Here it is (with thanks for your patience).
As in the past, I have taken the liberty of selecting what I feel are the voicier sections of your work for the guesswork; hopefully this will give a sense of style, but I've also tried to select passages that end nicely. Essentially all this means is that a few of the stories' excerpts start in the second or third paragraph.
Also, as the excerpts are over the 20K characters allowed, I've split them in to two lots of seven.
All participants are:
Johnnyjet
Darkchrome
Quellist
Mouse
Robert Mackay
Springs
ratsy
Kerry Buchanan
Jastius
David Evil Overlord
Glisterspeck
Cats Cradle
Victoria Silverwolf
Remedy
Chrispenycate
1
The professor was a tall, skinny person with white hair and skin
and labcoat and teeth...he radiated primarily in the spectrum of
white. The only things about him that seemed to have any color
at all were his lab slacks and his language, both a royal blue.
“Insufferable-incompetent-inadequate filth merchants,” he
mumbled as he continued his tidying. “Do those imbecilic janitors
perform any tasks? I’ve told them a dozen times, ‘If you sweep,
replace; if you dust, put back; if you bump, realign.’ Is ‘hy-
giene’ simply a greeting for one of their many drunken tavern
associates? The dean will hear of this. Scientific theory is a
thing of order, and best fomented in an environment of order!
Hrumph...my time is worth more than--”
*knock-knock*
The professor “hrumphed” again, then walked over to the lab’s
main door, still mumbling about the lack of cleanliness in the
room. He unlocked and opened the door, holding it ajar a few
inches, and peered out at the intruder who’d bothered his reverie
(he did, after all, feel a great satisfaction in ranting). Sunlight
poured into the room in a long slitted patch, and beyond the
door’s slight opening the professor saw--surrounded by a nimbus
of blazing light--the figure of a tall, muscular young man.
2
"No one's really from Earth anymore," Jaznon chirped,
somewhat dismissively.
"I am," said Jarli.
Jaznon waggled his antennae at Jarli.
"So you say, my little stowaway. So you say."
Jarli looked out the cargo ship's viewing dome, toward a
giant cylinder that turned slowly through space. So slowly, he
could barely see it move, but he could, and he realized now why
they called it the Kaleidoscope. Far beyond Zorbo's
Kaleidoscope Circus, the gleaming hulk of earth hung in the
darkness. It had once been green and blue, Jarli had learned,
before he left the colony's school. Now, it was brown and
white. Dust and ice. Still, Jarli was from there. From Earth.
He was human.
A thud reverberated through the hull of the cargo ship as
its docking bolts snapped into place. The port iris spun open
to reveal an air lock. Jarli and Jaznon had spent the final
approach in silence. Now, Jaznon's coxa touched Jarli's
shoulder, and Jarli flinched. He was still a bit unsettled by
bug folk. There hadn't been any bug folk at the colony.
There'd barely been any colonist at the colony. Forty seven.
And Jarli was the last of them.
"I could take you somewhere else, stowaway," Jaznon said.
"I have a delivery of rations for Hell's Port, and they are
always looking for new recruits. You are young. You could join
them."
3
At the time she had felt it an insult, tainted with sexism - she would no longer be giving orders to her squad, be seen by her superiors, paths to promotion were obstacled and confused and, with both Abby's arms broken, she was obliged to perform tasks better suited to a servant. She could hardly wait for her charge to be flown into orbit, where all worthwhile biological research was being done (originally, to protect society from microbes, spills, biohazards. More recently to protect researchers from what passed for society). Still, the youngster was a stimulating conversationalist, self-depreciating and humble (when not totally enthralled by a problem in her speciality) and grateful for the attention, and standing (or frequently sleeping) guard in a hospital in a high security enclave was a pleasant break from endless stimtabs and mindless mobs.
Until Rosa, whose only 'romantic' impulses until then had been totally physical, short lived and with men (generally squadmates), pleasant enough but no way important to her discovered that her feelings for the under-nourished, coffee-skinned researcher had gone beyond the purely protective/maternal stage and she could no longer imagine their separation. Promotion no longer seemed so important; while the hands had been unusable she had worked as a computer interface for the girl who couldn't stop working, prevent herself thinking, stop attacking the problem with teeth and toenails, if that was all she had, and had caught a glimpse of her genius, but it hadn't been that which introduced her to love but the sheer power of that will. And then the day they'd dared reveal to each other feelings that neither had experienced before… and those hands, while still not at full strength, had proved skilled in other than keyboard skills, and eager as the major's clumsy muscular paws to transmit feelings and pleasure.
4
First we check local conditions. We're all survivors, while a lot of the 'gung ho, charge into the unknown with a loaded gun and a belief in your own indestructibility' types are no longer posting on websites. If it takes us a day to check out local conditions, then a day it gets.
Lower Beelington is not exactly a metropolis, but we hadn't so far seen a human being or dog - or, apart from Patrick, a bird. This could indicate a plague, a zombie invasion, or just the fact that a Thursday afternoon in an English hamlet is not the most exciting period on Earth. More worrying was the silence on the airwaves - no radio, television, satellite broadcasts, unless they're too low level to decode.
"Fibre optic to all houses?"
"But they'd still want some kind of mobile contact, boats and planes if not cars and individuals. Taxis, fire engines and police got communications before the general run of mortals." A tiny smudge on the readout was probably a distant thunderstorm. "We don't go back far enough to completely miss the technology, do we? Most likely is a plague world."
Which existed, as Adam had pointed out to us frequently, even if we hadn't visited one before. And had the advantage that you could adopt - steal, except that there wasn't anybody you were stealing from - physical objects, jewellery, artworks. They weren't as valuable, guinea per gram, as ideas you could patent, or medications, or theories of physics, or seeds of plants unknown to gardeners, but you didn't need to establish communications, took what you wanted and told the forces of law, order and apple pie where you'd been, what you'd found, when you got back. And posted it on a dozen websites, coordinates and situation, which was as good as it got for staking a claim.
5
Everything hurt. Tom opened his dry eyes a crack and was quickly blinded by the glowing orange orb in the sky. He tried to move his arms and managed to move them a few inches in excruciating pain. He figured at least one was dislocated, or maybe both just really sore from last night’s adventure. Raising his head slightly not only made him see spots but also the seaweed that spread over his body. He still had a piece of the boat tied to his waist and he almost laughed at that. Until he thought of Cane.
Panic set in and he found the energy to sit up.
“Cane!” he yelled. “Come here boy!”
He scanned the rocky beach and was now just remembering the land he’d spotted during the storm. Struggling to his feet, he started walking along the beach.
“Cane!” he called until his voice was hoarse which didn’t take long since his lungs had been full of salt water. Then he saw the prints. They were obviously paw prints, clear as day, in the sand. Tears flowed down Tom’s face in relief that his best friend was alive still. He ignored all his pain and ran towards the tree line where the prints led.
The tropical trees loomed high overhead. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything like them before but he wasn’t surprised since he’d been water bound floating around aimlessly for what could have been weeks. He followed Cane’s trail for as far as his untrained eyes could take him then paused. Ahead he could hear flowing water. If there was a fresh water source he figured Cane may have found it too. And then there was the fact that he hadn’t had any water since his supply ran out two days ago.
He hurried towards it and soon he could see a small water fall running off a tiny cliff face. “Cane!” he called once again and was rewarded with a bark. Another bark and his dog ran towards him at full speed, tail wagging. Something hung from his mouth.
“What is that Cane? Come here boy.” As the dog approached Tom saw that he was carrying a large white bone.
6
They came at night, of course. Caroline wouldn’t have known anything about it, except that she had woken with a desperate biological need and was passing a window when she saw movement in the garden. She had always thought that she would be good in situations like this. She was generally good in a crisis, generally good at knowing what to do. But the sight of the dark shapes, humanoid but somehow inhuman, barely visible in the moonlight, ghosting across the frosted lawn, left her unable to move. “Gary,” she croaked, the word barely getting past her lips.
She didn’t hear them break through the French doors, didn’t hear them climb the stairs. She only knew that they were gone from the garden, and she had managed to turn around when one of them was in front of her. She caught a glimpse of long black hair in a high ponytail, of stone eyes that pinned her back against the wall with a glare. Then it was gone, and she slid down, till she was sitting, aware of only the urge to vomit and the dislocated sound of her gasping.
She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, before she had convinced herself that it was nothing more than one of those hypnagogic dreams. Or maybe hypnopompic – she was never sure which was what – and it was this with this delirious line of thought in her head that she found her husband of two years dead on their bed, his blood staining every square inch of their 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
7
The zoo was underground. It's a secret, I got that, but I thought the animals would like to see the sky. The sun. Maybe feel a bit of wind in their fur. Or feathers. Or tentacles, in the kraken's case.
I'd had an invite from a cryptozoologist friend of mine, but I decided to visit the place on my own. I didn't want to have to walk round with him and listen to him tell me exactly why it was best for the chupacabra. In my opinion, the chupacabra was better off in Puerto Rico, where it belonged. All the creatures should've been in their natural habitats. Not locked up underground.
As you walk down the stone stairway towards the exhibits, it gets progressively darker and colder. But, about halfway down, lights appear -- little hovering blue globes that emit warmth as well as light -- and once you're at the bottom, the whole cavern is lit up as if it was daytime.
I stood and stared at the cages. They were set on platforms in rows just as if this was a museum and the creatures were stuffed. I could see unicorns prancing upon circles of grass, mermaids in water-filled tanks, a phoenix burning bright in the distance, and many, many others.
There were other visitors -- not many -- but I wasn't alone down there. People were silent, gazing in awe at the animals that weren't supposed to exist other than in our imaginations. No cameras allowed, but I noticed a woman with a sketchbook and pencil. Her gaze flicked from the owlman behind its glass enclosure, to her drawing and back again in such a way that I knew she wasn't aware of anything else around her.
I pulled my attention from her and her sketch to the owlman. He… it… stood so still I wasn't sure it wasn't stuffed, until its head turned, slowly, and it blinked at me.
A shiver ran through me and, frowning, I turned away. I saw many other things, things I can't even remember the names of now -- a pale, pink thing with gills and large, liquid eyes -- but the place haunted me enough that I couldn't sleep for a long while after.
I had to go back.
As in the past, I have taken the liberty of selecting what I feel are the voicier sections of your work for the guesswork; hopefully this will give a sense of style, but I've also tried to select passages that end nicely. Essentially all this means is that a few of the stories' excerpts start in the second or third paragraph.
Also, as the excerpts are over the 20K characters allowed, I've split them in to two lots of seven.
All participants are:
Johnnyjet
Darkchrome
Quellist
Mouse
Robert Mackay
Springs
ratsy
Kerry Buchanan
Jastius
David Evil Overlord
Glisterspeck
Cats Cradle
Victoria Silverwolf
Remedy
Chrispenycate
1
The professor was a tall, skinny person with white hair and skin
and labcoat and teeth...he radiated primarily in the spectrum of
white. The only things about him that seemed to have any color
at all were his lab slacks and his language, both a royal blue.
“Insufferable-incompetent-inadequate filth merchants,” he
mumbled as he continued his tidying. “Do those imbecilic janitors
perform any tasks? I’ve told them a dozen times, ‘If you sweep,
replace; if you dust, put back; if you bump, realign.’ Is ‘hy-
giene’ simply a greeting for one of their many drunken tavern
associates? The dean will hear of this. Scientific theory is a
thing of order, and best fomented in an environment of order!
Hrumph...my time is worth more than--”
*knock-knock*
The professor “hrumphed” again, then walked over to the lab’s
main door, still mumbling about the lack of cleanliness in the
room. He unlocked and opened the door, holding it ajar a few
inches, and peered out at the intruder who’d bothered his reverie
(he did, after all, feel a great satisfaction in ranting). Sunlight
poured into the room in a long slitted patch, and beyond the
door’s slight opening the professor saw--surrounded by a nimbus
of blazing light--the figure of a tall, muscular young man.
2
"No one's really from Earth anymore," Jaznon chirped,
somewhat dismissively.
"I am," said Jarli.
Jaznon waggled his antennae at Jarli.
"So you say, my little stowaway. So you say."
Jarli looked out the cargo ship's viewing dome, toward a
giant cylinder that turned slowly through space. So slowly, he
could barely see it move, but he could, and he realized now why
they called it the Kaleidoscope. Far beyond Zorbo's
Kaleidoscope Circus, the gleaming hulk of earth hung in the
darkness. It had once been green and blue, Jarli had learned,
before he left the colony's school. Now, it was brown and
white. Dust and ice. Still, Jarli was from there. From Earth.
He was human.
A thud reverberated through the hull of the cargo ship as
its docking bolts snapped into place. The port iris spun open
to reveal an air lock. Jarli and Jaznon had spent the final
approach in silence. Now, Jaznon's coxa touched Jarli's
shoulder, and Jarli flinched. He was still a bit unsettled by
bug folk. There hadn't been any bug folk at the colony.
There'd barely been any colonist at the colony. Forty seven.
And Jarli was the last of them.
"I could take you somewhere else, stowaway," Jaznon said.
"I have a delivery of rations for Hell's Port, and they are
always looking for new recruits. You are young. You could join
them."
3
At the time she had felt it an insult, tainted with sexism - she would no longer be giving orders to her squad, be seen by her superiors, paths to promotion were obstacled and confused and, with both Abby's arms broken, she was obliged to perform tasks better suited to a servant. She could hardly wait for her charge to be flown into orbit, where all worthwhile biological research was being done (originally, to protect society from microbes, spills, biohazards. More recently to protect researchers from what passed for society). Still, the youngster was a stimulating conversationalist, self-depreciating and humble (when not totally enthralled by a problem in her speciality) and grateful for the attention, and standing (or frequently sleeping) guard in a hospital in a high security enclave was a pleasant break from endless stimtabs and mindless mobs.
Until Rosa, whose only 'romantic' impulses until then had been totally physical, short lived and with men (generally squadmates), pleasant enough but no way important to her discovered that her feelings for the under-nourished, coffee-skinned researcher had gone beyond the purely protective/maternal stage and she could no longer imagine their separation. Promotion no longer seemed so important; while the hands had been unusable she had worked as a computer interface for the girl who couldn't stop working, prevent herself thinking, stop attacking the problem with teeth and toenails, if that was all she had, and had caught a glimpse of her genius, but it hadn't been that which introduced her to love but the sheer power of that will. And then the day they'd dared reveal to each other feelings that neither had experienced before… and those hands, while still not at full strength, had proved skilled in other than keyboard skills, and eager as the major's clumsy muscular paws to transmit feelings and pleasure.
4
First we check local conditions. We're all survivors, while a lot of the 'gung ho, charge into the unknown with a loaded gun and a belief in your own indestructibility' types are no longer posting on websites. If it takes us a day to check out local conditions, then a day it gets.
Lower Beelington is not exactly a metropolis, but we hadn't so far seen a human being or dog - or, apart from Patrick, a bird. This could indicate a plague, a zombie invasion, or just the fact that a Thursday afternoon in an English hamlet is not the most exciting period on Earth. More worrying was the silence on the airwaves - no radio, television, satellite broadcasts, unless they're too low level to decode.
"Fibre optic to all houses?"
"But they'd still want some kind of mobile contact, boats and planes if not cars and individuals. Taxis, fire engines and police got communications before the general run of mortals." A tiny smudge on the readout was probably a distant thunderstorm. "We don't go back far enough to completely miss the technology, do we? Most likely is a plague world."
Which existed, as Adam had pointed out to us frequently, even if we hadn't visited one before. And had the advantage that you could adopt - steal, except that there wasn't anybody you were stealing from - physical objects, jewellery, artworks. They weren't as valuable, guinea per gram, as ideas you could patent, or medications, or theories of physics, or seeds of plants unknown to gardeners, but you didn't need to establish communications, took what you wanted and told the forces of law, order and apple pie where you'd been, what you'd found, when you got back. And posted it on a dozen websites, coordinates and situation, which was as good as it got for staking a claim.
5
Everything hurt. Tom opened his dry eyes a crack and was quickly blinded by the glowing orange orb in the sky. He tried to move his arms and managed to move them a few inches in excruciating pain. He figured at least one was dislocated, or maybe both just really sore from last night’s adventure. Raising his head slightly not only made him see spots but also the seaweed that spread over his body. He still had a piece of the boat tied to his waist and he almost laughed at that. Until he thought of Cane.
Panic set in and he found the energy to sit up.
“Cane!” he yelled. “Come here boy!”
He scanned the rocky beach and was now just remembering the land he’d spotted during the storm. Struggling to his feet, he started walking along the beach.
“Cane!” he called until his voice was hoarse which didn’t take long since his lungs had been full of salt water. Then he saw the prints. They were obviously paw prints, clear as day, in the sand. Tears flowed down Tom’s face in relief that his best friend was alive still. He ignored all his pain and ran towards the tree line where the prints led.
The tropical trees loomed high overhead. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything like them before but he wasn’t surprised since he’d been water bound floating around aimlessly for what could have been weeks. He followed Cane’s trail for as far as his untrained eyes could take him then paused. Ahead he could hear flowing water. If there was a fresh water source he figured Cane may have found it too. And then there was the fact that he hadn’t had any water since his supply ran out two days ago.
He hurried towards it and soon he could see a small water fall running off a tiny cliff face. “Cane!” he called once again and was rewarded with a bark. Another bark and his dog ran towards him at full speed, tail wagging. Something hung from his mouth.
“What is that Cane? Come here boy.” As the dog approached Tom saw that he was carrying a large white bone.
6
They came at night, of course. Caroline wouldn’t have known anything about it, except that she had woken with a desperate biological need and was passing a window when she saw movement in the garden. She had always thought that she would be good in situations like this. She was generally good in a crisis, generally good at knowing what to do. But the sight of the dark shapes, humanoid but somehow inhuman, barely visible in the moonlight, ghosting across the frosted lawn, left her unable to move. “Gary,” she croaked, the word barely getting past her lips.
She didn’t hear them break through the French doors, didn’t hear them climb the stairs. She only knew that they were gone from the garden, and she had managed to turn around when one of them was in front of her. She caught a glimpse of long black hair in a high ponytail, of stone eyes that pinned her back against the wall with a glare. Then it was gone, and she slid down, till she was sitting, aware of only the urge to vomit and the dislocated sound of her gasping.
She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, before she had convinced herself that it was nothing more than one of those hypnagogic dreams. Or maybe hypnopompic – she was never sure which was what – and it was this with this delirious line of thought in her head that she found her husband of two years dead on their bed, his blood staining every square inch of their 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
7
The zoo was underground. It's a secret, I got that, but I thought the animals would like to see the sky. The sun. Maybe feel a bit of wind in their fur. Or feathers. Or tentacles, in the kraken's case.
I'd had an invite from a cryptozoologist friend of mine, but I decided to visit the place on my own. I didn't want to have to walk round with him and listen to him tell me exactly why it was best for the chupacabra. In my opinion, the chupacabra was better off in Puerto Rico, where it belonged. All the creatures should've been in their natural habitats. Not locked up underground.
As you walk down the stone stairway towards the exhibits, it gets progressively darker and colder. But, about halfway down, lights appear -- little hovering blue globes that emit warmth as well as light -- and once you're at the bottom, the whole cavern is lit up as if it was daytime.
I stood and stared at the cages. They were set on platforms in rows just as if this was a museum and the creatures were stuffed. I could see unicorns prancing upon circles of grass, mermaids in water-filled tanks, a phoenix burning bright in the distance, and many, many others.
There were other visitors -- not many -- but I wasn't alone down there. People were silent, gazing in awe at the animals that weren't supposed to exist other than in our imaginations. No cameras allowed, but I noticed a woman with a sketchbook and pencil. Her gaze flicked from the owlman behind its glass enclosure, to her drawing and back again in such a way that I knew she wasn't aware of anything else around her.
I pulled my attention from her and her sketch to the owlman. He… it… stood so still I wasn't sure it wasn't stuffed, until its head turned, slowly, and it blinked at me.
A shiver ran through me and, frowning, I turned away. I saw many other things, things I can't even remember the names of now -- a pale, pink thing with gills and large, liquid eyes -- but the place haunted me enough that I couldn't sleep for a long while after.
I had to go back.
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