References to other stuff; stuff I didn't write

I hide little references to stuff I like in my writing. Maybe you've caught some of them. This has one that isn't hidden very well. And another is a quote I always wanted to hear someone say on an old sci-fi show I watched when I was a kid. See if you spot them.

Part XVIII – I Just Wanted A Soda

Rock wakes up in a small, white room with one door and no windows.  He soon discovers he is strapped down to a table, with a pillow under his head.

“Hello,” a voice on an intercom says.  “How are you feeling?”

“Who are you?  Where the hell am I?” Rock yells.

“I am Doctor Smith, your Primary Care Psychological Technician.  You are in the Quincy Metropolis Mental Health Center, Ward South Two.  Are you feeling better now?”

“I’d feel better if you let me the fuck out of here!!”

“Well; you’ll never get well with that attitude,” the voice says.  “When you are ready to co-operate with us, I’ll be back.  Please, help me to help you.  If you do, you can get off that table and into a casual restraint jacket.  Would you like that, Mr. Tone?”

“AAaahh!  Let me out of here you bastard!  I’ll sue your ass!  I’m a rock star! I have friends in high places! You’ll regret ever fucking with me Dr. Smith!”

“Nurse, have the room filled with sedative gas, then hook up the Thoughtscan Imager.  I want to see this man’s nightmares.   I want to see how his brain works while he sleeps.”

“Yes, Dr. Smith.”

“My God,” he says aloud.  He is alone in the monitor room, viewing Rock Tone’s dreams.  As he sees the figure of the shadow-lurker, sliding its un-natural shape about the twilight shadows of the ruins, he himself begins to feel the terror of Rock Tone, asleep on a table in a small room.  ‘It seems so real; more so than any other dream I’ve seen.’ 

As Rock runs through the twilight ruins, he sees shadows of the lurkers everywhere, sometimes one of their withered limbs, but never does he get a clear picture of their horrible, true form.  Rock turns a corner quickly, running into a pillar of ancient stone.  As he gets up, he feels the shadow-lurkers closer, closer…

Dr. Smith jumps up from his seat, pressing a button on the console in front of him.  “Nurse!  Wake Mr. Tone immediately! Nurse!  Wake him now!”

“She can’t hear you anymore.”

“What?”  Dr. Smith utters, turning around.  The sight of the shadow-lurker, its full form revealed there in the bright monitor room, is too much for his mind.  The terror causes his heart to fail, and he falls to the floor clutching feebly at his chest.

It's Two-fer-Tuesday!!

Part XVII – The Dream

“Did you see the old man?” Rock asks the bald man, tugging at his sleeve while he talks at him.  “Just then, across the intersection.  It was him.”

“What are you talking about?  It was who?”

“The old man.  The one who created the sunlit city, before it became the twilight city.  I saw him.”  Rock rants on, “That’s the second time.  But he’s dead.  So are the lizard-men.  That’s why the city is in twilight.”

“Rock, pal, take it easy,” the bald man says.  “We’ll get you to a doctor for your dreams.  You’ll be fine.”

“No, you don’t get it.  They’re not just dreams; it’s a whole other reality.  It’s real.”  Rock closes his eyes, pounds his fist on the dash of the aircar.  “And I’m afraid of what those dreaded shadow-lurkers will do when they get me.”

‘Rock, my friend,’ the bald man thinks, ‘I hope we can get the kind of help you may need.’

“They think I’m this human-god that the dead lizard-men worshiped, and the twilight gods want me dead.  I try to tell them I’m not a god, just a singer in a rock band, but they don’t listen.  They just hang around and… lurk.”

“Well, as long as they don’t come any closer, you’ll be O.K., eh?” the bald man says lightly.

“No, you don’t grok;  they lurk; in the shadows.  They just… they…”

Rock passes out from the pill the bald man put in his drink.

‘Finally,’ the bald man thinks. ‘Rock’s really losing it.  I hope it’s just some drugs, or something.  Maybe the pressures of stardom getting to him.  I’ll take him somewhere to get checked out.’

This has nothing to do with the song

...but I'm still going to post this video with it. Just because.

 

Part XVI – Hello Old Friend

He was breathless at the image of beauty before him.  Her hair was long, and fiery red, and her red dress was well tailored to fit her petite, athletic figure.  Her bright green eyes met his, and her moist, red lips formed the word ‘Hello.’

“Hi,” he responds.

“Hi, yourself.”  She pulls a smoke from her purse, an old fashioned Long Light.

“Got a light?” she asks, fluttering her lashes at him.

“I don’t smoke,” he replies.

“Everyone smokes.”  She flips her hair.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you should start,” she says, reaching into her purse for her lighter.  “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Oh, how romantic.  Do you say that to all the pigeons?”

“Only you,” he says, taking the Long from between her lips.  He puts it out in the ashtray.

“How’s that, yobbo?”  she says, annoyed by his daring.

“You should stop.  At least for now.  We should get going.”  He grabs her hand with his cyberarm.

“What’s your hurry, old man?  You don’t see your war buddy for years, then we can’t stay out late?  Aunt Sarah got you on a short leash?”  the fire-haired girl jokes.

“Sarah’s gone.”  The pain is clear in his eyes as the words come out.  “You’re being followed.  We should go. Now.”

“Oh, Gods, I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.”

“Forget it.  Those suits are here to watch you.”

“Who?” she asks, turning to look that way.

“No, don’t… now we gotta go.  They know we spotted them.”

“Where’ll we go?” she asks him.

“I’ll explain on the way,” he says as he escorts her to the door.  “Let’s hurry; Vostok’s waiting.”

“Vostok?” she questions.  “I thought he was dead.”

“I hope not; he’s our getaway driver.”

The horror...

Horror comes from the terrible things you see. Terror comes from what you don't see. Your own brain can scare you with it's visions of what could be around that corner far more than whatever is actually there. It's one of the things that separates Stephen King's horror from H.P. Lovecraft's terror. All fear is, at its base, a fear of the unknown. No matter how horrible and monstrous something looks, once you get a good description of its every detail, it's a little less scary.

This is one of my personal favorite parts that I've written. It's right about here that the story became really fun to write. Please enjoy...

Part XV – Twilight City

In the eerie twilight of the ruined, once sunlit city, he peers around a decayed column, spying a shadow that chills his body.  A shadow, of what must be said to have been a limb, though distorted by twilight.  But not any known limb of a man, nor even of the lizard-men that thrived in the sunlit city of long ago.  It appeared a singularly inhuman appendage, resembling vaguely the weathered limb of an ancient tree.  Looking closer, with hope that it was a trick of the unearthly twilight, it moved, and he glimpsed another, similar shadow to his side, but not just a shadow, but the withered treelike limb itself, quickly pulling behind the ruins of an ancient bathhouse.  Noises of movement to all sides brings fear to the young man’s heart, knowing the human-gods of the sunlit-dream-city would not be well received by the withered shadow-lurkers of the ruins, or by their distinctly more monstrous, terrifying gods of the twilight city.

Rock wakes with a jump.  “What the fuck was that?!” he yells. 

“We were wondering the same thing,” his keyboardist says.

“What happened?” Rock asks.

“You passed out, took a header, right in the middle of ‘Clone Heroes.’  Rock, pal, are you doin’ O.K.?  Are you on the horse?”

“I don’t know what happened, man,” Rock replies, “and I ain’t done drugs in days.”

“Can you go back out there?” his manager asks.

“Yeah, let’s go.  Yeah!” Rock shouts as he gets up.

The Eudoran in the balcony of the dark club speaks into his wristphone.  “It’s done.  The dream is implanted.  He can’t escape the nightmares now.  Where will I collect the rest of my fee?”

He turns to leave as the Element come back onto the stage to finish their sold-out show at Mew Channel Club.  Rock Tone has forgotten about the dream already.

 Thanks for stopping by.

The Flu, and what comes after

Had the flu for about a week. Really beat me down. In that time, I missed more days of work than I have in the last six months or so. Also, I found some great music that was new to me. Here's a little of it;

And some more of the story. It starts to come together here, hold on, it'll all pan out. Really, trust me...

Part XIV – Vostok

As she sifts through the rubble of what was once Vostok’s building, she sifts through her last day or so in her mind.

‘I can’t believe they’re still after me.  How the hell do they keep finding me?  First my place, then here.  I hope Vostok got out.’

She sees his shades, broken underneath cold stone and steel.  The cyberjack still has blood on it.

“Shit,” she says out loud.

‘Gotta get mobile.  They’ll be here soon.  They always are.’ She goes down the street to the aircar she stole, and gets in.  She starts it up and heads toward the nearest tunnel to Level Two.

‘What did he say? A beacon? But how?  I don’t have anything of theirs except… The program!’  She pounds the dash with her fist.  She checks the system of her On-Body-Computer, looking for anything unusual.  It’s hidden well, but not well enough.  ‘This is amazing.  I didn’t even notice.  Whoever came up with this is brilliant.’

She marvels at it.  This program somehow gains access to the system it resides in, and has it send out a homing signal for it over the Matrix, a radio, whatever means it has at its disposal.

‘I went through all this and I can’t keep it.  And by the time I could sell it, I’d be dead.  If I ever meet the guy who wrote this… the trouble he caused me… bastard.’

As she erases the program from her O.B.C., she thinks about her friend Vostok.

‘I think he made it outta the building.  I hope he did. He always seems to come through O.K.’

Saurian swivels in his chair, and looks up through thick glasses.  “My O.B.C. tells me another copy of your brilliant program has been erased.  Do you think it could be that blond girl?”

“It could have been.  She’s smarter than you think.”

Saurian looks across his desk into the other man’s shades.  “If she’s smart enough, we could use her.   Keep an eye on her. We’re all done here.”  He turns his chair to the window, his back now to the other man, who gets up and walks to the door.

“Oh,” starts Saurian, “Sorry about your building, Vostok.  But you should live up here in real sunlight with better people anyway.  You could afford it now.”

Vostok slams the door behind him on his way out into the real world below.

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Thanks for stopping by! Come back later, I'll have more stuff for you in a few days. 

Now on to part two of

I've been sick for a few days. Fighting off a cold with rest, Alka-Seltzer, and fine Lagavulin Scotch. Mmmm...
So, on to another part starring our blond friend.

Part XIII – The Blonde’s Second Mistake

            She barely dodges the high-powered bolter fire from the skycycle pursuing her as she weaves up through the third traffic level.

            ‘How’d they find me?’ She wonders.  ‘I just left the place twenty minutes ago.’

            She takes a left the next chance she gets, then stops around the corner.  She readies her rifle, waiting for the skycycle.  As it turns the corner, she fires a grenade, hitting it dead-on.  The skycycle explodes, and crashes into the Cityblock beside it on the fall to the ground.  Shards of metal and transluminum fly everywhere, one piece impaling her cyberarm.

            ‘Shit,’ she thinks as she looks at her damaged arm.

‘Shit,’ she thinks again as the police aircar rises up in front of her.  She flies straight toward the hole made by the falling skycycle, and gets inside the Residential Cityblock.  Once inside, she knows she can get away.

Back at her place, she copies the stolen data onto another chip, and stores the chip and its data in her home terminal.  ‘It never hurts to have a backup.  Maybe I can sell it to someone else.  My buyer won’t know; unless he has a Eudoran with him when we meet tomorrow.  I wouldn’t think so.’

She looks at her damaged cyberarm.  ‘Gotta get this fixed,’ she thinks. ‘I’ll go see Vostok.  Maybe he knows someone who’ll buy my data.’

She grabs her jetpack and heads outside.  When she’s flying away from her apartment, three skycycles converge on the window to her place.  They begin firing their bolters, then missiles into it, destroying her apartment and the surrounding apartments as well.

‘What the hell?’ she thinks.  ‘How did they find me again?  Better get outta here; Vostok’ll help me.’

She turns and begins to fly away, but isn’t watching where to.  She bumps right into an aircar stopped in traffic.  She looks through the windshield at the surprised bald man at the controls.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Hey; I know you!” the bald man shouts as she flies away.

“Who was she?” Rock asks his friend.

“An old friend,” the bald man answers.

“You always did like blondes,” Rock jokes.

So now you've met most of the main characters. Have a favorite? Someone you don't like? Let me know. It'll let me know someone's actually reading this...:)  Thanks!  Next time we'll see some more of someone we know already, and maybe meet someone new.