Sunday, April 25, 2010

flash fiction "The Outpost"

Aloha writers,
Here is my latest flash fiction from my novel, "The Outpost." Enjoy!

A heavy rain falls as tiny crystal marbles, the river is alive with hunger as gravity feeds her.
Cooper puts himself next to a window and closes his eyes hoping for the warmth of memory. He took a deep breath as he thought of his life, a life racing back to him now, like that river rushing outside.
Intelligent people don't like to kill. It's the prefrontal lobe that does the killing. The Army thinks it knows it. The problem is, the Army is guessing too. Scientists spend their entire careers trying to prove their guesses.
Cooper thought to himself, "Mystic research. People in fourth world laboratories are into that." He hoped that wasn't happening here at this military post. He was well aware of the unseen forces. "Humans would love to have this jungle floor take on mystic powers," he thought.
There was a renewed interest in the recent discovery that anger and fear had nothing to do with the urge to kill. Pleasure before death, procreation before demise--psychologists had studied that for centuries--but his were primal thoughts, ones that included hoping the tigress shows again.
Cooper is not given to pandering wild thoughts, but can't help being drawn to her aura. The tigress shows no fear, her silence sends Cooper deeper into the caverns of his own mind. This wasn't a mere trickling of information here. He would go after this data like it were an addiction. But then again, Cooper didn't want this to look like a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo. He had his own plan.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Sunday, April 18, 2010

flash fiction

Aloha poets,
Another flash fiction from my novel, "The Outpost." Enjoy


Cooper walks down the long stairs across the rock cliff above the lab complex, far below lies the link station-LiStX.
"Another renovated oversized pill box out of our warlord past," he thinks.
Dense tropical shrubbery sets the old structure into a natural camouflage against the rocky coastal terrain. He smells the cool air of the beach below, and the ocean beyond. The view is an overload of multiple blues and greens in the midday sun. Then, in an instant, the ocean looks different. It has been, what, almost a year now, and the greens are a lighter tinge, a shade of yellow.
"Oxidation," he says.

Cooper arrives at the station and enters the front door with a single mind.
"How's the project?" A friendly girl's voice comes from the screen.
Everyone here is either a scientist or a student of science. Anonymity is not easy at a science station such as this, though it has nothing but a motion activated cold screen-MacS. Cooper doesn't mind, though. Everybody knows each other by link, things run smooth that way.
"It's OK," Cooper replied.
"What do you need, Dr. Cooper?"
"I need to log into the frame terminal at ComTrxx."
"The array displays are down in that zone." She held her eyes there for him a little longer than usual.
A sensation rushes through Cooper. He knows that this won't be easy. "I have to tell you something, and you must swear to me that you won't tell anyone."
A crooked smile comes to Jamie's face."Sure, Dr. Cooper," she said.
Cooper looks her square in the eyes. "I've received transfer orders from a woman who has no record of ever being born."

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Sunday, April 11, 2010

flash fiction

Aloha Poets,
Flash fiction from my novel, "The Outpost." Enjoy!


Cooper starts the long walk up the rock steps to the cliff lab. He looks out across the vast ocean and thinks, "Another temporary place. I could never think of it as any different."
It happens again; the PTSD kicks in. So the great scientist looks out across the vast green dead sea, smug with his so-called education. So he now holds the esteemed title of lead scientist with his projected energizing manner.
Four billion years for the genetic code to ravel up here and all that comes up is "temporary."

The lab base is an oversized fortress abandoned on the edge of a jungle. Remodeled on the inside, high tech, and of course paid for in full by SortiumIV. The lab is immaculate, not in a religious kind of way, more control freakish, and clean matters to Cooper; except for right now. He enters.

"Hello," Cooper says.
"Hello Dr Cooper." Suzi stays at her lab station, as if she were communicating with a space object near a black hole.

Cooper was being extra personable for a bespectacled scientist. These new digs made him easy going. Carter was already inside the lab when Cooper unlocked the inner metal door.

"Suzie from Beijing came up here while you were gone," Carter told Cooper. "She's the one who interviewed for this job about five months ago," Cooper said.
"I remember her. Tall, thin, always carrying a red umbrella, rain or shine. Yeah, her complexion. She's worried about it. Pretty face. She said she's applied to a number of stations. She wants to work here."
"Because we're closer to Beijing?"
"No."
"No homesickness? A true woman of science."

Cooper opened a fresh stick of gum and began chewing. He considered himself a lucky man, never getting hooked on the pleasures of smoke."She says she's a scientist," Cooper thought. "And really, there's no reason to disbelieve her. But a woman with those looks?" He hesitated with a side glance. "I'm a fool to think women of science should all be Madam Curie."
"Has anyone else seen her transfer papers?" Cooper asks.
"I don't think so."
"May I see them?"
Carter stopped checking protein gels long enough to retrieve the document. "Yeah, it's right here," he said.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Making a Point



Aloha Poets,
Making a point inspires today. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Jungle Fuzzy

flash fiction

Aloha writers,
Flash fiction from my novel, "The Outpost," inspires today. Enjoy!


Nature at night smells different. It's a helpless thrill, deep where no one can find you. No awards when the battle is over--just the right to continue

Tigress appears from the shadows. A renewed encounter, the worthy huntress. Forgotten magic responding as if to evoke religion. Beauty's pure natural motion, a ritual dance of sweet hate-- reassuring killer instinct.

Cooper checks his weapon and thinks,"Crosshairs optical instruments used for astronomy and surveying."
He locks on the tigress, intersecting lines in the shape of a cross. "... who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge..."
He pulls the trigger.

Her ferocity is a deep contrast to the darkness of the jungle. She wasn't complete without this. Her eyes held his. So young, yet ancient in her moves, holding her youth as a clever disguise.

Cooper pulls the weapon up again to aim. The inscriptions faint and subtle in raised lettering near the end of the stock number. He feels the glow of tritium, that radioactive form of hydrogen creating the light that helps. ...."let light shine out of darkness,' ... give us the light of the knowledge of the glory"...
He shoots again.

Cooper's mind wanders. Telescopic sights in the shape of a cross, a device associated with crosshairs. Cooper thinks of motion pictures and the media, crosshairs as a dramatic device. His memory floods back now--telescopes of polar alignment, reticles that indicate Polaris position relative to the north celestial pole. He flicks his scanner...." for precise measurements with filar micrometer as reticle; adjusted by the operator to measure angular distances between stars....my goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me."

Cooper's scanners click in automatically once more... "for aiming telescopes, reflex sights are used in conjunction with a telescope with a crosshair reticle. Reflex sights make aiming the telescope on astronomical object or a region of the sky instant. Constellation Reticulum is designated in recognition of the reticle and its importance to astronomy."
..."blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."

Tigress lives in this jungle. Cooper was part of it now, coaxed on by her dominance, a finalist in a contest, the final battle.
A face-off with nature herself. This one moment in time, no oppressors or victors yet. Raw power the way it was intended to be. Her teeth, her only jewelry, her smell pure, as if the jungle floor itself.

Cooper locks his weapon in again for discharge. "...blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.

Evolutionary companions don't want to be any stronger or less strong than they are at this moment. He was here for the same reason she was. ..."be not that far from me, for trouble is near; haste Thee to help me.
..I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me."

Her ferocity was a deep contrast to the darkness of the jungle. She wouldn't have been complete without this. Her eyes held his. So young, yet ancient in her moves, holding her youth as a clever disguise.
..."whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Recognition emerges. Something in her eyes. She has the primitive wild gene, the one lost in a century of cloning. The xEVEo project.
Cooper locks his weapon in for one final shot. "Every living substance that I have made will I destroy,,,"