Tin Universe Monthly #1

by Brian C. Williams

  Beyond human is a scientific term coined to describe those with “Superhuman” abilities. I did the whole quote unquote thingee because I think “Superhuman” maybe a copyrighted term.

  Before WWI started, twelve people, one each in as many countries, were mysteriously granted superhuman powers and a very slow aging bioinorganic chemistry. Before the war started they battled criminals, saboteurs, enemy agents, and in some cases disobedient citizens.

  These beyond human heroes hailed from America, Germany, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, India, Egypt, Japan, China, and Scotland.

  The heroes that made up The Raising were Musketoon from France, Garand from America, Cardiff from Great Britain, Kitel from Russia, Yukon from Canada, and Humid from Australia.

  During WWII their fights went from being just for their countries and within their country to outside their countries for the world’s freedom. They united to fight against Germany and Japan who had their own beyond human soldiers.

  But I won’t talk about those individuals yet. Just don’t wish to. Writers prerogative.

  The members of The Raising, whose identities were secret even before the war, disappeared and went underground after the war. For the most part they disappeared never to be heard from again.

  Some say they were paid a large amount of money by their governments for their military service and retired after the war.

  Others say they were forced into retirement by their own governments who had grown afraid of them.

  Some weird conspiracy theorists, probably from Texas, years later would say their own governments captured them all after the war and did experiments on them to try and find out how they gained their powers.

  No one really knows why the disappearance of these heroes happened, but treaties were signed by many nations and between many nations banning all beyond human activities; private, domestic, and national after WWII.

  Although there are treaties, in many countries, vigilantes in costumes have appeared from time to time, with some people believing they may just be one of the original beyond humans or at least the descendents of those who first gained more than human abilities.

  They usually don’t’ stick around for long with so much working against them, international treaties and the like.

  More or less, the fact is, very few beyond humans have been active since WWII and that’s what you should know.

  But something else you might find interesting is that a former member of The Raising, Malcolm Steed, who went by the code name Cardiff, is now the Prime Minister of Great Britain,

  Barely anyone knows of his secret past and hardly anyone suspect him of being the orchestrator in getting laws passed banning all beyond human activity in the United Kingdom.

  Malcolm Steed is also the chief crafting of international laws when it comes to beyond humans and just one more reasons why he was elected Prime Minister in a landslide.

  Something happened near the end of the war that made Cardiff quit The Rising and fear all those with beyond human powers and most of his direction and choices since have been influenced by that fear.

  But there is so much more to Great Britain and The Raising. And someday it will take me whole books to even scratch the surface of those subjects.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The waves were created from each footstep he was taking under the surface of the water. Offshore from the part of Florida that’s called the Space Coast walked a never ending ancient.

  The sand of the seabed moved away from his feet instead of his feet shuffling through the sand. The water seemed to even be reluctant to get him wet now that it recognized who he was but he allowed it to.

  Some forms of life have just always been terrified of his presence.

  Others just knew to show proper respect.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Another powerful individual force was approaching in the same direction but this one was moving above the water.

  He was a human male who in appearance seemed to be around 40 years of age. A mortal man who had become a force of nature through the study of ancient practices, prehistoric medicines, and primordial meditations.

  Destiny tapped him into the nature of knowledge itself. He is a dam to those powers that should never appear in the world of human living or nothing but blood should follow.

  Appearing from his personal dimension of balance and solitude to travel a long distance in search of someone even he should fear.

  Now he floats in the air above the waters off the coast like an image out of some sort of Anime fairytale.

  Like everyone, he has a story.

  We will start a few years after his birth.

  In the next chapter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the age of five an orphaned boy who lived on the streets of 1765 Boston was kidnapped by slave traders and sold to European merchants who dealt in young boys. This was a very common twisted thing that happens in many countries.

  Happens as in still happens.

  The slave merchants sold the young boys they bought from the people they called Pickers to upper class men and women to be used as sex slaves.

  Wait are little white boys sold still slaves are should I have said sex indentures?

  I think I’m wrong and don’t know what to go with but need to move on.

  The boy’s name was William Dexter. He was the child of a prostitute who was raped by several men in an alley while in Cambridge searching for work to try and find herself.

  That kind of tragedy is not unique in the story of William Dexter. There are many who came into the world as a child of rape but only from tragedy does Destiny touch those like him.

  His mother died giving birth to him and he was raised in an orphanage until he was five. At five is when he ran away while working at a mill run by the owner of the orphanage.

  If you have watched many BBC dramas you will get the gist of what his life was like there and why he wanted to run escape.

  The European slave merchants sold William to a family related to old French royalty. Related in the sense that they were distant cousins and being related to a Royal Family meant they were given lands and titles. But they actually had little wealth except from what they obtained from living off what they had been given.

  Titles and lands. Even today that’s more important than actual wealth.

  The couple William was sold to tortured him in a hidden chamber in their estate. From the age of five to the age of eight he existed solely for their perverse pleasures. Each day something horrific would happen to him and the next day something even worse.

  He was a slave to their every whim- be it labor, sexual impulse, or fulfillment of their thirst for power. They were only satisfied in life through inflicting pain on another human being.

  William found his escape one night after a party as his tormentors were prone to have many social gatherings. Some to show and share.

  As the couple who owned him was passed out among their guests William tried to sneak out of the house. He was just inches from reaching freedom when he was caught by the chamber maid in the gardens that surrounded the hellish prison he had to call home.

  They forced him to call it home in one of many purely psychological tortures.

  He was being beaten to the point of whispering prayers asking for his own death when a sword went through the chamber maids head.

  William looked up to see four men and one woman all dressed very differently from anything he had ever seen before. It was very much a strange sight for him to see. Then he looked down and one of them pulled their sword from the chamber maids head with her eyes and mouth still open.

  A swift kick from a boot closed her eyes.

  It would be nice to say this was William’s first time seeing death in person but it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

  One of the men waved for the other males to follow him to the house, ‘We end this den of sin tonight.’

  ‘That wasn’t part of our mission.’

/>   ‘I don’t care. I’m going to shard every inch of their flesh.’

  ‘It won’t pay back anything’

  ‘I’ll feel better about the world.’

  William still hears those words echo whenever he sees cruelty in the world.

  The female of the group picked William up and into her arms. He passed out from his injuries. Not just from the damage of the beating but from his whole life.

  Another thing he will always remember is how peaceful he felt as she held him.

  A day later William awoke in a castle in Hungary and discovered he had been saved from his life of torment by The Knights Templar. Their duty was and is to protect the sacred truths. One of those truths is that every thousand years or so a young man or woman is chosen to be educated in the old secrets of the world and become The Pledge of Solomon.

  Over the centuries William moved toward becoming what he is but now he goes by a shorter title- The Pledge.

  First as a Templar Knight he traveled the world. Then through studying with hidden Templar teachers he gained knowledge of all the ancient secrets and in learning those secrets he gained powers that connected him with the universe and all of the fabrics of the realities.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back to the present as The Pledge was hovering for a few moments above the waters off the coast of Central Florida thinking about his past as his black cape blew in the wind. He knew the signs that being lost in your own past signal for your future but he has acted as he always has.

  The wind really began to kick up and his cape wrapped itself around him like a comfortable shield. It was in this moment that he sensed something truly worrying.

  Standing there in midair, floating above the water, a sight looking sort of like what would happen if Clive Barker designed the costumes for a Disney movie about wizards.

  That sight was of one of the most powerful living beings in all of creation. His clothing was old but modern and I mean modern in the sense that leather was formed to look like metal.

  The leather was brown, a dark brown outfit that was from head to toe. His boots resembled socks until you get a closer look at them. They were made from the thinnest of leathers. His body suit was one large piece. The only thing separating it from the rest of the outfit was the sign of Solomon burned into the brown leather at the center of his chest.

  The sign was also set into the back of his cape.

  Slowly he descended into the water. As the water contacted with his body he tried to connect with the world of the sea but something was interfering with the connection he had reached before.

  Down into the depths of the ocean he went. As he sunk his lungs changed to fit need. His blood warped and his skin scaled up from the top of his bald head down like dropping rolled up window blinds.

  Finally touching the bottom of the sea floor with the tips of his toes The Pledge was being bombarded with signals from the sea world trying to tell him what he would be facing. He wasn’t able to decode these signals in time though because he wasn’t use to being in this world so to him it just seemed like the ocean was singing to him.

  He reached down and touched the sand at his feet as if to say hello.

  In reply the sand was stirring trying to tell him to run.

  The other powerful being walking through the water, the one who caused the impact and the exceedingly deadly series of waves crashing into the Florida Coast, was a being that The Pledge know instantly when he came face to face with him by the feeling he felt being in his presence.

  The Pledge held out his gloved hand in the gesture for the individual to stop. He had already stopped; so the gesture was more for dramatic effect.

  Dramatics are wasted on those who were there at the beginning.

  As in there at the beginning of the universe.

  Through thoughts The Pledge spoke, ‘This is not the end time for humanity. Why have you returned in full glory?’

  The creature stood in the water like an emotionless well dressed fresh corpse without even blinking, just staring straight ahead.

  The Pledge pulled his cape behind his back, locking his hands together in an ancient gesture of power, ‘I have been to The Gates of Hell. I have stood in the presence of The Great Black Bull. Your gaze will not move me. I have sworn The Pledge of Solomon to be the keeper of humanity’s knowledge and I need to know why you are here?’

  The individual is Death. This must be known now, because what happens next is what happens to those who try to obstruct Death.

  The Pledge took half a step before Death lifted his hand and waved it out in front of his body as if he was swatting a fly. At that instant The Pledge’s body burst…no, exploded into a million gold fish that swam off in all different directions before dying in the inhospitable salt water.

  Death kept walking forward as if this encounter had never happen and the waves kept pounding Florida.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The oomph that once was the powerful being known as The Pledge scatters across the planet to hide from the complete touch of Death. The individual personality is gone forever but the fundamental nature of what a Pledge is will live on.

  Every living thing will contain some of that ancient power until a new Pledge comes to be embodied on Earth once again.

  Don’t get excited it’s not going to turn everybody into a big beyond human orgasm orgy.

  These portions of what the Pledge was are using living beings as hidey-holes.

  The powers, spirits, tricks, secrets, thoughts, and essence of The Pledge may have been saved by transferring a small portion of his existence to every living thing on the planet but that wasn’t just a chance nerve jerk reaction, it was in fact a safety spell that all Pledge’s must learn.

  That also includes single cell organisms such as the Archaea, Bacteria, and Protists.

  Hate to leave anyone out of the fun.

  To gain the knowledge of this spell a Pledge must travel to five unusual sites. Each of these locations contain within them portals to different realities. While within each reality they will find a word that forms the spoken casing of the spell.

  In case you have interest and like to travel and for me when I get to this in a future story the five locations are The Antelope Canyon, the Moeraki Boulders, the Stone Forests, Rio Tinto, and the Dallol Volcano.

  Those journeys are one of the most taxing walks any Pledge must take.

  The very nature of the universe would shift if the line of The Pledge were to end so the one who has chosen learns this spell as soon as possible and integrates it into their spoken memory.

  Part of that spell as it spreads the Pledge’s energies across the planet is a search for potentials. They are the ones who will be asked to make the choice and possibly become the next Pledge.

  There will be others looking for these potentials as there always are and so more than a small portion of what The Pledge was goes to each one of these potentials to help them remain safe until the moment of realization.

  More than a small portion to a hospital in Florida and Destiny puts a circle around three others to stand by her side.

  More than a small portion to Savannah Georgia but what happens to it is a little clouded as that state contains as many ancient uncanny maneuvers and mystical secrets as just about anywhere else in North America.

  Right there with New Orleans, Florida, and Tweed.

  That’s in Ontario.

  A nice threatre village which has a really small jail.

  Elvis lives there too.

  And a more than small portion was meant to go to a preparatory school in England but a powerful mind knocked it off course and it ended up hitting the backroom of a pub in Ireland.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Pretty much the only beyond human who has been active long term between the time period of the aftermath of WWII and the present day goes by the name Pulpy. Though as always with most things there were a lot of things going on in the shadows that never even touched any light, be it sun or
moon shine.

  Pulpy is the very powerful hero who calls New York City home because New York and the United States as a whole naturally attract beyond humans or at least that’s what a childhood of reading comics has taught me.

  First appearing a few years after the end of the Korean War he was at first a thing of legend and then a thing of conspiracy theorists and lastly a pop culture icon before he started to finally be caught on camera fully.

  Pulpy gained the trust of many world governments and was deputized and given citizenship by the United States. And the United Nations called him an agent of the world in 1982 after he held off an alien invasion almost single-handedly and nearly died trying.

  Before that day of the alien invasion he said he was just traveling the world trying to learn about it. We know that not to be true by some of the sightings that are now fully contributed to him. The question that springs from that time has to be asked. If he was working for anyone, who? The United States says they had no idea he was around.

  Now you can either believe the U.S. government is really stupid or they are lying. Many will tell you thinking a government is stupid as a reply to explaining its actions is a most dangerous thing to do.

  The limit of his powers is unknown as is where he came from but many governments are tracking his every movement in attempts to find out more about this very powerful alien who looks so very human at times.

  And that’s one of the main reasons they fear him so much.

  Just like America itself Pulpy is a symbol for most of the world. The only thing is that symbol symbolizes different things to different people. Just as when you look at a loyal soldier or a by the book police officer, many people see different things when viewing Pulpy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sabrena and Ken rushed out to get to the truck with both of them nearly falling on their asses a few times. They weren’t in a total panic- it was panic mixed with fear, mixed with mixed feelings, mixed with reasons.

  Dressed in mismatched outfits quickly grabbed from the closet this scene was one of two people in pure go mode. GO!