EpiphanyMill Presents: The First Third

indGame: Chapter 8 - Animehem: Round Two 'Are You Sure You Want to Do This?'

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Once the gift-giving was over, Sir Scabby took the burlap that had covered our new weapons and draped the pieces in a crisscrossed formation over the pile of heads and hides at the edge of his camp. He then broke down the wooden crate and built what looked like a teepee over the pile. After packing away or piling up any evidence he’d ever been there he took a flint out of one of the half dozen pouches at his waist. With a few well-placed sparks, he had an impressive, if not foul-smelling fire raging.

“Won’t that attract unwanted attention, my lord,” Aconitum asked, appearing chaotic-nervous.

“Better the attention beest hither, than whither we're headed,” Sir Scabby replied. “And unless thou art joining us, thee should be’est returning to the castle, post-haste.”

The warlock offered a facial expression that looked like a kalanchoe stalking its prey, yet I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a smile. He should seriously stick to frowning or poker faces. “As you say, my lord.” Turning to the rest of us, he said, “You’ll get what’s coming to you when you return with the prince, unharmed.” That completely not creepy, non-foreshadowy speech given, he darted off into the woods like the filthy, crazed murder-hobo I suspected him to be.

Cool, as innocent as a newborn baby, laughed as Aconitum scurried off like a rat into a maze. “Heh. He was nice, but he could use a bath. And a toothbrush. Maybe a pedicure, too. Hey, when we get our rewards, we should all chip in and get him a gift certificate for the kingdom day spa!”

Scalar hefted his huge axe over his shoulder and hung it across his back. He’d fashioned one of the kalanchoe hides into a makeshift bandoleer. He used an additional hide to make twin axe-holsters, which hung loosely from his belt, one on each hip. Scalar was handy with the hides, that was for sure. “Please, Cool, my dear friend, take no offense when I say, hell no. That stinky culo is the king’s advisor. If he wishes to spend a day cleansing his body to make himself look and smell like a respectable creature, then I am quite sure the king would be happy to accommodate him.”

Sir Scabby laughed heartily at Scalar’s response, giving one of Santa’s guffaws a run for its money. “Friend Minotaur, thee feeleth as most of the kingdom doth feel. T’is a mystery wherefore the king alloweth Aconitum to remain at his side. His loyalty and motives has't at each moment been in question amongst the knights of the royal court.”

Cool snaked his head around the trees, his neck winding like a creeping laurentii, and whispered into Sir Scabby’s ear. “He’s not a Minotaur, dude. He’s a cursed prince. He just looks like a Minotaur.”

Both Cool and the knight glanced back at Scalar, the revelation burning between them. Sir Scabby whispered back. “Forsooth he doest. I shalt be’est more careful in the days to come.”

Scalar snorted and plodded into the woods to await directions and grumbled. “I can hear you whispering.”

The witches’ lair, cave, tent, teepee, whatever they lived in, was in a region north of what we’d always considered north. Like, so far north, no one from Capitula ever ventured there. It was, as it turned out, beyond the land of the dragons, a place no one ever returned from. We, in our haste, um, my haste actually, agreed to go. Pharaoh offered more than one ‘I told you so’ or in his case, ‘Me did tell yuh suh’, as we made our way into the lands to the west of Candytuft.

We’d briefly considered going directly through Candytuft, but the risk of the queen, or one of her many handmaidens or advisors, seeing Sir Scabby was too great. We chose to circumvent the castle, and everything in its vicinity, by taking the western route.

I know what you’re thinking. What? The western trail? Are you out of your mind?

And yes, you’re right, taking the western trail was going to be dangerous. But think about it. Facing trolls, orcs, and creeping shadows in the western forests would be far less problematic than battling gnomes, ghouls, and golems in the rocky crags that made up Capitula’s eastern borderlands. The eastern route was nothing short of suicide. Not that everything in the northern territories wouldn’t be trying to kill us the moment we arrived, but the western route gave us a better chance of getting there in one piece.

The group was glum, even by our standards. Only Sir Scabby seemed to have a modicum of confidence that we might survive our quest. Dirk and Scalar moped along like children sent out to shovel snow, while Santa and Steve brought up the rear, whispering, so the horrors lurking around the swamp couldn’t hear. Hex floated along at the head of the group, keeping pace with Sir Scabby. Pharaoh, Yin, and Yang bravely took the left and right flanks. Even Cool was uncharacteristically quiet, plodding along thoughtfully, occasionally laughing at a joke only he could hear.

I got the impression nobody wanted to walk with me, as I was given a wide berth at the middle of the group. I felt like a soap-covered finger at the center of a glass of peppered water. If I moved closer, they moved farther away.

And was that a giggle I heard in Angus’s ever-present wheeze?

Screw ‘em. I didn’t want to talk to any of them anyway.

Have I mentioned how much I hate swamps? Soggy boots are the freaking worst. And leeches? They get into your pants, and-

Yeah, don’t get me started. The only thing I hate more than the leeches, ogres, and goblins that seemed to like living in that mucking place, are the arachnodactyls. Because how do you make hairy, wolf-sized spiders even more terrifying? Give ‘em effing wings, that’s how! Those damned things seemed to be happy living anywhere with deep shadow banks and plenty of food. There’s plenty of food in the swamp because they’ll eat anything that has a soft, chewy center. I’m like a big, delicious wonton to those bastards.

Swamp-serpents, laurentiis, kalanchoes, and spine-toothed jawfish filled the murky brown swamp-waters. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but you get the picture.

On a normal day, a walk from Lake Billy Buttons to the northern farmlands of Candytuft took slightly over a half a day. Turn the trek into a semicircle around the kingdom, and the ETA more than doubled. Add the time it would take to traverse the northern mountains, all while hiding from hungry dragons? We were in for a three-day hike, at least. Hell, we didn’t know how far beyond the mountains our quarry was, or what horrors lived in the lands north of the dragons.

We were in deep shit.

The path narrowed up ahead, and the team began to draw into a single file. The swamp rose on both sides of the trail, giving us little more than a 2-foot-wide, muddy path to follow.

Dirk grumbled as one of his booties got sucked off his foot with a thick, wet slurp. He retrieved it and nonchalantly hung it from one of Scalar’s horns. Ol’ tatanka-head didn’t seem to notice, and I wasn’t about to cause a skirmish out there in the swamp, so I kept my mouth shut.

Low-hanging willow branches covered with patches of moss and fungus drooped lazily ahead. We brushed them aside like a never-ending curtain of beads as we moved blindly forward.

Steve scurried ahead, passing deftly between our legs until he’d taken the lead. “I can see ahead,” he called back. “The branches don’t get in my way!”

“What do you see,” Sir Scabby asked, trying to duck, but still having no luck.

“The path widens again in about a half an SLA. Twice that distance, and we’ll be out of the swamp,” Steve replied. “The forest is dead ahead!”

“You had to say ‘dead’, didn’t you,” Hex muttered.

A shadow in the swamp water to my right drew my attention. I slowed my pace a bit, trying to follow its movement. Something was in the water, and it was moving fast. Too fast!

By the time I realized what I was seeing, it was already too late. It was a reflection! I looked up just in time to see a dozen arachnodactyls silently descending upon us in a frenzy. “Run,” I shouted.

Before anyone could get clear of the willow branches, they were on us. Steve was the first to go. One of those damned winged monstrosities picked him up and dragged him, kicking and screaming, into the treetops. Next was Angus, as an overzealous arachnodactyl misjudged the difference between Dirk and his noisy friend.

Dirk shrieked, reaching into the air for his friend, but as with Steve, it was too late.

The next to go… was me!

One of the beasts grabbed my ankle and dragged me roughly to the ground. I drew my sword and rolled to strike at the bastard, but was horrified to see it wasn’t an arachnodactyl at all. Nope, it was one of those other things I’d forgotten about.

A long, leathery tentacle coiled around my leg, and dragged me into the swamp. I was waist deep before I could get enough balance to swing my sword. At that point, I risked taking off my own leg if I wasn’t careful.

“Packard!” I heard a voice that could only be Pharaoh’s cry out. A strong hand clamped onto my shoulder. I guess he wasn’t that mad at me after all.

A moment later, I took in a mouthful of putrid water. Shortly after that, I blacked out.

indGame: Chapter 7 - Animehem: The Quest

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

Okay, my life’s really weird. I’m the first to admit I’m not the most normal kid. I’m not a superhero or anything quite that cool, but I do know several.

Let’s see. There's Pharaoh, Cool, Scalar, Hex, Yin-Yang, Dirk Claymore of the Clan McJagger, Santa Claus, and, um, Steve.

Pharaoh and Cool are a part of a superhero team called The Evolutants. Pharaoh, also called the Prince of Beasts, is a hyper-evolved lion with dreadlocks for a mane. He’s wicked strong and built like Arnold Schwarzenegger – if Arnold was a lion who walked upright, wore denim coveralls, and spoke like a Rastafarian. That makes sense, right? Cool is an elastic giraffe. When I say elastic, I mean that dude can stretch high enough to high-five a 747! Yeah, that would be dangerous. It would probably frighten the passengers too. Like, who wouldn’t be scared if some cartoon-looking giraffe with a huge Crest toothpaste grin and big shiny horsesh- um, giraffeshoes? Is that a thing? You know, tried to high-five their plane midflight? He’s impressionable, so I won’t suggest it. Cool is hyper-evolved, too. Aside from stretching, he can shape-shift. He’s great at it. I’ve seen him impersonate Elvis, Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Batman – the ‘60s version, he even does the funny little vogue dance, and a hundred different animals! It’s amazing, provided you can get past the fact that he’s always yellow with brown spots. Every person, every animal, yellow with brown spots. I will say, a yellow T. rex with brown spots is still freaking terrifying. And he’s scary good at the T. rex thing.

Scalar is also a man-beast sort of dude. He’s a Dwayne Johnson-sized Minotaur, but with the head of a bison instead of a bull. Unlike Pharaoh and Cool, he wasn't hyper-evolved. He’s a human prince, but an evil shaman cursed him more than a thousand years ago for falling in love with the wrong woman. He and Pharaoh have an odd relationship. Not really a bromance, more like some weird high school rivalry. They’re constantly flexing on each other. Honestly, Pharaoh’s stronger, but Scalar’s a natural-born warrior. If they ever really threw down, it would be like the Punisher vs. John Wick. Pop some popcorn and pick a side because it’s anybody’s game!

Hex is a dinosaur from another superhero team called Team-Rex. She’s a Tyrannosaurus-Hex if I understand correctly. Basically, she’s a teenage Tyrannosaur who’s also a witch. She’s also kind of a b- um, blunt speaker. Oddly, her accent makes her sound like she’s from somewhere in New England. Not exactly New York, more like Boston. ‘Pahk the cah in Hahvid Yahd.’ You know?

Hex is an odd bird, but she’s, um, how would she put it? Wikkid powaful. Her feet rarely touch the ground, since she prefers to hover or fly, she can control lightning with her bare hands, make herself and other things invisible, control minds – she calls it chahming, and even bring dead plants back to life. Unfortunately, you can’t reanimate animals. The brain activity becomes an issue. Brain death is forever unless you’re lucky enough to have a backup of the patient’s brain handy. But come on, this is the real world we’re talking about, right?

Fun fact about Hex: her dead grandmother’s spirit follows her everywhere she goes. A time travel experiment gone wrong sucked them both through a tem-portal, and now they’re constantly together. Sounds awkward to me, but whatever. I thought she was nuts at first, hearing her talk to her grandmother like she was there with us. Only she can see or hear her. Who knows? Maybe she really is nuts.

Did I mention we’re on a quest? It’s wild. I feel like that little guy with the Robin Hood hat in the old Zelda game. “Take this sword, ‘cause shit’s about to get real!” And good god, did I ever get a sword! It's called the Sword of Helianthus. The deity of heat and light, Helianthus, blessed the sword, so great job naming it after him. The hilt looks like gold, but unlike everybody's favorite wedding ring material, it’s lightweight and stronger than steel. The crest of Helianthus is engraved on the quillon block – that’s the crosspiece where the blade meets the handle. It’s like a flaming sunflower with a Freemason-looking eye at the center. I’m generally not into flowery crap, but truth be told, it’s pretty badass. I have a chain-mail tee-shirt with a glowing key woven into the chest, a black leather jacket and leather biker pants, a magical water-skin that never goes dry, and black leather boots of levitation. Gotta keep the ensemble consistent, right?

King Solidago Altissima tasked us with the quest. He wasn’t there personally, but Aconitum, his magic advisor, wizard, warlock, whatever you want to call him, was there.

Aconitum was a creepy dude, to say the least. He wore a drab brown robe that concealed most of his face with a monk's hood and was the perfect blend of all the classic villain tropes. His eyes were the color of ash burrowed in deep, leathery sockets, like twin tarantulas lurking in tunnels of flesh-colored webbing. He sported a long wizard hat of a schnoz, ending in a point that would’ve made Pinocchio do a double take. A set of thin, deflated lips that looked like a cocoon after the butterfly flew away framed his sullen mouth. Stringy, graying hair as clean as an old bicycle chain hung loosely around his pale, ghoulish face. His hands were so gnarled, laying them flat appeared to be an impossible task. That was alright because he seemed perfectly content to wring them together repeatedly in classic villain fashion whenever he spoke. His old, leather sandals betrayed filthy, calloused feet ending in long, jagged toenails. When he sneered – smiling obviously wasn’t something Aconitum’s face was accustomed to – it was painfully clear his dental hygiene was worse than his foot care routine. You’d think a wizard could use a little magic to tidy himself up a bit.

Our benefactor found my friends and me celebrating a recent victory at our longstanding tavern of choice, a tiny hole in the wall in the rough and tumble mining village of Artemisia, called The Prancing Peony. Dirk, who happens to be an honest-to-God ninja, was drinking blue agave tequila from one of Scalar’s boots. It’s a long story that ends with something like a bad punchline. You really don’t want to hear it. Anyway, Dirk’s full name is Dirk Claymore McJagger of the Clan McJagger. Yep, he’s as Scottish as Highlands, golf courses, and kilts. His outfit is a sublimely strange blend of Highlander warrior meets ninja. He wears a kilt, wee black ninja booties, and the traditional black pajama top. His hair and beard are a shade of red that, well… Let’s put it this way, he’s basically Hagrid if he was a Weasley. In my opinion, he’s too loud to be a ninja. He carries an old claymore broadsword instead of a katana. He also carries nunchucks. They’re actually a couple of lengths of tree trunk connected by an anchor chain, but they do the trick. His magical bagpipes would blow your freakin’ mind. They’re made from a dragon’s bladder, and alicorns. Those are unicorn horns in case you didn’t know. They sound like Sir Sean Connery after a few tankards of ale. Rest in peace, Sir Connery. Other than their ability to speak, I haven’t been able to figure out what’s particularly magical about them. When I say them, I mean him. His name is Angus. Not that talking bagpipes aren’t freaking magical, but Angus seems to be more of a hindrance than help most of the time. Ninjas are supposed to be stealthy, but whenever Dirk’s sneaking around, Angus either complains like a Scottish C3-P0, or breathes loudly, which sounds like Scalar farting with a harmonica shoved in his butt. Please don’t ask how I know what that sounds like.

Oh, wow! Dirk, Aconitum, quest. Yeah, I squirreled there, didn’t I?

The quest! Dirk was drinking from Scalar’s boot when Aconitum showed up, looking around the room like a frog at a fly convention. Pharaoh noticed him right away. I could see something was up, so I pulled him aside.

“Everything okay,” I asked casually, trying not to be obvious.

Pharaoh raised a bushy eyebrow and nodded in Aconitum’s direction. “Dat mon smell bad.”

“Maybe he’s in a grunge band,” I asked. “He looks old enough.”

Pharaoh isn’t exactly quick on the draw when it comes to humor. He’s not unintelligent, but his wit is dryer than Arizona in the summer. “Nuh. Me mean he smell like a bad mon.”

I nodded. “Yeah, he looks like he’s up to no good.” We watched him through the usual crowd of Friday night patrons, a volatile mixture of miners, farmers, vagabonds, and thieves. “Wanna see what he’s up to,” I asked.

Before Pharaoh could respond, Hex floated towards the cloaked man and blocked our view. “Wah she doing,” Pharaoh wondered, even though she was clearly talking to Aconitum.

Fewer than half our party gathered on either side of a long wooden table near the center of the room. Hex was at the bar when Aconitum slunk through the door. Yin-Yang was playing darts with Cool in a dimly lit corner. Santa and Steve were hustling some farmers at a card game known as Black-Eyed Susan.

Dirk and Scalar threw back shots of some God-awful smelling alcohol. Pharaoh and I, as inconspicuously as possible, stared at the back of Hex’s head. We watched for several minutes, waiting for some indication as to where the conversation might be leading. Our patience was rewarded moments later when Hex turned in midair, causing us to avert our gazes guiltily, and brought the conversation directly to our table.

“Suh, how bout di weather,” Pharaoh commented a little too nonchalantly.

“You two can give up the innocent act,” Hex muttered. “I’ve told you before-”

“Yeah, we know,” I interrupted. “Eyes in the back of your head.”

Pharaoh adjusted his seat while Hex and Aconitum sat down across from us, ignoring Dirk and Scalar’s drunken hijinks.

Hex motioned towards her new friend, who hungrily eyed an untouched platter of fried quaker ladies. “Aconitum is here on behalf of King Solidago Altissima. He’s searching for champions to rescue the king’s son from an evil coven of witches known as Noisetier des Sorcières. There’s a substantial reward, and he’ll provide us with gear and a map to guide us.”

“Why doesn’t the king just send his knights to rescue his son,” I asked. To Aconitum, who was still eying the quaker ladies, I said, “Dig in if you’re hungry.”

The warlock pulled the bounty towards him and began to devour the platter’s contents, pausing only to summon Viola, the barmaid, to the table. “Ale,” he ordered through a full mouth. “Tankard!” As she scuttled off to fulfill his request, he shouted, “On their tab!” He motioned around the table with a wild sweeping gesture, and then went back to stuffing his face.

Hex stared at him for a moment, clearly disgusted, but continued. “The queen doesn’t know her son is missing, and the king wants to keep it that way. Sending the king’s guard on such a quest would prompt the queen to ask questions the king would rather not answer.”

I knew better than to ask Aconitum, who hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Hex and Viola, any further questions about the king or the circumstances of the prince’s assumed abduction. The king was a private man. Questions made him less than comfortable. Nobody in their right mind made the king less than comfortable.

I looked at Pharaoh, who nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, Hex. You’ve got our attention. Go on.”

Hex’s tail was long, but her tale was short. Get it? Tail? Tale? Oh, God, I’m turning into my dad. Scratch that first line. Forget I said any of it, please.

Hex’s story was a short one, but it was so full of intrigue and betrayal, it could have been a Shakespearean play, or a Mexican soap opera.

Solidago Altissima’s kingdom, the once lovely Candytuft, was in all sorts of agricultural distress. He turned to a coven of witches to resolve his problems. That’s like going to a loan shark to resolve financial troubles, or a crossroads demon for like… anything. The piper always demands payment in the end.

The king apparently made a deal with the twelve witches and their silent partner. Once the witches solved his problems with magic, he arrested them for practicing witchcraft instead of paying up. I’m still not clear on what the agreed payment was. Dick move, if you ask me. All attempts to incarcerate the witches obviously failed, and you can probably guess how the rest went down. Not only did the crops start dying again, but the king’s only son, Prince Ranunculus Goldenrod, vanished as he slept one night. Thirteen deadly flowers were left on his pillow, a clear message as to who took him, and of their intent.

Apparently, the king discovered the flowers. He told Queen Ursinia that their son went on a hunting expedition with Sir Scabiosa Atropurpurea and would be gone for several days. It had been two days since the prince’s abduction. With each passing day, the king knew the likelihood of ever seeing his son alive again grew increasingly unlikely.

Atropurpurea, also known as the Black Knight, or Blackamoor's Beauty to the village maidens, camped out in the swamplands to the south of Candytuft. No one but knights hunting goblins or ogres dared set foot in the swamp, let alone spent a night or more, but there the Black Knight remained, faithfully awaiting word from Aconitum. He would lead whatever party was brave, or perhaps foolish enough, to accept the warlock’s proposal.

Hex finished her story with a sideways glance at the warlock. Absolutely no one could compete with her level of stink-eye. She was the grand master of the craft. “Would you say that was an accurate retelling of your proposal?” Her words dripped more sarcasm than Aconitum dripped drool and God knew what else.

The warlock nodded and involuntarily gagged while mumbling, which ended up sounding something like a cat hacking up a hairball. He was a class act all the way. I had a hard time imagining him in the king’s court.

Hex shook her head ruefully. “So, what do you think? I’m in if you are.”

I looked at Pharaoh, his brows furrowed in deep thought. “What say you, big guy,” I asked.

“Nuh. I tink we should aks di others,” he mused.

I looked around the room at the others. “Dude, Scalar and Dirk aren’t in any condition to make decisions, but they’re always ready for a fight. There’s a reward involved, so Santa and Steve will be in. There’s a child in danger, so Yin-Yang would go regardless of the reward, and Cool would follow you into the twisting depths of Pothos itself. I’d say the three of us can safely make the call.”

Pharaoh shook his head, his dreadlocks swaying disapprovingly. “Nuh mon. We do dis how we always do it. Wit a vote.”

I sighed. Pharaoh was a rules guy through and through. There would be no getting around his lawful good nature. “Fine,” I said after a moment’s consideration. “Hey, Scalar, Dirk!”

The two turned to look at us, bleary-eyed.

“How would you feel about a quest? We’d get to rescue a little boy!”

They stared at us, processing what they’d heard.

“There’s a reward,” I continued.

Still no response. The pair’s eyes were glazed over like bloodshot donut holes.

“And fighting,” I added.

“Oh, aye, a quest would be just GRAND!” Dirk interrupted, throwing his hands in the air, inadvertently tossing his drink into Scalar’s eyes.

Barely fazed, Scalar picked up a dirty bar towel that was cleaner than his face and sopped off the drink before nodding. “Si compadre. A quest.” He seemed ready to say something profound, his eyes taking on a somber cast. “Sure. Why not?”

I turned to Pharaoh triumphantly. “There you have it! Five of nine in favor of the quest. Majority rules, yes?”

Pharaoh narrowed his eyes, looking like Santa and Steve just cheated him at Black-Eyed Susan. “Yuh pull dis crap every time. An me always let yuh git away wit it.” He finally shook his head and shrugged. “Fine. We go rescue di prince. But nuh blame me when dem witches turn yuh inta a toad.”

Dirk turned, a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes. “Have ye laddies ever tried frog’s legs? Almost as yummy as haggis, they are!”

We waited a few hours for Dirk and Scalar to sober up, listening to Angus complain about Dirk’s clear intolerance of alcohol. The evening finally ended in a short-lived bar fight with the farmers whom Santa and Steve had apparently cleaned out of every last pachira. Pharaoh ended the fight by buying the farmers drinks, and sending them home happy, still broke, but happy.

Yin-Yang and Cool returned to the table shortly after we made the decision to go on the quest. Cool, as always, was agreeable to whatever Pharaoh thought was best. However, Yin-Yang, the quintessential Gemini, wanted to look at everything from both sides before committing.

Yin-Yang was typically at odds with everything, including himself. When I say him, I mean them. Yin and Yang, a pair of bears whose actual breed I didn’t know, were fraternal twins. They were nearly identical twins, but Yin was as black as pitch, and Yang was as white as newly fallen snow. Yin was a cleric and had mastered the ability to control and blend into shadows. He couldn’t create complete darkness, but he came damned close. Yang, on the other hand, was a monk who could create spiritual lights so bright they could turn your retinas into tiny charcoal briquettes. He, like his brother and his shadows, could become invisible in the midst of his self-generated light. Most surprising was the fact that his light, no matter how bright, generated absolutely zero heat.

Yin and Yang’s third power, or second to each of them I guess, was to combine their body mass to become a much larger black and white bear closely resembling a Giant Panda.

In addition to their mystical abilities, the pair was as stealthy as Dirk believed himself to be. They, like one of Santa’s farts, were silent and deadly. Individually, they were dangerous enough, but when they worked as one, they were a powerful force to be reckoned with. There’s some life lesson in there, but I’m telling a story here, not expounding philosophical insights.

Yin-Yang had one clear weakness. As balanced as his powers were in his combined form, he was a bit indecisive. Left, right, up, down, war, peace. There was always a brief internal debate. Yin and Yang were, for all intents and purposes, polar opposites. I’m doing my best to avoid the obvious polar bear joke. Generally, whatever direction had the moral or ethical high ground, was the direction he gravitated to. Thankfully, both of their respective orders served Helianthus. I can’t imagine the turmoil serving two gods would create.

Yin-Yang sat quietly at our table, meditating as Angus berated Dirk for not having the fortitude of a dragon’s bladder, which, if I understand correctly, can handle alcohol better than any other living being. Considering it’s the liver that processes alcohol, I’m pretty sure Angus is full of crap. Dirk’s the only one obstinate enough to actually carry on a debate with Angus, so I let them banter.

The bear, bears, you know… finally agreed the rescue of a young prince was worth the risks a quest imposed. Deeply nodding with hands together in praise, he was in.

Santa and Steve, as I predicted, were automatically in for the loot. Once Scalar...

indGame: Chapter 6 - Gifted

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 00:15:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

I caught my breath, an irrational wave of fear washing over me, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re on the cusp of forgetting.

All I could recall was my face burning before the dream faded like a sigh in a hurricane.

It took a moment to gather my bearings, but before long the Earth came back into focus, and I remembered where I was. Safely soaring high above the planet I’d sworn to protect with my life. To date, I hadn’t found anything that could even remotely harm me, except maybe old age. I do age, slowly, but eventually entropy even catches up with superheroes. Entropy is the real grim reaper.

The world’s beautiful from up here – just a big blue marble, with white swirls over odd-shaped patches of gray, brown, and green. I had a cat-eye marble that looked like it when I was a kid. Somewhere down there, it still existed. Maybe in a landfill, in the backyard of my old house, or even in the possession of some new lucky child, but it still existed. That’s the nature of matter and the law of conservation of mass. Entropy be damned. When I eventually cease being me, my molecules will become something else. Hopefully, something amazing.

But for now, and I expect for a very long time, I am the Golden Sentinel, sworn defender of Earth and her almost eight billion inhabitants.

I floated quietly, miles above the surface of the breathtaking blue planet, watching, listening. My pristine white cape floated loosely around me, as there was no atmosphere to disturb it, nor gravity to tug at its hem.

Let me tell you, when it rains, it most definitely pours. In my case, it usually hails, sleets, snows, and throws in some frogs and locusts for good measure. The world went from relatively quiet – you know, stuff the global police forces and militaries can safely deal with – to absolute hell in a handbasket in a matter of seconds. Only this handbasket is almost a hundred and ninety-seven million square miles. That’s a huge handbasket for Hell to eff-up.

You can plan and prepare, but much like the Spanish Inquisition, you can never actually expect the unexpected. That’s why it’s called the unexpected. Trust me, my life revolves around it.

As I was saying, the world went from quietly sleeping baby to colicky quintuplets in the blink of an eye.

It all started with a volcano erupting on the island of Nea Kameni, a tiny island in the cluster that makes up Santorini, Greece. Hundreds of tourists would be in the path of any resulting lava flow, and traditional evacuation processes would be too late, so it was a priority-one emergency.

Before I could fly in and save the day, though, the city of San Francisco, all the way over on the West Coast of the United States, began to shake like one of those tacky hula dancer figurines people put on the dashboard of their car. San Francisco’s car clearly had bad shocks and was driving through potholes.

To make matters worse, a massive sinkhole nearly a mile in diameter suddenly formed in the Sea of Japan. Midway between Japan and South Korea, the liquid black hole guzzled seawater like a beer drinker at a football game. Its gaping maw pulled in a luxury liner, the ship’s superstructure shuddering and groaning as it careened sideways.

As I formulated a plan of attack, yet another hero-sized event let down its unruly hair. A small, undetectable fragment of meteorite struck the JEM – Japanese Experimental Module – of the International Space Station. The damage was so minor, the naked eye could barely see it. However, in a very short time, that segment of the ISS’s artificial atmosphere would fail, and all the current residents of the JEM would suffer an unpleasant demise.

I could see all this happening from where I floated, but even with my awesome speed and strength, I’d never figured out how to be in more than one place at a time.

The space station was closest, but there were people on the western coast of Nea Kameni bathing in the tantalizing warmth of the natural hot springs.

Moving at speeds rivaling light itself, I hurried off to save the day.

I arrived on the coast of Nea Kameni a fraction of a second later, and not a moment too soon. The people in the hot springs were already shouting that the water suddenly felt uncomfortably hot. In mere seconds it would become toxic and start to boil.

As cool as my superpowers are, nature imposes some practical limits on how I can use them. I can only move as fast as whatever I’m carrying can handle. Too fast, and the friction would tear them apart, like a stack of papers flying off the roof of a speeding car, so no speed of light travel while carrying a person. I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I did learn that lesson the hard way. Cut me some slack though. It’s not like there’s a school for superheroes or anything!

Around five to six hundred miles per hour is my max speed when carrying a human being unless they’re inside a structure that can withstand greater speeds. Then it’s on. We can go all sorts of fast. Like tens of thousands of miles per hour, depending on the structural integrity of the thing they’re enclosed in.

I don’t have some magical aura that extends out and protects anything I’m touching, like in the comics. That’s just silly. The laws of physics still apply, friends, just not to me. Why? Well, it’s a long story, but the Cliffs Notes version says I was gifted powers of a divine origin. Even I don’t totally understand my powers, but I know they don’t seem to have any upward limits. Strength, speed, flight, even healing. I’m a mixed bag of vanilla powers. The healing comes in handy if I’m too late to prevent injuries, but resurrection is impossible, even for me. Dead is dead. Doornails will remain doornails. As much as I desperately want to, even I can’t save everyone, everywhere, all the time.

There were about forty people in and around the coastal hot spring. I zipped past the captains of the tour boats, and told them in Greek – yep, I speak every known language, including a few forgotten ones for good measure – to turn west and move like hell!

As the captains shouted out their orders, I pulled people from the water, two by two, and deposited them carefully on the boats. There were a few bathing suits lost during the rescue. You think 500 miles per hour makes a face look funny! In a matter of seconds, I scooped up every person in immediate danger. With a half salute, half-wave I’m pretty sure no one actually saw, I rocketed towards the distressed luxury liner in the Tsushima Strait.

The ship was already buckling. She would need serious structural repairs once she was back in port.

An incredible assortment of seabirds circled the sinkhole. Morbid curiosity is clearly not a trait exclusive to humans and felines. It sounded as if the people on the ship were engaged in a screaming match with the seabirds.

Speaking of screaming, a few lifeboats had dropped into the churning waters of the strait. People foolish enough to hop in before their release were being sucked rapidly towards the ravenous expanse. I flew into the frigid waters and emerged with one of the lifeboats held over my head. I deposited the small craft on a deserted upper deck, and returned to the waters twice more, each time returning with another lifeboat full of terrified men, women, and children. Once the lifeboats were up and out of the way, I shouted for everyone to get below deck. I started to turn the ship’s nose away from the terrifying phenomenon. I had to turn the behemoth slowly, as she wasn’t built to withstand the strain of a sudden six hundred mile per hour pivot. If I tried that, the ship would snap in two, like the Titanic, and I’d have a brand-new disaster on my hands.

I felt the clock ticking as I turned the beast south. Once I was sure everyone was below deck, I found a structurally solid spot at the rear of the ship and began to push. The effort was more than a playground shove, but nowhere near what I could without the friction of the salt water in my way. Water is far denser than most people realize and moving a skyscraper sized vessel at any significant speed is no small feat. I was strong enough to hurl the ship into space with ease if I wanted to, but those pesky laws of physics still apply. Sending her flying like a jet engine would destroy her and kill everyone on board, so I had to go slower than dial-up internet to get the ship to safety.

You might wonder why I didn’t pick the ship up and fly her out of harm’s way, like I did with the lifeboats. Ever try to hold a wet paper plate full of food up with the tip of your finger? Too much area and too little support. The odds of pulling it off safely were too low. I’d risk either punching through the hull or breaking the ship in half.

I pushed as fast as I could without risking the lives of the passengers, well under a hundred miles per hour. Under normal circumstances, a ship like that never exceeded thirty! It took the better part of a minute to complete my rescue of the ship and her passengers. Finally, amidst the din of grateful cheers and relieved tears, I streaked skyward, directly towards the ISS.

I flew in with the grace and control of a hummingbird and hovered outside the JEM. I briefly studied the damage before flying to the edge of a series of stabilizer panels. Taking hold of the edge of a thin metal panel, I bent it back and forth, like folding a piece of paper before tearing it along a scored line. Then I tore the metal. The repeated bending created a weakened line in the metal that allowed me to achieve the tear with no additional visible damage. When the world was no longer on the brink of disaster, I could go back and repair or perhaps replace the panel.

Rocketing back to the puncture in the JEM unit, I began rubbing the metal between my hands furiously, superheating the business card-sized piece to nearly three thousand degrees. I placed it against the puncture, pressing firmly enough to effectively weld the patch in place.

Satisfied the ISS was out of danger, I sped back to Earth.

Now, you might be thinking the citizens of San Francisco and Santorini would be toast by now, especially the tourists still on Nea Kameni. See what I did there? Volcano? Toast? Okay, that was probably in poor taste. But seriously, I’m fast. Reeeeeaaaaaly fast. I’m ‘saved the entire world in the time it took you to read the last couple of pages’ kinda fast, so bear with me. That was a long day.

As I raced towards the California coast, and ultimately that oh-so famous City by the Bay, I could see the region erupting into utter chaos. It wasn’t massive, around a 6.2 on the Richter scale, but the quake was centered closer to the city than any since the big one of 1906. There was going to be a lot of damage. I arrived over the South Bay just as all hell broke loose.

The Golden Gate Bridge was bucking like a bull in a rodeo. Cars crashed into each other as they were pushed precariously towards the edge. A two hundred and twenty foot drop would crush a car like a bug on a windshield and kill everyone inside. Like I said before, water’s harder than people realize. The seismic force tugged the support cables in directions they weren’t ever meant to be tugged. If even one of them broke free, it would cut through the cars like a steel bullwhip through a piñata.

I flew the length of the bridge shouting for everyone to put up their windows and convertible tops. Then I went to work.

I needed a safe place to deposit the vehicles as I removed them from the bridge. The grassy area at the center of Fort Baker, only about a mile north, would be perfect. A similar area at the center of Fort Winfield Scott existed roughly a mile to the south.

Going slow enough to avoid injury, I could pick up a vehicle, fly it to a fort, and set it down, about once a second. Return trips, at that close distance, were virtually instantaneous when viewed by the naked eye.

A mortal couldn’t follow the amount of disastrous activity going on in the city at the moment. Luckily, my powers let me take in everything around me and process it instantly. Every brick that tumbled, every crack that formed in every road, every broken pane of glass, every scream and shout for help, I heard it all. In between my deliveries of cars from the bridge to the grassy knolls, I crisscrossed the city like a sentient beam of golden light, catching people as they fell, shielding them from falling debris, and putting out fires as they erupted. I placed my rescuees in the safest possible places and zipped off to the bridge to collect more cars and trucks.

About twenty-five seconds after the devastating shaking began, it ceased. But the city still needed a whole lot of saving. For every person I plucked from the crosshairs of danger, there were hundreds, maybe thousands more, who were still in some sort of peril. It was going to be a very busy day.

I shot around the city for another few seconds, removing large sections of debris from atop trapped cars and clearing the way for emergency response teams to assist. You see, I’m not the only hero in town. There are firefighters, EMTs, police officers, doctors, nurses, and so many others, paid and unpaid, who are always instrumental in saving lives and property when disaster strikes. I get the parades and photo-ops, but honestly, those unsung heroes out there, who never share the stage or spotlight with yours truly, they’re the ones who deserve the recognition. They’re just as vulnerable as the people they save, yet they put their lives on the line just the same.

They’re the real heroes.

Before anyone could thank me, assuming they’d even seen who’d saved them, I streaked back towards Santorini. I still had a volcano to deal with.

I arrived back at the island to find the magma advancing over Nea Kameni like a wave of giant fire ants, if the ants were made of actual fire. Though the tourists who chose to visit the island that fateful day were all heading for coastal waters, the wall of molten death would overtake most of them long before they could get to any real semblance of safety.

I studied the situation for a moment and decided my original plan was still the best. Diving under the crystal waters on the northernmost side of the island, I continued down until I reached the seabed, more than thirteen hundred feet below. Once there, I dug furiously into the centuries old lava rock that made up the base of the island, punching through Earth’s crust to the mantle below. I dug in and upwards at a forty-degree angle, turning lava rock, and pockets of iron, nickel, and diamond into dust with my bare hands. I punched, grabbed, crushed, and brushed aside chunks of the mantle as I bored upwards, eventually reaching the magma vent that fed the volcano. The torrent of molten lava that suddenly flooded my makeshift tunnel would have destroyed most anything in its path, but to me, it barely registered as warm. The magma immediately began to flow down the tunnel, and as it did, I followed it back towards the sea below. As I returned to the opening of the tube, I widened the tunnel’s diameter, allowing more lava to flow, and ensuring it wouldn’t cool too soon and impede upon the lava’s new direction.

I returned to the surface and watched for a moment as the magma flowing into the sea began to form what would one day be a new island. It was rare, but occasionally even I could be impressed.

I spent the next few minutes healing tourists who’d been too close to the advancing lava and suffered first and second degree burns by sheer proximity. That’s one thing I have to slow down to ‘mortal time’ for. The time it takes to lay my hands on someone and heal them isn’t as trivial as most tasks. Besides, even if only for a moment, it’s nice to look into the eyes of someone I save. It wholly reminds me why I do what I do. Every time.

A young girl from Ireland and her father were the last to receive my gift. The man was in his early thirties, and thankfully in excellent health. He and his daughter, who was about five, had been exploring the rim of the volcano when it erupted. They’d been at a safe distance under normal circumstances, but the coast was just too far for him to carry his daughter ahead of a rampaging wall of liquid heat. I’ve been too late before, too late to heal. Thankfully, this family was going home unscathed.

The man, Errol, had been running from the advancing wave, carrying his daughter in his arms, clutching her tightly to his chest. The heat left his back blistered and raw, bleeding in some places from the scorch marks, like Blowtorch Man had been chasing him. Yeah, he was a thing for a minute. But archenemies are a story for another time.

As painful as I knew his wounds were, Errol insisted I heal his daughter, Marjorie, first. Since her arms had been wrapped around his neck, her tiny hands and wrists were also heat blasted and raw. I held Marjorie’s hands in mine and felt the power flow. Healing is as close to truly experiencing the divine nature of my powers as I ever get. It’s transformative for the recipient of my gift, but almost as much for me. See, I haven't felt real pain in a very long time. When I heal someone, I can feel their pain. It’s a brief flare, quick, like a paper cut, but for a moment I feel it all. I can lift buildings all day but healing actually drains me a bit. Marjorie’s hands healed quickly and beautifully. She wouldn’t even have a scar to remind her of her terrifying visit to Santorini.

As I placed my hands on Errol’s back, I could still feel the tingle of Marjorie’s burns in my fingertips. Then, for just a moment, my back flared like someone poured boiling oil over it.

In seconds, Errol’s back was as good as new. I even fixed a bulging disk at L5-S1 he probably hadn’t been to the doctor for yet, just for good measure.

The father and daughter looked at me with pure gratitude and awe. Marjorie touched my face, tracing my cheek with a tiny, perfect fingertip, and Errol placed a hand on my shoulder. There were tears in the man’s pale blue eyes. “I can never repay what you’ve done for us,” he said. “Bless you, friend.”

He took Marjorie’s hands in his own, and hefted her up, back into his arms. As they strolled towards the rescue boats in the western harbor, Marjorie waved goodbye.

And then the moment was over.

Many more moments lay ahead, though. San Francisco was still in dire need of assistance, and there were countless more people there to heal.

I was in the Bay Area for almost an hour; healing, digging, and rescuing. Between Santorini and San Francisco, it’s amazing there were no fatalities. I take my job as sworn defender of Earth seriously, folks. Any day I can pull off rescues like that, and whisk a few fatally injured people away from the Grim Reaper with my healing in the process, is a good day at the office. Even with superpowers, I can’t take all the credit. Those local heroes, the mortal ones, they help humanity bounce back just as much as me when disaster hits. The human spirit would give iron or diamonds a run for their money when it came to sheer durability. Times like these proved it.

Once I finished in San Francisco, I had one last task to complete before returning to the ISS and fixing the stabilizer panel that had served as a...

indGame: Chapter 5 - String Theories - Sector 2 (The Particle Accelerator)

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:15:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

Stan laid on his stomach at the back of the room, an M2 Browning – a .50 caliber badass mo-fo were Stan’s exact words – positioned on a low, wide-based tripod in front of him, aimed directly at the door. Brad and Becky were hunkered behind a metal table we’d upended and set up as a potential line of defense against the spiderlings and whatever else might have joined the unholy, alien congregation in the hall. They were both armed and ready to fire at the potential wave of monsters, just like Stan taught us. And me? Well, like a dumbass, I volunteered to open the door. I mean, I had grenades to throw into the hall, and I was ready to dive behind the table with Brad and Becky as Stan unloaded his .50 cal on the bastards. But hey, somebody had to open the door. Why not me?

To my dismay, the evil, tap-dancing mimes were still in the hall, and the alarms were still blaring like angel’s trumpets announcing the end of the world.

“On three,” Stan finally whispered, disengaging the safety and gripping the twin handles with both hands.

Brad and Becky, heads and guns sticking out from behind the table, were ready to join in the action if necessary. They looked like something straight out of an old World War II movie. It was like trench warfare, but in a big, concrete conference room. A conference room with guns on the wall… like a conference for gangsters… aw hell, you know what I mean.

“One.”

No turning back now.

“Two.”

My feet felt like lead. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move once I’d pulled the door open. I was about to find ou-

“Three!”

I turned the knob and pulled. The minute or so that followed was probably the worst and longest of my life.

More than a dozen spiderlings practically fell through the doorway. Before I could enjoy tossing a grenade into the opaque mass of legs, tongues, and bodies, Stan began firing his beast of a gun. Spent casings pinged to the floor by the dozen, and I suddenly understood what it would be like to work in the quality control department testing Zeus’s lightning bolts. To say the sound was deafening would be a gross understatement. My eardrums felt like speaker cones at a metal concert. To add insult to injury, or just to pile on more injury, the shrapnel and body parts produced by the constant spray of bullets was like cleaning up a driving range while the golfers were still practicing their swings. Legs, guts, Vaseline-blood, and golf ball sized chunks of concrete and wood pelted my legs repeatedly.

I dove behind the table and found Becky and Brad screaming. At least I think they were screaming. Their mouths were open like they were screaming, but all any of us could hear was Stan’s 90 pound monster-shredder. The firing slowed for a moment while Stan fed another belt of ammo into the gun. I think I heard Stan laughing in that brief moment. Good for him, man. Good for him.

A minute or so later, the spiderlings, the door, and the walls surrounding it were no more.

The firing stopped, but my ears would be ringing for days to come. Stan suddenly put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and met his eyes. He gestured towards the duffle bags behind us. I tapped on Brad and Becky’s shoulders, nodding towards the bags.

It was time to go.

After loading up, the four of us moved stealthily up the corridor towards the particle accelerator and the rest of our friends. One thought dominated all others as we headed towards an uncertain future, and all-too certain doom. Pink! Her bra was pink!

Our enviro-suits were combat ready, and the helmets outfitted with small, but powerful LED spotlights around the face shields. The added light made the run back to the lab a lot easier to navigate, though I really didn’t want to see the spiderlings better. The gloves were thin but surprisingly durable, and allowed us to feel the triggers of our guns without having to apply any added pressure.

We each carried an M27 – a U.S. Marine’s standard issue machine gun – and a duffle bag. Our chosen weapons each sported a bayonet, a suppressor, and a laser sight. Inside our duffle bags, we carried several 30-round magazines, MREs and water, a combat shovel – yeah, it’s really a thing – and several grenades. Stan gave each of us a different flavor of grenade, so we wouldn’t get them confused and throw the wrong type in the heat of battle. Mine were standard fragmentation grenades. Brad got flash-bangers; all bright, but very little heat. Becky opted for the less lethal smoke variety. Stan carried the HEs – high intensity – which he explained would be a bit like bathing in a solar flare. He also picked up an RPG and three projectiles. RPG is short for rocket propelled grenade, which is basic anti-tank gear in the outside world. I guess, technically, Stan chose two flavors of grenades.

It was crazy to think that, at one time or another, Stan had actually played with everything we collectively carried. Just when you think you know someone.

Surprisingly, we didn’t run into any other interdimensional monstrosities on our return trip to Mr. Shishido and our six friends in the waiting room. I guessed there’d been a breach along the north or west wall of the lab, someplace next to the Mr. Panacharian Memorial Hallway. There was probably another somewhere on the east side, which allowed the spiderlings to flank us from behind.

Halfway to the waiting room, we realized we could hear the glorious sound of our own running feet. It was odd to hear, since the constant droning of the alarms had become an accepted condition, like humidity you could hear instead of feel. It was awful, but you got used to it. Just as suddenly as they blared to life, the alarms shut down.

There were always two sides to every coin. The flip side of our alarm vs. silence coin was that the multi-legged beasties and other things that went bump in the night could hear us now. No more alarm bells to confuse them.

We finally reached the waiting room and were shocked to find it empty. The chair we’d placed against the doorknob had been flung across the little room and lay bent in a corner. The door leading to the lab hung by a single hinge. Dim light filtered eerily through the opening in a smoky gray haze, and there was a smeared, bloody handprint on the once pristine, white door.

“Same plan as before,” Stan whispered, though he didn’t have to. We had two-way com units built into our helmets. No one else could hear us unless we shouted. “Pack gets the door. I’ll be the first through, since I’m the best shot. Pack, you fall back and cover Becky and Brad as they follow me through. Becky, go left as you enter. Brad, you go right. Remember, barrels angled down and fingers off the triggers unless you’re firing. It’ll be easy to mistake survivors, and each other, for monsters once we’re in there. Friendly fire is a no-no. Pack, you bring up the rear. I’ll provide cover fire for all of you as you enter, and then take to high ground as soon as I’m able.”

We all nodded before I added, “Be careful to not damage systems necessary to close the rip. Assuming anyone’s still alive in there who knows how.”

“Good call, Pack,” Stan agreed. “Now, let’s go kick some interdimensional ass.”

The statement, ‘nothing ever goes as planned’, was coined for a reason. I feel like someone had me in mind when the words were first uttered. There’s even a classic rock song by the band Styx explaining the concept. They could have dedicated it to me.

For the record, I followed the plan to the letter. I got in close to the door, looked for movement beyond the narrow opening, and then kicked it in.

I really didn’t ever want to see the spiderlings up close, but we don’t always get what we want now, do we? The moment I kicked in the door, three things happened simultaneously. First, a wet mass of tentacles wrapped around my ankles, pulling my feet together and dropping me to the floor. As I hit the concrete, several spiderlings swarmed over me, their tiny, transparent tongues lapping at my bio-suit, looking for an opening. Then the door ripped free of its remaining hinge, almost knocking me out as it fell on me.

Stan rushed through, careful not to step on the door, but before he could lift the heavy slab of metal off me, Becky and Brad followed. Not surprisingly, they both managed to trample me like a herd of elephants running over a sloth at nap time. Normally, I’d be less than pleased with their carelessness but, under the circumstances, I was appreciative. Somehow, they’d managed to squash the entire swarm of spiderlings, covering me with their corrosive Vaseline blood and all the pink and red chunks that made up their lunch. I laid there covered with gore and unable to move. Suddenly, a hulking figure erupted boldly from the smoke and shadows. It was Mr. Pan! He held a firefighter’s axe mid-handle, looking like a warrior dwarf from a Tolkien book, only beardless and a tad-bit taller. Covered in blood, grime, and soot, he looked like he’d just been dragged straight through hell by his hair.

He reached down with his free hand and tossed the door aside like it was cardboard. Then he held out the blade of his axe, nodding towards it. I grasped it tightly and he pulled me to my feet. He was careful to keep the spiderling’s blood and guts off his skin.

“We thought you were dead!” I hollered through the mask.

“I should be,” he hollered back. “But I discovered the tentacles don’t like it when their prey bites back. They taste like shit. Zero stars. Would not recommend, kiddo.”

I would have laughed if I wasn’t so scared. I looked down at the mention of the tentacles, panicking. As it turned out, spiderlings and their secretions were just as dangerous to the tentacles, as they were to us. The tentacles slowly melted off my legs like the chocolate bar I left on my dad’s dashboard last summer.

Stan climbed the scaffolding that surrounded the accelerator chamber, looking for a high-ground position. Becky and Brad stopped when they saw our teacher. We all focused our attention on him. Becky finally spoke, probably louder than she wanted to. “Aleah’s dead, Mr. Pan. We saw it happen. It was horrible.”

Pan’s expression softened when he heard the words. “Dammit,” he finally muttered. “Karsten? Tegan?”

“They ran off with her,” Brad replied. “We haven’t seen them since.”

Pan shook his head and sighed. He pointed back through the smoke and a mass of sparking wires. “I looped around the halls and found my way here through a break in the wall behind the accelerator. I haven’t seen anyone else until you showed up.”

Becky held out her gun to Mr. Pan. “Wanna trade?”

He lit up at the sight of the M27, and eagerly handed Becky the axe in return. “Be careful,” he said. “The safety’s off.”

Looking confused, Becky studied the axe. Then she looked at him, rolling her eyes, the faintest hint of a smile curling the edges of her lips. “Funny, Mr. Pan.”

His eyes twinkled. He loved being a teacher, probably even more than he’d loved being a Marine, but given the choice between the M27 and a dry-erase marker, there was obviously no contest.

“I found them,” Stan called from the scaffolding. Everyone except Mr. Pan turned. He didn’t have the benefit of a two-way radio in his helmet, or a helmet.

He motioned towards an enclosed glass chamber about twenty feet into the room. From what I could see through the haze, it appeared to be a control room. There were lots of flashing lights and stuff, but hey, what did I know?

“Mr. Pan,” I shouted. When he looked at me, I pointed at the glass enclosure. “Stan says he found the others in there!”

“Tell Pan and the others I’ll cover them. You cover me while I climb back down,” Stan’s voice crackled in my helmet.

“Roger that,” I replied. I always wanted to say that.

Mr. Pan motioned for Brad and Becky to go ahead of him, then turned to me. “Go with them,” he said. “You’re my responsibility. I’m not losing another one of you.”

I shook my head, dropping Mr. Shishido’s keycard in his hand. “Get them to safety, Mr. Pan. Stan has us covered. I’ll cover him as he joins us. We’ll be right behind you.”

Mr. Pan’s lips drew into a thin line. He was ready to argue but realized Becky and Brad were already ahead of him. He pointed at me, his expression serious to a fault. “Get Stan down. I’ll cover both of you and bring you home. Got it?”

“Yessir!” I saluted him. It felt weird, not actually being military, but then Mr. Pan saluted back.

Without another word, he lumbered off towards the glass enclosure.

“I’ve got you covered, Stan,” I whispered over the com-link. “You’re a go, big guy.”

Stan didn’t answer. He just started climbing like his life depended on it. It took a few moments. By the time he reached the floor, Pan, Becky, and Brad were in the control room.

As soon as Becky and Brad were inside, Pan came back out and waved for us to join him.

Stan was almost to the enclosure when something roared from the opposite side of the room. The roar shook the walls around us like a runaway freight train tearing through a tunnel.

We all turned to face the source of the noise. It was a lump of clear tissue the size of an elephant. Tentacles, the ones plaguing us since back in the hallway, covered the thing’s body.

The tentacles stretched and ran their suckers over every exposed surface as the beast moved forward. It didn’t seem to need the tentacles to move. While they felt and grabbed things around it, something like a giant snail’s foot simultaneously pulled and pushed it across the floor. It was like a giant octoslug. No, too many tentacles. A centeslug maybe?

Stan began firing at the thing, but bullets didn’t seem to faze it. It was like shooting spitballs at a lump of sour cream. The bullets simply struck, then fell away, like raindrops off a window… a slimy, scary window.

Suddenly, the thing began to draw in air, expanding like a slowly inflating balloon. Then, without any warning, centeslug rapidly expelled the air through unseen orifices all over its body. The sound was like an unholy union between a fart and a T. rex’s roar. The noise was terrifying enough, but the orifices also shot out some horrifying clear jelly that, like the spiderling’s secretions, seemed to have corrosive properties. Unlike the spiderlings though, the corrosion was not exclusive to organic tissue. Desks, walls, wires, entire sections of floor, melted away.

I watched in awe and terror as the thing bulldozed through the lab, tentacles waving wildly in all directions, roaring and spewing as it went, like Moby Dick wrestling a giant squid.

Then the unthinkable happened. Stan hollered, “Get down!”

The command crackled in my headset like a poorly tuned radio station. I turned to see him firing off one of the RPG projectiles. I threw my hands in the air, but it was too late.

The rocket struck the centeslug center mass, and the concussive force of the explosion was nothing short of devastating. The bullets had been ineffective at worst, an irritation at best, but the RPG was not a gun. The monster blew apart like a cherry bomb planted in jello salad. The creature’s disintegrating body hit Mr. Pan first. He vaporized before our eyes, without enough time to even scream. I turned to see Stan’s enviro-suit melting around him, and then he was melting too. Stan, unfortunately, did have time to scream. I couldn’t hear him for long. The next moment brought screams to my own lips. Little did I know, corrosive awfulness covered my helmet. It took mere seconds to eat right through. Pain like I’d never imagined possible ripped through my body like the otherworldly roars of the centeslug. My face disappeared like a marshmallow left in the fire too long, and before I could die, I passed out from the pain.

Game over.

indGame: Chapter 4 - String Theories

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

Laboratory 311, home of the Waller-Lobue Particle Accelerator.

It was the perfect day for a high school field trip. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and the staff was… well, dead. All of them. Dead.

“Welcome to Laboratory 311”, the tour guide had said, but when she went to check on the screams coming from the particle accelerator viewing chamber, she never came back.

To the best of our teacher’s understanding, some sort of accident caused the emergency protocols to kick in. That meant a complete lock-down and containment of any breach. Now I’m trapped in the complex with the other students and our teacher, Mr. Panacharian, waiting for a rescue team.

“Kids, please stay together,” Mr. Pan said gruffly. Pan was a big man. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t muscle-bound either. He was powerful looking, with huge hands and an overly expressive unibrow that looked like two caterpillars practicing the Kama Sutra on his forehead. Picture a Greco-Roman wrestler, but shorter. Probably just a higher concentration of Neanderthal DNA. I mean, give the man a cigar and mutton chops, and he would have been the perfect guy to play a comic book accurate Wolverine.

“Mr. Pan, I have to go to the restroom,” Becky Anderson whined. “Really bad.”

Pan’s shoulders drooped, and he sighed like a man whose job it was to tell the world that humanity was on the brink of extinction. “Becky, we’re supposed to remain in this room until someone comes to let us out. I don’t think anyone will hold an accident against you. To be honest, I have to go too.”

Brad Wilson, team quarterback, snickered. “Don’t be too sure of that. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of judging.”

Pan swiveled his head on the tree stump serving as his neck and glared at Brad. “Don’t be a dick, Brad,” he said, clearly unafraid of potential repercussions. “You’ve been doing the pee-pee dance for the last twenty minutes.”

The rest of the class, including Becky, laughed as Brad’s face flushed a deep, warm crimson.

It took a moment to register amidst the laughter, but a hush rolled through the room as we all recognized the sound of what could best be described as a guttural, primal roar. The roar echoed through the room like a train passing through an underground terminal, and Becky began to cry. I put my arm around her, hoping to provide a little comfort, but I wasn’t feeling all that comfortable myself.

A series of shrieks and screams rang out in the halls, followed by a high-pitched squeal that sounded like the mating call of a cyborg dolphin. Becky, voice shaking like a Yahtzee cup, whispered, “Brad just peed himself.”

We stood in the closest thing to silence we could muster. I mean, there were whimpers, whispers, and outright crying, and of course Mr. Pan was busy hushing all of the above, but it wasn’t as bad as the pandemonium going on in the hall and particle accelerator chamber.

Suddenly, the door from the adjoining viewing room flew open and a tall Japanese man wearing a lab coat and yellow safety glasses stumbled through. He quickly closed the door behind him and cursed when he remembered there wasn’t a lock on our side. He turned to look at us, seeming surprised for a moment, and then wheezed, “The field trip! Thank God. Are you all accounted for?” He looked to Mr. Pan for an answer, his eyes desperate.

“Everyone’s here, except Jodi, our tour guide,” Mr. Pan replied. He looked just as shaken as the man standing in front of us. His name tag identified him as Fuun Shishido – Senior Controls Engineer. “Can you tell us what’s happening here?”

Fuun shook his head. “Classified,” he muttered.

Mr. Pan wasn’t a fan of the engineer’s answer. In one solid move, he hefted him against the unlocked door by the front of his lab coat. “I have more than a dozen kids here whose parents won’t give a good god-damn about your classified crap! What in the hell is going on out there!?”

Fuun looked at us through cockeyed safety glasses. As if finally seeing us for what we were – a bunch of clueless kids who just wanted to go home – he sighed and relented. “Let go of my jacket, please.”

It was a request, not a demand, and Mr. Pan obliged.

“Thank you,” Fuun said, offering a slight bow. “I’m sorry. You see, everything is classified, even the number of sugars I take in my coffee. Chalk it up to habit.” The man looked around the room. Seeing nothing but terror, he continued. He must have thought Mr. Pan was a priest, because he spilled the beans on everything except how many sugars he’d taken in his coffee that morning. “A strange black stone, unlike anything we’d ever seen. A power source beyond comprehension. We used it to power the accelerator. It worked well the first time. It opened the multiverse like a beautiful patchwork. We could see everything, everywhere. But the second time, the investors got greedy. They wanted to do more than just see. They wanted to explore. But it was an accident. An accident ripped a hole in the complex fabric of spacetime, and it appears the multiverse is now collapsing into a single nexus. That nexus is our lab. It’s contained for the moment, but the strain of the entire multiverse pressing against the tear is just too much for even spacetime to hold. The rip is expanding. Soon it will exceed the confines of this facility, and there will be no place to hide.”

“Unless someone closes it,” I said matter-of-factly. I was trying to impress Becky, who’d clamped onto my arm like a human vice; a very pretty, incredibly nice smelling human vice. But it was still a valid statement, right?

Everyone in the room looked at me like I’d just professed my virginity or something.

“Seriously? Are you going to tell me you can’t close it,” I asked.

“He’s got a point,” Brad said, no longer trying to hide the drying stain on the front of his Levis.

I hadn’t really expected validation from anyone, especially Brad.

Fuun sighed and pursed his lips. “I’m only a controls engineer. I’m not allowed to operate the systems necessary to-”

“Doesn’t matter if you should do it.” The new voice was Jamal Stone, a generally quiet self-described science nerd, who probably understood what was happening better than anyone on the field trip, including Mr. Pan. “The question is, can you?”

Fuun looked really nervous. He was obviously a rules guy. But we were teenagers. We broke rules for breakfast.

Jamal continued. “Look, I’ve been taking particle physics classes through MIT’s online program since junior high. If you need an assistant, I’ve got your back. But you’ve got to be straight with us, alright bro?”

Fuun nodded. “Yes. It is worth a try. I think dodging any sort of liability went out the window when the rip appeared, and as far as I can tell, I’m the only employee left alive. I’ll try, and I’ll take whatever help I can get.”

Becky was looking at Jamal with a newfound level of admiration. We all were. I’d had a crush on Becky since the fourth grade, but unless her last name was Higgs-Boson, Jamal wouldn’t have even known she was alive.

I stepped forward once more. “Are there any weapons around here? Like a security station or anything? Someone has to keep everyone else safe while you guys figure this thing out.”

Fuun nodded. “Yes, but I wouldn’t bother with the security station. They’ve only got tasers and batons. There’s another chamber, not far from here, with tactical exploration gear, just in case we were successful.”

Mr. Pan shook his head ruefully. “Looks like you were successful.”

I nodded. “Jamal, you help Mr. Susudio. Whoever wants to come with me, I’m going for the tactical gear.”

Becky squeezed my arm, Jamal all but forgotten. “I’m coming with you.”

Brad stepped forward bravely. “I’m with you too, nerd.” His facade of bravado was as thin as our survival odds.

“Not so fast, kids.” Mr. Pan put up his hands. “I’m responsible for all of you, so-”

“No disrespect, Mr. Pan,” I said, “but things are only getting worse out there, and time is not on our side. You can’t stop us all. If you want to protect us, come with us and gear up.”

Several kids agreed out loud. While the screaming outside had ceased, the alarms continued to blare at a, well, alarming level.

Mr. Pan looked flustered, but he couldn’t argue, not about that, not considering what we all knew. He finally nodded and looked at Shishido. “Ok, some of us will get the tactical gear. The rest will assist you and Jamal.” He glanced around the room at my classmates. “Or stay out of the way.”

A few of the students who were neither scientifically inclined, nor particularly excited about carrying a firearm, nodded sheepishly.

Mr. Pan looked satisfied. “So, Mr. Shishido, tell me. Where is this munitions depot?”

A few minutes later, eight of us, including Mr. Pan, Brad, Becky, and I, escaped the locked room using Mr. Shishido’s keycard. He had limited access inside the facility, meaning the keycard wasn’t going to open any exits leading to the outside world, but he assured us he had access to the munitions room. It turns out our humble Mr. Shishido was more important than he made himself out to be. Our unwitting savior had overseen the development of most of the systems that controlled everyday life at Waller-Lobue, including security. His card allowed him to go anywhere his expertise might be needed. Apparently, he was needed just about everywhere.

Shishido, Jamal, and the other five kids remained in the waiting area, as there were unimaginable horrors lurking on the other side of the unlocked door leading to the lab; horrors yours truly needed to take down before the science nerds could repair the rip. We wedged a chair under the doorknob, effectively preventing any accidental openings. Unfortunately, if something in the lab had even a bit of upper body strength and an inkling of determination, the chair wouldn’t stop it for long.

As it turns out, Mr. Pan was a former marine, and pretty badass. We won’t talk about the time he ran out of a classroom full of kids during an earthquake. Everyone’s allowed a phobia. Interdimensional cosmic horror, it seemed, wasn’t one of his. As part of the first marine raider battalion, clearing rooms was second nature to our warrior turned science teacher. Had we been learning from freakin’ MacGyver all along?

“Stay close, kids,” Pan whispered.

With the alarms still blaring, I doubt anyone but those of us closest to him could hear. He used hand signals to guide us. Even if most of us didn’t know what the signals actually meant, his body language told us everything we needed to know. Two fingers up, three fingers sideways, who the hell knew, but when his hand shot up like a high-five as he was about to turn down another hall, we all recognized stop.

Pan looked back to see if the path behind us was clear. He raised two fingers and circled them in the air. Maybe he wanted us to turn around? Before any of us could register the signal, a mass of wet, albino-white tentacles that resembled extra-long ears of overcooked, slimy white corn, slithered around the corner, and coiled around Mr. Pan’s ankle and calf. Our teacher grunted. Impressive, considering the rest of us would’ve shrieked like babies if the things touched us. He tried to kick at the tentacles, before realizing that was the worst possible response. Once he lifted his foot, whatever was attached to the tentacles yanked him off-balance and dragged him, screaming and flailing his arms like a cartoon character, down the hall and out of sight.

Then we all shrieked like babies.

The shrieking, it turned out, was also a bad idea.

A high-pitched chittering sound, followed by a rapid succession of wet, guttural yelps, echoed from somewhere in the corridor behind us. Stan Bautista, a big, quiet Samoan dude with hair like John Travolta in that really old movie, Grease, ran from the back of the group, towards the corridor Mr. Pan just disappeared down.

And the stampede was on.

Becky started running before I did. I only started moving because she was pulling on my arm, and one of us was bound to fall if I didn’t go with her. I might have started pumping my legs like a madman when an odd clicking, like the sound of hundreds of tiny feet running, began swarming up the hall in our direction.

The problem was, everyone was running down the wrong hall. Mr. Pan had the map, but I’d memorized it. The hall our teacher disappeared down, where the class was now running, was the wrong one. We were supposed to go straight, not left.

I pulled on Becky and hollered, “This is the wrong way!”

She slowed and looked at me, and finally stopped. Brad and Stan, who’d inadvertently started the exodus, stopped as well. Everyone else kept running, unable to hear my shout over the alarms and screaming.

I tugged at Becky’s arm, nodding back to the hall we’d come from. Without another word or gesture, the four of us ran back and turned left. As we passed through the junction of intersecting halls, I spotted Mr. Shishido’s keycard on the ground. Poor Mr. Pan dropped it when the tentacles pulled him off his feet. I scooped up the card and kept running.

Then I made the mistake of looking back. About two or three dozen pregnant cat-sized creatures stopped at the juncture we’d just run back through. I tugged at Becky and shushed, pointing back down the hall. I wasn’t she could even see the gesture in the dim emergency lighting. We stopped, transfixed by the mind-numbing sight. Brad and Stan stopped and looked back as well. There was a collective skipped heartbeat as we watched. Suddenly, Brad wasn’t the only one with pee in his pants. Hey! It might be Stan I’m talking about, or Becky. No judging, alright?

Oh, yeah, the creatures. The creatures looked like they were very, very distant relatives to spiders. Their bodies were roughly the size of volleyballs, and their color was a sickly, translucent, milky hue, like an amphibian’s eggs. We could see through to their innards. While their skin was clear, there was an awful mixture of red and pink tones swirling around in what looked like their digestive tract. Most likely human flesh. Becky dug her nails into my forearm. I was fairly sure I was bleeding by now. The bodies were bad enough, but their legs made me wish I was wearing brown pants. It’s a pirate joke my dad likes to tell. Look it up. Their legs were long and spindly, but sturdy looking. They were the same milky white hue, and covered with spiky, white hairs that seemed to move independently, like a cat’s whiskers. The worst thing about the legs wasn’t the length, the color, or the fact they needed a waxing in the worst way. It wasn’t even that they had so many we couldn’t count them. It was the tiny tongues. From each joint, on each leg, and there were a lot of both, what looked like a tiny tongue protruded, licking eagerly at the air, tasting it. Maybe smelling it? And it might have been the diffused lighting, but I couldn’t seem to see a single eye on any of the things. They appeared to be blind.

The four of us had stopped in the hall, right out in plain sight. We’d be sitting ducks if the things decided to come our way. As I said, though, the things had to have been blind, because they’d stopped at the T-juncture, seemingly confused by the two directions available to them. Their tiny tongues lapped at the air, like a cat at a puddle of milk, and their leg whiskers moved as if pushed by an unseen wind. Then the tapping started again. It was nothing in comparison to the awfulness of the alarms, but it was so consistent and rhythmic that the emergency systems couldn’t overshadow it. The sound was like hundreds of tiny tap dancers sending out messages in Morse code. But creepier, like if the tap dancers were mimes.

Then someone farted.

I refuse to believe it was Becky, even though she excused herself. It must have been Stan or Brad. She was just being polite.

But when one of the two cretins cut the cheese, the collective tap dancing monstrosities' whiskers all swayed in our direction, and a thousand tiny tongues started licking at the air in our section of the hall.

Then they took a step towards us. And when I say they, I mean all of them.

One step became two, two became four, and before we knew it, they were practically skipping in our direction singing “Zippity Doodah”. I don’t know about them, but I wanted to go away from the fart, not towards it.

Several more steps and the multi-legged nightmares were practically on top of us. The way we huddled together, if they brushed past one of us, they’d find us all.

I lifted my foot to step on the closest one, though I was certain all that would do was make it mad. Seeing as we were already doomed.

Then we heard the roar, the screams, and the stampede of footsteps coming from Mr. Pan Memorial Hallway. Our classmates found something else, or something else found them. The spiderlings decided the screaming and running was far more interesting than a fart. Without so much as a ‘see y’all later’, they were off to dinner.

A moment later, the screaming increased. A few seconds after that, everything became quiet again.

“Move,” I whisper-shouted.

We continued our panicked race towards the safety of the munitions room. A shriek from behind us froze us in our tracks. It was human.

We turned to see Aleah Lopez stumbling towards us, her eyes wide with terror. She screamed again when she saw us and reached out for help.

We all bolted towards her, but stopped short when we saw the opaque, whisker covered leg stalks creeping over her shoulders and around her upper torso. The whiskers seemed to do nothing to the fabric of her hoodie, but as soon as they touched the exposed flesh of her neck and face, they burrowed in like sentient porcupine quills. They pulled the legs and those awful flicking tongues up against her neck and face, but that was just the terrifying beginning. As the legs made contact, Aleah’s flesh dissolved like a hot knife passing through a hard stick of butter, or maybe a lightsaber through metal. There was definitely some bubbling. Man, I don’t mean to sound callous. Seriously, in that awful moment, I think the four of us screamed at least as much as Aleah. She was our friend. We grew up together. I still remember the first day of kindergarten. Aleah sat next to me. We got in trouble for talking. The photographer had to take a second picture because of us.

We could only assume Mr. Pan, Tegan Short, and Karsten Jablonka were dead. In Aleah’s case, though, we were sure of it. We had to watch her die. Her voice suddenly turned into a gurgling spurt, and it was over.

Bile filled my mouth at a ratio equivalent to the tears filling my eyes.

Becky was shaking uncontrollably. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

I hugged her tightly. “We’re going to be alright. Right, guys?” I looked to Stan and Brad for reassurance.

They were holding each other the way Becky was holding me. Brad let go of Stan. “Not a word, nerd! Do you hear me?”

Stan looked like he still needed a hug.

“Yeah,” I stammered. It wasn’t time for jokes. “Not a word, man. I promise.”

We all backed away from Aleah’s corpse and the thing that was greedily consuming her....

indGame: Chapter 3 - Marshal Blood

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Sun, 06 Nov 2022 00:15:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

My horse shuddered nervously as I guided her into the narrow passageway between the boulders. “Easy girl,” I whispered, stroking her mane gently. “We’re okay.” I was lying, of course. Whisper knew my vocal tones as well as the flies that followed us knew the reach of her tail.

I knew the canyon that lay ahead of us was a deathtrap, plain and simple. Between the bloodthirsty savages still calling the territory home, and the murderous train robbers I was trailing, and were almost certainly lying in wait for me in the narrow expanse ahead, I’d be lucky to make it out alive.

I’d never been one to be frightened off by a little danger, and I had the scars to prove it. As lawmen went, my quarry knew there were three possible outcomes once Packard Campbell, known in lawful circles as Marshal Blood, and by lowlife varmints as the Bloodhound, was on their scent. One, you ended up in jail, two, you ended up dead, or three, I ended up dead. It was usually number two. Seeing as I was still kicking up dust and bringing ne'er-do-wells to justice, option three had never played out. I'd been close, but close didn't offer up very favorable odds to those on the wrong side of the law.

“Woah girl.” I drew back on the reins, though Whisper had already stopped. She knew my body language, after all. She snorted nervously, clearing her sinuses, and took a whiff of the scent on the wind.

Gun oil. Fresh. I smelled it too. It traveled the breeze accompanied by the faint aromas of gunpowder, chewin’ tobacco, and sweat.

I dismounted and tied the reins to a loose branch of scrub brush jutting out from the wall next to us. I crept away from Whisper, who remained as silent as the eye of a storm, and ducked into a crevasse large enough to shield me from three of four sides. Digging a small, cracked mirror from my vest pocket, I scanned the narrow passage around me.

The Lubbock Gang consisted of six men: three brothers, two lifelong friends, and a well-paid hired gun. The odds of them scattering like exposed cellar rats at the first sign of danger were slim to none.

I spotted the first two men quickly. The hired gun, a former Confederate soldier turned mercenary known only as Bly, perched about twenty feet ahead and thirty feet up, at the top of the canyon wall. Bly carried a Marlin 1893 lever-action 30-30 and wore his pistol slung low on his right thigh. The butt of the gun faced forward so that he could cross-draw with his left hand. He was at close enough range to put a hole in me the size and relative messiness of a whorehouse spittoon. Bly crouched behind a sizable boulder, perfectly shielding him from the canyon’s point of entry, though from my vantage point, he was nothing more than a sitting duck in an old, tan leather duster.

Closest to Bly was Garrett Long; one dangerous third of the murderous Long brothers. The Long brothers were inseparable and had a strict fraternal code of honor that bound them more tightly than blood-brothers, making them some of the most feared and unpredictable outlaws to ever ride the range. Garrett was stretched out on his belly roughly ten feet from Bly, and resembled a huge rattlesnake, sunning itself casually in the desert heat. He was armed with a rifle, bolt-action, though I couldn’t determine the make from his hidden position. I like to know as much as possible about my quarry before heading into a firefight, including what kind of guns they’re packing. In the right hands, a firearm is nothing less than a physical extension of the wielder. Just like a boxer needs to know if their opponent is a right-hander or a southpaw, I need to know what manner of gun a man is holding.

It took another minute or so to find the other two Long brothers, Hank and Bobby, and one of the two friends who completed the gang. Black Burt was as pale a sumbitch as ever crawled out from underneath a rock, but he was a deadeye with a revolver, and one of the most notorious gunfighters west of the ol’ Mississippi. I couldn’t see the second friend, a wily Irish varmint simply named Red, anywhere, though it was unlikely he was far. These men were as thick as thieves. Maybe that’s a redundant analogy, seeing as they were thieves, but hey, if the boot fits, right?

Hank and Bobby each carried a Winchester shotgun. Hank’s was an 1887 and Bobby’s was a 1901. They also had single sidearms slung low on their right thighs, butt facing back, gunfighter style. Burt loosely gripped twin 1860 Colt revolvers, and occasionally tipped them back, as if he was silently firing at an unseen target.

Hank, Bobby, and Burt had taken up defensive positions in locations where they wouldn’t risk catching each other, or Garret and Bly, in a crossfire.

I studied them for a moment, doing the math in my head. If they were avoiding a crossfire, that only left two places for Red to hide. Red would either be directly at the entrance to the canyon, which I knew wasn’t right, because I’d already have a bullet in my brainpan from the ride in.

The other location was-

A revolver’s hammer cocked less than three inches from the back of my head.

“Easy there, Red,” I said quietly. “You should be awfully damned proud of yourself. Nobody ever got the drop on me this close or this quietly. You sure you ain’t one of them Kung Fu masters or somethin’?”

Red snickered at the comment. “Yer a funny man, Mr. Bludhoond. It’s a pity I’m gonna havta kill ya now. Ye might’ve had quite the career on Vaudeville.”

Red’s reputation preceded him, and I was quite sure it would be the only thing that might save my life. “Come on now, Red. You know you’ve never shot a man in the back. That Irish honor, or some bullshit like that. I understand you like to look a man in the eye before you kill him.”

Red breathed out through his nose, sounding like Whisper when she sensed a trap. “I might say t‘the Devil with honor, jest this once. It would be worth it t’be able t’say I was the man t’finally take doon the Bludhoond. Doncha fancy?”

“Maybe,” I conceded, realizing I could see his gun barrel in the old mirror I still held between my fingers. Christ, but that guy had steady hands. “If you think you could live with yourself, and your secret, shameful, dishonorable deed. Just imagine what your Pa would think. His own boyo couldn’t face me like a man, so he shot me in the back. Go ahead, lad. I’ll tell your old man about it when I see him in Hell.”

“Blast ye and yer sheep-shite yammerin’!” Red fumed. For the barest of moments, his focus wavered, and his gun sight strayed to the left. It only moved by a hair, but it would have to be enough.

I compensated for Red’s twitch by quickly rolling to the right. I ended up on my back, face to face with the man who, allegedly, would only shoot a man if he could see his eyes. His eyes were narrowed, partly because he directly faced the mid-morning sun, but mostly because I’d pissed him off, royally.

“Damn you,” he shouted, as he overcorrected and tugged off a shot that slammed into the soil just to the right of my head.

As Red palmed the revolver’s hammer back, I brought my right boot up as hard as I was able to from my prone position and drove the pointed tip right up between his bowed legs.

Red squealed like a stuck pig as he squeezed off a final shot. The left side of my face felt like someone pressed an icicle against it. I knew I'd been hit, though how badly remained in question.

The mirror in my left hand broke off where the old crack had been. As Red doubled over me in pain, I lashed out with the remaining shard, and brought it across Red’s exposed throat. The wound was shallow, there was no spray of blood or anything quite so dramatic, but it was clearly painful enough that Red’s left hand reflexively shot from his aching crotch and pressed against his throat. His eyes bugged as he felt a warm trickle of blood seep between his fingers. I’m sure the blood felt like a lot more than it really was. Honestly, Red might’ve lived if not for the bullet I put between his eyes in the second that followed. The fingers on his right hand flew open in surprise, and his revolver dropped, clattering down the incline, and landing somewhere in the rocks below.

I leapt to my feet and shoved Red backwards before he could land on me like a stinky old sack of onions. His body tumbled down the embankment to join his fallen revolver.

Shouts sounded from below, but there was no indication of movement. The others were trying to determine who was down – one of them or, dare they believe, me.

I didn’t give them the chance to figure it out. As the remaining bandits shouted out to each other in frustrated confusion, I pulled my trusty Henry from my rifle-scabbard on my back and began to fire.

As I said before, in the right hands, a firearm is nothing less than a physical extension of the wielder. When I’m firing my weapons, there’s no saying where my hands end, and my guns begin. Finger and trigger become one, and the rifle butt knows my shoulder like a baby knows the warm embrace of its mother’s arms. My eyes are autotuned to the sights of my rifle and my pistol, and when it comes to my trusty ol’ shotgun, no sighting is necessary, my friend. I can dead-eye a target as easily as pointing a finger.

Burt was the first to fall. A hole appeared in his forehead as I squeezed off a round, and he slumped to the hardpan soil without any fanfare, his twin Colts splayed out in different directions like abstract art.

I took out Hank and Bobby much the same way. Hank took a slug to the temple. Bobby, flinching as Hank’s head jerked back, took one to the throat. Hank never even knew he’d been hit, but Bobby took a minute or so to die. The desperado fired off a last wild shot that clipped an unsuspecting cactus as he choked on blood, bile, and chewin’ tobacco.

Once I was satisfied Bobby was beyond chambering another round, I let my focus shift down to Garrett and Bly. Garret leapt to his feet as he realized one or both of his brothers were down. He scrambled ahead like a well-armed hermit crab, shouting my name like a nun scolding an ill-behaved student. Bly clearly knew where I was. He wisely allowed the frantic Garrett to stay between us, using him as a moving meat-shield. I chambered another round and fired at Garrett, striking him in the shoulder. I was already chambering again, when Garrett’s uncoordinated run slowed to an even less coordinated stumble. He threw his head back in surprise and agony. I was shocked to see an arrowhead protruding from his Adam’s apple like a kebab.

Bly, realizing the arrow’d been fired from the rear of his supposedly safe position, rolled forward in an awkward somersault, and began to zigzag in my direction. Apparently, he preferred incarceration to death. A small hatchet adorned with beads and feathers whizzed past his head, ending up lodged in yet another unfortunate cactus.

Arrows zinged dangerously close to Bly, one clipping his boot heel as he hot-footed it for my narrow alcove in the rocks. I felt a little better knowing none of the arrows or tomahawks were coming from behind me, but I was also well aware that if Red could get the drop on me, then so could the locals.

My beef wasn’t with the natives, but when an arrow put a hole in my favorite canteen, I realized they were out for blood, plain and simple. Bly’s blood, my blood, if we didn’t belong on their land, we were fair game. Whisper was safe, of course. The locals didn’t scalp horses. They’d take her back and feed her apples and turnips while they brushed her. At least there was that.

Bly made it to me faster than a rabbit bein’ chased by a hawk. Just like that, I was sardined into a stone crevice with one of the most dangerous men west of the Pecos. Strange bedfellows, as the old man said.

“Seems my meal ticket’s dead,” Bly wheezed. His loose drawl betrayed a distinctly southern upbringing. “If’n ye don’t mind, I’d rather take my chances coverin’ yer back, since I’m right sure yer lawman’s code says ye got to cover mine.”

I nodded curtly. “You do realize, if we get outta this alive, I’m gonna hav’ta take you in, son.”

Bly smirked. “If’n we do get outta this alive, Marshal, ye can try to take me in. Ye have my word as a commanding officer of the Confederate States of America on that.”

I laughed as a pair of arrows thunked into the rocks to my left. “The South lost, son.”

Bly drew his pistol and aimed it towards where the arrows seemed to be coming from. “The South will rise again, Marshal. Ye can count on me as much as ye can count on that.”

Well, I thought, that’s not encouraging at all.

Arrows continued to rain down on the stone notch where Bly and I hid. I noticed their accuracy increased with each incoming wave. As the locals got closer, their line of sight got wider. At least we could count on being able to see them as soon as they could see us. I made sure all my guns were fully loaded and ready to fire as soon as the whites of black greasepaint-covered eyes came into view. My Henry repeater, a marvel of modern weaponry that held sixteen rounds in the clip and could fire up to twenty-eight of those bad boys per minute, was up and at the ready. A scout or two would likely come ahead of the actual hunting party, and my rifle would be just the thing to pick ‘em off before they could fire an arrow at either Bly or me. My shotgun leaned against my elbow. It would be more useful when the group got closer together. Like the Henry, I could get off several shots in a short period of time. As a last resort, I could quickdraw my revolver like Zeus tossing lightning bolts, but the revolver was the least accurate of the three. As fast as our stalkers were known to be, accuracy was the most likely thing to get us out of our current predicament.

When I say predicament, please understand, I’ve been in worse situations before, but not many. It was the first time I’d found myself partially relying on the likes of Bly for my survival. I trusted my skin to nobody but myself, and maybe the local sheriff, Clem Pickett. Clem was a loyal lawman, though far too chauvinistic to make a smooth transition into the approaching twentieth century. He held some antiquated and downright offensive viewpoints on women, people of any other color, and folks subscribing to lifestyles or ideas contrary to his own. Clem Pickett was lily-white and as conservative as a preacher collecting the Sunday morning tithe. But as much as you’d never find me at a cookout with the gun-totin’ Neanderthal, I’d prefer his gun at my side than this Confederate, lowlife sellout. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, though, can we?

“Marshall,” Bly said in the loudest whisper he could muster. “If’n you call out to that horse you got tied yonder, it’ll come a runnin' up the hill, and provide the cover we’d need to get free of this-here deathtrap!”

“Of all the lily-livered, cowardly things to suggest.” I glared at him, considering ending our uneasy partnership with a bullet right then and there.

“Or not,” he said reassuringly, tipping his head sheepishly, and raising a scar-split eyebrow. The scar ran from somewhere under his hairline, and all the way down his cheek to his jawline. It barely nicked his eyelid, and looked like it hurt like a motherf-

“Jesus,” Bly hissed. My eyes followed his sudden shift in attention. An arrow stuck out of his right shoulder. The arrowhead protruded out the other side ever so slightly. The outlaw pursed his lips over gritted teeth and breathed sharply through his nose. “Lucky for us, I’m a lefty,” he said finally. “Is it clean through?”

“Mostly,” I replied quietly. “But we’re gonna need to get it out after we get clear of the locals. They’re close. Otherwise, that shot never would’ve got so deep.”

Bly nodded. His eyes blazed with determination, and beads of sweat peppered his windburned brow. He was a survivor. The South might not be returning, but when it came to sheer skills as a gunfighter, I had to admit, there were certainly worse men to be stuck with.

I reached out, and without giving him any warning, I snapped the arrow off an inch or so from the entry wound. Bly’s teeth remained gritted, but his lips parted like the Red Sea. As he quietly exhaled, I heard the faintest hint of a growl. Then, without a word, Bly sealed his lips and nodded again, breathing hard through his nose. I tossed the arrow aside, and the first of the natives leapt into view.

I can’t rightly say who fired the shot that killed him. Bly and I pulled our triggers almost simultaneously. There was only evidence of one bullet hole in his chest as the warrior slammed lifelessly into the rocks in his path.

And that started it.

From the first of the warriors to the last, we dropped more than thirty men. It wasn’t satisfying or glorious. It was survival. Without a second thought, we killed every man who came at us. When the dust settled, the only sounds remaining were dripping blood, Bly’s heavy breathing, and a quick, approving whinny from Whisper.

I picked up one of the feather-adorned hatchets and Bly put his hand on my wrist. I looked at him and let his eyes follow mine down to his wounded shoulder. He looked back at me, understanding my intent, and released my wrist.

“Brace yourself,” I warned. I placed the flat side of the hatchet’s blade against the broken end of the arrow and pushed.

Bly finally cried out as the arrowhead finished its trip through his flesh and ended up poking all the way out. Stepping behind him, I placed a notch in the edge of the hatchet over the shaft of the arrow, securing the weapon like a handle behind the arrowhead. I pulled for all I was worth, and the remaining third of the arrow came out as smoothly as a knife through butter. I stumbled backwards clumsily as it pulled out, and Bly took the opportunity to be the varmint I knew him to be. Taking advantage of my brief distraction, he picked up my Colt SAA from where I’d set it on the rocks to his left and shoved the barrel right in my face.

“Gotta say, lawman. Yer as good as the stories make ye out t’be.” Bly looked conflicted, clearly caught somewhere between admiration and wanting to get his ass to freedom. “If’n I thought there was even the slightest chance ye’d let me go, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

“You know I cain’t do that, Bly,” I said. “I cain’t break the law, even outta gratitude.”

Bly nodded. He didn’t look any happier than I felt killing the natives. “Then I cain’t let ye live, Marshal,” he conceded. “I will take right good care of yer horse and guns, though.”

“Well, isn’t that kind of you,” I asked. “Do me a favor and make it a clean shot, will ya’? Forehead, not face.”

Bly nodded amicably. “A’yup. Seems the least I kin do.” He looked at my Colt like a man inspecting a horse before purchasing it. “Fine weapon, Marshal. Looks like ye maintained it well. I promise I’ll keep up the tradition. By the way, thank ye kindly for leaving a bullet chambered. I was counting as ye fired at the end of the firefight. Turns out, ye only needed five of your six rounds.”

“You were countin’, eh? That’s right trig of you.” I shuffled my feet a bit. “Mind if I ask one more favor, Bly?”

“Aw, hell, I’m feelin’ generous...

indGame: Chapter 2 - Packard Campbell

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:15:00 -0500

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Like I said, my name’s Packard Campbell. Most people just call me Pack, except my dad, but I don’t mind Packard. So many people stress about how their birth name sounds. Rodneys become Rod, Jakobs become Jake, Richards become Dick. You know what I’m talking about. And why? Because it sounds more mature? Because it rolls off the tongue more easily? Whatever. My name is my name, and I’m proud of it.

Anyway, my name isn’t the problem. It’s everything else.

It’s weird. I mostly know who I am, but it’s like I’ve got memories of past lives, or I see glimpses of alternate versions of myself somewhere in the multiverse. It makes zero sense, right? Especially since I think I know where all these memories came from. I beta-test new first-person neural-interface games for my dad’s company, indGame. Funny, back to the name thing again. The real name of the company is Individual Gaming, but he calls it indGame. That doesn’t sound more mature to me. If you ask me, indGame sounds better as a video game or movie title. Check us out at IndividualGaming.com if you’re interested. I’ve got my own profile and everything. Take that, Vic E. Parker! Oh, sorry. Vic was my middle school bully. I occasionally need to remind the universe I’m not the slaghead he always made me out to be. It’s cathartic. I’ll get over it one day, you’ll see.

Oh, dang, I squirreled, didn’t I? Where was I? Richard becomes Dick… Oh, yeah, beta-testing. I’m the primary tester for all the new games that indGame releases. You’ve probably played at least a few of them: Tournament of Warlords, Marshal Blood, Gifted, Animehem, and String Theories are all currently available. I’ve tested more than twenty others that haven’t even been released yet. I think Tom Mux: Space Marine was my favorite, but LepreKong was a flippin’ trip, and I actually peed a little while playing dad’s latest cosmic horror game, Crawlspace.

Hey, don’t laugh. I pee a little during lots of the games. I don’t even have to be afraid or excited. See, when I was in middle school, doctors diagnosed me with a previously undiscovered neuromuscular disorder, Atrophic Lamin A Sclerosis, that’s been slowly but surely eating away at my ability to use my own body. I call it ALAS, since it’s like Progeria and Lou Gehrig’s disease had a really colicky baby, then put energy drinks in its bottle. Yeah, I joke, but it sucks. The first symptoms reared their ugly head during my freshman year in high school. By the time I was a junior, I was completely numb from the belly button down. At least Vic never saw me like this. Slaghead would have been a compliment compared to the bullshit comments I would have had to endure as my body forgot how to walk. I’m mostly glad mom didn’t have to watch dad and me go through this. She died when I was nine. The doctors think her condition and mine might be related, but they can’t be completely sure. She was wonderful and I miss her every day. Dad does too, but he’s strong in ways I don’t think she could have been. If she hadn’t died, watching me die would have killed her anyway. Oh, yeah, I’m dying too. I’ve got three to five years tops before my body won’t breathe on its own. I told dad that I don’t want to end up a vegetable kept alive by machines. Even though I know it hurts him, I’m old enough to request a do not resuscitate order.

Crap, I squirreled again. Sorry. Rodney, beta testing? Peeing myself, that’s it. I’ve played all of dad’s games from start to finish and found all the gold star items and platinum levels to boot. I’m proud of that accomplishment, to be honest.

Okay, so this is where it gets weird. My consciousness gets cloned into the system when I jack in, so the games play like I’m actually the character, leaving memories of the game in my head that feel as real as, well, reality. I’ve always been able to solidly distinguish between reality and the virtual world. Today, though, things are different. Jumbled memories keep coming at me rapid-fire. One moment, I’m remembering an Easter egg hunt with my mom. The next, I’m reliving slicing the top of some alien warlord’s head off in a multiversal coliseum. I’m on the verge of my first panic attack in half a decade, and the floodgates don’t seem to be planning to close anytime soon.

Whisper. I remember. Whisper…

Hold onto your horses, folks. Here we go again…

indGame: Part One - Memory Dump: Chapter 1 - Tournament of Warlords

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:45:00 -0500

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Tournament of Warlords

The beast drew back his arm, clenching his broad, blood-encrusted fist so tightly, it shook like a centenarian with a bad case of the tremors. Sharp, bony protrusions appearing to serve as knuckles popped audibly, and I braced myself for the next blow.

The crowd roared as I raised my arms in a defensive move, activating a plasma shield that ran between ceramic nodes permanently implanted in my forearms. With my fists balled, and my arms in close enough proximity to one another, the nodes filled the gap with a near-impenetrable energy field that would last as long as I maintained my position.

I braced myself. The view through the energy field was like wearing blue aviator sunglasses. Light filtered through in a cool haze. The beast swung, striking the makeshift shield with the force of a freight train. Bone chips and sparks flew in all directions. A shockwave rippled across the energy field, causing parts of its surface to change momentarily from blue to a shade of violet, a clear sign the barrier had almost been compromised. I winced as the impact jarred the nodes, resonating all the way down to the anchor points in my bones. Immediately, thousands of nanops went to work on the resulting hairline fractures. Within mere seconds, the anchor points were as good as new.

A second blow came just as the nanops finished their task, almost dislodging one of the nodes completely, sending the tiny medical technicians back to work. It appeared their day was just getting started.

The shield’s surface became darker. My pain threshold was exploring a new definition for the word ‘excruciating’, but I held my ground like a retiree with coupons at the cash register.

A third, well-placed strike changed that.

I cried out involuntarily as the powerful fist finally crashed through the barrier, ripping most of the nodes from my bones, leaving them dangling loosely from the flesh of my already battered forearms. The fist connected with my face, smashing my nose and shredding my lips. Teeth flew to the back of my throat, making me gag as the beast’s other hand wrapped tightly around my throat, cutting off my air supply.

The beast, known on his home planet as L’OthruC’ant, was an arthrolopithicus. Like many desert-dwelling predatory species, he wore his skeleton on the outside. Virtually covered in bioresponsive armor and possessing unparalleled strength, he was insanely difficult to kill. Yet, with a face resembling a spoiled package of ground beef, and my primary defenses equally disposed, I still wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

L’OthruC’ant noticed as I brought my right knee up between us. I half expected him to react, but his arrogant expression said everything. In his eyes, he had already won. He would let me suffer the pain of a broken knee as a final indignity.

I knew I had precious little time before the arthrolopithicoid ended the fight. All fights in the Multiversal Tournament of Warlords ended with at least one fatality.

“Finish it! Finish it! Finish it!” The chant had become the crowd’s mantra, and L’OthruC’ant drank it like grape Kool-Aid from a golden chalice. Intoxicated by it and the smell of my blood, he thrust a gore-covered celebratory fist into the air. The crowd stood and showed its approval with a unified roar.

L’OthruC’ant’s moment of self-indulgent glory became my window of opportunity. I brought my knee up to my adversary's groin and clenched my foot and toes tightly. A tiny laser implanted in my patella, with a beam like a surgeon's scalpel, bored a needle-sized hole through my flesh and began to work on my opponent’s exoskeleton.

Before L’OthruC’ant understood what was happening, the lasers simultaneously bisected and cauterized his internal organs. He pulled back slightly, his expression betrayed both surprise and pain. In that moment of confusion, I raised my arms into my trademark defensive position. The nanops were fast, but I was by no means healed. I could only hope they'd done enough as I positioned my forearms on either side of L’OthruC’ant’s head and clenched my fists tightly.

The field flickered for a moment, but the nanops were responsive and practical in their repair patterns. I was in battle mode, so weapons ops took priority over all else. One final adjustment to the last node in the firing order, and the shield sparked to life.

The top of L’OthruC’ant’s head slid along the thin layer of energy and landed with a wet thud in the dirt behind me.

The shield sputtered and failed, peppering me with the charred remains of my foe’s blood and brains. L’OthruC’ant’s body quivered slightly before collapsing on me.

The crowd fell silent as their champion dropped, burying me under his massive frame.

The audience cheered once again as L’OthruC’ant began to move, pleased to see the fight continue on. They paused for the briefest of moments, though, as L’OthruC’ant rolled off to the side, and I staggered to my feet. The roar resumed, however, when I boldly raised one bloody fist victoriously into the air.

They had a new champion to cheer for.

Packard Campbell. Remember that name, folks.

indGame: Prologue

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:30:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

“Take one. indGame commercial. Mic live in 3… 2… 1…”

Exciting electronic music begins to play. It sounds like the ‘80s are getting a second wind.

Welcome to indGame!

Welcome to a future without boundaries!

Have you ever wanted to scale Mount Everest? Maybe your secret dream has always been to explore the Mariana Trench. Or perhaps a game of hopscotch on the dark side of the moon would be more your speed.

Tired of your day job? How does facing down gladiators in an alien arena sound to you? Not really your thing? There’s always a need for a new U.S. Marshal in the Arizona boomtown of Rotgut. Then again, there are always vampires, aliens, and feral humans to take down if you just want to save the world, or nearly indestructible battle suits, if your goal is to enslave it.

Greetings! My name is Hal Campbell, CEO of the indGame Corporation. You can see my son Packard over there, testing out our latest simulator, Marshal Blood. He'd wave if he knew he was on camera. Right now, though, he’s lost in another world, hot on the trail of a ruthless band of train robbers. He might even catch ‘em if the locals don't scalp him first!

You see, using our patented cerebral scanner, coupled with our quantum universal anamnesis database, Q.U.A.D for short, we can import your very essence into our servers. We record your memories, emotions, fears, everything that makes you who you are, to create an in-game character with your precise personality, right down to ticks, twitches, and nasty habits. For all intents and purposes, the character in the game believes itself to be you.

All you need to do is jack into the game and immerse yourself in an experience that is part simulator, part interactive play, and, as far as your brain will be concerned, 100% real.

The best part is, you'll return to the real world without a scratch, but with real memories of your adventures in cyberspace completely intact, like a dream you actually remember. Or a nightmare, if that's your bag.

So whether you’re a n00b or l33t, old or young, ability-challenged or triathlete, indGame has something for everyone.

No joysticks or button-mashing required.

indGame - individual gaming at its finest.

“Aaaand cut! Alright, folks, that’s a wrap. Nice work, Hal.”

indGame: Credits, Dedications, and Quote

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:15:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

Credits, Dedications, and Quote

indGame, Written by Rod R Garcia, Narrated by Rod R Garcia

For Dylan ‘Doritos’ Dirodis, my friend.

You are missed.

P.S. Packard would have appreciated your t-shirt collection almost as much as me.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

BETA READERS:

Patrick Matthews
Pat Muxie
Jeremy Lelle
Michael Foster

COVER ART CLEANUP

Whendell Souza

COVER ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Betsy Ponce

COVER ART MODEL

Jake Ashton

QUOTE

Video games are bad for you?

That’s what they said about Rock ‘n’ Roll.

~ Shigeru Miyamoto

indGame: Teaser

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Purchase indGame in paperback, e-book, or audiobook

Coming to iTunes, Spotify, Audible, and more in November of 2022, indGame, the electrifying 1st book in the indGame series, written by Rod R Garcia.

Packard Campbell has made a life out of gaming. He’s logged thousands of hours in Neural Reality simulators, playing the most in-depth, mind-bending games available.

When an accident forces an unconventional fusion between the NR and cutting edge, experimental tech, Packard’s understanding of reality changes forever.

Now, Packard and the people he cares about most, will have to take a stand against an enemy intent upon redefining the very nature of existence.

To win, they must find a way to stop an entity that operates on the fringe of the rules of science and nature.

Packard’s in-game experience might just be what they need to tip the scales in their favor.

Hear the first incredible 8 chapters of indGame, here, exclusively on EpiphanyMill Presents The 1st 3rd!

Exploding Buddha: Teaser

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 20:15:00 -0500

Coming to Audible, Amazon, and iTunes in the Spring of 2022 – Exploding Buddha – the breakout first book in the exciting 'Gideon Jones Detective Series', written by Paul Leonard Williams.

Business has been slow, which is never a good thing when you have bills to pay. It’s much worse when you owe money to the most notorious crime boss in San Francisco. So, when a beautiful anthropology professor walks into Gideon’s office asking him to determine the whereabouts of an ancient artifact called the Horn of Ryujin, he naturally takes the case.

Gideon is not the only one looking for the horn, and soon, mob enforcers become the least of his worries. Our hero quickly finds himself in a life-or-death race against deadly ninja assassins and ancient, dark forces, to see who can claim the mystical horn first. To make matters worse, if the horn falls into the wrong hands, the world’s delicate balance of power will shift, and millions of innocent souls will be eradicated.

Is this tough-as-nails private eye in over his head? Will street-smarts, a mean right hook, and a Colt .45 be enough against demons and dark magic?

No pressure, though… It’s all in a day's work for Gideon Jones, Private Eye.

Welcome to EpiphanyMIll Presents, The First Third! Here's what you can expect!

EpiphanyMill Publishing — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 15:00:00 -0500

Welcome to EpiphanyMIll Presents, The First Third!

Here, you will find the first third (give or take) of every book that EpiphanyMill produces as an audiobook. Each chapter will be released weekly as an episode until roughly 1/3 of every book has been shared. This hybridized experience bridges the gap between podcast and audiobook, presenting a unique, extended 'try before you buy' opportunity for our fellow audiobibliophiles.

It is our hope that you'll find something in our ever-expanding library, that you will ultimately wish to add to your own digital bookshelf!

On the very near horizon, we've got: Detectives, Ninjas, Superheroes, Monsters, and Serial Killers. Action and adventure, horror, young adult's literature, Sci-Fi, a Brave New Multiverse, and so much more!

My name is Rod R. Garcia, author, and CEO of EpiphanyMill LLC. I'm honored that you've chosen to join us here today, and I sincerely hope that you'll find one of your next, most-treasured tales, here, on this podcast.

If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, as fantastic new books will be popping up regularly, and we'd be thrilled to keep you in the know!

Once again, welcome to the podcast, and welcome to the world of EpiphanyMill!

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