Category Archives: Short Stories

SciFi short stories Short Stories

Zombie Gummi Bear Dreams

“And 8… deeper still…  You are safe and at peace. Take another deep, cleansing breath… And 9… You’re getting more relaxed. Deeper… Deeper… You’re totally relaxed… And 10.

“Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“Can you think back to your dream?”


“What’s the first thing you can remember?”

“I’m… outside… and, you know how inside your dream sometimes you can tell its a dream? It’s like that.”

“How do you know it’s a dream?”

“I’m staring up at the sky. It’s bright purple. Electric. Like someone’s plugged it in. The clouds are swirly like a Van Gogh painting. They’re brilliant shades of pink and yellow. Their patterns remind me of watching my mother mix batter for cake when I was a boy. I reach up to the sky and try to grab the clouds. They’re such soft, fluffy pastels that I think they must taste wonderful.”

“You reach for them. But you can’t touch them, is that right?”

“No, I can’t and my heart aches.”

“Your heart aches?”

“Yes. I am so sad and disappointed at not being able to taste the clouds that I feel a pain in my chest. The pain reminds me of when I played with marbles as a child.


“Yes. When I was maybe three or four years old, my father bought me marbles. They all had colorful, swirly designs, they looked like they had feathers frozen inside them. So beautiful. I remember being very upset that they didn’t taste like anything after I put them in my mouth. I wanted to suck on them swallow them but they were tasteless. I tried every one. I remember wondering at how could they all look so pretty and not taste like anything. It was very disappointing. I feel like that when I can’t touch the clouds.”

“We didn’t discuss this last time but would you say your emotions are immature, like that child?”

“No… not immature. I think ‘pure’ is a better word. What I feel is simple and clear.

“OK, I think I understand. After that, what happens?”

“Somewhere in the back of my mind I realize I must be dreaming because the sky is never purple in real life and the clouds are never pink and yellow. So I turn around to see where I am.”

“And where are you?”

“I’m standing in my front yard. My house is normal color though, not like the sky. I can hear soft, musical burblings. The noises sound like they are coming from my back yard.

“Soft burblings? Can you describe the noises?”

“They are fairly loud but they sound like they are wrapped in something soft,  like how a gong can sound so smooth even when played loudly. It’s as if the rougher edges of the noise have been shaved off. They sound like they are emerging from bubbles as they pop. The noises are muffled and then after each‘bloop, bloop,’ popping noise, they become louder, one after the next. Each time a bubble pops there is a note inside it that escapes.”

“A note of music, like from an instrument?”

“No, not like that. The sound is more like people’s voices singing and each bubble contains just a fragment of the note. I can hear each soft pop followed by a clear, pretty note. The noise makes me so happy.”

“Happy? Like when you were looking at the sky and the clouds?”

“Yes…sort of… I feel excited by the noises. Excitement is bubbling up in my own gut. It’s thrilling and I have to find the source of the noises. There are so many different notes, different octaves. It sounds like a bubble symphony.”

“How do you react to this feeling?”

“I need to find the source. I walk toward the symphony, around the side of my house.”

“And what do you find there when you go around the side of your house?”

“Gummi bears. Giant gummi bears. Ohhh… They are so big and soft… and shiny.”

“ You see these gummi bears right now? In your back yard?”

“Yes, I see them. But not in my back yard. My neighbor’s.”

“Remember, this is not happening right now. Take a deep breath. Good. We are both here, safe in my office. You are remembering your dream. Do you recall our last session?”


“This is where we began our session the last time but I think it’d be best if we went over the details again. It might help you remember some things more clearly. Can you describe these gummi bears for me?”

“There is a family of them having a barbecue in my neighbor’s back yard.  They are all different colors and human-sized; kids, teenagers, adults.

“I’m just standing there watching them. None of them turn to see me.  One of them, the biggest, is cooking something on a grill. He must be the father. He looks ridiculous, a gummi bear holding a spatula. Two little ones are swinging on a swing set.  They are fat and translucent and their smooth skin shines slick in the sun. They are all so plump and the ones that are moving around wobble as they walk.”

“Are they the source of the symphony?”

“Yes. They are singing their bubbly-sounding notes. And the music doesn’t just sound bubbly. I can see the bubbles emerging from their mouths as they sing. The bubbles pop a few feet above their heads and their notes emerge. Each bubble is a the same color as the gummi bear it comes from. The sights and sounds of the bubbles makes the ache in my chest return. I am sad to know that the bubbles cannot long last after their escape from the bodies. But, still, the bubbles and the bears are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I want to have them, keep them, own them. I want to devour them so that their beautifulness will be inside of me.”

“Do they see you?”

“No. They all have their backs to me. The little girls on the swing set are closest to me, bubbles of joy arcing out of them as they swing. Back and forth. Back and forth.”

“Can you remember what you did next, in your dream?”

“I… I have to have them, devour them. The girls on the swings are closest to me as I approach. One is strawberry colored and the other lime. When I get close enough, I can smell them both and they smell just like their colors.When I am close enough, it is the strawberry gummi bear who is swinging back toward me. I reach out and grab her off her swing. She feels as soft and warm as a flannel sheet. The strawberry gummi girl feels like strawberry flavoring.

“I’m sorry. She feels like strawberry? What does that mean?”

“…I can’t explain it. It’s like I can taste with my hands. I know what strawberry flavor feels like.”

“That’s odd.”

“The gummi girl smells and tastes and feels so good that I take a bite out of her gummi shoulder.  She emits so many bubbles at this, and the sound is so beautiful, that I’m sure she loves this as much as I do. This must be her purpose in life, to be eaten. The lime gummi girl jumps off her swing and begins bouncing around the yard. I think that this must be a game. I’m supposed to try and catch them and eat them. It’s what gummi bears are for.

“Then, I begin to sing with the strawberry gummi girl. The bubbling of joy within me increases until it escapes me and I sing with her. By now, the rest of the gummi bear family is looking over at us. Their soft songs increase, all of them singing different notes at once.”

“Do they approach you?”

“Some of them do. Some bounce around the yard in joy. Some bounce toward me, wanting to play. They move very fast for gummi bears though, much faster than I can move. Before I can take another bite of the strawberry girl, a blueberry boy is in front of me. He’s bigger than the girl. The size of a teenager. As he reaches out for me, we touch and the blue I feel is so deep and still and pure that another pang of desire makes me let go of the gummi girl and grab hold of his arm. He begins to bounce his free gummi hand off the top of my head. His arm keeps coming down like he’s trying to strike me but it tickles. I want to taste him too but he’s so fast and slick and sugary that I can’t grab the arm he’s tickling me with. It’s almost like I’m drunk, how slow and awkward I move compared to the gummi bears. This blue one is tickling the top of my head so much though that I laugh.”

“In your dream, the noise you make is a laugh?”

“Yes, that’s right. The laugh bubbles escape my mouth and float up over my head. I look up, following them, as they rise. I find them so interesting. Just then though, the blue gummi is about to tickle my head again so I open my mouth and take a big bite of his blue arm. He’s as soft and sweet as the strawberry gummi. I want another bite but before I can get one he bounces away from me singing in ecstasy, bubbles trailing behind him as he flees.

“He’s so fast. I have almost no chance to catch him. I wonder why they run and play these games if they sing with such joy when I eat them.”

“This is where we ended last time. Do you remember getting this far during our last session?”

“I remember.”

“Do you remember why we stopped last time?”

“I…  I have a bad feeling now. I like this dream and I want to stay here, feeling this…bliss… forever.”

“But you do remember more of the dream?”


“During our last session you began getting very upset. You’re doing much better. Remember, you’re safe. I’m here with you. Can we go on? Can you tell me what happens next?”


“Good. Go ahead.”

“Now I notice all the gummi’s running around. It seems like a fun game, having to chase them in order to get a bite, so I try. But they’re too fast and I can’t catch them. Then I think I need to sneak up on them. I must find some gummi’s that aren’t aware of me so I can catch them before they can run away. It’s not fair that they’re so hard to catch.

“Just at that moment though the father gummi, the big, cranberry colored one, comes around to the back yard again. He’d been one of the ones to run away as soon as I’d started singing. He has a tree pruner in his hands; one of those things with a saw at the end of a long pole. Its as funny to see a gummi bear holding a tree pruner as it is seeing it hold a spatula and so I begin to laugh again, bubbles floating out of my mouth and past my eyes.”

“You said that before, that you could see bubbles. Can you tell me what color they are, these bubbles?”

“They’re… brown.”

“You sound upset. What’s wrong?”

“They aren’t pretty bubbles. I don’t like brown.”

“But there you are, right? Bubbles, the gummi bear…”

“Yes. The gummi father comes at me and starts tickling me with the tree pole saw. It feels like a feather and gives me chills. Every touch comes at me so fast, is so ticklish, makes me laugh so hard, that I find it too distracting to concentrate on how to get close enough to this cranberry gummi to taste him. By now, the rest of the gummi’s have run away. I can’t see any of them anywhere and I am worried that I won’t be able to taste any of them ever again. I try focusing on the cranberry gummi. He’s moving backward, away from me, even as he keeps tickling me. He is the only one around and I want to feel his cranberriness and taste him so badly that I follow him.

“By the time we make it to the front yard, a big, tan military-looking truck pulls up in front of the house. It looks like a huge pick-up truck, the kind with six wheels that seats twenty men in the bed. And in the back, in assorted colors, are gummi soldiers. This makes me happy again. I am so happy that excitement rises in my belly and pale brown bubbles float past my eyes into the sky.”

“Suddenly, for the first time, I feel pain. It feels like a bee sting; in my neck. I reach my hand up and feel something there. I grab hold of it and pull it out. When I look at it, I see a large dart with pretty orange feathers at the back. I think to myself that this is what they use to tranquilize tigers at the zoo.

“The pain from the sting spreads across my neck and increases until my muscles spasm. I can’t breathe or swallow. My head feels like it’s about to explode. Everything begins to get dimmer. Just as I fall to the ground, I see that the sky is blue and the clouds are white and the men in the truck are not gummi soldiers. And I… I…”

“You need to relax. Remember, this is just a dream and you are actually safe right now. You are here in a hospital room. I am with you. Take a deep breath. Good. Inhale lightness. Exhale the tension. Good. Again… And Again.

“Good. Now, are you relaxed again?


“And is this all you can remember from the dream?”


“What do you remember next?”

“I remember waking up here, with you, in the hospital.”

“That’s good. You’ve done very well. Now, I am going to count backward from 10. As I do, you will become more refreshed and relaxed. The tension you feel from recollecting the end of your dream will melt away. You will remember the whole dream the next time I hypnotize you but you will not remember it when I awaken you. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I will not remember the dream when I’m awake but will recall it when I’m hypnotized.”

“That’s correct. You will also not have this dream any more when you sleep at night. You will only discuss and remember this dream with me, during our sessions. Is that clear?”


“Good. 10… you’re relaxing. All the tension is moving to your fingertips. 9… 8… you feel content. 7…”


“How do you feel?”

“I feel great, rested.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“I’m…in… a hospital.”

“Correct. And you know who I am?”

“Yes. You’re Dr. Harding.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“ No. Was I in an accident? Why am I wrapped in bandages?”

“In a way, yes, you were in an accident. You are hurt very badly.”

“Is my family OK? Where are they?”

“Do you remember the zombie plague?”

“It’s over, isn’t it? I thought we heard it was over.”

“No, no, don’t try and sit up. Your family is fine. The plague is done. Can you tell me what’s the last thing you recall before arriving here?”

“I… The last thing I remember is that we’d won. There was a vaccine. The news said that the vaccine reversed the effects of the plague. Most of those changed would die from the wounds inflicted on them while  they were zombies though. How did I… I can’t…”

“After the ordeal you’ve been through, a little confusion is to be expected. I need you to tell me though, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“We were celebrating. The whole town was celebrating. Fireworks in the middle of the day, barbecues. Monica and the kids were returning from the safe zone since the National Guard sounded the all-clear for our county. Monica had just texted me that she’d gotten off the highway. I was in the front yard, waiting for them to pull up.

“What happened to me? How did I get here?”

“You’ve been through a traumatic event. Do you remember my hypnotizing you?”


“Do you remember the last time we spoke?”

“We… when did we speak? Did you just say you were a doctor?”

“Yes, your doctor. Dr. Harding. I’ve been your doctor for three days.”

“Three days? What happened? The last thing I remember was standing in my front yard and then waking up here… We’ve talked before?”

“Yes. I just hypnotized you. We are attempting to get at your memories of what happened to you. The type of trauma you’ve experienced causes gaps in a person’s short-term memory. Do you remember anything from our session?”


“Do you remember the recurring dream you’ve been having?”

“Dream? No.”

“That’s fine, just fine. I’m sure in time your memory will return. With this type of trauma, its best to bring the memory to the surface gradually.”


SciFi short stories Short Stories

Murder Most Fowl

An exercise in writing the first 100 words of a story.

In writing workshops, we are told that unsolicited stories end up in the “slush” pile and the average editor will give a work the first one hundred words before giving up on it if they are not intrigued enough to keep reading. In this workshop, we were urged to write about ‘the other’. Writing from a perspective other than your own. I assume the suggestion was for men to write women, women men, gays straights, and/or straights gays. I took the suggestion one step further:


Don Fillmore was an ill-tempered duck this morning even as his webbed feet luxuriated in the cool, morning dew of one of Central Park’s grassy fields. He hated murder.

“It’s a pretty fowl deed, huh detective?” the beat cop manning the police cordon said with a chuckle.

It never ceased to amaze Detective Fillmore how people managed to lose focus on what was important when confronted with an over-sized, hyper-intelligent Mallard duck.

“You think this is funny?” Don quacked as he turned and challenged the officer standing thirty feet behind him. When the man did not look chastened enough by this rebuke, Fillmore charged the beat cop, wings flapping, and took flight. He pulled up just short of the officer, battering him with his wings, before landing and said, “there’s nothing funny about a corpse, officer. Get out of my crime scene!”

SciFi short stories Short Stories




     Given the fact that people cannot foresee all eventualities, nothing can be made fool-proof. There can never be, by the same logic, a set of rules that covers all situations. When confronted with these facts, humans resort to deploying other humans; reasoning, discretionary beings; to preside over issues of concern. And this is how Jephet Abramson ended up sitting in the desert in the southeastern quadrant of Impi-el under a neutralizing cloak.

            Long ago, before life-extending nano-technology and its subsequent need for humans to move out into the universe, people began saving their information. This form of immortality began with writing. The preservation of information was finite, however, and tenuous. Beyond the accidental destruction of information caused by the environment, and who did not learn of the history of burning books from the destruction of the library at Alexandria to the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence to the great public fires of Germany and America in their troubling times of social dislocation? Since the advent of modern computing advancements in the mid-21st Century, however, recording and successfully keeping faithful information became a permanent resource for untainted historical knowledge. There were no more expunging of records, nor bottlenecks of information dissemination.

After years of practice and discipline, any human could have the computer implants set into their brains that would store humanity’s information and allow them access to it at will. An arduous process of receiving certification for implants had developed over time and was itself influenced and mandated by the process which all human advancement has known: trial and error. The history of episodic psychosis amongst the weak-willed who received Information Augmentor technology is one of the first things learned about by fourth years. A steady logic and an assured sense of self are ground into every potential human candidate, meaning all but the two lower quintiles of intelligence, from the time they undertake their educations.

     Taking up station on this gods-forsaken planet was a special privilege reserved for the likes of Jephet for the very reason that he had topped out on almost every test his fellow humans could devise to measure one’s aptitude. Jephet was a free-roaming trouble shooter for the Department of Information. What first began the inquiry that brought him to this desolate planet seemed fairly innocuous, a series of events that could barely be said to have any connection at all. The accidental drowning death of a professor on Distal IV, a break-in at the Meta-Lab on Winchon, a mid-level security analyst gone missing on a climb in Earth’s Himalaya range; these events went nearly unreported and almost without comment. Jephet found the news odd in the frequency with which they occurred in sequence to each other but had his curiosity aroused when the library at New Caledonia was destroyed from a solar panel fire and the subsequent Reclamation Center explosion.

            Too many connectable events too close together brought Jephet here. He sat at the mouth of a cave overlooking a hot, barren valley. Down on the valley floor sat a squat, rectangular building that looked more like a bunker. Around it stood the obligatory solar panels used for power production. Below that building, deep within the ground, dwelt one of the most important, least known archives in the whole of the human universe. Hundreds of feet below the surface sat a digital library with a near up-to-date history of humanity.

            The thought process that led Jephet to the mouth of this cave was something that he at first was incapable of accepting. His mind rebelled at the possibility that someone could conceive of such a plan. The mini data-wipe at the colony outpost of Theba is what set his mind into overdrive though. The colonists sent a request for a reboot of their mainframe to the Department of Information. Someone, it seemed a malicious hacker, had managed to sneak in a worm that sat dormant for long enough to assure that all the residents of the outpost had updated their computer chips. When the worm activated itself, it corrupted all memory stored in every human’s brain chip. Malicious, yes. Malicious but harmless, really. There was no way to prevent the corrupted data from being erased and everyone’s computer’s from being rebooted from the Theban central Data Store for all the members of the outpost. The worm had caused some trouble, to be sure, but it seemed more an inconvenience than anything else.

            Jephet found himself thinking on the event though and then he recalled that the professor on Distal IV had just died days before. That was two events on the same subject, Data Stores. The professor had been a main author of the programming used to transmit updates to the regional Data Store and the Data Clearinghouse’s on every planet’s, outpost’s and colony’s main computer systems. The fire was next; another Data Store event. Jephet’s mind raced with possibilities. His prime induction based on the data, human nature, and some imaginative hypotheticals was that someone was seeking to either wipe out data or install false data into the main cache libraries, the back-up Data Stores. This was a mind-boggling thought. Who could be so audacious, so far-seeing, to decide to alter the history of humanity?       

            The alteration must be something that people do not learn directly as a matter of course, it must be some other, foundational, knowledge that would impact and influence other understanding and knowledge or else people would realize that something had been changed when their actual knowledge did not match up with the background knowledge saved in their chips. To change foundational knowledge would have, could have, enormous affect, Jephet realized. All peoples’ brain chips ran off a synthesis of knowledge for prime induction theory. Induction is taking the particular and attempting to infer something about a larger class of knowledge. Given what we know, we can guess very accurately at unknowns. Deduction is taking the general and applying it to the particular. Deduction, when the larger area of knowledge is true, always yields facts that are true. Induction, on the other hand, is guess-work, educated guess-work. The brain chips that nearly three fifths of all humans have installed in their heads assist in inductive reasoning as well as information storage. A computer chip uploaded with more knowledge and history than any human could know ran off algorithms and processed questions and inquiries against an intricate tapestry of information nearly infinitely divided into multiple categories and classifications. When a person needed to make a decision, they were able to pose their quandary within the framework of an inductive question and have the computer in their head give them a number of prime inductive computations.

            Changing the framework of the inductive question allowed the individual to re-frame the parameters of the inquiry performed by their computer chip which in turn altered the type and category of the cross-referential data their chip used to achieve prime inductions. This was the sort of test Jephet had been so good at while being measured for a possible career at the Department of Information. It’s what got him here, on this deserted planet.




     The cave mouth in which he sat, was overhung by a large rock affording him cover and cool shade. The neutralizing cloak he had deployed was most likely unnecessary given the rock above him but Jephet had decided not to chance giving away his presence given the intelligence of his possible quarry. Anyone who could think as deeply as he suspected someone was doing if his theory was true would make damned sure that they were alone when they walked into that building down there to alter the Data Store. Besides, the overhanging rock would protect his life-signs from registering on a scan of the area from space or even from a craft in atmosphere but it would not protect him from a scan pointed up at the mountain the valley below. The neutralizing cloak did. It offered him a dome of protection four meters around cancelling out all bio-rhythmic vibrations as well as infra-red readings.

            No one was scheduled to be out here for an update for at more than 30 standards and there was only one colony on the planet, on the near exact opposite side. No one would show up here accidentally. Jephet induced this Data Store to be the next stop on the perpetrator’s journey given the pattern of travel for the events cited previously, the travel time needed to get to each Data Store, and the schedule for each Data Store’s update in the near future. There were five central Data Stores in the universe. At least there were five of which Jephet was aware. As precaution against any number of unforeseeable cataclysms, the Department of Information had built five similar caches in five dispersed areas of the galaxy. Each had its own unique features and each was used exclusively as a system for which all the known history of humanity could be stored. Rarely were these locations visited except to upload information. Each was built on a geologically stable planet and each was equipped with its own stand-alone power grid with triple default redundancies. Truly, the power was a non-essential component of the buildings as the systems were deep enough into the planet that the temperature in them was a constant and once the data was written into the computer’s memory system, there was no power needed to keep it secure. The power systems were important for the reason that power would be needed in the case that some event occurred that made it essential for someone to gain access to humanity’s history. Nobody alive would enjoy climbing down a three hundred foot ladder to gain access to the computer.

     Jephet had been living in this cave for almost a week standard waiting for his sensors to raise the alarm that he was not alone. To combat boredom, Jephet had been recalculating and re-aligning his search and inquiry algorithms trying to come up with new prime inductions for his problem here. There were a few inductions that could be reached with his hypotheticals other than that someone was bent on tampering with humanity’s history but they required torturing what he knew of human nature in his propositions and adding a fair number of events from recent history that he would be loathe to include as relevant. If he did not add his hypotheticals into the events he’d noted, nothing untoward was going on. In that case, he would waste a week or so sitting in a cave in the desert. But this was his life.

Other than this, Jephet spent his time in the history books of his mind searching through the raw data that informed his chip’s decision-making processes and playing games against his computer. Relaxing back onto the cool ground, this is what Jephet chose to do now. Closing his eyes, he opened the file for Pungiball. The computer cast upon his mind’s eye the arena, the nets, and the players illuminated in their opposing colors. Jephet chose blue, precipitating the computer’s need to open the game with an offensive move. Jephet always liked watching the opening salvo of his opponent in Pungiball because he felt it gave him an advantage in seeing his opponent’s mindset in the way he spread out his players and moved them down the field. Pungiball was a game of counter-moves where you relied upon your opponent’s momentum and form of attack to inform your course of action, much like the ancient martial arts of Judo and Aikido. His computer was a very good opponent, sometimes even winning a game, but it lacked the spontaneity and improvisation required in such a free-flowing game involving an open field and multiple players as Pungiball. Just as he relaxed into the game and began to feel the flow of it, his alarm sounded.

     Jephet opened his eyes and rolled over onto his stomach. Grabbing the scanner to his left, he raised it to his eyes and focused out onto the plain below. Just then, a craft darted into view, slowed, and touched down near the desert bunker. Unbelievable, he thought. A man exited the craft and proceeded directly to the Data Store building. Not very cautious, he noted, he must have no inkling I am on to him. The man was not bothering to scan his surroundings nor set up a dampening field for his ship.

Nice vessel though. The ship was a T1-11. A high-end interstellar model capable of wormhole jumps with white hole re-entry, and electro-magnetic stabilizers to make the ride out of a star less violent than usual. The vehicle spoke of a good deal of money. Either the man in the valley was wealthy or he worked for wealthy people. Twenty more meters, and I will find out which, Jephet thought.

     As the man closed the distance, unaware of his impending capture, again Jephet wondered what someone could hope to tamper with that would alter peoples’ decision-making paradigms. Finding the five Data Stores was a feat in and of itself. Erasing or corrupting peoples’ memory files was, also, an enormous undertaking. These things, taken individually, had caused Jephet distress. These things, alone, were worthy of high levels of attention within the Department of Information. But what Jephet had found more worrisome was the induction that these two prospects could only be informing, could only be ancillary to, a greater goal. Someone had figured a way, or at least was confident that they had figured a way, to alter archived history in a way that would change the decision-making paradigms of everyone’s brain chips. Not only that, they thought that this change was to their advantage. The scope of what that change was, and how it could benefit someone, and who that someone might be, chilled Jephet to the core on that hot mountainside on Impi-el. This was not the first time he had settled into that utter stillness of fear while thinking on this subject.           

            The reason that this subject, this inquiry, was not a matter of attention at the highest levels of the Department of Information was because Jephet had also induced from his multiple analyses that there was a high probability of someone within the Department acting in this plan. The break-in at the Meta-Lab on Winchon, for instance, could be overlooked as newsworthy except that this was the lab that stored all the iterations of brain chip algorithms and their programming software. Not many people knew about this. The researcher who had gone missing on Earth, also not too noteworthy, was a mid-level analyst. But that mid-level analyst was hiding in plain sight and was, in actuality, a Data Store updater. This was also something not widely known. The professor, everyone knew, had programmed the Data Store systems but that publicity could not be helped if someone needed to get his information.

            There were many members of the Department of Information running around the galaxy looking for what these incidences meant and trying to understand if there were connections, Jephet had no doubt, but he was the only one camped out on this lonely rock and the only one who just activated a neuralizer field around the building that just rendered his suspect unconscious. Now for some answers, he thought as he climbed out of his hide and began clambering down the mountainside.