by Chucho Jones
“We’re out of firepower!” Victoria yelled.
“It doesn’t matter. That was a hell of a shot frenzy,” Oliver said, complementing her, though his expression was masked by the dark membrane over his head.
“Mom, have we gotten a signal? We don’t have much time. Earth is in danger now,” Oliver said as they approached the planet’s atmosphere.
“I’m trying my best, Oli, but there’s only white noise,” Laura reported back.
Their time was running out. Oliver had to focus on contacting Earth. He thought of a plan to end this once and for all. He knew if they managed to make it to Earth fast enough, he might be able to use the fridge’s magnetic core to help the Wielder create a magnetic field big enough to hold and attract all the debris.
If achieved, this would pull the alien vessel into a contained field. The small saucer began to close in toward Earth’s atmosphere. Oliver tinkered with the communications in hopes of informing Dickens about his plan.
“Ground control, do you copy?” Oliver said with no reply. “Ground control, please, do you copy?” Static overcame the cockpit and cut off words resounded.
“Come… in. We hear you loud and clear.” Oliver recognized his mentor’s jumpy voice. He was happy to hear it.
“Ground control, so glad to hear you. We have an emergency situation. Listen closely, no time to waste. You must amplify the fridge factory’s magnetic core. I repeat, amplify the fridge factory’s magnetic core.” Desperately the boy spat over the radio. “Do you copy, ground control?” Oliver asked.
“Loud and clear, Tomorrow Sky. What’s your ETA? I will send a retrieval unit., the good doctor said over the radio.
“Thank you, ground control. Rapidly approaching the atmosphere. I’ll send you our estimated landing coordinates. We’re riding in an alien bogey. I repeat, we’re in one of the alien ships. Over,” Oliver replied.
“Wait, what happened to Tomorrow Sky?” the good doctor asked over the radio.
“Sorry, Doctor. Tomorrow Sky’s no more. Over,” Oliver responded.
He knew everything had to be synchronized and precise in order for it to work. He decided to speed the vessel up, but it was to no avail. Something was holding them back. An energy beam of some sort was pulling them back towards the menacing sphere.
“We need to put more distance between us and the big vessel. It’s drawing us in,” he said, concerned.
The screens began to jitter. A hum overcame the cockpit, and Oliver began to shriek in pain. Laura tried to detach him from the bond.
“Help me get it off. Quick!” she yelled at her brother.
Oliver calmed down and regained control of himself again. The screens showed the menacing Forefather as the source of the hum.
“XY is drawing us in. He wants the Quantum Wielder, otherwise he cannot control the Quantessence,” Oliver said, obviously drained. He looked at everyone as they showed concern for his well-being.
“Who’s XY?” Victoria replied.
He recognized her endearing expression, and he once again felt a jitter in his stomach as he felt her concern for him.
They needed to make it home.
“Help me. We need to find a way to stall it,” he said with the same endearment in his eyes.
“Stall it? What do you want us to do, wave at it?” interrupted the rebel uncle. Leon grabbed his jet pack and climbed into the containment sack below the ship’s main cockpit.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asked.
“This thing runs on hyper jet fuel. You saw what it did to the robot when I crashed into it. If we thrust the jetpack towards one of the big bad guy’s thrusters…” Leon said as he prepared the jetpack’s controls. “All I need is something to keep the thrusters on and your aim,” he said as he looked at Victoria.
“Here, use this,” Victoria said as she pulled out her last two pieces of gum.
She chewed on one as Chuggy immediately chomped on the second one. Leon took both wads as Chuggy laid above his head and shoulders.
“Get off me, creepy thing. I gotta do this!” he yelled at the creature.
With his thumb, he pushed the gum around the thruster’s buttons to jam them down. He turned it on, and the rockets ignited immediately. With the help of Victoria, they shot towards the alien’s massive vessel.
Kha Tse tried to keep a straight trajectory to end the escaping crew. The rocket got into her line of fire, exploding in front of her. She veered her ship jerkily, and had lost half her cockpit, now having trouble keeping her ship straight. Even though the crew had a successful hit, it didn’t cause the destruction they wanted.
“Crap! Come on; it should’ve worked. And she’s still flying!” Leon yelled in frustration.
Chuggy jumped up and down on Leon’s back, alluding the young cavalier’s feelings. The crew’s ship began to jolt, as if losing momentum. The vitro-plasma they were floating in began to drain towards XY’s vessel.
Without anything else to do, Oliver was losing control of the ship. His face was no longer covered in black, and everyone could see his defeated expression. He tried to fight it, but he began to lose control of GR-3G and his bond. He was unable to draw away from the alien’s power.
“We’re losing Vitro-plasma. I can’t control it anymore,” he cried out desperately.
Oliver looked at everyone, knowing that Kha Tse was closing in. She was getting in the way of XY and the crew’s UFO. She furiously charged at them, wielding both her silver phatasfa’s with might. She jumped off her vehicle, charging towards the alien UFO holding the human crew.
Leon rolled a phatasfa on as he anticipated Kha Tse. Her tendrils grabbed hold of the cargo space underneath the main cockpit of the vessel. Leon tried to shock her tendrils, but she whipped him out of commission.
Oliver saw his uncle’s feat and got an idea.
He waited until the alien mistress had a tight grip of the mercuranium frame. He knew he only had seconds, so he concentrated his energy towards all the Vitro-Plasma. He thought about the Silicone-Carbon paradox and the remaining atoms.
He channeled that energy, took a deep breath, and unleashed himself.
The Vitro-plasma began to turn into white energy surrounding the whole vessel. The alien hybrid got zapped with a white beam of energy and lost her grip. She went flailing towards XY’s vessel. The Vitro-Plasma that he was draining turned into white energy just the same. White explosions surrounded the giant sphere sporadically.
Oliver had felt it. A rupture in the Quantessence. The collision created a chain reaction that resulted in a blinding explosion. The energy frenzy covered everything in a luminous, white light. A giant ruckus shook the skies, and a big bang from an implosion resounded in everyone’s ears.
Everything shook tremendously. Oliver had to keep his controls tight as the vessel fell faster towards Earth. They looked behind them to see that the nightmare was gone.
Oliver couldn’t feel the presence of the Quantessense anymore, and there was nothing chasing them. The skies began to clear. Oliver, confused, tried to communicate back to Earth. The spacecraft was in a free fall, plummeting towards terra firma, and communications were out.
“Mayday, mayday. Ground control. We’re freefalling. Mayday. Please respond.” Oliver moved back to the controls but realized the lack of power made him lose the bond with GR-3G. They had accomplished their mission but were now careening to their deaths.
“What the hell just happened?” Leon asked worry all over his face and laced in his voice.
“They’re gone. Can we reach ground control?” Laura said.
“No, I don’t feel anything. I can’t activate the vessel, I can’t sense the mother ship, and I can’t feel the Quantessence calling anymore. We’re on our own,” Oliver cried out.
“But did we save the world?” Victoria asked.
“You all did it,” Laura said reassuringly as she locked her sight to her brother. “I couldn’t be prouder of you all,” she added.
Oliver felt at peace
with his mother’s words, but it was at that moment he realized they were facing their doom.
“Wait a minute, but we’re still freefalling. It’s not fair,” Oliver interrupted.
“What are you saying? You mean there’s nothing your robot hand can do? What about bucket o’ bolts there? Anything?” Leon shouted.
Oliver shook his head and embraced his mother one last time. Leon saw Victoria’s plain expression as she held on to Chuggy and comforted them as well.
“I guess this is it then. What happened to the falling debris then?” Leon asked.
Oliver realized the adventure had come to an end as the pressure from Earth’s gravity began to settle.
“I guess it got sucked by the quantum cosmos,” replied Oliver with an educated guess.
A clanking sound and an abrupt jolt broke their fall. A mercuranium bubble arose from the falling vessel. A second and a third bubble followed, easing their decent.
GR-3G had activated the ship’s failsafe before shutting down.
The outside atmosphere filled with fog for the remainder of their fall, and the crew hit the waters in a soothing embrace. Everyone inside felt the vessel hit the water from the bottom. The feeling was unfamiliar. They had made it, and everything was over.
They were home.
Oliver looked at his uncle and smiled before giving him a hug. “What a ride, huh spectacles?” the cavalier rebel said to his nephew.
Laura stood tall above the spherical carcass, looking into the distance for their saviors. Victoria helped Chuggy to her feet and showed her furry friend her new environment.
“Welcome back, Chuggy. This is Earth now. It’s your home,” Victoria said.
The furry girl looked around and sighed for her lost friend. “Nanook, Nanook,” she whimpered.
“I know you’re lonely, but you will not be alone. We will always be together, you and I,” the young woman said to the pygmite in a sweet tone.
She caressed the creature for a moment, stood up, and got between Leon and Oliver, facing the young man. Taking another step, she stood very close.
“You saved me. I’ll never forget that, Oliver Hawke,” Victoria said just before she kissed him on the cheek and put her arm around his shoulder.
Oliver looked at his mother, feeling a shred of embarrassment. Laura was looking straight at the horizon, and Oliver felt unnoticed and relieved.
“The convoy is approaching. We’re going home,” Laura said in a sign of relief.
“It’s about time,” Leon added.
The whole crew looked off into the distance as various fog lights began to approach. Oliver couldn’t help but wonder how life had changed them after these events and what could follow from all of this. He felt optimistic at what lay ahead.
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Notes
Dedication
1
It’s funny how inspiration can strike a young brain, I remember being four when I first saw the first thing that got me into this lifelong wild journey of creativity. I was waiting, outside my house, excited for what would become our first entertainment system. There wasn’t much other than the local channels and the occasional VHS or BETAMAX on the brink of what would become the first wave of home entertainment. The only movies I had seen at the time were Dumbo, Pinocchio, and the most inspiring movie for a child in the early 80’s, E.T. the extraterrestrial.
At first I didn’t know what to expect, but then a freight truck pulled up through the street and parked in front of our garage. The view was nothing short of a science fiction movie at the time. The big tow truck carried a massive satellite dish almost the size of a roof top. I remember my sister saying that thing would become our new tv system. Being at such young age , I could only think of three words when the men unloaded the massive satellite dish, “E.T. phone home”.
After the dish was securely placed at our home’s rooftop and the hardware was installed to our TV set, the adventure was on. I remember having to turn the nobs on an analog console that would measure the dish’s angle in degrees as well as it’s orientation. A second transistor would have a digital counter with a few buttons that would control the channels and the volume for the respective satellite’s programming. The whole experience made me feel like I was fishing for space programming, nothing short of what E.T. would do to phone home. Watching T.V. became an exhilarating pastime, almost like watching alternate dimension programing, the first window to the world.
With time my curiosity for the science-fiction and fantasy genre’s grew tremendously into a life style. If I wasn’t watching random programing, I would be outside playing pretend with an assorted array of imaginary friends that would live the outmost ludicrous surreal adventures, and I went along with them for the ride. For most of my younger years I would keep these imaginary friends a secret, I was eight when I first learned about comic books, my second wave of inspiring content. Having learned about heroes alter egos it became easy for me to hide away my strange to fit along with the rest of the kids. I began to write and draw my stories to vent them out and pretended to sell them before recess at school to make easy money.
Flash forward twenty-four years later to a time where movies where not made unless there were at least a light literary material behind the brand. I still remember the smell of fresh printed paint as I pulled the first printed Issue of my first edited comic. I knew then back in twenty fourteen, that I had followed my heart and dedicated my life into fleshing out these characters that in time had become my friends and family. It felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, unfortunately the story never took off the way I expected it. I tried anything from kickstarters, private funding, writing movie scripts, but it wasn’t until my great friend Gentry encouraged me to plaster all these ideas and characters in prose.
I might not have had such an adventurous life growing up, but I sure had an inspiring journey, chasing a life long dream of manifesting my universe into a reality. Today I’d like to share those characters and thoughts to the world in hopes that I can too send a message home. This is for all the oddballs, the improbables, the misfits, and any boy or girl that knows there’s something else out there in the universe other than the consumerist life that we so long for. Dream on and keep it live no matter what other people say. In the end it’s what inside you that counts, so let it out!
May you never loose your sense of wonder.
-Chucho Jones.
* * *
As an Indie author I truly thank everyone that has taken the time to read this story. Jesus or (Chucho) has had this universe in his head for quite some time and remember meeting him in College in San Francisco with him spouting of crazy sci-fi stories. It has been amazing to help him see this series to fruition. Without your support and your fandom this story would truly perish. This one goes out to the best readers out there! ~ Gentry Race