned Afro-American, but more than a full head taller than the agent, with arms and shoulders resembling a champion body builder on steroids.


“May I help you, Sir?” Raul spoke with a thick, deep Oxford accent that reminded Sanford of the Bureau's former director who had hired him ten years prior.


Recovering his composure again, the agent slowly spat out, “Agent Sanford from the Missing Person's Bureau to see Professor Hanks.” He held up his I.D. Card.


“Follow me, Sir.”


As he followed behind the giant butler, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number 2 in G became louder and more present. Sanford didn't recognize the piece. He only knew it as classic music. Music in general was one of his lowest priority interests.


At first he suspected the professor was enjoying listening to the complex piece written over two hundred years prior. As the butler led him through a set of French doors wide and tall enough to be cleared by a Mack truck, he knew the music was coming from this room. When Raul stepped aside, sweeping a massive arm toward the sparsely furnished chamber, he realized the person within was not working quietly, seated at some huge desk, but lost in a fever of motion at a perfectly maintained concert, grand piano. The man playing so intently, with no detectable error, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Russian who wrote the opus. Sanford didn't know that either. Hammering the keys to its crescendo as though blind to the presence of anyone else in the room, the professor finished.


Sanford hated classical music more than any other. He offered not so much as even cordial applause. He had come for an interview and to serve a home detention order till Hanks could be ruled out as prime suspect. Fourteen murders wailing from beyond the grave were important enough to interrupt everything a single man had planned while charges could be decided upon. Even serious threats made more than half a century ago were enough circumstantial evidence to build a case. Blowing the head off a scoutmaster was enough reason to immobilize someone. If the suspect did anything that remotely seemed to obfuscate or confuse the investigation, that courtesy of home detention could end with his arrest.


Sanford conducted his interview and service of the mandate, signed by a judge. Hanks cooperated, still he was far from a docile little lamb. He already knew his rights. As soon as the interview was finished, his local attorneys were brought into play.

 

("...reads well, keep it coming slowly..." suggested the goblin)

 

Here' an excerpt from another book I've been working on for quite some time. I keep wondering if its really just a trunk novel.


_______________________________________________________


I was reasonably certain, then, that the estate would not allow one inside its structure. I knew that also included me, but I could always walk in and out through the front gate. The ship accelerated upward and forward in time. The backs of my teeth felt like a dentist was after them with a drill.


Although we ascended high enough to ascertain the curvature of the planet, I decided to stay at a low enough altitude to keep a better eye on things. No different than if it were using a refracting telescope, the ship could see a lot of what was happening on the planet's surface, but the higher I went the lower was the resolution. The viewer screens showed samples of activity below and around us in space, same as before.


Yes, there were 'Locks and Mo'Locks and the carnage that accompanied them. I had noticed the nature of the crust breaking into hundreds of plateaus amid the rising sea level with a smaller number of remaining land bodies large enough to be a continent. I was wondering how these creatures had learned about time travel, or at least something like it.


I thought of the plant in Kentucky. I looked at that area finding it in the principle stages of a Northern hemispherical glacier, oddly enough, moving West for the most part. There was no possible way anything could exist within those gigantic mountains of ice and snow unless they were beneath our dome. With exothermic cooling from all the brine once there from new ocean inlets, it would be close to 120 degrees below zero at the core of the glacier. Now I had two missions. The most important was to find out how to keep time travel out of the hands of 'Locks. It wouldn't make much sense to bring Lynda back to a world in dire turmoil.


“Maggie.” I didn't know exactly what to think about a computer that had ended up training me as much as I'd trained her. “Take us out and forward full speed, please.”


We were in high, stationary orbit with the Earth again. I watched the viewers as the days of the future became the past. The planet below was flickering, as time travel perceived it, and the sun, in the distance of space, all along its blurry illusion of motion, was flickering along with it. The scene below wasn't pretty to watch.


Where Wyoming had once been a gaping black pit erupted, spewing smoke and ash, steam and more water. I watched as Yellowstone had finally burst forth, but it was not alone. An even larger flood gate broke through more profusely in the Himalayan Mountain range and, with the machinery of time travel racing along, still accelerating, I perceived the oceans rising till the shores simply disappeared. The area around Yellowstone continued churning and bubbling beneath the surface of the waters.


The screaming of the M.A.G.G.I.E process kept growing more excruciating. Smoking a lot of pot numbed that a bit, but not completely. Even amid the churning, rising water and deep, developing ice, tiny pinpoints of light could be seen. The SureVival arks scattered about the seas were seemingly intact. Something was going right, but there was an unexpected juggernaut coming about that had only been partially confirmed in 2012 by NASA's Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer.


The ship's TSV could see farther and clearer, than any of NASA's local probes or space telescopes, from out in space. Like the sun and moon, the stars, the planets, asteroids and comets became blurs, but for a ring to form, they had to be orbiting Sol. The only reason Sol was a blurry ring is because we were also orbiting along with the Earth, above it in one stationary spot. The widest rings were the gas giants. Further out, what at first looked like a vast, approaching comet was entering from the ship's starboard.


“Maggie, what's that?”


“Judging by its trajectory, Doctor, I'm reasonably sure it's Tyche.”


“Aren't there a group of rings around it?”


“Look deeper, Doctor.” Then Maggie interpolated the deeper field of space. The sampler showed fewer frames and the clarity enhanced. “Do you see that larger shape in the background?”


Tyche was not merely a lone gas giant from outside the main Solar System. It was orbiting a very dim, barely visible object about fifty times the size of Jupiter. It was a brown dwarf. There were several gas giants three and four times the size of our largest gas giant.


“Is that Nemesis?” I was captivated by the presence of the tiny prototype star that I had always questioned whether it truly existed at all.


“Yes.”


“What is going to happen?”


“At this point, your guess is as good as mine, Doctor.”


“Bump our speed up a bit, please, Maggie.”


“Will do, Doc.”


My back molars were still aching enough to make me want to stop, but finally we achieved the higher speed and the pain went away. Always there remains this slight odor of electric ozone, like the 3rd hand smoke we used to smell on people who smoked tobacco. So time travel stinks. It is, just as much, exciting to watch any of eighteen viewer screens you want to that are tuned into various tomes of Earth's time and space as well as the star system. At full speed, to a lesser degree than the human eye, the ship's computer video processors and screens cannot keep up with the changes, so process a number of samples to assemble with an accumulating lag. Still, with the quantum computing storage, it would one day be something to review.


I was clearly lagging myself and passing time by smoking some good pot. Looking back about twenty minutes to view the rest of the 21st Century, I saw the chronic readouts had reached 2057. It was nearly 5 O'clock when I'd kissed Bailey so long. By my suit's timepiece it was nearly 1 AM. I found myself drifting off to sleep.


I awoke again to find four hours had gone by. The Nemesis system was completely gone and a few traces of what might have been Tyche was a blur off of the ship's port side. A curious red star seemed to have joined the solar system and there were fewer rings encircling the sun. That woke me up a bit. I looked at the scenes of the planet's evolution below.


Most of the planet was still water and ice then. There were many regions keeping their metaphorical noses above water and a few of the mountain chains actually had what would be thought of as mountains, only atop islands. The band of ice had widened even to include Knoxville. I would have difficulty at best to even attempt finding it and to materialize inside the estate would instantly get a plasma ball shoved up my time traveling snout. That is assuming the megalithic cocoon really was all alive, functioning and well.


After a few days of traveling at full speed, the planet was showing a good deal more land. I had Maggie slow the ship's forward temporal speed and return to within the atmosphere. From altitude high enough to see the planet's curvature, the shorelines I'd once known had become a spiderweb of cliffs and plateaus. Then the rifts between the plateaus bubbled and erupted with smoke, fire and ash, joining one or more of the plateaus, leaving springs and geysers to once again sooth and caress the newly appearing land. Beauty was returning. It was captivating to watch.


The screen with the Chronological Readouts showed that while the lag had expanded to about two hours, the ship was coursing its way through the 26th Century. That didn't make sense.


“Maggie... “ I stretched. “What happened? Are the readouts correct?”


“Yes, Alexander.”


Then I noticed the date on my wrist screen. “Wow!” I looked at the viewers. “I've been asleep for six days?”


“Yes, Alexander.” Then she continued. “In answer to your first question, Sol went Nova in 2059. It was fascinating to watch. The bow shock knocked Earth out of orbit instead of burning it to a crisp. We are now orbiting the new star that formed out of the gas giants, the ejecta of Sol and Nemesis. If you look a bit wider, you'll see a new belt of asteroids. It's that ellipse that is orbiting both stars. Luna appears to have broken up and is gradually spiraling toward it. This new Earth seems to have attracted two new moons.”


“A week ago I would have said that was impossible.”
“Genesis says that creation took six days.” Maggie's holographic image smiled at me. “Maybe it was all a matter of relative perspective, Doctor.”


“I'm not God.”


I had Maggie zoom in on the Earth's surface. The ice seemed to linger. The ship's system always displayed a magnetic field display, showing the planet's field that was migrating in two directions at close to five degrees per day and no signs of slowing down. The planet's true axis had tilted its Northern precession about sixteen degrees away from the new sun. The North Pole was ironically freezing more solidly, where the South pole was mostly land with its snowy region reduced to barely 600 miles.


Green, grassy areas could be seen in pockets and the Sandwich Islands appeared to have seasons as we once knew them in North America. The once sandy, desert areas around the equator were becoming green with a wide variety of albedo. What was once the life supporting three-quarters of the planet had moved South to become the habitable two-thirds.


“Maggie, do you see them?” I found a reason to smile.


“The pinpoints of light?”


“Yes.” I pointed to a cluster of them that seemed like a city of lights out in the middle of the oceans. “Those are the houseboats! I'm certain of it!” I looked at the eyes of her image, knowing the hologram couldn't actually see me back, still it provided the feeling of a companion on board; someone to help me feel like the journey involved “we” instead of merely I. “Life has endured even in the wake of a star's destruction. There must have been generations of mankind evolving within them just like cocoons.”


I pushed on letting Maggie make the decisions while I caught a few hours of sleep here and there. The centuries reeled away. Every time I looked, the lights had migrated elsewhere. They were beginning to show up on the dry land.


To see any closer, we actually had to extend a high power telescope through one of the auxiliary portals and patch it into a viewer. That was one of the nice things about the worm-wells, in that they would allow us to launch a probe or, unthinkably, a bag of trash if I so desired. Nonetheless, the ship had physical air locks attached to the portals. Now we could return to High Earth Orbit, yet get a very good picture of activity on the planet's surface. Maggie still had to sort it out to watch it in anything close to reality time.


Reality time. What a concept.


It was all so fascinating I didn't want to miss anything. Although the houseboat communities seemed to remain in their clusters, huts and villages of an early type of mankind had shown up again closer to the 40th Century, but the humans seemed like people in the 15th Century with arrows and torches, more than a scatter of people running from a pride of Sabre-tooth tigers. In fact it didn't look like anything resembling prehistoric life was in the picture at all. So, in 1500 years, a race with little or no technology could grow at least that far. I probably wouldn't miss any great first hand findings.


Those still living at deep sea appeared to do better. The ones on the land seemed to disappear then reappear again after another 3000 years. It could be seen why when some of the reviewed pictures on the screen included dinosaurs and flying reptiles. It became apparent that the ones far into the oceans were staying alive because the giants didn't venture out that far very often. To exist in the seas for that long, the inhabitants of the arks surely must have developed some new technology to maintain generations of life under those conditions. On the land, volcanism had rekindled itself.

 

Well, Flea... I decided I'm not going back to WB. Tired of the biased moderation.

 

I noticed this was HOT, so I thought I'd jump write into the lava dome...


I'm battling cancer right now folks, so my posts will be sporadic. Shoot! They're always sporadic!

 

("...I'm not well myself but nothing like what you have then..." went the goblin thanking DrC, adding "...I read what you write, you know me then, I never critic, instead I just keep reading you in an open expectation, so feed me now, try to make it habitual and rewarding, I'll be your reader now...")