Introduction

This blog is about the ongoing adventures of Frank Clay, the Quantum Unstable Man, and his team. This is the next draft of the story that was told a daily basis at https://twitter.com/QuantumUnstable then collected weekly at http://thequantumlyunstableman.tumblr.com/. Any questions or comments are appreciated.

Check out the Character List for Book One
Start from the Beginning
Check out the Character List for Book Two
Or jump to the beginning of Book Two.
Or if you’re caught up, see the Complete Character List that is (more or less) kept up to date.

Floating in a Most Peculiar Way

“Move? Move how?” I said into his ear. “You’re the one with the gem, not me.”

“Oh, stop complaining and start swimming otherwise we’ll lose all our momentum.”

I glanced back at the pirate ship in time to see the whale open its mouth and swallow it whole. “No going back now.”

“That was never an option,” G’fon said. “The second I decided to leave, they had to be dealt with.”

“Dealt with?” I echoed. “What are you saying, G’Fon? You saying you’re responsible for that whale eating your former crew?”

“Of course, I am. You think a whale just shows up like that? No, Frank. They do not. You’ve got to send out pheromones. You’ve got to chum the airways. You’ve got to prepare and be ready if you want to escape cannibalistic pirates.”

“Fair enough. But one question. If you prepared and were ready, why are we floating around without a ship?”

“Why, Frank?” G’Fon growled. “Because you keep asking stupid questions. I said, we need to go and we need to go now, and you asked questions. I said, hurry it along, and you asked questions. I said, get in the boat and start rowing, and YOU. Asked. Questions.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to know what’s going on, G’fon!” I replied bitterly. “Excuse me for not automatically trusting the guy who was the captain of a boatload of cannibalistic pirates when he mysteriously pops up and says I should follow him!”

“What are you talking about?” G’fon asked, surprisingly sounding quite hurt. “I’m not just some guy. We’re friends! Teammates! We’re part of a squad of time heroes united to saving the timestream! I’m not just some random captain! You should’ve trusted me!”

“G’fon,” I started, “I barely know you. We just met right before this. We went in search of Lu Wu and then we were attacked. We ran and then we were scattered. Then I find you working with cannibal pirates. What am I supposed to think?”

“You’re supposed to think, ‘oh, goody, there’s my friend, G’fon. He’s going to save me from these evil pirates and maybe, just maybe, I can help G’fon find his way out of this crazy dimension because he clearly has no idea how to leave this hell with no bottom.”

“Ok,” I said, hearing the pain in the man’s voice, hearing the vulnerability. “I’m sorry, G’fon. I’m sorry you’ve been trapped here.” I glanced back. The pirate ship was swallowed without a trace and even the whale was leaving us behind. “But now we’re both stuck out here. So what are we supposed to do?”

“You’re asking me?” he replied. “I thought you were supposed to be the one making the big rescue. What are you doing here if not getting me out of here?”

“I’m trying to get us out of here, but I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I know the portal is up, but I don’t know how far up or how far away from it I’ve been thrown. I don’t know how we’re going to be able to figure out exactly where it is or how we’re going to be able to get there. And I don’t know how we’re going to be able to find Tam.”

“Tam?” G’fon asked, as he held onto me with his four hands.

“Yes,” I replied. “They came with me. I found them on an ocean world, but we were separated as soon as we got here when we were hit by a tornado.”

“Oh, yes, you do have to watch out for those freeforming whirlstorms.“

“Well, at least we’ve finally got some good news. Tam being here means I can track them.”

“You can?“

“Oh, yes. I’ve spent more than enough time with them to know where they are. Now, we just have to figure out a way to get up there or a way to more at all.”

“Our momentum seems to be slowing, most likely from all this air resistance,” I noted. “Soon enough we’re going to be trapped out here with no way to move except by the whims of the wind.”

“That’s what I just said,” G’fon complained. “You got a solution in all that complaining?”

“Sadly, I can only really think of one option. We’ve got no way to create a propulsion device. I’m assuming you don’t have anything left over to attract one of those whales, not that I think would really be a good even if you could. Our options seem pretty limited.”

“I think you said we had one option. Is it to just float here and die?”

“No, that’s not the one option I was talking about.”

“Then what is it? What’s our option?”

I let out a slow breath. “We fall.”

“Fall!? Are you out of your mind!?” G’Fon yelled, practically in my ear.

“No. It’s our only option. It’s the only way we can go anywhere. We drop the gem and…”

“Drop the gem? Now I know you’re not thinking straight.”

“We have to, G’fon. We have no choice.”

“The gem’s keeping us suspended in the air, so we have to drop it if we want to fall.”

“First off, I don’t want to fall…” he started before I interrupted.

“Don’t worry. We can survive it. Our terminal velocity here is much lower than in our home dimension.”

“That doesn’t mean dropping the gem isn’t a dumb idea.”

“What do you want us to do?” I asked. “Just hang here in the air, slowly drifting nowhere?”

“Yes. I agree, falling is really our only option, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose the gem. That’d be stupid. We’d be just tossing away our only asset.

“But we have to get rid of it. We need to fall and it’s the only thing keeping us up.”

“Or we could just turn it off.”

“Turn it…?”

“Yeah,” G’fon replied. “We can just turn the gem off. We can switch it so it no longer emits anti-gravity waves. Didn’t you know that?”

“No. Why would I know that? I’ve never seen these stupid things before. I just got here.”

“Oh. Well, we can.”

“All we have to do is rub the gem like this and then…”

We began to fall!

to be continued…

Waiting for the Inevitable

Could I trust G’fon? I didn’t know him very well. It’s why it was so easy to believe he’d betrayed me, why it was so easy to think he’d become a full member of this cannibalistic crew. But what was my other choice, stay here and be eaten? “Ok,” I said, “Let’s go.”

Without any more hesitation, G’fon unlocked the door and let me out. He then waved as he started to lead the way out. I prepared to be ambushed as I followed him out of the brig. No surprises yet as we began to climb the steps up to the main deck. I had to fight that urge so I could try to believe that this was all going to work out. I knew something bad was about to happen and I was not going to let myself believe otherwise no matter what the situation looked like. It might have looked like we had a clear shot, but it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. The pirates had to be waiting for us. They were waiting to jump us or there was some trap set up waiting for us to activate it. Or there was some monster waiting to be let loose. There was something waiting for us, it couldn’t be this easy.

We stepped out onto the deck and we weren’t attacked. Yet. No monster was let loose. Yet. We didn’t fall into a trap. Yet. We began to cross toward the railing and still nothing happened. G’fon climbed over to the liferaft waiting on the side. “Are we not going to be attacked?”

“Only if you don’t keep your voice down,” G’fon replied. “Now get in before someone hears us.”

I could feel my suspicions grow. Was the trap in the raft? Or did he want to bring me out to somewhere where the pirates were waiting? Or maybe there was something else waiting for me?

I stepped inside the raft and nothing happened. No one attacked us. Nothing grabbed me. Nothing attacked me. “Take a seat, Frank,” G’fon said, as he began to untie us from the boat. Slowly, I sat down, but I kept my eyes on him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

G’fon disconnected us from the pirate ship and pushed us off. We began to float away from it and still no attack. I began to think that maybe this was real. Maybe we had actually escaped without any kind of attack or doublecross. Everything had actually worked out for once. G’Fon cranked the fan at the back of the raft and we sailed away from the ship. No one called after us, no one fired at us. We had done it! G’Fon had gotten us out of there without any problem! It was a miracle!

And then the giant whale attacked us.

It came out from behind another floating island. We didn’t see it coming. You’d think we’d have to with something so large, but one minute it wasn’t there and the next it was, a giant whale swimming through the airways, heading right for us with its mouth open.

I couldn’t believe it was happening again. You wouldn’t think being attacked by a flying whale would become a common occurrence, but this was now the second time this had happened to me. The first time I came to these strange other dimensional worlds, Lu Wu and I were attacked by one of them. And I had thought I had lost Lu forever when he was eaten by one of them, but then in our time of most need the whale came back and saved the day. In the end it turned out that Lu had taken possession of the whale and rescued us.

Perhaps it was Lu again in control of this whale? Had Lu come to save us again? I was still looking for him. Him and Kink. They had to be around here somewhere. If they weren’t in this dimension, then I didn’t know where they would be. But as the whale swam right for our little boat I had my doubts that this was a rescue.

“Bail!” G’Fon screamed as he jumped at me. I had little more than enough time to simply look his way as G’fon came flying at me. He slammed into me with enough force to send us both sailing out of the raft. I barely had enough time to say a word when the whale swallowed our raft whole.

I watched with stunned amazement as the whale moved right past us. I heard an explosion and only then did I notice that the whale was headed for the pirate ship. Another explosion made me realize that the pirates were fighting back. Cannons roared, but the whale continued onward toward the pirate ship.

“Don’t just lie there!” G’fon roared. “Start moving!”

I looked around. We were floating in the empty air without a boat. And the pirates and the whale were fighting only meters away.

to be continued…

Into the Brig

“That’s Captain G’fon!” the man said before turning around. He was wearing a large hat with big feathers in it, a red vest and puffy white pants. There was a sword at his side. He looked right at me. “Who’s this? New meat for the cooking pot?”

“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “G’Fon! It’s me! It’s Frank!”

G’fon laughed and so did the pirates. “FRANKly, Meat, I have no idea who you are, but if you forget the captain part again this conversation is going to come to end real quick. And so will you.”

“Excuse me, Captain, I didn’t mean to offend you, but maybe you and I should have a conversation alone.”

“The only conversation you’re going to be having is with the brig. Take him down there, boys. Let him marinate a little longer.”

“G’fon!” I yelled angily. “What are you doing? It’s m…”

The pirate hit me on the back of the head and I stumbled. “Don’t talk to the captain, meat.” They dragged me out of the statehouse and down below deck. They then tossed me into the brig and locked me in.

I couldn’t believe this. I finally found G’Fon and he had locked me up? What was he doing? This didn’t seem like G’fon at all. Though these dimensions didn’t run at the same speed, so I had to wonder how long had he been here. If he’d been here for years, then I couldn’t really blame him for falling in with the locals.

On the other hand, he did lock me and threaten to eat me, so maybe giving him the whole benefit of the doubt is going a little too far. How much did I know about G’fon? Not much. I didn’t know who he was or what he was. I’d only known him for a short amount of time when he was teaming with Kink and Freyja and they weren’t the best sources of reference for people who were trustworthy. They were possibly the worst sources if we’re being honest. We had had common enemies, the Time Police on the rampage, but now we were out of reach of the Time Police, so maybe G’Fon had reverted to his true nature. This could be the true G’fon and the one I thought I knew was just an act for the sake of necessity.

So I couldn’t expect anything from G’fon. I had decided that much. If he wanted to stay here and play pirate for the rest of his life, then so be it. I needed to get out of here. I still had a mission to complete. I wasn’t going to let some crazy tiger-striped lizard man stop me. Now I just had to figure out how to get out of this prison, sneak out of the ship, and avoid an entire crew of pirates, from there all I’d have to do is… I paused as I heard footsteps coming my way. They were coming for me. What could I do?

I couldn’t flee and there was nowhere to hide. I looked for a weapon, but the cell was bare. Looked like I had no choice but to stand here and face whoever it was that was coming. But I wouldn’t go easy, I promised that. They were dumb to send only one person. I wasn’t the strongest person in the world or the best fighter, but I’ve been in my share of scrapes. Sure, changing the body I was in every few days made things difficult, but I’ve learned to acclimate. It’s made me a better improviser. I take what I have and make the best of it. So if someone dared to come at me alone, I’d make them regret it. I promise that. No matter who they were. A pirate, a monster, anyone.

I stepped back from the bars as I heard the footsteps enter the brig and prepared myself. The figure approached the cell door and I was surprised to see it was G’fon. What was he doing down here by himself? “So you’ve come down to do the deed yourself?” I growled. “Don’t want to let any of your lackeys to have the fun of killing, do you? Not when you could do it yourself.”

He leaned in and put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh! What are you trying to do? Blow our escape?”

“Blow our escape!? I’m the one in a cell! You’re the one who put me here!”

“Frank, get a hold of yourself. What did you think I was going to do? Hand the captaincy over to you? It doesn’t work like that. These are vicious pirates, Frank!”

“And you’re their captain!”

“I didn’t want to be! They made me!”

“Made you?”

“It was that or be eaten, Frank. Would you rather be eaten or be made captain? It’s not a hard decision, Frank. I’d rather have been made the janitor than be eaten.”

“Oh yeah? Then why’d you send me down here? If you’re the captain…”

“Frank,” he interrupted, “I may be the captain, but that doesn’t mean I’m in charge. This is a pirate ship and that means the ship is run by the crew. I’m just their representative. They can get rid of me anytime they want, which means I can be joining you for dinner in a way neither of us wants to think about, so if you don’t mind maybe we can get out of here? And do it quietly maybe so we don’t wake up the entire crew.”

to be continued…

The Pirate Captain

The only silver lining I could see about being captured by a horde of thieves inside of a floating island was that these particular thieves were marching me toward the exit which was exactly where I had been trying to get to. I just hoped they didn’t push me off the island when we got there.

As we marched forward, the thieves were all around me, but as we neared the exit, I could see that something waited for us outside. What could it be? They were thieves so it wouldn’t be some kind of incinerator and it wouldn’t be some kind of prison cell. No, they would want something to escape in, so it would have to be some kind of transport. But the exact kind of transport took me completely by surprise. It was a sailing ship! And that’s when I realized these weren’t just ordinary thieves, they were pirates!

The gangplank had been lowered and the pirates led me onto their ship. I began to think maybe I was in trouble. Thieves would steal from you, but I had nothing that they would want, nothing of any worth. Pirates, however, would gladly kill anyone they met. Immoral acts like that didn’t bother them in the slightest. What they had in store for me, I could only begin to wonder. It wasn’t going to be good, I could tell you that. Were they going to make me walk the plank? Were they going to use me as shooting practice? Were they just going to stab me in the chest? I really had no clue.

As for the ship, it looked normal enough to me. It appeared to made of wood with canvas sails, but there were gems buried along its railing. That was obviously how this ship got around between the floating islands and it explained to some degree what they were doing here now. So I had interrupted them fueling up. Unless there were some kind of laws that made unlicensed mining illegal, and there didn’t seem to be any laws in this place at all, then they should have just let me go. It’s not like I could created any trouble for them. “I don’t care what you were doing,” I said. “I just want to get back home.”

“Home?” the pirates laughed. “You’ll never be going home again. Not when our captain gets his chance with you.”

“Your captain?” I gulped.

“He’ll carve you up and eat you raw! He’ll use your bones as toothpicks!”

“Oh goody,” I groaned. “Again with the eating me.”

“The Captain won’t be having any of that sass, Meat,” the pirate holding me snarled. “You best keep your mouth closed.”

“Or what? You’ll cut me up and eat me? Isn’t that already the plan? I don’t see how anything I say will make things worse than that.”

“It’s all about the order of things,” one of the pirates said. “What happens to you first, what happens to you last, how much of it you’re able to feel happening to you. We can always think of ways to make things worse. And if we can’t, then the captain certainly can.”

“Sounds like a wonderful man, this captain,” I said as they marched me across the deck.

“Oh, he is. That’s why he’s the captain.”

“We don’t just make anyone our captain,” another added. “He’s got to be special. From the moment we met him, we knew he was the one.”

“I’m glad you like the man,” I told them, “but I’m getting the impression that I might not. Why don’t you fellas let me go and you and your captain can have some nice alone time together?”

“Oh, don’t worry, meat,” the pirate said. “You won’t be bothering us for much longer.”

Nothing I could say seemed to be able to help me. There were too many of them to fight and they were all around me, so escape was no option. And even if I could escape that escape would be over the side and a return to falling even further down this giant rabbit hole. I was trapped here with no choice but to meet my fate.

They marched me right toward the door. “No more delaying, Meat. Time to meet your end.”

I wanted to run, but the pirates had good grips on me and the entire deck was filled with them. No matter where I looked I saw options for flight. Even grabbing a weapon was barely an option. There was no getting away from this. The pirates opened the captain’s door.

They pushed me into the captain’s room and I went stumbling in. By the time I had regained my footing, the captain was right in front of me. I was stunned by what I saw. The captain was some kind of lizard creature, but he had six arms and stripes like a tiger. I recognized him instantly. “G’Fon?”

to be continued…

Bouncing Off the Walls Again

It took me a second to take in that none of them were surprised that I could now fly. It made sense. They were mining these gems, of course they knew what they could do.

I tried to move forward, fly out of this cavern and, hopefully, into the wild blue yonder. I tried to move backwards, maybe back the way I had come. I tried to move right. I tried to move left. But I just couldn’t move. It seemed like maybe this gem wasn’t a form of propulsion at all. All it did was glow and make me float in the air. That was a nice trick for a crystal, but it did little good for me trapped in this cavern with a bunch of thieves who wanted to cook me and eat me.

They were moving in now, reaching up for my legs. I kicked at them. I made contact with one of them, kicking him in his face. I began to spin around. I was moving like I was in zero g. All I needed was momentum and I could get going. I kicked at another of them with both my legs and began to fly toward the opposite wall. I unfortunately hadn’t completely spun around when I hit the other wall, so my attempt to push off was uneven and I ricocheted deeper into the cave, moving further away from the exit. I bounced off two more walls before I started moving back toward the front.

Unfortunately by this time, the miners were all prepared for me and I still hadn’t managed to get full control of my trajectory. And worse, I could see some of them had gems in their hands and they, too, began to rise into the air. The closest of them to me had snapping mandibles and tentacles instead of hands, but I was able to kick off her hard forehead, pushing her downward and giving myself a second to prepare for the dozen others heading my way.

When I hit the wall this time, I was prepared. I kicked off it with both feet, pushing my way with force toward the closest attacker. I used the impact with him to spiral into the next one and then used that to smack the next one hard in the chest. I tried to hit the next but they got me first. I went spiraling off in a new direction.

Before I could regain control, before I could even get an idea of where I was going, I was smacked again hard in the side. My momentum was dying now, my body was hurting, and the bad guys were rising. There had to be twenty of them up in the air with me and another twenty below ready to take the place of anyone who fell. Taking them out one at a time wasn’t going to work. I had to pretend I was the cueball and they were the rack. It was time to break the rack.

I waited as long as I could, letting them start bunching up, and then I pushed off the wall with all my might into the largest bunch. I slammed into them with a great force sending the thieves bouncing off each other. But I, of course, ricocheted, too, and I tried to use it as best I could bouncing into other large groups of thieves. And, for a little while, it worked. We were all bouncing off each other and none of them had a chance at grabbing me. But I wasn’t getting any closer to the exit, either. If I was going to make a move, now was going to be the time. With the thieves all ricocheting off of each other., I planted my feet on the far wall and pushed off as hard as I could.

The path was open. I could the light shining through the exit, my escape was clear as day. I flew across the cavern like a rocket ship. I was home free, only seconds away from getting out of thus mess, or so I thought. But then the opening started closing. The thieves were bouncing back.

They were collapsing in on me, but I was still flying forward toward the exit. I could prepare to defend myself or keep pushing onto my way out of here. I saw that as no choice. I wasn’t going to be able to defeat all of these guys. Escape was my only real option. So I aimed ahead, kept my focus on the cave exit and sailed forward. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to go faster and despite all my efforts, they were closing in on me. I was only feet away now. I could see the literal light at the end of the tunnel.

But before I could reach it, they closed in on me. With multiple impacts coming from multiple directions, we all went tumbling across the cavern, smashing into walls and other people. It was chaos, but I was unfortunately in no position to take advantage of it. I was bouncing off the walls along with them and I had half a dozen of the thieves holding on to me. Some would fall off as we impacted, but others would jump on as we sailed between the walls. But I might still have a chance, I told myself. All I had to do was keep bouncing.

But the thieves had other ideas. Working together they started grabbing ahold of me and grabbing ahold of their friends who were already wrapped aroud me. Then more began grabbing them and pretty soon I was stuck in the middle of a web of partially floating thieves going nowhere. They began pulling me down toward the ground and, as I tried to fight back, one of them stole the gem from out of my hand. I immediately lost the ability to float and the thieves who were immobilizing me, accidentally ended up saving me from falling to the ground with a splat. As my feet hit the ground, my mind was racing about ways to escape and coming up empty. Grabbing another gem wasn’t going to do the job or trying to make a break for it, there were just too many of them. It seemed like I was out of luck. I was at the mercy of these thieves.

to be continued…

Even Under the Ground There is Danger

I was in some kind of tunnel inside the middle of the floating island. I looked up but I could only barely make out the top of the hole. It was mostly just darkness everywhere I looked, but in front of me, there was light.

There was something in front of me that was giving off light, maybe it was an exit, maybe it was a lamp, but whatever it was I was going to crawl toward it. As I moved through it, I realized just how tight the tunnel was. To make matters worse, it was also lined with rocks jutting everywhere to bang my various limbs against. The crawl was uncomfortable and painful, but on the other end was light, so I continued forward until I was out of the darkness.

At the other end, I found a large cavern covered in blue glowing gems. I rose to my feet and dusted myself off. What were these gems? Why did they glow like that? I moved toward a pocket of them to take a better look when I heard a noise. I wasn’t alone down here!

I moved cautiously toward the sound, doing my best to stay hidden. I didn’t know what new threat awaited me. But as I came around the corner I was not greeted by a giant crab or some dinosaur, or a vicious worm of some kind. No, it was a bunch of humanoids. There were over a dozen of them down there and not two of them looked alike. Some were reptilian and some mammalian, others were neither. They had multiple arms and legs, some had tails, one even had an extra head. But all of them seemed completely focused on the gems on the walls.

I was watching miners at work. I couldn’t believe it. Up above giant crabs were doing battle with swooping birds, but down here, in the middle of a floating island, were miners just banging away. And best of all it, it meant that people lived in this dimension and were able to get around. Which meant that I could get out of here! I could go find Tam. Then we could go find Kink or G’Fon or Lu Wu, whichever one of them was in this place. Finally, I was back in control, not just falling wildly down an endless pit being chased by random monsters. I was on the way to success!

Then I felt something sharp against my back. I started to turn, but I heard a voice close behind me say, “Don’t move, meat, or I’ll jam my blade so far into your back it’ll be popping out the other end.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “I come in peace. I’m not here to hurt any…”

“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” the voice said from behind me. I could hear the smile. “Now, start walking.”

The miners all turned to look at me as I was marched past them and they smiled. Theirs were not nice smiles. I think ‘vicious’ would be a more appropriate adjective and that would even include the ones who weren’t flashing their sharp fangs at me. I had a bad feeling about this. These people couldn’t just be regular prospectors. Prospectors didn’t take such pleasure in taking a prisoner. Were they stealing these gems? Were they thieves? “Look,” I said, “I don’t know what this is, but I promise you I’m not here to interfere with it.”

“It don’t matter what you’re here for, meat,” the man holding a knife on me said. “The only thing you’ll be doing is cooking in the stew pot.”

Stew pot?!? I spun around so quickly he didn’t have a chance to stop me. “You want to EAT me??”

My captor, a three-eyed pig-man, snorted, “What do you think we’re going to do? The Endless Sky isn’t so full that we can just throw away good meat. The boys need to eat, don’t they?”

“I just escaped from a giant crab and her legion of children, why don’t you just go eat them?”

“I don’t know what a ‘crab’ is, but if it’s that beasty up-top and her brood, I can tell you I’ve had it. I’ve had too much of it. I’m tired of it. But you? I’ve never had any of you.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, don’t make me an entrée. You wouldn’t like me as an entrée.”

“In that case, we’ll just save you for dessert. How do you like that?” the pig-man said to me.

“I don’t like that at all.” I pushed him away from and began to run. The miners all dropped their equipment and began to chase after me. Despite my best efforts, they quickly surrounded me. It wasn’t as if I had much choice as to where to run, stuck in the middle of a cavern underground, but I wasn’t about to let them make me dinner. I looked for a weapon, but all I could find was a gem sticking out of the dirt. I pulled it out, but before I could use it I began to float off the ground.

“He’s got one of the gems!” one of them shouted. “Don’t let him get away!”

to be continued…

Running at a Snap

As the birds began to scatter, I decided it was time I got away as well. I ran up the mother crab’s shell. I could see her eyes following me as I rushed to her back. As I dove off to the beach, I could feel her turning underneath me. I smacked down on the rocky barrier at the border of the beach and immediately tried to climb up it. But the mother crab was already turning around and reaching out to me with her giant claw. I rolled away as its claw smashed into the barrier. Shards of the barrier came tumbling down, but I was already moving, running away. The mother crab was in immediate pursuit. Even with all these birds flapping about eating her children, I had her full attention. Maybe running over her back hadn’t been the best idea.

I continued to run down the beach, looking for somewhere where the cliff wasn’t so steep, skirting the beach, as little crabs snapped at my toes. The mother crab continued to turn toward me. The one positive thing in of all this was that she wasn’t very quick on her toes. Unfortunately, I had trouble taking advantage of this since I had to avoid the flat beach since it was covered in baby crabs who were close enough to their mother to be safe from the feeding birds, so I was forced to run alongside the steep incline that really cut down my stride.

But I did my best to get away. However, I couldn’t help but glance behind me to see how close the mother crab was. That was a mistake because I could see her giant claw, snapping at me, and it was only a few feet behind me. I immediately tried to run even faster, though there wasn’t much I could do really speed up. The only real option I had was to not be so precious about staying off the beach. A flat even path would allow me to run full out, assuming I didn’t trip on one of the thousands of little crabs scurrying around everywhere.

I ran with all my speed now, deciding getting away from giant crab was the primary concern. Every now and then I’d feel a snap on my toes from one of the little crabs that would cause me to stumble, but I continued to race on as best I could. And soon enough, I saw a way out, a break in the wall. I rushed toward it with all the speed I could muster, which unfortunately wasn’t helped much by my bionic prosthesis, ahead of the mother crab’s gigantic claws snapping at my back. I rushed so fast toward the opening that I didn’t have a chance to notice that the hole in the wall was also a hole in the ground until it was too late.

I did, however, almost get lucky. I was running so fast my inertia almost carried me over the hole. I might have made it if my stride were just a little bit longer. As it was my foot slipped right down into the hole and the front half of my body was thrown forward. I went smack into the far side of the hole. My chest hit the rim and I could see clearly the path ahead of me, free of danger, but then my hips smacked against the wall of the hole and I began to slide down. I didn’t even have time to grab anything before I started to fall back. All I could do was attempt to grab wildly at the ground as I began to tumble backwards down the hole.

I immediately began to fear that I was going to fall through the bottom of the island and return to my endless plummet down this infinite well of a universe. I dreaded the possibility horribly. If I continued to fall, I was never going to be able to get out of here. I would lose sight of Tam and the dimensional hole that would get me out of here forever. Maybe that’s what had happened to my friends. Maybe they were trapped tumbling down this hole for eternity. Except, I realized Kink had wings, so she’d have been able to navigate this place much easier. And Lu Wu could use his magic to float or open portals. As for G’fon…

But I wasn’t given much time to dwell on any of that because within seconds I was thrown backwards into the far wall and my tumble down the hole began in earnest. As I fell into the darkness, all I could do was try to protect my face from the rocky outcroppings as I smacked into them. I went ricocheting off the walls of the hole, smacking back and forth. I began to worry I was going to become a bloody mess before I finally fell out of the bottom, but then the bottom hit me hard. This was not some hole leading to the bottom of the floating island. This was a hole leading to the middle of the island and I wasn’t sure that was any better.

to be continued…

A Sudden Attack of Crabs

The ‘water’ fought me with every stroke every kick. Trying just to get back to the surface was a struggle. I could feel my lungs begin to burn as I fought my way out of the lake, but the lake fought back. I could see things start to go black when I felt my body begin to shake. Next thing I knew I was speeding upward to the surface and I realized the shaking wasn’t coming from me but my leg!

My prosthetic leg was saving me again! Though if there was anything this leg was made for by the fish people, it was to get around in water. And even though this water was more like jello than regular water, it was still water and this leg was showing me that it indeed knew how to get around in it.

I finally broke the surface and sucked in all the air I could get. I looked around me as I let the leg take me toward the beach. Where was I? And more importantly how was I going to be able to find Tam again? At this point we had to be miles away from each other. Even to get onto the beach I needed help from my new artificial leg. I would’ve thought climbing out of the water would have been the easy part, but this ‘water’ just did not want to let go. With a bit of struggling, I was finally able to get myself free, but the ‘water’ continued to linger on me. I tried to dry off, but I seemed unable to slick away the layer of this goop. Surprisingly, when I gave up trying, the ‘water’ began to just slip off of me.

As I stood there letting the ‘water’ ooze off me, I looked out into the beach and the rocky cliffs behind it. I wasn’t going to find a payphone out here or a taxi stand. Finding a way back up was going to be tricky, but I could do it. I knew I could. I wasn’t…OW! Something bit my foot!

I looked down at the ground and saw little crab-like creatures streaming out of the sand, swarming all over my feet. One of my legs may have been made out of metal, but the other one was pure meat. As the tiny crabs tried to tear into my flesh, I shook my fleshy leg with desperate terror. I tried to hop further up the shore as more and more tiny crabs emerged from the sand. It was like the entire beach was made up of them and the sand was just a screen for them to go hunting. I feared that was exactly what this was like and, at the moment, that I was the prey.

It was then that red bird-like creatures began to divebomb down at me. I tried to dodge as they swooped past. Just because I was trying to escape these vicious tiny crabs didn’t mean I was going to let some opportunistic birds be the end of me. As I did my best to dodge, duck, dive, dip, and dodge, I realized that the birds weren’t coming after me at all. They were only after the crabs, scooping up bill-fulls of them with every swoop. So it seemed like something was finally on my side in this crazy, mixed up world.

Not that those crazy birds were doing much to the crabs that were already biting me. All those birds were doing were terrorizing the other crabs, keeping me from being completely swarmed. That was good, I consented, but not great. I still needed to get these crabs that were on me off of me and to get as far away from this feeding frenzy as I could.

So I bounced up the beach, trying to shake the crabs off me, trying to not get hit by the divebombing birds, trying to survive in one piece, but then the whole ground began to shake. I went tumbling backwards to the ground, but as soon as my body hit the beach I had to move to keep the crabs from swarming all over me. The shaking beeneath was violent enough that I began to worry that the whole little floating island was going to shake apart, but then the shaking became something else.

Something beneath me was rising, coming out from beneath the sand! And it wasn’t just rising up from beneath me, but it was emerging from most of the beach! Whatever this behemoth was, it had to be thirty, forty feet wide! The sand began to slide off of it in sheets. I did my best to stay on top of it so I didn’t fall back into the viscous lake. It wasn’t easy staying on, but fortunately most of the little crabs had fallen off of me by then so I only had the occasional bite to distract me from trying to maintain my balance. But I did have the monstrous thing emerging beneath to draw my attention. What was this thing?

And then a giant claw emerged from the sand to snap down on one of the swooping birds. It was then they I realized what the creature I was standing on was. It was a giant crab! It was the mother of all crabs!

to be continued…

Falling and Falling and also Falling

“Now, it’s time to die, me laddo,” the Pterodactyl called to me. “No, more running for you. No more sticks to swing either. But I’m not going to end this one fast. It’s going to be slow. I’m going to pull your organs out one at a time. First maybe your liver, then a spleen…”

“While that sounds like fun,” I told him, as I did my best to hang onto the mountainside. Fighting off this monster was not going to be fun, especially since the likely result of success would be me falling off this floating mountain into the never-ending abyss below. “I’m going to have to pass.”

“The only thing that’s going to pass,” the Pterodactyl replied, “is your heart after I eat it.”

I shook my head. “Boo!”

“What?” he gasped. “I’d like to see you do better with the lines you’re giving me.”

“It’s a poor musician than blames his instrument.”

“My instrument is just fine. Thank you. It’s the brass section that is having trouble keeping up. Fortunately, I’m about to make this song a solo.”

“You know what an orchestra is?”

“Of course, I do. I’m not a philistine.”

“No, but you’re a pterosaur living in a nest without a single shred of technology in sight.”

“What does technology have to do with an orchestra? I can fly just fine on my own to go listen to some musicians play.”

“Musical instruments are technology. Brass instruments are technology. Making brass instruments requires technology!”

“You silly morsels and your attempts at thinking,” the Pterodactyl laughed, as he continued to circle me. “It’s so cute. And appetizing.”

Suddenly, he dove down at me, but this time I was ready for him. I leapt over him and landed on his back. I wrapped my legs around his short torso and around his thin neck. “Get off of me!” he shouted. “Get off of me or I’ll tear you apart!”

I held him tighter, trying to put him to sleep. The Pterodactyl continued to flap wildly, doing his best to free himself, but slowly his thrashing began to fade. And then he was out and we were falling, but I knew that was coming. I still had one chance to save myself. I dove for the mountain, reaching out as far as I could, extending my fingers as far as they could go. If I could just reach the mountain, if I could just get a finger hold, but, no, I just couldn’t do it.

There was no helping it, we were falling. Both of us. To save myself, I had had to jump off of the mountain and there was no way I could get back to it now. I was left to the open sky and unless my cybernetic leg had another lifesaving secret in it, I was doomed to fall forever.

I spread myself out to increase the drag and slow myself down, but I doubted it would do me much good. Eventually, the Pterodactyl regained consciousness, shouted “Piss off, mate!”, and soared away presumably back to his mountain. Any chance I had of him saving me was gone. I was left to fall alone, seemingly forever.

As I fell (and fell and fell), I began to notice other floating mountains off in the distance. It seemed the Pterodactyl’s nest wasn’t unique. There were other land masses that could stop my endless fall. Of course, while that could be a good thing, it could also be a bad one. Land meant I could stop falling, that I wouldn’t fall for all eternity, that I wouldn’t starve to death or die of thirst, but it also meant I would stop falling and as they said it wasn’t the fall that killed you, it was the sudden stop.

But in the end, I decided, land meant the possibility of being saved, no matter how slim. And a small possibility was better than none, so I angled myself toward an approaching mountain. As it got closer, I began to scan it for anyone or anything that could save me. There was nothing I could see, nothing that could stop my fall. But I did notice something about it, something that seemed off. With a quick calculation in my head, I was able to verify it. My terminal velocity was indeed much slower than usual. And with slower terminal velocity that meant I would hit the ground with less force, maybe even gentle enough that I could survive it. Now all I needed was to find somewhere to land, somewhere that wasn’t sharp and hard and deadly.

I saw rocks and mountains. I saw valleys and flat plains. I saw icy tundras. I saw places with no give and unyielding ground. So many bad places to go, I was beginning to lose hope. And then I saw it: a nice deep lake. With this fishman designed prosethetic leg, it seemed like destiny.

I steered myself over to above the lake. I straightened myself out as I tried to enter the water as vertically as possible to minimize the impact. I slipped into the lake smoothly, but I immediately noticed that something was wrong. The water was too viscous. It was like molasses! Sure, I had managed to land without hurting myself, but getting out of the lake was turning out to be a problem!

to be continued…

No Place for Civility when a Pterodactyl Wants to Eat You

“Uh…you talk?” I replied, eloquently to the pterodactyl squatting over me on the edge of his nest.

Despite his inflexible beak, he seemed to be smiling down at me. “Indeed. Too right. I do go on.”

“That’s such a relief,” I confessed. “I was afraid you were going to feed me to your babies.”

“No babies for me. Lifelong bachelor, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame, but I’m sure you’ll meet the right…person sooner or later.”

He chuckled merrily. “What a kind thing to say, lad! Rather makes me feel a bit like a heel. Almost makes me not want to eat you now.”

“Eat me?” I gasped, backing away from the pterosaur. “I thought you said you weren’t going to eat me?”

“All I told you was that I didn’t have children, which is the truth. No babies for this lad. It’s tough enough feeding one mouth, forget half a dozen. I mean, imagine splitting you eight-ways, no thank you. I’d be lucky to get a liver out of it.”

That was enough for me. I made a break for it, running to the far end of the nest before starting my climb out. “What are you doing there, chap?” the Pterodactyl asked as he flapped over to me. “Trying to get away, are you?”

“I’m not going to let you eat me,” I told him. What could I say, I had a thing about not getting eaten.

He laughed. “I don’t think you really have a choice in the matter.”

“You want to make a bet?”

He swung his wing at me and I jumped out of the way. As I came up to my feet, he swung again, but now I was no longer unarmed. As I had rolled, I had pulled one of the sticks out of the nest. It was a good sized stick, nearly the size of my arm, and when I tried to block his attack, the stick went right through the skin flap of his wing. “Ah!” he screamed. “Why’d you do that!?!”

“All I did was defend myself. And I’ll do it again if you try to attack me again.”

“You think I’m going to just let you rip my wing and get away with it? I don’t think so, little worm. I’m going to tear you to shreds!”

I raised my stick up in the air. “I’d like to see you try!”

I did not want to see him try. What I really wanted to see him do was fly away, but he seemed a bit too angry at the moment for that too happen. He went after me leading with his beak. I smacked him across the side of the face.

“Ow!” the Pterosaur shrieked. “That hurt!”

“And you think eating me isn’t going to hurt?”

“It’s not going to hurt me.”

“Oh, yeah?” I waved my stick at him. “I’m going to do my best to make sure that it does.”

“Give up, lad. All you’re doing is drawing this out.”

“That’s fine with me. I can do this forever. You’re the one that’s hungry, not me.”

“Why must you be so violent?” the Pterodactyl whined. “I’m trying to be civil and you resort to violence and rudeness.”

“Because you’re trying to eat me and I don’t want to get eaten.”

“It’s the natural order of things,” the Pterodactyl tried to explain. “There are predators and prey, eaters and those who are eaten. Fighting it is futile.”

I raised my club in the air. “Well, then here’s to futility because I’m not going to let you eat me.”

The Pterodactyl lunged again and again, but I batted him away each time until finally, with a look of frustration, he took off into the air. I had beaten him! I had scared him off! But it wouldn’t be for long, I knew that. I immediately began climbing out of the nest. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far before he came swooping back down at me.

I lunged out of the way toward the mountain. For a second, I thought I might be safe. I had dodged the pterodactyl. I had escaped the nest. But as I tried to hold onto the mountain, I began to slip.

My hand came loose and I began to fall. But it wasn’t a plummet – I was still too close to the mountain for that. It was more like a tumble. I bounced back and forth as my body ricocheted off of the various outcroppings. It hurt quite a bit. It looked like this was going to be the end, that I was either going to break my neck falling down this mountain or I was going to tumble off this mountain and be back where I started, plummeting into the abyss forever. And then suddenly I felt a tug on my hip and I came to a stop.

I looked up toward my prosthetic leg. I was just hanging from it. Had it gotten stuck, wedged into a crevice? I pulled myself up to get a better look. Hanging onto the calve, there didn’t seem to be anything for it to have gotten stuck to. And then something caught my eye, a glint of metal. I wasn’t wedged into something. Something had instead come out of my cybernetic leg, some kind of metal…thing.

Meaning, my prosthetic leg had just saved me! I don’t know how or why, but it did! It had hurt like hell when it had, pulling on the joint, but that was better than splatting on the ground, assuming there was a ground in this dimension, or falling forever if there wasn’t. Now, all I had to do was get my leg free from the cliff and not fall in the attempt.

I went searching for handholds, something I could use to prop myself, something that would be able to support my weight. The mountain was far from flat, but there weren’t any convenient ledges nearby. I did the best that I could and started to pull myself up. I thought I had a good hold and I starting feeling around my leg for a button to extract the blade. I found no button, but surprisingly the blade extracted itself. But as my leg came free, a large shadow fell over me.

It was the Pterodactyl and he was not happy.

to be continued…