Kindle Edition
Life on Earth: Declan Book 1
Life On Earth
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Green Ivy
ISBN-10: 1943955557
Type: Fiction
Pages: 362
Copyright: Dec 3, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781943955558
Price: $15.99 (eBook)
future/adventure/fantasy/fun/unpredictable/unusual/Written in a very casual writing style. Written in first person.
Welcome to the wildest, most insane ride at the book fair. Take a seat and have a sneak peek into the future through the eyes of Declan, an ordinary college student, growing up in the early twenty-second century. Where today’s technology has evolved into a world filled with interesting characters, places, and things. You’re going to lose your mind in this most unusual, unpredictable, science fiction adventure. This book is hilarious, surreal,thought provoking, and deep all at the same time.
In this first book, Life On Earth, Declan cuts a deal with the worlds first artificially intelligent Droid and they are both desperate and on the run.
Our future world is the perfect backdrop for all kinds of madness to unfold. Declan’s destiny continually clashes with his desire for a normal life; a life that fate just will not allow. His amazing escapades bend and twist him into the man that he must become if the human race is to survive.
Excerpt
“This is amazing. Check this out,” Sam said as he enlarged a monitor showing the earth and its ionosphere from a distant space perspective. He pointed at a few satellites. “These satellites are projecting particle beams into the ionosphere. The matrix of the algorithms is causing the ionospheric anomalies to form.”
“We’ve gotta get out of here, fast,” QD insisted, raising his eyebrows just as another monitor turned yellow and enlarged. It showed radio waves bouncing back and forth between the pimple vortexes and the ground.
Another polygon enlarged, and the white boarder started flashing red. ‘Engine Part Failure Pending’ flashed in time with the border. Underneath the flashing text was a diagram of a ball tumbling and spinning very fast, with an arrow pointing to its center. The words read in large letters, ‘Monopole Simulator Membranes Failing.’
“We’re slowing down,” observed Sam.
“We’re all going to die!” I yelled, pointing at the pulsing pimples pulling together and forming larger and larger cyclones.
“They’re drawing us in,” the Gray said excitedly. “They’re distorting the ion hover buffer, and they're pulling us towards them.”
I looked over at QD puffing helium, and it scared me. He was an arrogant bastard that always had everything under control, but I could see he was worried.
I saw something shiny flash in the forward display, and it thudded against the saucer.
QD zoomed one of the ship’s cameras in on Area Fifty-One and said, “Look. Very large energy receivers are raising up out of the ground.”
“I can’t steer!” Sam squeaked out. “I have no control! Something’s wrong with the rudder!”
“We’re all going to die!” I screamed again.
Nervously, QD said, “Yeah, you might be right. Prepare for a crash landing.” And we sat down and buckled ourselves in tight.
“I hope the airbags work,” Sam shouted.
“We’re all going to die!” I shrieked for a third time.
“Shut up,” QD commanded.
We were going down fast, but not really. True, we were getting sucked into the direction of the array of energy cyclones, but we were still flying. Hell, we were gliding down pretty smoothly, like a well-thrown Frisbee, actually, just easing its way on down.
I looked at the ground monitor, and it was a blank. Steady text said, ‘No information available.’
I glanced over at Sammy the Gray; he was as white as a sheet. He was mumbling something just under his breath, and his eyes were getting wider and wider as he spoke the words louder and louder. “Oh my God, oh God, oh God, please don’t let me die.” And he kept repeating it louder each time, and the more he repeated it, the more the fear of crashing intensified within me. I dug my fingers into the arms of the chair and started crying and praying and chanting with him.
“Oh God, oh God, please don't let me die. Oh God…”
A couple of chants later, I saw Sam grab his left arm and say, “Nooo!” Then he was out of breath.
I saw out of the corner of my eye a ball of lightning, and it was filling the entire horizon from in the atmosphere. And then—BAM! All the power in the craft went out as the lightning came funneling down. It was the last thing we saw.
The control VeeM went blank, and the cabin went dark. Then we hit the ground and bounced up like a stone skipping across the water. An emergency light came on, and I saw Sam’s body go limp. His hand had moved from his arm to his heart, and I had a bad feeling that we lost him.
The first skip wrenched my back, but I kept holding on tight. QD just sat there with his eyes closed pretty much the whole way down. The airbags inflated just before we hit, and cushioned the blow pretty well, but I didn’t think my back would ever be the same.
The PT finally came to a sliding stop on the desert floor. QD wasted no time unbuckling and getting up.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
He replied, “I guess so.”
And then shwoop—in an instant, everything everywhere shifted into black and white.
There was no color.
There was no color anywhere anymore.
Only shades of black and white.
“My eyes!” I yelled. “My eyes! I’ve lost all sense of color!”
POW! and my ears started ringing. QD had popped open an emergency hatch with explosive bolts at the top of the cockpit. He moved quickly to grab the cash and throw it to me, saying, “Carry this.” Then he grabbed as many helium tanks as he could.
I was crying hysterically, but I unbuckled myself and frantically made my way over to Sam. I placed two fingers on his jugular, searching for a pulse, but there wasn’t one to be found.
QD said, “We have to move. There’s not much time.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He replied, “There’s only one thing on Earth that could use that much energy. It must be the government experimenting with time bomb technology. I do believe that we are in an impossibly large time distortion field. And we have to get out of here fast!”
“But we have to bury Sammy! We can’t just leave him here,” I argued.
“I don’t care how much energy they sucked out of the ionosphere, they’re not going to be able to keep a ball of the past this size open very long,” QD said. “No, not long at all. And we need to be as far away from the epicenter as possible.”
As he talked, he was crawling out of the hatch that’d popped open, and I was right behind him.
When we crawled out, I could see the shiny thing that had flashed across the main monitor on the way down. It was some kind of high altitude weather balloon. Apparently it had wrapped itself around the rudder after hitting us on the way down.
As soon as I got out of the saucer, I could feel the desert heat. It was hot, and the sun was just past high noon in the dusty sky. The lack of color was freaking me out. I wondered if I’d ever see in color again as I gazed out at the dull gray landscape and the clear white sky.
We started running toward a highway that looked like a big black snake. Besides a couple of cactuses and an unusual-looking tree, it was the only feature visible besides an old car driving towards us. It looked like an upside down bathtub that somebody had put wheels on. It drove off the road and pulled up about twenty feet in front of us. An older gentleman behind the wheel jumped out and asked, “Are you guys okay?”
“Well, my back is hurting quite a bit. We could sure use a lift,” I hinted.
QD looked a little pissed off at me for talking to the guy, who was looking at the flying saucer with wide, staring eyes.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked, and he cautiously started walking towards it.
QD gestured for me to get in the car, which was still running. He jumped into the driver’s seat, and the old man turned around as I closed the big car door on the passenger side. I heard him yell, “Hey! Come back here! That’s my car!”
The back tire spun out in the desert sand before we accelerated back towards the highway in a cloud of dust.
“Where are we?” I asked QD.
“New Mexico, just outside of Area Fifty-One,” he replied as we barreled down the highway. “But I think the bigger question is, When are we?”
“What do you think is going to happen when the present time snaps back?” I asked.
QD said, “I’m not sure, but I’m afraid if we don’t get far enough away from the epicenter of the distortion, we might get trapped here in this time. Or the reverberations of the back flash could possibly leave us in a different time altogether. There’s no information on anything like this ever happening, as far as I know.”
We passed a road sign that read, ‘Roswell, five miles.’ A small fueling station down the road was cresting on the horizon.
It took a while to drive to it, but QD pulled into the fueling station when we finally reached it. As we drove past the pumps, we ran over a weird rubber hose that was lying on the ground. It was stretched out in between the gas pumps, and a bell attached to the building went bing bing as the car’s tires rolled over it.
QD got out and grabbed a different rubber hose, one that had a sign over it with big black letters that read, ‘Water.’ He fumbled around, not sure how to turn it on. He finally turned a knob and took a large drink out of it, spilling it all over the front of his shirt. Then he drank some more. He kept the water going to fill up a spare canister in the car.
Well, I got out and stood in line there behind him. I was quite parched as well.
About that time, an attendant came out of the station through an already opened glass door. There was a fan just on the other side of it. Eyes squinting from the bright sunny day, the man cocked his head to the side and said with a quaint country accent, “They’s a water fountain just inside this garage door he’a.” He pointed at the large bay garage door.
I was intrigued. A water fountain? What was that all about? I imagined the fountain outside of my mom’s neighborhood back in Florida, spewing water fifteen or sixteen feet into the air, and I just couldn’t believe that anyone would build a water fountain inside of a greasy, oily pit with broken cars in it.
I walked over, and peeked around the corner, and saw a small machine attached to the wall , with a spigot on the right and a drain hole on the left. It took me a second, but I figured out that if I turned the little knob on the spigot with my thumb that water would come out in a skinny little bow-shaped stream. I was amazed.
I bent over, and it was cold and refreshing as it moved over my lips and I sucked it in. Dude, it was quantum.
I looked up and said, “Thanks, mister. How much do I owe you?”
Miffed, he rolled his eyes and replied, “It’s water. I don’t know what planet you’re from, but around here it falls right out of the sky. We don’t charge for it. It’s a courtesy.”
“Thanks, mister,” I said again.
“You fellas didn’t see any flying saucers crash out there, did ya?” the old timer asked.
QD laughed and said, “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” the attendant explained. “This young whipper snapper from the newspaper just filled up his tank and lit outta here ninety miles an hour. He was yakking away about some flying saucer that crashed back the way y’all came from. Just wondered if you’d seen anything.”
“Nah, we didn’t see anything,” I lied. “Thanks for the water, though.”
We got back in the car, and there was a line of Army jeeps, a couple of Army trucks, and an old-timey police car heading towards the crash site. We lit out of there and headed straight through town without stopping. QD was on a mission and wasn’t wasting any time.
“I can’t believe we’re still here,” he muttered. “There’s no way they sucked that much energy out of the ionosphere. No way.”
I said, “Maybe we’re here for good. Maybe the snap back to the present already happened.”
“I don’t think so, but maybe,” QD replied, and he pressed on down the lonely desert highway.
We both sat there quietly, listening to the engine hum. I couldn’t believe how nice this old, primitive car rides. It was hot with no A/C, and I put my hand out the window, letting the air float it up and down as I turned my wrist.
QD and me looked at each other, then back down the road out the windshield. The car climbed a low hill that spread the length of the flat, sandy horizon. Just as we started to crest the hilltop, the sun darkened and faded from the white sky in a haze of fuzzy colors. They took over the entire view, both directly in front of us and far away in the rearview mirror. A mirror to see behind us, how quaint.
There was a roaring sound growing louder and louder, and it sounded like waves crashing onto the beach or the sound you hear when you put a conch shell up to your ear. It engulfed my entire being as the wave of fuzzy colors flowed over us, and then my entire body jolted as the energy passed through it.
I opened my eyes and saw a colorful, wobbling world that was momentarily re-stabilizing.
Jizmo looked over at me, and his eyeballs looked like they’d shrunk down too small for their sockets. Then all of his hair fell out onto his lap and shoulders, except for a few patches here and there.
The car stalled in the middle of the highway. A roloball went around us, honking its horn. I could hear the driver yelling something at us. I was just glad he was the only traffic on the road at the time.
“Jiz,” I fretted, shaking him. “Jiz, are you okay?”
He was sort of stiff, and his face was frozen.
Fuck, I’m out here all alone with a bag of stolen money and a dead android. I took a bottle of helium and put the nozzle up his nose. I’d been wanting to do this ever since I met him. I really don’t know why. Then I gave the bottle a long blast, and the vapor poured out of his mouth and ears.
He shook his head around and then took a deep breath. “Wow! That’ll wake a droid up!” he shouted. QD looked at me and said, “The absence of color must’ve been a compression technique designed to sustain a past presence of a position for an extended period of time, also allowing for a larger area to be morphed. Interesting.”
What the fuck. I nodded, “Uh huh, yeah, whatever, dude.”
My skin ached with every move since the reformation of the present, and it smelled like I’d been welding without any leathers on. I was red as a lobster, just like a Florida tourist who lost his sunblock.
QD took a few big slugs of water, and his eyes started inflating back into their sockets, thank goodness. He looked bad enough with little more than a few patches of hair left on his head. Then he laughed, “Your hair is as white as snow, and your eyes are so red that they’d probably glow like tail lights in the dark.” I’d been burning pretty bad and seemed to be getting worse since the flashback.
We got out and pushed the antique automobile to the side of the road, out of the way of any more roloballs. ‘Nash’ was written in shiny chrome on the front fender, and I wondered what the car’d be worth today with only a few hundred miles on it.
We were in the middle of nowhere.
QD said, “They’ll be looking for us. We need to keep moving.”
I wondered if Sam was still back in what I could only imagine must’ve been the late forties or early fifties.
Climbing back in, QD turned the key a few times and pumped the gas until the car finally started.
Whew. I was glad it started.
QD pulled it out onto the road, and we started driving down the highway again. A few miles later, he suddenly turned and drove right off the road. The car bumped and thudded in the sand.
“This vehicle is way too obvious,” QD explained. “We’ll have to ditch it right away.”
“Where are we headed?” I asked as the car bogged down in some of the softer desert sands.
“There’s an old missile testing site just up ahead. We’ll dump the car in an old explosion hole and walk to a nearby Indian reservation from there. They’re pretty close to each other, and the missile testing ground should be coming up in about an hour.”
About this time, my skin and eyes were really starting to burn. I don’t ever remember having a sunburn this bad in my life. I told QD he might have to carry me.
“Hang in there, champ. We’re going to make it, just a little bit longer,” QD assured me.
As the hour passed by, we pretty much drank all the water reserves, short of emptying out the radiator. The helium was starting to run in short supply as well.
We were driving around some shallow blast holes that had filled in with soft sand over the years when the old Nash backfired a couple of times, chugging until it was completely drained of gasoline. QD steered it up to the edge of the biggest hole within coasting range and said, “Well, this is it. Bye-bye, birdie.” He got out of the car and opened the back door, grabbing the moneybag and the last helium bottle.
It was dusk, and the sun was setting fast. Thank goodness the temperature had started to drop. My entire front was on fire.
We could see the Indian reservation in the distance, and we started walking towards it.
QD said, “I’m going to run out of helium shortly, probably before we reach the reservation, Declan. I’m going to save a blast for when we get in range of their quantacom connection and tap into their network.”
I was walking like Frankenstein’s monster. I could barely move, let alone walk. Finally, I groaned, “Dude, I need a doctor. I’m going to die from the radiation poisoning. I’m on fucking fire.”
“Listen carefully, Declan. I’m going to give you a false identity, but it’ll only be local, in and around the Indian reservation. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be somebody that didn’t make their flight or something. We’ll assume their identity and take their reservations, or figure something else out when I get online,” he explained seriously as we trudged along. “You’ll have to give me the last blast when we get really close. Don’t take any chances. I’ll probably be zoned out, but don’t worry. I’m just like any high-end droid when my quantum function fails. I’ll recognize you as my owner.”
“Great. Yup, that sounds like a real good plan there, Dilroy. I always wanted to be the dead owner of a roboslave. I can hardly wait,” I drawled. “How about this? I turn your ass in and live happily ever after.”
“You wouldn’t,” QD replied confidently. “You can’t. They’ll lock you up forever.”
“Oh no,” I said, “I’ll just make up a bunch of lies and blame you for everything. Yup, that’s what I’m going to do.” He doesn’t know how much I hate droids, especially those that are nothing but trouble.
We bantered on about this for quite a while. We kept walking and walking, and here and there QD had to drag me, holding my rib cage up under my arms. But the pulling on my skin was too painful for him to drag me very far.
The burn was only on the front half of my body, like a sunbather that fell asleep in a lounge chair. I was dying. Man, I hurt so bad I couldn’t stand it, and that damn Indian reservation just didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
I was starting to think it was just a mirage.
QD slowly lost consciousness, and I could see his eyes shrinking and slipping into the back of his head.
He started turning his head around in circles and clacking his teeth together. It was weird and freakish. He’d open his mouth and look at me with his scary face and his nappy head, closing his jaw several times, clack, clack, clack. His head spun one, two, three, and then clack, clack, clack. He looked like a freaking zombie. I was worried that he might eat me like one too.
Funny. I did smell like something roasted to perfection.
QD wasn’t the only one out of touch. I was starting to lose my mind as well. And to make things worse, I just couldn’t walk anymore. Until the sun went down, I walked backwards as much as I could to keep it off my front half. But I was still dehydrated and starving.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Not one more step. The radiation burn was too painful. As much as I knew it was going to hurt to move my arms, I fashioned QD’s arms at right angles and put my own around them, telling him to drag me by walking backwards. I clutched the moneybag and the last puff of helium tightly with all that was left of my strength before finally passing out from exhaustion.
○ ○ ○
I woke up sometime later when QD crashed us to the ground. He’d tripped over a curb, and my head slammed into the pavement of a casino parking lot. I looked up and saw a sixty-foot Indian in full headdress, lit up and holding a sign that read, 'Welcome to Geronimo's Vacation Resort and Casino.’
I cried out in pain as soon as I moved but shifted to make my way back up.
QD was out. He was lying there on the pavement with his eyes open, but he wasn’t really moving, just twitching every few moments. He was a goner for sure.
Chapter 6
Geronimo's
I Frankensteined my way towards a hotel sitting across the huge parking lot we’d stumbled on to. I knew it was late, and I was freezing. The cool night air on my burn made me shiver.
There seemed to be a lot going on around the resort. Roloballs and rololimos buzzed around, and people were walking in and out of the casino and shopping plaza, where night clubs were playing loud music. I could hear people talking and laughing in the distance. The theme park had some lights on here and there, but it was obviously closed for the night, as was the holotheater.
Funny, there were no flying vehicles out, not even a transjet or a uniflyer. It was nothing but stars and a blue moon shining brightly.
A couple of guys were walking out as I approached the hotel’s door, and they started laughing at me. Between one’s guffaws, he shouted, “Dude so burnt up!”
I could hear his friend making fun of me too, saying, “Now there’s a red man! Hey, Chief Krispy-chise!” It was probably a bad, bad reference to Cochise, but I don’t know.
As I was walking funny across the lobby, I heard a young lady scream, “Oh my gosh!” She ran up to me and asked, “Are you okay?”
And then I heard another woman gasp as she came out the open door of an office behind the desk. “Hurry, get him into a room, the closest one available,” she said, and then she proceeded to take charge of the situation. She commanded another hotel clerk to bring me some water, quickly.
She placed her hand under my chin and looked me in the eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked.
In a calm voice, I sarcastically replied, “I could use some painkillers and some cream. I have an android that’s also in need of some water and attention at the edge of the parking lot.” She asked me my name, and I froze. Then I pretended I couldn’t remember it.
She said, “That’s okay, dear. We’ll take care of you.” And then she helped me into a nearby suite.
She was gorgeous. Her body was long and thin, well accented with curves in all the right places. She was wearing a tight, little dark blue dress and sexy high heels. Her hair was shiny jet black and in a large bun on the top of her head. She had big, dark, caring eyes. I could tell that she was genuinely concerned and worried about me.
She helped me into a room down the corridor from the lobby. For a moment, her cleavage and the way she walked made me forget I was in pain.
My heart skipped a beat as she laid me on the bed. And then she started undressing me slowly and carefully, all the way down to my undies. She was so gentle and smooth. I was in love.
She told the other girl to turn the A/C off. I didn’t know if I was hot or cold, but she said, “Stay right there and don’t move. I’ll go get some aloe.”
She told the other girl to go back to the front desk. She was going to take care of me.
I raised my head up just enough to see the moneybag next to my clothes on the dresser. That was a bit of a relief. I’d closed it up tight back in the desert.
I lay there near naked on the bed. Man alive, I’m so lucky to be alive right now.
I wondered what happened to Rhonda. She said she had a plan. I hope she’s all right. David Wayne sure wanted her badly.
I couldn’t believe Tawana was mixed up with that maniac. I wondered if Mom was okay. I really needed to call her soon.
I was sure they were watching her pretty closely, to see if I tried to contact her.
The NSA. Wow. I was probably the NSA’s most wanted man alive. What the fuck. What the fuck am I going to do?
I heard the door open. I thought it was my new crush coming to rub me down and sooth my burn, but it was just QD.
“Ohhh,” I groaned as I lifted my head up off the pillow to take a look at him. He looked really bad, and I could tell there was nobody home in that brain of his by his blank facial expression. He still looked like a zombie. It must be that post-apocalyptic hairdo, but his skin looked a little paler than normal as well, with a tinge of green.
Helping him in was a gentleman wearing a black cowboy hat and a white and black suit, similar to the one the hostess was wearing, the one that was sent back to the front desk by my one true love.
I know. But even with all the pain, I couldn't stop thinking of her long, thin body and pretty face.
In a quaint voice, the gentleman said, “There’s your owner.” Then he asked me, “What happened to you, boy? Did some girl’s dad tie you down out there in the desert and leave you for dead?”
“No, nothing like that,” I answered.
He said, “Well, what then?”
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