“Strike three!” thundered the umpire.
The scene turned into pandemonium, at least for half of us there. I smiled, watching the little figures running in from the outfield, and someone grabbed me by the arm.
“What a great game!” said the man standing beside me. “You got a son in the game?”
“I sure do,” I replied as my boy scampered up the stairs through the departing crowd. He jumped into my arms and hugged me, and I looked down into his eyes.
“We won dad!” he squealed at me. “Why are you crying, dad? We won!”
I wiped my face.
“You sure have your mother’s eyes, you know that?”
Little Ricky just smiled without understanding. Drying my eyes I took his hand, and we walked down off the bleachers, across the infield and into the dying sunshine.
~ Timedrops ~
Book 3:
Vince Indigo
Prologue
In the thin air at the edge of space, I could feel more than hear the steady beat of the UAV’s massive propeller dragging me onwards towards my death. I’d been able to see this moment coming for a long time. The tight compartment I was in had never been meant to fit a human. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the cold metal pressing against me through the thin pressure suit of the improvised life support system I’d rigged.
I shouldn’t have tried to escape.
Alarms signaling the start of the slingshot weapons test firing rang out across the multiverse spectrum. They would have canceled the test if they knew I was hidden up here in this thing, but in my desperate bid to erase my tracks I’d cut myself off entirely from the communications networks, concealing what I was doing, even why I was doing it.
It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off as the UAV’s control system signaled the system malfunction that I always knew was coming. It lurched sickeningly off to the left, cutting and sliding through empty space, turning inexorably back towards my doom.
In the near distance, the boom of the slingshot began, its thundering inferno blossoming as it demonstrated its fearsome power to the world. My heart was racing, my breathing ragged and shallow. For days, weeks even, I had been able to see this exact moment arriving, and yet here I was.
The awful growl of the slingshot built in power and began rattling the delicate cage of the UAV’s body. The cold metal pressing against me warmed, and then turned hot as the acrid stench of molten plastic burned into my lungs. I gagged, shrinking up into myself, terrified.
Engulfed in roaring flames the UAV pitched over, its metal and plastic skin coming apart in great fiery gobs as it disintegrated, offering me up into the emptiness. In seconds I was incinerated like Icarus flying too close to the firestorm of knowledge, spinning, falling, and burning as my wings fell away.
In my last instants of life, I caught a distant glimpse of Atopia, a cool green speck between the flames, her Siren song calling me back towards the endless seas below.
1
Identity: Vince Indigo
The last dregs of the night drained sleeplessly away, and despite the world’s best efforts, my life had filled with yet another new day. More dreams of death, but they weren’t just dreams. Or were they? I felt nauseous. You’d have thought that life would be easy as one of the world’s richest men living on the island colony of Atopia, the most sought after zip code on the planet, but the universe was frustrating my expectations.
It was still early morning. From beneath the sheets, my blurry eyes could just glimpse the dawning sky regaining its composure while the roar and flame of the slingshot test began to die down. Dread filled me as I watched stiletto tipped fishnet stockings stalking towards me from the living area. Then the lights flipped on as Hotstuff tore the sheets off me.
“Aw, come on!” I whimpered, weakly fumbling to grab back the covers.
Hotstuff was all done up in a bad schoolgirl outfit today, complete with a checked miniskirt and a starched men’s dress shirt. The shirt was done up from the bottom in a knot to expose her belly ring, and unbuttoned far enough down from the top to reveal hints of something naughty underneath. She knew I was depressed and was doing her part to keep me alert and in the game. What I didn’t immediately notice was the riding crop in her hand.
“Ouch!” I cried out as she whacked me with it.
She just giggled and wound back up to smack me again.
“What the heck?” I screeched, and jumped up out of bed to chase her across the room. She squealed, running away from me, and my bedroom morphed into the battle room we’d created to track my looming future death threats.
Hotstuff had already transitioned into wearing army fatigues. She playfully menaced me with the riding crop as I stood naked and rubbed my stubble with one hand and defended myself with the other.
Absentmindedly, I admired myself in a mirror on the opposite wall. Nearly seventy years old, yet with all the gene therapy I barely looked forty. A thick shock of graying hair still hung playfully, if listlessly, over tired eyes that stared back at me.
“Two things before we get started, sir,” announced Hotstuff, snapping smartly to attention and giving me a salute with the riding crop. “Commander Strong’s proxxi asked for some flowers for his wife—which I provided from our private gardens—and Bob just pinged you to go surfing.” She raised her eyebrows as if to tell me that surfing obviously wasn’t an option today.
“Patch him through,” I replied groggily. Sensing Hotstuff hesitating I added, “Now Hotstuff!”
Bob immediately materialized before me, holding his yellow long board, smirking. He looked stoned already.
A great mop of blond hair lived a life of its own above his twinkling blue eyes, and while he had all the appearances of the uber-surfer, there was a persistent and unmistakable intelligence underpinning it all—the philosopher king of wave hunters. What a great kid, it was just too bad.
“So…surfing today?” asked Bob lazily.
Yeah, he was high. Sizing up Hotstuff’s outfit, he grinned appreciatively.
“No, sorry, Bob. Can’t make it. Something has popped up.”
“Popped up, huh?” laughed Bob, looking back at Hotstuff again. He’d begun projecting some nicely curling waves into my display spaces. “Come on, dude! It’s going to be monster out there today!”
“I really can’t,” I reiterated weakly. Jealously I watched the waves. My nerves were frazzled. Honestly, I could use a little relaxation, and I hadn’t been out surfing in weeks.
“What could you possibly have to do?” asked Bob. “I thought you were like the richest guy in the world? Get someone else to do it!”
“I wish I could...”
I looked pleadingly towards Hotstuff. She rolled her eyes and wagged the riding crop at me.
“Hey it’s your life mister,” she scolded, sensing I was going to do what I wanted anyway. “I suppose an hour couldn’t hurt, we don’t have anything imminent I can’t handle right now. But only one hour, right? After that it could get dangerous.”
I was already halfway out the door to get my wetsuit by the time she’d finished the sentence. Bob gave me a goofy thumbs-up before flitting away to rejoin his body in the hunt for waves. I’d catch up with him in a minute.
Bob and I were sitting on our boards and waiting for waves just inside the edge of the kelp forest, near the western inlet and not far from my habitat.
Atopian kelp, the base of our ecological chain, had been bioengineered to grow inverted with its holdfast now a gas filled bladder floating on the surface with the kelp blades spreading downwards hundreds of feet into the depths. It sprouted outwards at fantastic rates like a watery mangrove, beginning just at the edge of the underwater extremity of Atopia and stretching outwards from there to about two miles out through the water.