Secret Technology,
Unrequited Love, Absolute Vengeance
© February 2022
- Written by David
Wicker
Please do
not reprint without permission
CHAPTER 9 -
"MOTORCYCLE"
Slice Of Life (02-02-22)
Hello there. When it rains it pours, right ?
Katy's Grandma; Carlos' wife is back in the hospital again. This is not the first time she has been. She has serious health problems involving spiking heart rates, her sugar level up to 900, to the point it causes her hallucinations and - it keeps happening. Likely I will be visiting her this week. Hopefully she will get better.
During all of these crises including Katy's Mom's death, I've been in touch with my sister and we talk quite a bit about the future. Uncertain. What is all going to happen.
And I've been talking to Katy too. She said if Grandma does pass away she wants to move in with her Aunt who already has 3-kids ages 10-15. Two girls and one boy. I know that Aunt would be more than happy to take 12-yo Katy in.
And I agree with this. While I may not ever see her or babysit her again as I've been doing on Saturdays, I want her to be happy. That is of the utmost importance to me. I would miss her of course, but that's the price of freedom.
That, her health, her education, and her overall well-being are looked after. A woman that has successfully raised 3-kids should not be a problem with Katy. And Katy will FINALLY get some much needed discipline.
I'm not saying she's all bad, but the fact she has received absolutely NO discipline from birth makes her a bit of a manipulative and at times out of control child, shrieking and hitting others. That would end with the Aunt I'm certain.
How about Carlos ? I can't imagine he would NOT be aware that Katy wants to live with her Aunt if Gramma passes on.
I know he told me on the phone he feels guilty about what all has been happening - the death of his step-daughter; Katy's Mom, and now Gayle back in the hospital; his wife, my step-grandma. Damn. I don't know how to deal with that.
It just makes me want to cry because Carlos has been such a good friend and surrogate Father to me for more years than I can count. He need not feel guilty with me. He has gone over and aboard what I think anyone expected of him in keeping me safe and secure.
I know he has done the same with the rest of his family, it's just - well - it's getting to be Autumn for him, you know ?
Let's see ... I'm 55, my sister is older than me, Rose is 73, Gayle I think is 79, Carlos is 84, Jimbo I think he's like 69, and of course Katy is 12, will be 13 the end of this month 02-28-22. Our ages are all sneaking up on us.
Katy has questioned me time and time again why I treat her so nicely even when she's mean to me. I told her that she has to carry on. That SHE will be the one to carry on the family legacy.
That SHE is the one that has many many years ahead of her, so many incredible and wonderful things to do, enjoy, explore, and to gain an education from. That she deserves my very best. That is why I basically let her get away with murder when she visits. :)
I hope when I pass on, she realizes I did this out of love - and my hope that she will become a wonderful and strong person also capable of love not just to her immediate family but the family she builds to follow ... Time enough to worry about that - hopefully far into the future from now.
. . .
Old Man Winter is certainly gonna be blowing around these next few days. Already I've received notice to drip my faucets and leave cabinet doors open with a hard freeze expected.
Baby girl my mouse apparently anticipating it's gonna get cold has completely torn up the floor I made for her and stuffed them in her house where she is at the moment. This despite the fact I kept the Hermit Crab heater which is about as warm as your hand.
So, no she's not get gonna burned by it, but - does she really need all that insulation ?
Yet she's doing fine, quite healthy, I checked on her. Lifted her up, pet her and all. She's clearly eating food and drinking the water I change daily - so she's fine. She feels warm in my hand too. Apparently just a little cold is why she's insulating.
. . .
I ran into a bit of a snag regarding health myself yesterday. I got a little greedy last night and ate 5 caramel M&M's in succession after my lunch and my own heart started racing, beating very fast, and I felt like I was gonna pass out.
I take anti-psychotic medication that does that, sugar reacts to it. Usually a treat for me is a couple of graham crackers or a single cookie. I shouldn't have done what I did, but I did.
And I know better now to watch the sugar intake especially since I was categorized with an arhythmic heart. Don't need to be dying over some tasty M&M's ...
What else ? Wow the Covid is bad. Rose my G/F already told me her next-door neighbors have the Covid and are quarantined to their home. As for me, I'm fine. I have a bit of a cough always. That's just my asthma.
Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, you can get your free Covid test from the USPS HERE:
https://special.usps.com/testkits
I've already received mine and will keep them for emergencies.
. . .
Rose is still talking about Jimbo's health; her husband, and how when he passes on which she thinks is soon, how her and me are going to spend a whole lot more time together. I know. I understand. Absolutely no-one likes to be alone, not even me in my mountain of movies, media, writing and programming.
You still need human contact.
I see in the future it will be her, Carlos, and myself, likely all getting together on a good Wednesday, checking up on each other, visiting, figuring out where to go in life from there - maybe even having a few quiet adventures, perhaps. And recalling happy times from years years ago.
Reminiscing, old folk do that, don't they ? And possibly even making some future plans. Not great big ones. But plans nonetheless.
. . .
I got Rose's Valentine's Day present as well. Now she has never had cable TV. She has this very old television set that we barely managed to hook in an antenna for her switchbox, and that's it. The picture is not very clear on any channel. Yet she absolutely loves it and watches TV all the time.
So, I went out and bought her a DVD player. Now NOT a regular player per se but a player that has a built-in screen. This exact one in fact. She told me do not touch her television set at all if even to hook up a DVD player.
So this is an external player you can bring to friends' homes, play in the car on the car charger, or just enjoy in the kitchen if you like. It has the screen built in it.
When it finally arrived, I found it does only a third of what it says it was supposed to do.
One is it's supposed to play old 8-bit Nintendo games which I thought was kind of neat. It does not, nor did it include a joystick as the illustration showed.
Nor does it recognize in any way its USB plug (which is not the charger, that's a different plug).It is supposed to be able to play media from the USB. Pictures, audio, and video from there - yet I found it does not recognize any file type I put in there, OGG, Mp3, JPG, Mp4, BMP, AVI, GIF, WAV, PNG, MKV, WMA, or MPG.
Even if they are placed in the root directory.
However the device is not for me, it's for Rose and it does play DVDs perfectly. And I know that's all she is going to be interested in.
. . .
I know, you're curious about the situation with Chris and Rick. Well Chris did indeed come visit Sunday (01-30-22), Katy wanted to tag along, we had some tacos, Katy bought some makeup for herself from Walgreens.
And Chris - very simply said to me, "Forward me the Email he sent you." He doesn't want to talk about it. So - I'll let them sort it out even though Rick did specifically ask for my help.
But I know Chris a lot more than I know Rick. There is and always have been a series of pendulums and balances in my brain for everything in life. I would sooner do what Chris tells me to than Rick whom I've only known bits and pieces of and very sparsely.
. . .
What is happening with me ? Well aside from some well-placed jealousy regarding the myriad of RPGs out there written with RPG Maker VX Ace, I have been slowly coding. Still working on that kind of postcard generator.
I'll give you a link once I finish writing it. And I've been going through and organizing my horde of videogames, videos, pictures, music, and movies.
I'm up to about 14 terabytes now and I'm quite certain I have repeats in there I need to delete to make room for new stuff.
And the more I've given it thought about Future Barrier, the more I am certain, this 5th book, will definitely be the last one I write. What will I do after that ? I've already decided, I want to return to Dream Diary and never close it from there.
Just keep writing in there every week - until Autumn arrives and the gates of Mayberry open for me. Hopefully that will be some time, and even then - I may not wanna go.
. . .
But for now let's return back to the story, Dev's adventures in 5th century England.
. . .
And this time I had my eyes wide open.
This time I would see what these dragons really were because there was that nagging and familiar sound again !
I felt a tugging behind me and it was Nikki, "We have to run, Dev ! We need to get away from here. I don't want to end up a dragon's meal !"
I smiled at her. I finally recognized the sound. Suddenly a "dragon" came by us and I was right.
Motorcycles I thought to myself. And sure enough that was just what it was. Motorcycles painted with red stripes of fire and a fearsome mouth up front but motorcycles nonetheless. Standard motorcycles clearly running on gasoline, noisy, but definitely not dragons.
Those driving them their "bulbous" heads as described from earlier were clearly humans merely wearing motorcycle helmets also war-painted to look more fearsome than they were.
One of the drivers came to me swinging a wooden club, I guess to clout me on the head or something. I easily stepped aside and yelled at him, "Motorcycle !"
The reaction was immediate. While I couldn't see his eyes with the helmet on, his lips started to tremble, clearly disturbed that someone from the 5th century knew who and what they were. He circled around avoiding me and went back to the front of the pack to relay what I said.
I watched carefully. Then two motorcycles took off. One I guess for reinforcements. The other came straight at me, wielding the same bat. I stepped aside as I did last time when suddenly someone grabbed me from behind. A woman I could tell from the warm bumps on the chest and a needle was quickly injected into my neck.
I pulled away from her. Instead of getting reinforcements the leader had ordered the 2nd troop to secretly get around me. Dismount and apparently try to capture me.
I looked at her for a moment. She took off her helmet to reveal a full-length of florid and beautiful blonde hair that she whipped free of the headgear. She had a bit of a leer on her face too, clearly waiting for the injection to affect me.
And she didn't have to wait long. I felt like my head was filling up with warm oatmeal, and drooling slightly I fell forward into her grip. Then things started to sound like they were underwater again.
"Dev !" I could make out from Nikki. Then another voice, "Grab her, she knows him. It could be important !"
Then darkness ...
I awoke an unknown time later to find that I was handcuffed to a long polished and wooden table. What was important for me to see though was that the room was illuminated by electricity, not fire or even gas.
I had no idea where I was though I was pretty sure I was here because I saw through their ruse. Clearly this was some other tribe of humans that had advanced knowledge and instead of riding on horseback they rode on real motorcycles !
I looked forward to see there were metal manacles connected to a short chain to my wrists on the table. I looked to the handcuffs and did not see any way to get the removed. Nonetheless I pulled on them. Then a door opened and a sweet voice spoke.
"I wouldn't do that. You're not going to get free and you'll wind up hurting yourself." She paused to meet my eye, "And I don't want that to happen to you."
"Who are you !?" I demanded still pulling on my wrists. Maybe the manacle would pull free if not the handcuffs ?
She sighed and came behind me suddenly leaning forward to shockingly smell my hair. She played with it in her fingers for a bit causing me to relax.
"That's better." she said agreeably. She smelled my hair again. I could tell she wasn't being pervy, she was seeing that I didn't have a familiar smell likely that this time period was permeated with. Crap and mud maybe ?
"You can call me ma'am or madam, that is all. You're clearly not from here. Your hair smells like shampoo, modern."
"Shampoo ?" I asked. "What is that ?"
She then pulled painfully on my hair, "We can do this a few ways, boy, the easy way and the hard way. Now don't lie, we already know you are from the future. No-one but no-one would know we rode motorcycles."
"Hell WE don't even call them that here, we call them gasbikes as we also have an electric variety called elecbikes - yet we know the future we came from people commonly called the gasoline powered variety 'motorcycles,' just as you did."
She started to circle around the table to the other side, "So you didn't hear the word 'motorcycle' anywhere except from the future. There is no other possibility, and that is where you are from. We are certain of this."
I swallowed hard. She had me pegged. Then she then came to the opposite side of the table, turned a chair around and sat in it backwards facing me. "This is actually good news. It means we can return to the future where we belong."
I started to say something, she raised a hand to stop me. "I know your question. How did WE get here ? Well we are from the future. We did discover time travel and we hoped to travel back in time, a SHORT time, to effect our future from a disaster."
"Unfortunately we had skewed calculations so we traveled much further than we hoped. The 5th century as you see now. Our knowledge of technology though allowed us electricity and gasoline."
She let that sink in for a minute. "Now, who is the girl that was with you, the Molly ?"
"That's Nikki." I told her.
She nodded, "Nikki is catkind. We know she is from the future too, we don't know if it's the same year as yours, yet this is still unusual. There should've been no catkind in the immediate future from here. All catkind were genocide 100-years from now, the early part of the 6th century, a terrible war, humans vs catkind."
"The fact she exists proves the race somehow continued in secret."
I spoke now, "And you, are you human ?"
She tilted her head a bit, "Don't I look human to you ?"
* * *
I nodded. She had a pink face, blonde hair, pink hands, well manicured. She did indeed look Caucasian.
"I'll ask the questions now." she said getting back on track.
"How did you get here ?"
"There was a person named Mr. White, he was interested in my powers - " I suddenly shut up ! I shouldn't tell her about that.
But she caught it immediately, "Powers ? Powers ? What powers ? What powers do you have ? Do you mean you believe to have super abilities ?"
* * *
I kept my mouth closed and didn't say anything further. She nodded, knowingly, and reaching under the table pulled out a small black box about as big around as my finger.
As my hands were separated and handcuffed I could not pull away as she clamped it down on my left-handed index finger.
She explained, "Dev be aware this device will know when you are lying. Hell it'll even know if you're trying to keep back the truth. If you do, you will receive a painful shock that I can control the level to. It goes from 1-10, 10 would be complete electrocution and your death - do you understand ?"
My eyes grew wide. Here she was so nice to me a moment ago and now ... ?
"Do you understand !?" she shouted now.
I nodded. Tears came to my eyes. She smiled, scooted back the chair as it made a squeaking sound of wood on stone. Then came up behind me and started playing with my hair again. We were quiet for a minute.
Then she spoke holding my hair in her hand, "I know you like this." She said. "There are literally thousands of never endings in a person's head. Far more than that stupid stick between your legs you men give so much attention to."
She turned her head up in thought for a second, "As long as you are completely truthful with me, no harm shall come to you. Lie to me ? And this could be a very painful experience for you indeed !" She suddenly grabbed my hair and jerked me back and then quickly forward to smack my head on the wooden table.
I raised groggily, dizzy from the blow. "Oww !?" I offered.
She grinned, "I just wanted to make sure I have your undivided attention. Let's begin, shall we ?"
"Now what powers are you talking of ?"
I was quiet. She fondled my hair for about a minute. It really felt wonderful. Finally in an angry tone, "I'm waiting for an answer !"
10-more seconds passed when she suddenly reached for something inside her pocket. In an instant an electric charge filled me, not just my finger, my whole body. And it WAS painful. Exceedingly painful. The tears I had kept back from now were starting to flow and I groaned in agony a bit.
She released the control, "That was level one, Dev. As you know this goes all the way up to 10, but at that point you become a grilled-cheese-sandwich. We really don't want that. Answer the question."
"What question ?" I wailed, really forgetting in wake of the torturous electrical shock.
She smiled and patiently repeated, "What powers do you have ?"
I couldn't lie to her nor could I remain silent. "Darceon." I said simply.
She started to massage my hair and head again, "And just who or what is a Darceon ?"
"Darceon is a - being I guess. Maybe a fallen angel, I'm not sure. He instilled within me the power of the plugin."
Her voice took on curiosity as she examine a portable display, "You're not lying, interesting. What is this - plugin ?"
I told her, "The plugin is a device I received in the mail about a year ago. It was basically a thumb-drive with a blue light on it."
"Go on." she said, apparently understanding exactly what I said.
"You plug it in the computer and it boots to DOS. In there were some EXE programs. One of which was called SIM."
"Continue." she said now starting to gently massage my ears with her delicate fingers. It really did feel wonderful.
"Sim was - well I guess a kind of artificial intelligence on the plugin, that could alter reality."
"And do you have this plugin with you ?" she asked.
I shook my head, "No, Darceon made it part of me."
"What do you mean by that ?"
I tried to explain, "Darceon made it part of me. Part of my being. So it cannot be removed and is a permanent part of my body, my spirit."
"So you can do what the plugin can ?"
I looked down, "Sort of, well, not entirely. It's kind of a sometimes here, sometimes not thing."
"What COULD you do when your powers worked properly, Dev ?"
"Well for one I gave telekinetic ability to Tyr ?"
"Who is Tyr ?"
"She's my girlfriend."
"Is she here in this time ?"
"No. Only Nikki came with me."
"Who is Nikki to you ?"
"A friend. I rescued her from an underground prison."
"I see ..." she said thoughtfully. "Let's get back to the previous point. So you can give others superpowers then ?"
"Sort of. Not all the time." I said. I could see her look down to her pocket at some unseen device and apparently it was showing I was telling the truth all along.
She stood at the side of the table and raised her voice a bit so I could hear her clearly.
"Well, Dev. I have some good news for you. We are going to cultivate your superpowers so they are not just hit and miss anymore. And we are all, Nikki, you, and ourselves - we are all going to return to the future time in which we belong. Interested ?"
"Yes ma'am !" I said, eager to be back where I was.
She jerked her head back to that statement and smiled, "That was unexpectedly respectful. Fine. Let me check with my superiors."
"Could you please undo these ?" I asked her raising my wrists still manacled to the table.
She bit her lip in thought. "Not just yet, Dev. We will free you in time. Please be patient. Someone will be here shortly with a meal as it's almost lunchtime."
"Lunch ?" I asked her, "But it's nighttime."
She smiled, "Not anymore, Dev. You and your friend have been unconscious for nearly 14-hours now. The side-effect of the drug we gave you earlier, and I do apologize for that. It does seem like you have the solution we need to get us all back though - and that is our main priority, to leave this primitive hellhole. I will return."
END OF CHAPTER 9
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