More October messages:

Hey, guys. Good news: the Light web page my friend is making should be =
up and running within a week, two at the most. It will have all the =
previous chapters as well as the next three or four up to the end of the =
first part, if i can get them formatted properly.

Heh. Hopefully  you'll have better luck with it than this here ^_^

"I told my wife I didn=92t want her to take drugs during our child=92s =
birth. She grabbed me by the balls and told me that every time she had a =
contraction, I was gonna have one."

I have no idea who said it, but I'd like to know. :)

7

  I was conscious before I was awake.

Hmm. Interesting. Nice way to grab attention.

  Half your life is spent in another place, talking to other
people, caring about different things. Your personality is different,
your taste in companionship is different. The surroundings are just as
familiar to you as anything you've ever seen in the world, and even
when you realize you're dreaming, you would just as soon forget.

Yeah, right. Half my life? I don't think so. If I'm really lucky, it's a
third.

  Alethea's long hair was tickling my nose,

Wow! That's some nose hair. ^_^

You wrote it correctly. I'm just making a joke here.

 as was her warm

breath. She was on her side, facing me and wrapped in a white sheet.

How I ended up in a morgue, well, that's a tale in the telling.

  I didn't think I could slip out of bed without waking Alethea,
so I just lay there with my eyes closed thinking about my new car.

  Somehow I was back in, and had avoided the miles of red tape I had
feared.

Sounds suspicious to me.

When you've raced in the Gold Cup, civilian life passes in

slow motion. You get used to thinking at 330 mph, and normal
driving is like riding a wheel chair through wet cement.

Nice imagery.

  After they sent me underground ten years ago, I was put in a
cell that was only eight feet by ten feet, and had nothing in it except
a toilet, a mattress, and another man.

who wanted to make me his bitch. But I outfoxed him and he became mine.

I was allowed no possessions.

Coming from five fast years of driving every day of my life to sitting
in a cell listening to pipes drip water onto the floor and the hum of
rusting machinery, I learned how to separate myself and lapse in to

into

  I shook my head in frustration. I was trying as hard as I could
to give him the benefit of the doubt, which was why I didn't just
confront him as soon as I found the pager.

Probably a sensible approach.

 But the fact that he

wouldn't tell me anything about what he did know made this very
hard. He said he didn't want me to get hurt at all,

I'd drop the 'at all'. Not really needed.

and I believed him

without being naive. Yet Wells and his bald buddy were not out for
my interests either, and I couldn't see how the two could be
reconciled.

Each party has its own agenda?

  And then, the bottom line. If we were shoved underground
again, I don't think I could take it. I know I couldn't take it. I was
barely hanging on when they let me out the last time. And Alethea
would be all alone.

Alethea: S'no sweat. I'll just find another sugar daddy.

  Twelve thirty came and went. Maybe Alethea took
barbiturates. No one normally slept this much sober.

Actually I've known some people that do.

  He could charm the color out of roses. I crumpled up the note
and threw it in the incinerator bin. There was a coffee packet in one
of his cabinets, and I turned on the hot water before I left the kitchen

to get dressed. I'd have to call Diago and explain why I never

Odd formatting here.

  She said nothing, but I got another smile. Things never
slowed down around here.

  After a provincial lunch we took my cyc over to the practice
track. No one was there, so we rode further down the road to Diago's
private garage. It was a two-story navy blue monstrosity, and the
envy of every jock in the city. It was visible for three blocks in every

direction. We found him here up to his armpits in the

Another one. Odd ones here and there. Don't know how you could get rid of
them though

  After two hours of flooring it, I had to stop to refuel. When I
went back out again, Alethea came with me and sat in the small
passenger seat. Going really fast scared her at first, but after she
started to like it she shouted for me to go even faster.

Heh. Nice touch

  But she refused to go, saying I couldn't be leaving her behind all the

time anymore. I explained that the date would mainly consist of a

little felony B and E and that it might get tricky, but you know
women. They love the whole idea of danger until it actually snaps in
their face.

Heh. Not for the smart or dangerous ones.

  The public phone spit out a card with the address printed on
one side, and

not sure if you need that comma

  She laughed. "You're right, I should have."

  "So you miss them? Is that why you paged?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. I just felt like doing it."

Nice. You're developing her well.

  The sight of high skyscrapers on either side of us gave way to
smaller and small structures, finally surrendering to a speed wall
which trapped the slipstream of my motorcycle in with the five or six
other cars before and behind my own. A hollow howl could be heard
through the muffling of my crash helmet, and Alie's heavier civilian
model. Something in my gut prepared to protect itself against the
oncoming sensations. Sweat gathered above my eyebrows as I
increased speed to a wild two hundred. My tires had grown three
inches in every direction to handle the stresses.

Nice imagery here too.

  The yellow light began to red shift. The shy

sky

  "Well," I said. "Its simple."

It's

  The great sphere loomed closer and became the only light as
speed walls stretched up and overhead completing

overhead, completing (I think)

  And now, very close, the last. Kelly green

Kelly green? Never heard of it.

  Someone had unlocked it from inside, apparently by
punching in the code on a keypad located twenty feet up the
driveway from the main gate. There was no sign of a guard post and
even though we were in the nicest part of town, this city was no
place to leave your doors unlocked. A little odd, maybe.

Smells like a set up to me

  "You ok?"

'okay' (should always spell it out, IMO)

I asked. I could see she was as shaken by the

place as I was.

  "I'm all right. Lets

Let's

just look in a window and get out of here,

ok?"

okay

  I nodded. At least we were on the same page.

  The lawn was even larger than it had looked to be,

awkward. I'd change it to something like 'larger than it had first appeared'

  I finally walked up the front steps, and peered in a window
next to the door. I saw no one inside, so I tried the handle. This one
was locked.

  "Lets

Let's

go around back, and see if any other doors are open." I

said to Alethea.

  We did this thing,

Awkward again. "We did, but had no luck."

  "I don't know, what do you think? Heaven or Hell?"

  She looked around and then said, "I guess we could start
upstairs and work our way down. But after that I'm serious, we get
out of here, ok?"

okay

  "Alright, this shouldn't take long. I just want to know if
anyone's here."

  I crept up the steps with my gun in my hand. I did not hear
anything. Upstairs there was a short hall way

hallway

 with three doors. The

first one was a store room

storeroom (I think)

 filled with boxes. I tried to pick one up,

but it was incredibly heavy. I ripped a few layers of packaging tape
off the top, and saw large metal battery packs. Unmarked, gray, 90-
volts. A lot of outdoor appliances used these, as well as certain lines
of military weaponry. But there must have been thousands in this
room, and I had never seen Wells use a gun. Maybe they were for his
crack squad of lawnmower men,

Heh. Cute line

  "I hope the basement gives us more to show for our trouble."

  "I'm starting to wonder about that," she said, holding onto
my arm.

Especially since there is still an intruder to deal with.

  "You didn't tell me we were hitting up the Bates Motel!"

Another cute line

  In the dim light I could see the ring of padded chairs in the
middle of the room. Appendages that looked like metal arms
protruded from the sides, and each was fitted with a hypodermic
needle. There were five of them, and they were all empty, save one.
It was the chair facing away from me as I approached it, and all I
could see was a pair of dangling legs.

How ominous.

  "He was my parole officer!"

Oops. That was a bit of a surprise.

  "Babe, Wells is probably in this house right now, and
knowing him like I do, he may even be watching. In order for
nothing like this to happen again (I thumbed the body) I have to find
him first. To see if he survived."

  "But why?!" she said in a pleading tone. "I though

thought

to put his number in the safety deposit box as insurance for his life.
This might also explain the fact that the building was bombed a few
days later; it could have been Wells destroying evidence. But the
number would be on Zig's phone bill as well, so destroying a little
piece of paper would be pretty useless. I concluded one thing almost
for sure, had I come back here with Wells last night, it would have
been me in that chair. He hadn't made to

too

serious of an attempt

earlier, but that was probably because he was afraid to do it publicly.
In the privacy of his own cellar, who knows what would have
happened.

Yes indeedy. Interesting turn of events as things get weirder. Nice chapter
that deepened the mystery some more and Alethea was developed some. Nice
work.

D.B. Sommer

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