The Works of Ravenpaine

The year is 2280.

The place is Boston.

The story is hers.

Talya Varenetti watched the sun loom against the horizon. A giant furious orb that cooked those in its view with no remorse. From behind her parasol Talya watched it descend by degrees igniting the last minute release of toxins from the industrial plants that ringed the bay and causing a super-fusion of oranges and greens and purples. The problem, as she saw it, was that Tommy Stokes was much more dead then advertised.

His corpse thudded against the rocks an inch below her boots with the rhythm of the artificial tide created by the very machines pumping poison into the air. The radiation would crack open each of the compounds within the day-glo cloud and spread the carefully manufactured waste products inland where they would collect against buildings that had been standing for nearly 500 years despite the earths attempts to tear them down. Tommy being dead was inconvenient, because Tommy was needed for questioning by the Polyplex Triumvirate, the very same mega-corp that controlled all food production and waste management and one half of the energy concern for the east coast. Whatever it was that Tommy knew, whatever it was that PT needed to know was leaking into the poison sea.

“Enough of this,” said Talya. She stood to her full height, a slight 5′6” and marched across the porcelain reef that ringed the sea access and plunged headlong into the noise of Boston Nu as it opened up its windows and doors and the neon sky burned where the sun once stood. This was the night season of Boston Nu and Talya’s business always picked up in that way that sent her underground an extra level, politically, socially, mentally. Reaching into herself for reasons and answers that were never there. The bottle held clues, the drugs hints, the sex was liberating and her mind leaped at conclusions. But it was all gossamer and smoke. Never anywhere to land.

Her right eye rotated into the UV for a moment before settling at the border of blue shift. The Rad Band was thicker today, the rumors of the continuing collapse of ozone over the plains was turning out to be more a dark prophecy then a bad rant. There would be action soon, regulations changed, CEOs making demands and excuses for their own actions but always with their fingers and arms raised at their next closest rivals. Standards had slipped again and the Rad Band was going to kill another 200 thousand before they decided to crank up their standards, raise their prices, and settle behind tinted windows and bunkers to drink pre-Circle liquor and smoke that new organophosphate they had found in Keny that had every adult male tripping balls from sundown to sunrise.

The blue shift revealed traces from the harbor to the center of Boston’s old district, a series of wood and brick structures so tainted with rads that they couldn’t be scrubbed, couldn’t be contained. The place where anyone without hope, without cash, without a logo eventually found themselves puckering and blistering in the Rad Band. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Talya was still at the harbor, and the trail was just heating up, metaphorically. In reality what she was tracking and would take us to the old district is a rate of decay. Tommy was saturated with it before being taken and dropped in the water. She may have found him a floater but he was roasted first. She stopped and walked back to the reef. She scanned Tommy’s body with a red shift spectrum analysis then compared it with the blue shift and thermal just to be safe. They corroborated her findings exactly, boiled from the inside out.

“Just what I need, one stiff, nuke-warm.”

Ending that last of the year hiatus and getting back to normal business. Here is an excerpt from a piece I was working on in the interim for not internet publication.

Eons ago before the first destruction of the Earth there was but one pool of life teeming and growing on the planet. This primordial ooze was waiting to spring forth with million myriad species, but it was still early and the Universe was still young. The darkness of the the pre-universe was still very much real. The creatures of Void would stop at nothing to destroy the emerging substance and life of the universe. So guardians were created and place upon the Earth to watch over the world as life came to be and the oceans were formed and the sky was set in place and the fabric of reality would be strong enough to push back the Void on its own.

In time these guardians would become less and less prevalent as the universe became permanent and the Void became a thing of legend coiling in dark pools of non-matter in a smatter of places throughout the universe. The guardian race of the Earth retreated to an island in the sea to live out their days as a silent watchers and chronicle the majesty they had seen since the moment after creation. But the things of the Void were not yet through with that golden gem of blue and conspired one last daring attack to destroy the things of reality and the firmament. They gathered en mass and fired a rock at the Earth. The impact was devastating and the planet was shattered by the blast. The guardians found their island smoldering and cooling in the depths of space.

It became the Moon.

Life on Earth survived the cataclysm, but without the wisdom and guidance of its chosen protectors it went through many years of trouble and one species after another rose and fell as other, smaller attacks from the Void sought to smite the seemingly invincible Earth.

Eventually, the humans were born and would look up into the sky and wonder at the blue/white eye that looked down upon them and wonder if there was another race looking down upon them with interest and kindness. This was the last of a twinge of telepathy that sought to speak the truth through the dense hub-bub of life.

Sensing that danger would again come to the Earth, a group of philosophers and artists moved to an island in the Mediterranean Sea and emulated the ancient practices of the guardians, unaware that they were treading in steps too large for their human feet. The island was consumed by the sea, but it was not destroyed. It was drug to the bottom of the ocean and created a tether between the Earth and the Moon which allowed, if only occasionally for a guardian to be sent to the Earth and take up the ancient rite of protecting all life from the Void.

These ocean dwellers were guardians in their own right, defending a great obelisk in the sea that was the source of all energy between the spheres. It was known as the Totem. Those that guarded the Totem and watched for the signs to be right to summon guardians were known as the Daughters, for each of them was always female. Thus the link between women and the Moon has always existed, a bond that all share with the Totem and the Moon.

In the year 1981, in the middle of June the signs aligned and the last Daughter of the Totem struck the gong and summoned a guardian, hoping to at last drive back the increasing Void that had taken root in the hearts of man. Her call was answered, but it was also heard. The Void had learned of the Totem long ago and had been laying in wait to prevent the guardian from being sent.

Though ancient knowledge flowed through them, the guardians were not invincible nor immune to the ravages of time. To protect themselves they would take on human forms and grow in strength and knowledge on the planet until such time as they were needed. So the Earth had its heroes and knew them by many names. Ulysses, Thor, Hercules, Musashi. Each a being of powers beyond the Earth but held in a mortal frame to provide wisdom and temperance.