The Final Destination of Flight 33

flight 33

From the Twilight Zone Episode “The Odyssey of Flight 33”.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have arrived at the gate but I ask that you all remain in your seats.”

Captain William Farver couldn’t actually hear the response of the passengers aboard Trans-Ocean Flight 33, but he could imagine a great deal of disappointment and grumbling. He didn’t blame them. They’d been through a lot together on their odyssey from London to New York.

He had to continue with the announcement as though he wasn’t as frustrated and terrified as everyone else. “Authorities from the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI will be boarding the aircraft momentarily. I urge you to remain calm and we will try to resolve this situation as soon as possible.”

As soon as Farver clicked off the mike, his First Officer Joe Craig piped up. “Resolve what, Skipper? You know what’s happened to us and where and when we are.”

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If Only Time Would End

time machine

Actor Rod Taylor as H. George Wells in “The Time Machine” (1960)

Truth be told, Gerald Fisher had been working on his time machine off and on for decades, but nearly four years ago, he received a strong boost in his motivation to make it functional. Fisher started the work almost as a lark, just proof-of-concept. He had no real interest in visiting the future or changing the past.

But times change and now he was desperate to change history before it was too late, and events were right on the cusp of being too late. The world was about to come to an end.

Ph.D in Physics from Stanford at eighteen, Fisher had established and sold nearly a dozen companies in the last decade alone. He held a lengthy list of patents on his revolutionary devices and it was mild praise indeed to refer to him merely as a genius.

He had been lured into a career in physics not by the possible but by the impossible. He’d read H.G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine” when he was eight and couldn’t stop imagining the possibilities. As he matured, he realized the full implications of time travel and determined never to do anything that might endanger the time line, however, he never lost the desire to prove that he could invent the first functioning time machine.

Gerald never imagined a world so terrible that he’d consider changing history to prevent it, that is, not until four years ago, and especially over the past few months now that America and Russia were seriously rattling their nuclear sabers at each other.

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Blanketing Fantasy With A Hint of Reality

trump-clinton

Image: CNN.com

Carolyn felt comforted and satisfied as she finally turned off the TV after watching Hillary Clinton being inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. It had been a struggle for her over the past eight years of the Obama Presidency, not because she opposed President Obama, not at all. It was a struggle because of the unfair and racist criticism he was constantly faced with during his two terms.

She hoped that with the Clintons back in the White House for another four and hopefully eight years, the country could finally heal, racism and sexism would begin to fade, and all of the so-called “deplorables” would learn to accept that a nurturing, protective, and loving woman was leading the nation. She fervently wished that Hillary wouldn’t have to experience sexism the way President Obama had faced such racist hatred.

Carolyn curled up on her sofa and pulled her big, fluffy blanket over her. She felt totally at peace, soothed, and relaxed. She thought about picking up her half-finished novel or making herself another cup of tea, but she didn’t feel like expending the energy. She wanted to bask in the glow of Hillary Clinton being the President. It almost didn’t seem real, more like a dream or fantasy come to life.

Then she cried out as another sudden, sharp pain shot through her skull. The headache was back. Where was it coming from? She’d been having these episodes with startling regularity ever since the day after Hillary won the election. She’d been to her doctor and then a specialist, but no one could explain why she had such pain.

She rubbed her temples and muttered, “Please, please go away.”

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A Late Night Visit

shadow

Image: Business Insider

Jerry was finally dozing off when his doorbell rang. He had a tough time sleeping alone, but Susan and the kids were visiting her mother in California so he had the place to himself for the next week, whether he liked it or not.

“10:30 at night? Who the devil?”

Then he abruptly got out of bed and grabbed a robe. No good news arrives so late at night. What if something happened to Susan, Denise, and little Frankie? “Please don’t let it be the cops.”

Jerry pulled on his robe, turned on the front hall light, and then the one over the front door before opening it.

“Bill?” It was Bill Henderson, the guy he used to share a cubical with at work until…

“Let me in Jerry, it’s freezing out here. What took you so long to answer the door?”

“It can’t be you, Bill.”

“What? Are you blind? Of course it’s me. Let me in.”

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Who Represents the Deplorables? How Donald Trump Won the Presidency

trump

Donald Trump

I woke up this morning and hit a local news site prepared to face the report of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable win as the nation’s next President. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Trump had won instead.

I thought maybe a mistake had been made and checked several sources to verify the report.

Yep. Donald Trump is the President-Elect.

When I got over the shock, I experienced something else I didn’t expect: relief.

It’s not that I wanted Trump to become the President, I just was terrified at the prospect of Hillary Clinton in the White House.

I don’t consider myself a low information voter and I have two undergraduate degrees and one graduate degree, so I don’t think you could say I’m uneducated.

I’ve watched Hillary Clinton dodge one metaphorical bullet after another when it seemed readily apparent that at least one of them should strike. I’ve called her “The Teflon Lady” because no allegation against her seemed to stick.

You could say that they didn’t stick because they weren’t true, but based on all the scandals and the on again/off again FBI investigations against her, it sure seemed like if she was smoking, she was on fire.

Clinton was the person who could get away with anything no matter how outrageous. This morning I found out otherwise.

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What We Do For Love

galaxy

Image: Gizmodo.com

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

There are monsters living in hyperspace and they’ve sent spies into the Consortium. Okay, maybe they’re not monsters, but they definitely aren’t like any sentient life form known in our little corner of the galaxy.

Oh, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m the owner/operator of the jump freighter Ginger’s Regret. Ginger is the other half of the partnership and in fact, she is the ship, well sort of.

Due to a bizarre accident she had over fifty years ago, her corporeal body was vaporized as the Regret entered hyperspace but everything else she is, personality, spirit, force of will, became somehow fused with the freighter. I used to think she was a ghost, but speaking of monsters, that thing that had been posing as Calderon Zg convinced me otherwise.

You remember Zg. In my previous log entry, I mentioned how he held Ginger hostage and forced me to perform a hyperspace jump while he was outside the ship. I’d like to think he was just vaporized and that’s all there is to it, but at the moment of the jump, Ginger was able to sense what he was thinking.

They’re watching us, those things from hyperspace. Zg or whatever it was, went back home if you can call hyperspace home, but Ging said there are more of them here in our universe. We’re safe as long as we don’t discover their realm and how to enter it. If anyone does, the very least they’ll do is change hyperspace somehow so that jumping will become impossible. No more interstellar travel…ever.

And if that’s the least they can do, I hate to think of what the worst might be.

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Savior in a Storm

thunderstormThe Eighth Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series

Four months ago.

The little Ambrosial Dragon was totally outmatched by the huge Shadow Dragon. Somehow, his mortal foe had detected him crossing the spaces between worlds and had pursued him. The smaller dragon was already almost exhausted. He had been hiding out from Shadow Dragons for months, moving from one realm to another, barely staying ahead of them.

Tonight, his luck had finally run out.

“You will die like all of your kind, golden one. Perish in agony, fool!”

The larger dragon used a combination of magic and brute force, striking his smaller opponent again and again. The little dragon was getting weaker. Fighting back would be useless. He couldn’t even begin to penetrate the dark dragon’s defenses in the current circumstances. But if he could open a doorway into the world he detected earlier, the one where magic almost does not exist, he could escape. The portal would allow only the smaller dragon through. The Shadow Dragon would be much too big to follow.

The Ambrosial Dragon was getting dizzy. It was hard to focus the spell, but if he failed, he’d die.

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The Dragon With Emerald Eyes

dragon

from “The Hobbit” (2012)

The Seventh Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series

Landon was playing with Baby, Scorch, and Sly in the field behind Grandpa’s house. It’s not unusual for a seven-year-old boy to play with friends on a Saturday morning, but in this case, Landon’s friends are living stuffed animals.

Well, they are living now, but they weren’t before the magic.

Through a rather unusual set of circumstances, Landon was imbued with magical energy and in order to learn to control it, his dragon companion Buddy had no choice but to train the child in the use of his magic.

This has caused some problems recently, but they were resolved when Landon formally became Buddy’s apprentice.

So on this bright, cold December morning, Landon is practicing magic with the aid of some of his stuffed animals, a small yellow giraffe named Baby, an equally small stuffed dragon with pink wings named Scorch, and a little red stuffed fox named Sly.

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Expendable

arena

Yokohama main arena courtesy of Yokohama.com

Decades of dispute between the two empires of Queen Rhoda and King Jon finally erupted into open warfare. Each ruler wanted to reign as supreme leader over the people of the Great Continent. They didn’t particularly care how they achieved their goal or how many had to suffer and die in the service of their ambition.

Each marshaled vast armies at their mutual border and targeted the other’s strongholds with weapons of mass destruction. The war, the great war of conquest would claim the lives of hundreds of millions. Both Queen Rhoda and King Jon were supremely confident in their abilities to send out their forces to battle and to win. Each were seated on their thrones in fortified bunkers awaiting the beginning of the first and last battle of the final war. After all, armies are expendable, sovereigns are not.

Rhoda grinned with evil intent imagining her troops and battalions smashing Jon’s fortifications and capturing him. She wanted the honor of slitting his throat with her own hand and then drinking his blood.

Jon had similar plans for the accursed Rhoda, though his personally violating the Virgin Queen’s body would proceed her slow torture and death.

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The Hopelessness of this Year’s Presidential Election

trump-clinton

Image: CNN.com

I voted early. I just couldn’t see waiting when I knew how I was going to vote, or rather who I was going to vote against.

I’ve been voting since the mid 1970s and I’ve never seen a Presidential race this bizarre.

Let’s cut to the chase.

I believe Hillary Clinton is one of the most corrupt human beings who has ever walked the Earth. I believe that beginning at a young age, she dedicated her life to political ambition and power. No other priority was and is higher in her life. She’ll do anything to advance her power. For Clinton, running for President must be like a junkie anticipating their next high. If she became President, she’ll run as fast as she can to please her billionaire supporters, both here and abroad, and to hell with the American citizens.

Donald Trump is a pig. I can’t believe he’s the GOP frontrunner (but then again, neither can the GOP). He’ll say any outrageous thing just because he can, and his supporters eat it up with a spoon. I still don’t think he actually wants to be President and that he’s doing all this just to see how people will react. If he became President, I don’t think he’d know what to do with it. He might just quit once elected.

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