The Advent of D.E.M.

The Advent of D. E. M.

Back in London strane lights were dancing over the hills dragons were perched on St Paul's dome and in a famous store vampires and other shoppers were bickering and clawing at each other and the specials as Harrods was having a sales.

In Respite Street people were quietly and efficiently setting up tables in the street to feed the survivors and tallying up the injuries and damages. Some folk were busy chasing Doctor A's pet triffids who had gotten out of his garden when a  wall collapsed and were trying to hide in a patch of shrubs to waylay passerbys in the commons at the end of the street.

Suddenly there was the unusual sound of horse hoofs on asphalt clattering down the street. Some one who seemed to be more or less female was riding a large horse who seemed to have been used as a model by Frank Frazetta towards Sassy and Goldie. The rider was riding a tee shirt with the words Darkover Ghost Wind Dancer on the front and jodphurs tucked improperly into cowboy boots and hair that was mostly silver flowed down from under a samurai style helmet.

"Hello I'm DEM the Divine Emergency Machina and yes that is a pun on Dea Ex Machina! Friends of friends asked me to assist you!"

Sassy peered at the list. Suddenly the name D. E. M. appeared in purple ink with red and gold outlines at the bottom along with a list of skills, very useful relevant weapon skills, experience with swords, naginata, sabres, muskets, archery, rifles, guns, and artillery.

"Are there going to be any more last minute additions to this or can we finally get to a battle scene?" asked Goldie.

Next ... yes finally a battle scene !

Powering UP

Powering up

If rock could steam Teckelstein would look like a comet.

At the moment the shields were glowing various engines were throbbing humming vibrating shaking and overloading. Psionic amplifier crystals blazed as if stars were in their hearts or whole galaxies and perhaps given the strange places the crystals had been collected across the multiverse perhaps some of those  stones did hold astronomical entities. The improbability drive was shivering rainbows. Out in the  streets plazas squares and other public gathering places the residents of Teckelstein were gathering to sing and pray since many of those devices were sensitive to thoughts and notions and wishes of love faith and hope.

Friendly dragons were firing up odd steam devices covered with symbols of inlay mithril and othr mythical magical metals.

A flight of bluebirds was circling the  central lake shedding blessings. Phoenixes were donating plumage for great workings and amongst all this one small black and tan hound studied the skies as Teckelstein moved across around or through subspace the shattered wreckage of forgotten worlds hyperspace and high places unspace and chaotic places and strange voids racing towards Earth and its sun powering up for the leap to the Node.

Gentle reades of all the strange devices and technologies and machinery Teckelsteins use the most powerful of all is the improbability drive for it works on an influx of love faith and hope a trinity more powerful than science or magic so as our characters and plot lines slowly converge to a final battle send you your wishes prayers and thoughts and repeat the magic words.

I BELIEVE IN DACHSHUNDS

TECKELSTEIN IS REAL

The Wizards of London

LONDON CHURNING
 and burning too!
and the resident wizards are not happy!

Sassy Goldie and Jonahexed had intended to park Lady Zen Shipper at the park at the end of Respite Street.
The street however was a smouldering ruin with fires still burning in some houses, others destroyed completely, and the surface of the street cracked and split with holes and impact craters.

"where are all the people?" cried Sassy, "oh no, Reg, Her, Dr. A!"

"One of those piles of rubble is moving?" Fluvia stated.

A metallic arm could be seen punching upwards moving rubble aside. Very soon a cyborg housewife wearing a charred frilly apron could been seen smashing rubble and heard screaming too.

"My garden! My garden!"

Reg was the next to emerge from the cellar moving over to the part of the rubble apparently covering his taxi and was using his levitators to bob up and down in a manner both erratic and irate.

"My taxi! My beautiful cab! OY! I just had her waxed polished last week! #$!@##@$#%$$@!"

JonaHexed pointed towards the centre of the city.

The ground was churning. Roads leading towards the city were rippling and cracking. Something was moving under the ground. The buildings of the city were moving too shaking and swaying. Tentacles were rising from the ground. Burning tentacles belonging to some being with a biochemistry allowing it to have a body temperature so high its touch burnt and melted everything around it.

The Subchthonic races were rising to the surface.

Squads of angry archaeozooic reptilians awakened from hibernation were also rampaging the streets along with survivors from buried alien shipwrecks and mole like people and pale skinned subterranean adapted hominids plus a light scattering of fast and slow swarms of zombies.

Directly below them other survivors were climbing up out of the ruins.

Dr A was amongst them and he was very unhappy with a look that could quall civil servants of several ranks. He was so angry he was actually visibly using magic. Fires were going out around him and frost forming on the ground immediately about him.

"Should we be worried that Dr. A might be going dark?" asked Fluvia.

"There's one than one Wizard in London," stated JonaHexed.

"So?" asked Fluvia.

"Yes there they are walking up the street towards us!" replied JonaHexed pointing at a group walking towards them. The group included a beraggled middle aged mage with what could only be called dirty blonde hair in a rather grotty trench coat who was smoking, the owner of a shop that was really more a storage unit for arcane items, and some clearly upper class individual with an air of authority in a very expensive but well kept older coat and suit. He had an apprentice with him a young man part West African in appearance but all Londoner.

The smoker stopped walking opened his mouth to speak and begun to his horror to cough and wheeze.

The others glared at him and one of them muttered cynically
" ... well that proves the Laws of Magic have changed his anti-lung damage spell has stopped working."

"I don't suppose ..." asked the authoritative looking man "Young Timothy or any of the Potters have shown up amongst this chaos or that fellow from Chicago or that New York based mage or any of the Merlins?"

"I am here!" snapped Dr. A giving them a look that could have turned Epping Forest into a barren polar waste.

"We're here too!" remarked Sassy with distracting cheeriness sensing a possible fight.

There was an equally distracting hissing noise in the distance as larges wave suddenly surged up out of the Thames and its tributaries putting out many of the fires in the city.

"ah the Ladies of the River have taken action!" remarked the man in the old but stylish overcoat.

"some one is going to pay for the damage to my triffid collection!" snarled Dr. A who was glaring at the ruins of his house and garden.

"AH" cooed fluvia using her most seductively dangerous tone of voice,"speaking about that perhaps you gentlemen would like to assist us ...?"

to be continued sooner or later

Next and next and next

Next next and next

Fluvia was in deep planning mode with the extended Adjunct clan.

A world in which all alternate universes and fictionalities along with other realms continuing to converge was dangerous to everyone. Death could become final and not dependent on rewrites or retro continuity or how popular your character was.  Also there were now fairies at the bottom of the garden and not necessarily the nice flowery ones. The distant yelping and shrieking  of tormented animals could be heard and that was just under the tea table as Goldie and the dodos fought over scraps and tidbits.

"So..." stated Fluvia, "its agreed we use Lady Zen to get to the Node and fight to make sure one of us is at the front of the queque  or brawl or civil war to make the first wish and ..." dark clouds suddenly appeared overhead tinting the daylight with ominous overtones, "Oh that's ... not good." The dark clouds begun to swirling and glow as if they were ash around a fire.

"There's no smiting scheduled!" cried one character.

"Weaponry!" cried another running towards the house, "we need guns!"

A bolt of something like plasma struck downwards vaporizing most of the house and setting fire to the rest and then a minute later a second carved a message into a hillside facing the house.

"New Product! The Schnittatron. Don't wait for Divine wrath! Take your revenge NOW!! Darkoverlord Today! Brought to you by giantmegacolossalcorp! Ha!ha!ha!"

"oh really!" yelped Sassy, "who carves evil laughter? Your series villians are really tasteless!"

JonaHexed pointed up at the sky. The clouds were swirling and glowing again!

"Run they havnt finished! To the ship now!"

The humans raced over the lawn but the most of the dodos panickd and run around in circles shrieking.

"PLOCK! plock PLOCK! plock!"

"Pickie here girl marshmallows!"

"PICKIE!"

Another bolt of pseudodivine wrath struck.

"oh Pickie!" wept several people.

Happily a small flock of slightly smouldering dodos wandered out of the smoke surrounding the impact crater from the bolt in a manner even more dazed and confused than usual for small reconstructed from extinction avians.

"Everyone aboard now!" ordered Fluvia.

Even the dodos complied with a little help from Sassy bravely ignoring the risk of incineration and racing out to round up and herd the dodos to the ship.

Lady Zen Shipper raced from the outskirt sof Swindon towards London followed by dark clouds.

The Stone of Darkened Destiny

The stone of darkened destiny.

In the middle of the sort of dark deep cavern that is accessed via winding stairs lit by candles whose wax comes from ... let us say unusual and cruel sources was a Stone a murky semi translucent stone that looked as if some one had caught a brewing storm in a hunk of roughly cut glass. Obsidian the color of a bruise would have also been a good description. Down those stairs trotted a royal prince of Teckelstein, a slender elegant canid of black and tan colouration with large but shapely front paws and coolly intelligent eyes.

The stone's colors shifted and it darkened at the centre as the canid prince approached and addressed it.

"I would like to offer a sacrifice. I understand you can grant wishes but there's a price? My wish is that Teckelstein escapes this limbo and is transported to a safe location with all damages repaired. I pay the price of my own free will."

The Stone shuddered lightened but shadows formed and gathered around the small dog. When they parted he had changed. The body proportions that had seemed elegant were now comically cute and awkward with large eyes protruding and tail slightly bent and legs too bowed and droopy ears and the eyes was still keen and bright but less focused. Leroy once the THE ROYal Prince wandered off slowly.

The stone murmured to itself.

"A gift of noble innocence and pure intent the first in generations.  IN exchange a gift given and something extra to protect that poor soul. My wish is that he be restored to his true self if he ever offers himself in sacrifice again.

(The story of leroy will continue at a future date. Don't worry folks we willnt leave him as a cartoonish parody of a dachshund.)

Outside something rippled through the skies of Teckelstein like a blur of moving shadow as if a storm cloud had been thinned into gauze. The force field became fully functional. Cracks in the dome disappeared. Ice and snow melted. Birds and other winged beings sung but A.F. von Teckelstein shuddered wondering who had sacrificed their destiny to the Stone.

SITREP

SITREP


Whats going on with our heroes and villians.

Back at the node a certain megalomaniac with a fondness for green and purple armor was having a quiet gloat at the latest sitrep report. His plan seemed to  be proceeding and succeeding beautifully. On the screen behind him was a view of his greatest frenemy being nagged by ALL of his past and present possible and actual girlfriends wives and immediate family cloned adopted and natural.

"Yes" he hissed gleefully to himself, "using the other villians to overrun the Node while I made my wish at the Cintamani worked gorgeously!"

"The Node's reality alteration devices are resonating to the Cinatamani reinforcing my wish and anyone whose plans might slash with mine, villianous or heroic, is either locked up here or being kept very very busy elsewhere, signing autographs, suing their creators, attending chat shows with their actors, trying to edit their Face book Fan Pages, invading small countries, or going into therapy!"

"This time when Reality resets my son will survive!"

A small mad scientist with very big glasses who had been listening from the doorway walked into the room asking,

"and we will all get our wishes? No more dachshunds and goullawks being disruptive influences? I caught them in my daughter's bedroom trying to tempt her onto the boring path of virtuous righteousness."

"Relax Sivvy I promised you we'ld  will take care of  minor pests as well as the big cheese and the stupid wizard.

Look what I did to the Justice Elsoc teams! That island of women warriors is under siege from hordes of feminist neopagans hoping to interview them  and academics who were sent an anonymous tip off they had copies of the contents of the original Library of Alexandria. The Atlantic ocean has several new islands and various submarine aquatic  amphibian types are  busy protecting refugees and fending off delusional Atlantis cultists. The Chinese have military forces advancing towards various hidden cities and temples that some one sent them a map of and every major magic worker has had their address posted on the Internet and is being pestered by wannabe mages acolytes and guardians. The Bat is in Venice with his feline girlfriend ... "

"Some people are still NOT under our control or surveillance!"

"Oh those minor characters in Respite Street! Bah!"

"What if they come here?"

"I rather think we outnumber them?" replied our chief villian gesturing at the windows at a congerie of robots henchfolk and general villianry.

Yes gentle readers what will our band of characters do next to achieve the return of Teckelstein and the restoration of balance to the Multiverse!

to be continued real soon!

Back in the Homeland

Back in the Home Land

Meanwhile back in beautiful scenic Teckelstein things were not getting better or fixed. Those residents who could tolerate darkness cold and shadows had retreated to the deepest caverns. Others were huddled around fireplaces in the main palace or other of the castles ringing the central lake. Aquatic and amphibian citizenry were occupied a swimming pool.

Augustus Friedrich von Teckelstein first Minister for Just about everything was consulting a big red book whose cover read Final Desperate Solutions in case of the world ending and the Sky Falling. And indeed the sky was falling slowly freezing and settling as snow flakes on the ground as the cold of whatever void Teckelstein was drifting seeped through the forcefields which were fading. Those occupants with weather powers had tried to form ice shields just inside the force fields but they were cracking.

"Gentle beings it would appear our readership has lowered to a critical limit and we have but one last solution left the Stone of Darkened Destiny!" announced AF grimly. Several people would have attempted to run out of the room but they were wearing so many layers of clothing running was impossible though there was some furtive shuffling.

"We need volunteers who are innocent virgins who love their pack !" shouted AF.

"Couldnt we try prayer again?" asked one person.

"That's why the power hasnt gone out completely yet!" answered AF.

Still one last time might help! Altogether now!


"oh mighty congeries of fannish readers and whosoever loveth dachshunds and complicated continual pop culture cross genre references and whosever has a sense of humor and can appreciate parody and satire and metatext and intertext cry out to all the powers and persons that have been are in being and will become moved by the power that by sweet Charity and Agape that moves the sun and stars shout out these words.

I BELIEVE IN TECKELSTEIN!

Shout it out threefold tenfold a hundred fold!

TECKELSTEIN IS REAL

MAKE IT SO!"

And as they prayed a small brave black and tan soul crept out of the hall to sacrifice himself.

to be continued  sooner or later hopefully sooner

(RE) introducing Temporal Pests

I'm doing a re introduction to Temporal Pest for those infrequent visitors who may be confused about the plot.

To be honest sometimes I wonder if we do have a plot since I'm taking narration from a pair of characters whose grasp of linear time is rather uncertain.

Our two main characters are Sassy a  sentient dachshund from Teckelstein and Goldie aka Gilda Dragonides aka that annoying Goullawk.

Our girls have been having adventures across the Multiverse  and through time and space and various realities and fictionalities and dreamings and other dimensions.

They are aided by


LADY ZEN SHIPPER a techno-organic travelling device saved from a junkyard on  Galli#$%^ before the timelock. She is probably related to the more famous TARDIS.

When LADY Zen is docked for repairs or just gone off shopping or wandering on her own the girls have often resorted to the services of London based taxi driver REG the Dawllawk. Not really a DAL#$ no really not at all.

Reg lives in East London on Respite Street with his lovely wife HerInside who just might be a Cyber er person.

The unfortunate survivor of a lost plot line JonaHexed sometimes gets dragged into  the girls' activities as a sidekick since neither of them have opposable thumbs. Yes JonaHexed does have a certain resemblance to an unpopular and abused Stargate character.

Currently a certain super villian got his hands on a reality altering Cintamani a wish granting jewel and made a wish that has lead to various parts of the Multiverse converging with our reality. This has involved Sassy and Goldie since there are certain cosmic laws you really shouldnt mess with.

You especially shouldnt make wishes that can only be fulfilled by cutting off Teckelstein from the rest of the Multiverse or promises to  other super villians who have had plans thwarted by Teckelsteiners.

Now Sassy and Goldie have to gather allies and gain access to the  Cintamani  to reset the Multiverse.

Now go back to the novel.

Thank you for hopefully choosing to continue reading Temporal Pests.

Let there be Ba#$

Let There be Ba#$s!

"So why do we need the boys to build a transstellar transport device that generates wormholes," asked JonaHexed, who hadn't been allowed to read the list yet?

"Something happens to Reg's Taxi but that's not for another hour," answered Sassy.

"But we have Lady Zen Shipper?" stated Jonahexed.

"Apparently building the gate allows a lost and forgotten character to return."

"So who's next," asked Fluvia, leaning closer to read down the list which Goldie was holding up in her mouth for Sassy to read," THEM? the little blue pests!"

No Dear Readers not the ones starting with S.

Meanwhile a memorial statue of a fuzzy elfish being in San Francisco was  surrounded by a horde or swarm of small blue beings all wailing,

"They killed Daddy B@#f! They killed Papa B@#f!"

"And Hewlett finally caught the last of us and banned us from the school grounds!" bewailed another holding an empty whiskey bottle.

Lady Zen Shipper appeared next to the normally invisible yet oddly never a hazard to aircraft or avians giant comatose alien.

"Look!" squealed one of the smarter Ba#$fs who instead of crying had been panhandling from tourists, "its the Dragon Queen and the Time Lady and the Teckel Princess!"


The Ba#$ stopped crying and swarmed over to the Girls.

"Hello boys!" barked Sassy, "wanna a job!"

To be continued in the usual erratic manner.

One Lab Accident

"Now what's next on our list?" asked Goldie, although she was quite capable of reading it herself.

Sassy was squinting earnestly with a very serious expression at the list.

"We've got cavalry and air support but we need a flock of dodos and to arrange a freak storm in pasadena to cause a lab accident to an Amy FF, some called pennypennypenny! and Bernie ... is ... gosh who wrote this for me ... is that name wolowiz?"

Meanwhile in Pasadena other people had similar ideas and two Ph.D., a Masters in Engineering and a waitress were setting up chemicals and other devices while Mrs Wolowiz and Superpandit were watching them. Superpandit was floating four feet off the floor as his new levitation abilities had gotten stuck on HOVER.

"Okay people if we're right about how the laws of physics have changed an open window a kitchen bench covered with dangerous chemicals and  a few of his hairs should allow us to locate the East Texan Mantis Monster along with this picture Stuie draw for us and the scrabble board on the table.

Now how do we get the freak weather or electrical discharge?"

Some short time later in the stratosphere Lady Zen Shipper was cloud herding disguised as an airship with camo gray cloud patterns.

"All right are we above Pasadena yet?  Everyone got their safety googles on?" asked JonaHexed dressed in a dashing 30s style lab jacket steam punk googles and black rubber boots.

"Oh can I do the count down wehn you pull the lever?" squealed Goldie!

"Lets all do it start chanting folks!" cried JonaHeXed as he started moving the lever downwards.

"TEN!" There was a humming sound.

"NINE!" An whiff of ozone!

"EIGHT!" Well yeah you're going to have to READthe SFX unless I suddenly start getting ahelluva lot of Paypal tokens of appreciation so I can pay a PRO to draw this and other scenes and no one has used the paypal yet and Christmas is coming and ...

"SEVEN" Fluvia's hair begun to frizz with static electricity and Sassy's heckles rose.

"SIX" Down in Pasadena the waitress exclaimed

"Oh a freak unforecast storm!"

"FIVE" "Everyone get inside the circle or stand next to the chemicals!" shouted one of the Ph.D's in Pasadena.

"FOUR"

"THREE"

"TWO"

Okay everyone reader participation time!

"ONE!"

A massive discharge of over excited molecules wove a mass of air into a pathway for power and flashed downwards thru the window.

Next time have our fearless heroines made new allies?

It was very difficult to impress a Goullawk queen and a dachshund who routinely flit about throughout time and space but a conversation with an avatar of a Boddhisattva riding a dragon will do it.

"Gosh I'm sorta Catholic" muttered Sassy, "I was expecting the Angel in charge of Dachshunds or Saint Francis or maybe Saints Jack and Ron?"

(Scribal note if you cant figure it from the next line consider what the nicknames were of two leading mid twentieth century academics who were also writers.)

"Jack and Ron are busy having a talk with that producer in New Zealand.
Now Ladies you two are straying off the WAY ..."

"But we're following the list!" interrupted Goldie.

"Yes girls but are you thinking about why certain people and items are on the list?" retorted Tara firmly yet gently. "For example you already have Lady Zen Shipper so why will you be using a Vortex Manipulator? Have you thought about why certain people are not on that list? what that means? Please go somewhere quiet for a while and think about it?

Tara departed leaving behind a lingering aroma of blossom and a layer of petals all over the courtyard to the initial annoyment of the groundskeeper until a few months later he noticed the compost he added the swept up blossoms to was unusually effective.

Fluvia who had been extremely quiet for her while Tara had been speaking lead them off to a teashop for scones with jam and cream and a large pot of Ti Kuan Yin tea to ingest while they reconsidered their list.

Next time its an Oval Office

THE WRONG WAY TO LONDON

Reg being a skilful driver evaded some curiously half hearted pursuit and soon had the girls back at Lady Zen Shipper who was soaking up the SoCal sunlight.

"Now ladies Supper's at Seven! Sure you don't want me to fly along you?"

"Really Reg how much trouble can we get into just flying to London?"  retorted Sassy.

Reg swivelled a sensor down at the dachshund and went into ominous silence mode being unable to glare at them with no neck external eye or indeed face. He sighed which for him was a low buzz of static.

"Just be careful girls!"

And being a careful driver he went into sleath mode as soon as he took off but the girls however were not and it was Goldie's turn to drive.

It wasnt long before they were being buzzed by USAF jets.

"Honestly Goldie did you have to fly over Nevada!" snapped Sassy as she nuzzled the speed dial up to supersonic,"you know how much that disturbs certain people!"

"But it makes the Area 51 campers so happy when they spot a UFO!" replied Goldie.

The UFO spotters down in Area 51 might have been excited to spot two UFOs if the vessel following them hadn't been in sleath mode.

Its one fully conscious occupant was chortling while evilly draped around the shoulders of a person who was familiar with Sassy and Goldie's piloting skills and battle strategies or lack thereof.

The sinister sentient cloth known as Dark Caper to some and Idiot Cousin to family had possessed  Jonahexed!

As they reached the Eastern Seaboard the first sleath missile struck Lady Zen Shipper not only marring her exterior but releasing a swarm of nanites that began to eat through her surface.

The ship shuddered and begun to spin faster and faster trying to shake them off and then resorted to the dangerous strategy of literally shedding her outer layers and shielding. Chunks of metal plastic and wierd alloys fell to the ground however causing no more than minor damage as most of them landed on a toxic waste dump not occupied by any mutants or monsters and the nanites eat up all the toxic waste before becoming inert so it eventually became a wetland and nesting site for migrating birds. Another piece  burnt through the windshield of a car full of Creationists on their way to a school board meeting thereby making them too late to vote to ban text books, and yet another fragment set fire to a nearby drug dealer's house.

These three events ultimately led to a group of witnessing teenagers deciding science might be more interesting than getting stoned, actually passing  the next day's chemistry exam, since with no illegal drugs available they went home and studied, and then going on to become a group of researchers who developed life saving drugs.

Normally if this  badly damaged Lady Zen Shipper would have automatically done an emergency transdimensional either to Teckelstein or a friendly nearby reality but with a horrible churning noise she jumped elsewhere and landed on something metallic with a loud clanking noise.

"Where are we now?" asked Goldie shaking dust out of her crest feathers.

"Oh even I thought that was a legend!" exclaimed Sassy looking at the forward screen, "I think ... maybe ... really .... wow we're in the space Sargasso ... the Full Metal Junkyard ... or some's private museum?"

Outisde parked or cabled to asteroids or just drifting were starships and air ships and strange devices and steam punk machines and flotsam and debris and a few giant robots with space travel capacity.

One asteroid however seemed to have several buildings on it and a sign saying "The End of the Line".

"No Sassy this is  simply can not be the dreadful Space Sargasso. That would mean our following of active readers has fallen low the fannish inverse critical threshold ... " Goldie paused to check to see if her tail flukes were fading.

Sassy whimpered "  ...aa ... an .... some of those ships look like they're fading out at the edges ... losing color ... becoming  flat and twodimensional..." She spun around trying to nip her tail and feet to check they were still there.

"oh happy idea Galpal if there are people out there we can use them to repair the Lady or swap for spare parts or something."

"Swap what this time? Your lingerie collection? Silk is only a barterable item in some parts of the multiverse."

"Oh well you know me I might just have a few collectables stashed around the ship mmm?" Goldie flumped out to to do a tally.


The End of the Line was probably one of the dreariest saddest pathetic bars in the multiverse full of depressed beings or worse people trying the cheer them up or people trying to get drunk or recovering from hangovers and everything was shades of gray or worse faded pastels and smelt of bleach.

There were clone troopers with cracked armor and cyborgs with plastic patches in odd places and robots with missing eyes and a fat bartender with tentacles instead of a beard who was slumped over the bar unconscious and the occupants barely stirring even when Goldie surged inot the middle of the barroom shrieking,

"Rise and shine people two ladies in distress are looking for repairs for their ship!"

A few people blinked. One person even stood up but instead of approaching them moved to a position where he could ignore them more easily.

Sassy tried nudging one of them on the knee and using the winsome charm of tilted head and wistful eyes. No response.

"We have money!" shrieked Goldie.

Some one laughed bitterly.

"We have fans and an author typing struggling to get us out of here!"

"Your author is still alive?" asked a woman wearing a silver overall.

"You could have her rewrite us into an active story?" asked another?

Fresh air suddenly moved through the bar and the bartender woke up and started serving drinks.

" and Lady Zen shipper just needs some shielding and spare ammo and we'll take as many of you as we can back to London with us."

"The REAL London ..." sighed a minor character," to be real and solid and ... and ... "

"Sassy" whispered Goldie none of these people are on your list?
Is this the right way to get back to London?"

"MMM well we went the wrong way going over Nevada," Goldie humphed,
"but helping these people puts us back the right way surely?"

"so the worng way is the right way is the wrong way is the ... er lets just fix the ship and get out of here!"

Help power up the girls above the fannish threshold!

Tell a friend or two or three or hundred about Temporal Pests!

Next The long wrong way to London!

A Sensible Civil Sorcerer

Dr A@#$%^&* was enjoying a cup of Darjeeling when his phone rung.

He put down the catalogue of exotic plants he had been holding in his other hand and lifted up the old fashioned receiver. He refused to use a cell phone especially after that incident with the modified iphone and the extra paper work and meetings it had created.

"DR A I wonder if you could pop in after work?"

"AH Silver lady of course it would be a pleasure. Have you been ... baking?"

"Oh Dr A you know I always make extra in case friends drop in and this afternoon two very special friends did with information you might want. Is this line clear? Is anyone in your office? We may have a Code Sky is falling situation."

"Some one is planning an illegal crossover that will weaken or even fracture the zone between worlds?"

"Possibly worse. Sassy and Goldie came to afternoon tea, and No, they're N _ O _ T causing problems but they came because my darling Reg had to do an emergency pickup from L.A."

The Silver Lady also know as HerInside went on to describe in brief the day's events.

Dr A after listening to her account placed the phone down swore in Mongolian then Latin and a strange unhuman language and summoned the apprentice he referred to as young Robert to his office.

"CodexRedSkyDissolving" he uttered solemnly three times.

Young Robert shuddered and cringed. There were few things as scary as his boss' ability to pronounce capitalisation. Dr A's use of that ability indicated some of those few things were active and that he might have to work UNPAID overtime.