The More You Travel the More You DIE!

Story by Oneyearmuse

Title by Captain Awesome

My honours, ladies and gentleman of the jury this case is very simple indeed, my client's business and technology has been proven in this court to not only work and be very safe indeed.  Opposing counsel would have you believe that it is anything but and the only safe method of long distance travel is via air travel and considering it is a conglomerate of Airlines and Oil companies that are paying counsel's very high salary it does not surprise me.

If we travel back in time to 1829 when Robert Stephenson built the Rocket which was one of the first steam engines of its period to ride on rails.  Many of the public and scientific community were of the opinion that people would suffocate at such high speeds although its maximum speed was only 28 miles per hour not much faster than a horse at full gallop.  It was not the speed that really was the issue back then it was the risk and the cost to existing methods of travel.  Which proved to be non-existent, railroads shaped much of the planet throughout much of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Since the dawn of humanity we always been at risk when we travel, in fact most of the risk has been when we meet new people and decided their patch of land was greener.  Humanity's worst creations have come from traveling across the land and killing other people.  Airplanes for instance drop bombs and fire missiles not to mention crashing.  Opposing counsel will say this does not happen anymore there are no more wars and the Space Patrol keeps us safe however whilst Jet and Low Orbit Airliners have an extremely high safety record they can carry up to a 1000 people at once.  This means when they do crash they take far more people in a single instance.  We may not have wars anymore but we still have the DST's who love to create chaos since they have become so disenfranchised with our stable world.

The Airlines are happy to misdirect the public which includes all you the members of jury and your honours from the simple truth air travel is not as safe as they make out.  Remember my earlier point about risk, when it comes to driving nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled.  And yet people still drive everyday, all of us accept this risk as one of the many stresses of everyday living.

As you have seen in this court room yesterday my client can remove that risk at a fraction of the cost of driving, flying and sailing.  Opposing counsel has already said we are opening Pandora's box, risking the creation of new D-Shifts despite assurances by the world government there has not been a recorded D-Shift in 10 years.  My client Jane Everfall has built her business around understanding and making use of the D-Shifts.  Portal Industries has the highest safety record throughout the solar system.  The D-Shifts are gone but we have learned from them how to manipulate space to our considerable advantage.

This ladies and gentleman of jury this is a landmark case which will dictate how humanity develops as a civilisation.  As I said at the beginning the case is very simple.

Do we finally remove the risk of travel!

OR!

Do we continue to allow ourselves and those we love DIE!

Live from Wolf Lunar News 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes Every Day

Coming to you from Selene City the only city on the Lunar surface, I'm Wolfgang G. Smythe your host for today.  If you recognise the name that is because my father is infamously known for traveling the one mile stretch of Thunder Road alive for a blonde lass who eventually bore me.  Mom emigrated once she had me as far as away as possible and here we are on the Moon.  Well that's my life in an empty O2 tank lets move on with today's news!

...the land is covered in different kinds of rock, red, yellow, green...Don't worry folks the shielding has not gone on my dome I was just reciting from Jeff Wayne's Musical The War of the Worlds which I am sure you are all aware is going to be the opening spectacle of the 25th Anniversary Selene City Gala on the Mare Serenitatis or those of you that do not speak dead languages like Latin the Sea of Serenity.  From what I hear they have remastered the 2D stage performances into the new solid 3D it is going to knock your O2 tube clean off.  Plus they has messed with the story line a little to include the Dwells and the Greys and that is exactly how conspiracy theories get started, more on that later.

The Gala is taking in place in the recently finished Retrograde Art Installation Flare!  Which does not only house the The War of the Worlds exhibit but many others including H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and my inside sources tell me that they will be handing out the Red Capsules for a ride that literally loses your mind!  Apparently red capsules are bad for you but they said that about Black and Blue meats.

The tickets are all sold but you can still watch the event live from dome.

The latest from the Earth bound conspiracy theorists is that Jane Everfall is in league with the Dwells and the Greys, they have secret base on the dark side. Well I have been to the dark side on a number of occasions and guys there is absolutely nothing there aside from the DSO, it is quite dark though.

Jane Everfall CEO of Portal Industries is not only one of the founding fathers of Selene City along the Russian and Chinese contingents but has made Selene City self-sufficient.  Jane Everfall is Supreme!

We are the Federation! No Conspiracy Here!

There have been rumours floating through the airlocks about a D-Shift on the dark side but you know what they say about rumours...there just rumours.

More laters...

Route 101 – Thunder Part 9 of 9

Flotsam

And that's the Road's history from beginning to end okay I so I left out the numerous attempts to travel the one mile of Road by various different thrill seekers and extreme sports nuts but that's a given really this sort of phenomenon always attracts the crazies.  There is of course one small fact that I have left out about the Road and that is no one has succeeded in traversing the full one mile they didn't just fail they all died.  My heart is pumping fast and I am beginning to think I've bitten off more than I can chew.  In the middle distance the dance of the lightening bolts lights up a circular patch near the school bus and I see just for a brief second the headless body of Robert Jones, the hair on the back of my neck and arms stands up straight.  If I make it I'd be famous otherwise I will be very dead indeed might even end up like Robert Jones.  This is it either I turn around now or I go hell for leather, I give my old hunker some gas it doesn't move and that would be because the hand brake is still on.

My mood shifts from sheer terror to a fit of the giggles which takes me awhile to get under control, once I've stopped laughing the Road is still there waiting for me its next victim.  The terror is gone now it has been replaced with never ending determination, I realise that I still got my foot on the gas so I drop the hand brake and my old hunker leaps away like a startled bull frog towards the chaos of the Road.

I drop the shielding into place across the windshield making it quite difficult to see out but I'm glad  to be wearing sunglasses I think would have been blinded as soon as I entered the storm zone.  I hear a number of loud thumps and I am pretty sure I can smell something burning, no point in looking in my rear view mirror there's nothing to see the cab is pretty much closed in with shielding plus I'm wearing the cloak as well which is quite warm.  Nothing truly bad has happened yet that I can see although I'm hardly into the heart of storm yet.  As I get closer to the half way mark I have to slow down there are far more wrecks in the way not many vehicles made it past this point and I having great difficulty navigating round them.  There is an awful lot of metal on metal sounds although I can barely hear that through the sound of the storm itself which like having a twenty pound artillery gun going off next to your ear every few seconds.  I'm now down to a complete crawl, I open the glove compartment to find something to stick in my ears, I don't really hear it more sort of feel it.  There's an explosion at the back on the nearside pretty sure that was the back wheel punctured I'm probably driving on at least one rim at the moment.  I see gap in the Road between the wrecks and I scrap slowly through, with cotton wadding stuffed in my ears the storm's voice is a little easier to take.

I'm past the half way point and Road is almost clear and I can see further down to the shadow of the over turned bus, I know I could scrap past the front of the bus at a reasonable speed which should give me enough momentum to make it out of the storm, there is another muffled explosion to right. The back of the hunker skews to right I do my best to turn into skid and just when I think I lost control my old hunker rights itself and I gear down to get some speed up.  I'm nearly up to fifty miles per hour when by the light of three simultaneous lightening bolts that hit close to the school bus whilst all around goes dark I see Robert Jones's headless body directly ahead I am mere yards from him, despite the fact he is most certainly dead I cannot bring myself to drive through him and I yank the steering wheel in attempt to swerve round him.  I must have missed him by mere inches however my swerve didn't end there as my hunker spun into a skid I heard the sickening crunch of the front axle tearing loose under the sudden collision with the bus but the bus did not stop the motion of my hunker but caused it to spin and then slide down off the side of the Road into the ditch.  The hunker starts to roll and I am tumbling over and over fortunately I have had the sense to wear my seat belt.

The hunker finally stops rolling and lands mostly upright, I can still hear the sounds of the storm outside but I cannot tell if I was far enough off the Road to attempt getting out of my hunker and walking the last two hundred yards or so. Still alive despite considerable bruising to my ribs, just as I was contemplating getting out the driver's airbag went off a little late and the sudden crunch in my nose leads to me suspect I now have a broken nose but compared to the pain in my ribs I barely notice it.  I pull a hunting knife from my boot and deflate the airbag, the driver's side door is completely buckled inwards no chance of leaving that way and it is closest to the storm so probably best to try leaving via the passengers side.

This door isn't bust however feels like something is blocking it so I roll down the window,  then lie on the bench seat and start kicking at the shielding I had attached to my hunker.  The fact that it survived the roll down the side of the Road is testament to my hardware skills but at the moment I want it to break very soon indeed.  It takes about five or six smacks of my heavy boots to knock the shielding loose at which point the light of the storm explodes into the cabin and not even my sunglasses are doing much good.  I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as possible and pull the hood of the cloak close over my head, okay as clever ideas go not so good but it is still my only option of getting out alive.

I figure my best hope is to go feet first and head away from the storm which despite my cotton wadding is very loud indeed.  Fortunately I'm not an unfit guy, quite slim in fact and going through the cab window is fine then I land awkwardly on my left foot, I feel my ankle twist so I purposefully lean to right and promptly fall over but at least I out and no bolts have hit me yet.  I use my hunker as a base to work from and on all fours I ease myself slowly out onto the plain.  I risk a brief look back, the light from the storm is very bright indeed but it is probably a safe enough distance to stand up and run like hell.  Whilst running I trip over what I assume is a big ass boulder which sends me flying, I put out my hand and there is definite crack as I hit the ground along with the sudden increased pounding of the storm's voice although the pain in my ribs still getting most of my attention.  My breathing is very difficult, there is a very sharp stinging feeling in both of my hands and to cap it all off my left foot feels far to big for my boot.  The boot is probably the only thing that is keeping me walking well it is more of a limp now.

And then as if by magic the noise ceases and it is completely quiet, I change my course and head south back towards those who sent me into this damned Road in the first place.  I see their lights, they obviously can see me because they are pointing in my direction and gesticulating but I hear nothing. I get within perhaps a hundred yards and then the lights go out.

Jetsam

Opening my eyes I see I am in a hospital room both my hands are bandaged, I can barely breath due to the wrapping around my ribs and the breathing is still quite painful.  Pretty sure my head and neck are in something of a neck brace, I fumbled around until I find the button to call the nurse and give good ten second push.  For a hospital it is damn quiet almost deathly in its stillness, I would click my fingers if they weren't so bandaged up, my mouth won't open but I don't remember any injuries to my face during my stupid adventure down that Road, holy hell what was I thinking.  The door opens in walks a nurse and doctor they seemed to be speaking but nothing is coming out out of their mouths, is this death did I die? Definite feeling of panic trying to get up out of this nightmare what happened back on the Road have I become trapped like Robert Jones.  Two nurses in the room now gently pushing me down, the doctor has pulled out a notebook and is writing on it.  He turns the notebook round and shows it to my face.  It takes a while for me focus on it but when I do I stopped fighting and lie back on the bed, although I don't think the doctor's professional bedside manner really let me down easy with those three words he wrote on the notepad.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 8 of 9

The last of the D-Shifts appeared at the north end of the Road as a shiny black circle about forty feet in diameter and yet it had no thickness to it.  If you walked around it, it disappeared.  A young drifter by the name of T. Smith discovered it, nobody ever knew what the 'T' stood for but he normally answered to Smithy.  Smithy worked out what this D-Shift did before anyone else did and he used it to his considerable advantage until the cops caught up with him in Reno.  Part of the evidence that locked up Smithy came from the D-Shift, you see it showed you the past but not your past.  It did however show every person within fifty miles you merely had to concentrate on a particular person to zoom to their past like you would with two fingers on a phone pad to zoom into a image someone had emailed you.  Smithy had zoomed all right and then spent a week blackmailing all of the locals.

Once the cops brought Smithy back into range of the D-Shift, Detectives were able to record Smithy's past of him viewing someone's past and that was that for Smithy.

The D-Shift itself do not move despite all attempts by the government boys so in the end they encased it in a fifty foot high concrete and a lead lined bunker just be sure nobody tried to x-ray it.

Four D-Shifts on the four points of the compass seems a little unreal to me unless you factor in the Dwell's and the Grey's landings, definitely makes you wonder.

And yes I am still here staring down at the Road turning over the history in my head, a series of events that turned this Road into the deathtrap it is today.  Not far to travel now.

Remember I spoke about a D.S. Agent that visited the D-Shifts on a monthly basis, well I was lucky (not that I believe in luck mind you) enough to meet him on the day I arrived in town.  I had come to look at various different plots of land but the weather was looking particularly dark and stormy so I stayed inside at the local diner.  The locals were quite friendly indeed, asked me if I was Australian to which I was tempted to ask if they were Canadian however I was brought up to be polite.  I told them I was from Great Britain, a farmer looking for land.  Questions came, cattle, sheep or corn. I thought it best at the time to stick to telling them it would be most likely an old fashioned crop like corn not that I said old fashioned to them.  I didn't want to rub potential neighbours the wrong way on my first day in town of course nothing ever turns out the way you expect.

Several of the locals were contributing to the discussion about the best land in the area for corn when the D.S. Agent walked in, although at the time I just saw him as a youngish guy in a city suit.  When the locals saw him they hailed him like an old friend and waitress ask if he wanted his usual fair, which turned out to be steaming hot black coffee and a slice of freshly made apple pie.  His name was Robert Jones but all the locals called him Bob, I could tell however he didn't really liked being called Bob.  He looked to be in his early thirties, I was introduced to him by the locals they seemed quite proud that a city man visited their town on a monthly basis.  Of course he wasn't just any man from city he was a government man here to check on the local D-shifts make sure nobody had been tampering with them.  Upon talking with him it became apparent that he was very proud of his job and even prouder of his wife and two kids, the picture he showed of them was an almost perfect family shot. Two smiley kids in front with him and his slim black haired wife standing behind.  They say the irony of the Universe is that bad things happen to good people in this case I would say it was very true.

That dark and stormy weather I telling you about had just in the hit town when Bob was showing his family photo to me, he had just finished of eating his pie and was warming his hands around the coffee mug.  This was about midday yet it looked more like six in the evening with storm clouds covering the town and when the rain came it wasn't just water in those drops there were huge chunks of hail and ice coming down.  And this D.S .Agent was getting up to leave apparently he had a schedule to keep no storm was going to stop him from completing his assigned tasks on time.  After a lot of badgering by the locals and myself included we persuaded him to wait out the storm until it had passed the town.  It wouldn't take long to pass and as I look back at it now I wonder whether we did the right thing or not.  Fortunately the hail didn't last long although one large chunk hit the diner front window and cracked it badly, we could see a few lightening strikes across the town but nothing really bad.  The worst of it lasted no more than ten minutes and slowly the light returned, when it stopped raining we all came of the diner to see the dark clouds heading north.  We could hear in distance the occasional ripple of thunder, Robert Jones waved us all goodbye and that was the last time I really saw him apart from the photo of him in the local rag.

Robert Jones had a schedule which took him first to the northern end of the Road where he would check on that great big concrete bunker and then he would travel down the Road and take a dirt track towards the 'Sweeper' although he ever managed to travel off-road in that dinky little city car he drove I will never know.  The storm got there ahead of him and because we had persuaded him to ride out the storm in the diner he saw the school bus coming back from its monthly service.  If we hadn't delayed him he might have been safely off the Road when the storm hit, the effects of the storm on the surrounding D-shifts or perhaps it was the other round was an almighty deafening explosion that was heard three hundred miles away, not a single window in town remained unbroken and many of the larger buildings including the Baptist Church in town looked like they had been punched by a giant hand.  Fortunately at the time of the explosion I was in the toilet and it was without window, what I came out into was the sort devastation you see on the news after a tornado has hit a town or perhaps one of those Escher type D-Shifts.  It took a long time and a lot of hard work by the emergency services to bring some resemblance of order back to the town and none even considered what might have happened to Robert Jones on the Road before the storm hit.

Whilst I was doing my best to help everyone and you would think that I helped at all would have put me in the locals good graces when I bought that widow's land, no not at all they are just mean to their boots, the government boys were searching for the cause of the explosion which they tracked back to the Road.  Although they couldn't get very close even with heavy shielding, they soon discovered all four D-Shifts were no longer in residence and what was left behind was a never ending lightening storm which defied all forms of known weather along with the fact that the lightening bolts themselves weren't electrical in nature but they definitely packed a punch when they hit.  They also saw two thirds down the Road the school bus on its side with the twisted corpse of the driver attempting to climb out the emergency exit at the back of the bus.  About five yards away on the other side of the Road was Robert Jones's city electric car or at least what was left of it and his body stuck half way through a run towards the bus.  His head wasn't connected to his body that was lying mostly intact close to the front of the bus, none of the big scientists from the city have been able explain what is holding Jones's body in place.  In fact there was some mention that he might still be alive ,I'm not sure how that works when your head is five yards from your body something about stasis fields apparently.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 7 of 9

Flotsam

Two off-road bikers came upon the next D-Shift to the west of the Road although it was awhile before it was discovered that they were first.  They were a young couple called Rick and Rosie Stone down from the city looking for some decent biking terrain and west of the Road is quite hilly in places.  Their 4x4 was found parked just off the Road on the west side, just married too.  Both were into extreme sports, they were also early followers of the D-Shift it said on the back of their 4x4: D-Shifting is the Truth.  The cops found tracks leading west and then tracks just vanished on top of a small cliff, no bikes or bodies were found below.

It was a bit of mystery for awhile until a scientist down from the city was testing her airborne sensor package initially designed for investigating D-Shifts.  Turns out just to the right of that small cliff where the bikes would have passed through was an invisible D-Shift.  The lady scientist's sensor package disappeared into it fortunately for her it had advanced A.I. which allowed it to retraced it steps back through the D-Shift.  This was the first of the Teleporter D-Shifts discovered, the GPS telemetry of the sensor package showed that it arrived above the sea of Japan also known as the Devil's Sea.  It was discovered later that depending upon what angle you enter the D-Shift depends on where you come out not that anyone was willing to do a manned expedition.  That lady scientist was Jane Everfall the now CEO of Portal Industries one of the largest firms on the planet(s) they make Microsoft and Apple look small.  It is likely that Rick and Rosie Stone drowned in the sea of Japan that's if they survived the journey through.

These types of D-Shift don't just lead to different parts of the world but other parts of the solar system, it is not just the angle of entry either but the exact timing as well.  Get the timing wrong and your goods could end up in the middle of the Sun or orbiting Pluto, Everfall's initial testing showed that whilst living organic matter could travel through the portal it was far from safe.  Passage through a portal is like sinking to the bottom of the deepest ocean without a diver's suit on and then coming straight back up within a few seconds.  Whilst you won't drown you will suffer from an explosive case of the bends with very messy results, none of the live animal tests Everfall tried ever arrived alive.  The portals that were found became transport hubs of non-organic matter, they could ship equipment anywhere in the solar system.  Then one bright spark hit upon on the idea of decompression chambers at either ends of the portal, it required several days of decompression but it was possible to send people through the portals.  It took an awful lot of money to make it safe and the government boys were always looking over Everfall's shoulders to make sure they didn't destroy the planet in the process but they finally got there.  Now we have colonies on the Moon and Mars, this however was not the end of Everfall's discoveries.

During her tests of travel through a portal she discovered that whilst the effects upon organic matter were the similar to violent decompression this was not actually the case.  Her sensor telemetry showed extreme gravity similar to if someone tried to descend through Jupiter's atmosphere, perhaps this was that ever elusive dark matter that scientist's have been searching for since they realised that Universe appeared to be missing about eighty percent of its mass.  That particular debate however is still going on.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 6 of 9

Flotsam

The next D-Shift to set up shop was at the south end literally just a couple of yards from the side of the Road, it was initially stationary like the 'Sweeper'.  Remember Billy the bus driver well he wasn't always a bus driver when he was younger he was an up and coming actor.  Set on the gravy train for life until he was caught with the  director's wife of the film he was in, in a very public incident with a recently printed giant banana.  It basically put his career in the toilet, so he chose anonymity as a school bus driver and became well known in the local bars as 'Only-if' a man of many regrets apparently the incident with the director's wife was just the tip of iceberg when he got drunk which was pretty every night he would bang on saying over and over again only if he done it differently he would be so rich not stuck out here in the sticks.  Billy did however have one redeeming feature he took care of his Mum and the locals knew this so they always made sure someone drove him home if he was too drunk to drive.

It was on one of these nights that Howard James one of Billy's friends was driving him home, they had literally just turned onto the Road when Billy said he needed to take a leak.  Howard stopped the truck and let Billy out who wandered in a less than straight line off the edge of the Road.  Ten minutes later Howard was still waiting for Billy to return, he grabbed a torch and walked off in the general direction Billy went in.  I've met Howard and he said to me it was pitch black out that night even with his flashlight he couldn't see a lot.  He spent about half an hour looking for Billy until he tripped over Billy's body lying face up, he was alive but with an odd calmness about him that Howard had never seen in Billy's eyes before.  He couldn't work out what Billy was looking at until he looked up and for a moment he couldn't drag his eyes away from the spectacle above him.  Unlike Billy Howard was not a man many regrets so he was not drawn into what he saw above him, he knew it must be another D-Shift probably something to do with time he supposed.  He dragged Billy's body back to Road and back into the truck, fifteen minutes went by before Billy blinked his eyes and asked if he had beer in the truck and that he just had a really odd dream.  Howard gave him a light beer then drove Billy home and didn't mention anything to Billy about what he saw.  In hindsight Howard regretted that particularly decision although he never went back to what became known as the Oracle of Madness.

Unlike other D-Shifts known at the time this particularly one was spherical in nature hovering some twenty feet above the ground and was approximately twenty feet in diameter.  To get a proper look at you really needed to lie under it although that wasn't always easy because it tended to wander across the land, at first it was thought that its route was random but when it was plotted it always took the same route across the plain and always ended up where it begun.  It did however make stops during its journey across the plain and took exactly nine hours from beginning to end.  The land that it traveled across was owned by a local entrepreneur called Jake 'River' Hook who instantly saw the D-Shift's money making potential and despite many attempts by the government boys was unable to stop him from raking in a fair bit of cash on the tourist ride he called River Futures.  The government boys did managed to force some health and safety regulations into Hook's operation but it didn't stop several people losing their minds to the Oracle including Only-if Billy before the government boys shutdown Hook down permanently.  Hook himself disappeared shortly after the shutdown he was found lying face up on the Oracle's route chained to ground, dead from exposure.  It was written off as a revenge killing however not enough evidence was ever found to point the finger at a viable suspect.

What you saw when you looked into the Oracle according those big scientists from the City was all your possible futures based upon your past decisions made differently.  The only problem is that you are effectively staring into an infinite number of realities all at once though according the scientists it appeared to affect people differently.  Not everyone looking into it went mad which according to the government boys was why it took so long to shut Hook down.  With Hook gone with no heir apparent the government took over and installed forty foot high fences around the Oracle's route and a daily security patrol.  The same D.S. Agent that visited the 'Sweeper' on a monthly basis also monitored the Oracle.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 5 of 9

Flotsam

The D-Shifts had just arrived around the time of the ozone hole but many of them were appearing over water except for the pigeon incident and there was a big one in Rome was well (an Escher type I think).  It was the early days of the D-Shifts and government boys hadn't even begun to categorised them.  The Road itself runs due south although when it was still open to the public it was a two lane highway so I suppose you could travel north too but back when it was used it had already acquired a bad name and most people drove around it.  However it was on the local school bus route and gas prices back then were still quite steep so the local high school home of the 'Thunder Rams' I might add, spent a little cash on UV shielding to avoid the larger spend of going the long way round.
Whoever came up with the name Thunder Rams must have had considerable foresight.  If it hadn't been for the somewhat cheap nature of the high school it is possible that the D-Shifts that appeared around the Road would never have been reported.

First came the 'Sweeper' due east of the Road, it appeared two hundred yards away from the crash barriers roughly in the center, it must have been an amazing sight for the school kids as they drove past it.  According the then driver of the bus one William Paker, Billy to his Mum although most of his friends called him 'Only-if' one moment there was nothing and the next a blue shimmering tornado spinning eastwards away from the Road.  Billy stopped the bus, he said he wasn't sure whether it would be safe or not.  When he and some of the older kids got out they discovered there was no wind whatsoever.  This tornado was also acting very weird according Billy, it was pretty much stationary apart from the fact it was spinning clockwise, was about eighteen to twenty feet across and there were blue sparks appearing all through it.  Billy could see that there was debris within it but upon closer inspection by the science team it was discovered that most of the debris was very small indeed.  A leaf is probably the largest object a 'Sweeper' will allow inside.  Billy waited about half an hour before he decided it was safe to drive past but he did as fast as he could.

The Road was closed temporarily whilst government boys investigated this new phenomenon when the Road was reopened the locals found the 'Sweeper' still there except with heavy duty razor wire round it with signs stating that the phenomenon was not dangerous had been categorised as a 'Sweeper' D-Shift but is under government jurisdiction and is a federal crime to attempt entry without permission.  A D.S. Agent will visit the site on a monthly basis to confirm that all is in order.

I met that same agent several years later when I first came to this neck of the woods but I'll tell you about that later.  There are quite a few 'Sweeper' D-Shifts around the world nowadays quite excellent for storing dead leaves although there has a been few lazy gardeners out there that have died when a 'Sweeper' departs for sunnier climes.  The field of energy that spins a 'Sweeper' doesn't slowly dissipates over time it just vanishes all at once leaving the debris it has collected explode outwards normally taking several innocent people in its wake.  When the first 'Sweeper' dropped its load so to speak the razor wire around the Road's 'Sweeper' was upgraded to heavy metal fencing and several outer fences to stop even the most determined tourist to get too close.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 4 of 9

Flotsam

Fortunately the Paris incident was probably the worst one for causalities and these events just seemed continued on at apace although the government says they are slowing down now.  Incidents on the Road however didn't stop with the Greys's landing hell no, after the D-Shifts started it became the new tornado alley but without the wind.  Both sides of the Road were originally used for cattle ranching although the slight radioactive nature of the then water table put to question as to quality of meat back then, of course most of the rich folk even then were printing their food.  What the rich folk don't know or care is that in order to print the food in the first place you've got to have some raw material to put into the printer, many so called synthetics come direct from nature.  Being a farmer you tend pick up on things like this you see.

I'm sure you have all heard of Black and Blue Meats, eaten their steaks in restaurants not to mention their chain of burger joints but I bet you didn't know the origin of the meat in the first place.  Many people believed that it is actually printed food not using beef at all but they would be very wrong there well originally they were wrong not so sure now of course.  The land on either side of Road had become tainted but the cattle didn't seemed to be affected by it at all in fact they seem to thrive on it.

Most people in this age think all cattle are black and blue coloured not so, many were brown and white or black and white or just plain brown, that shows the power of marketing nobody seems to remember the days before Black and Blue cattle.

The cattle along the Road seemed fine except the ranchers began notice little of patches blue coloured skin which slowly spread until the entire herd was black and blue.  Edward Black the owner of the cattle was half an honest man, he'd spent an awful lot of money on his ranch and cattle but he didn't want to poison people with his tainted herd.  He decided to butcher one of this cows and try out the meat himself turns out it tasted absolutely amazing, he then got some scientists in to test meat which proved to be negative to anything bad in the meat.  This however was the first generation of cattle on the land the originals so to speak, the second generation were not so lucky in their lack of effects.  Some of the calves were born with no legs but hovered a foot above ground but appeared to be in no distress whilst others just walked backwards however the meat itself was toxic.  This would have been Edward Black's downfall however he was quite a clever man, he had taken organic cells from the original cattle before they were slaughtered.  Dolly the Sheep may have made history so many years ago but its Edward Black that turned it into a stable industry of course some old guys say that the quality of a Black and Blue steak has dropped off of late and there are many conspiracy theories regarding the possibility that the meat is now printed too.


When the cattle farming upped sticks it was just a Road for a short time until some big scientists from the city discovered an ozone hole directly overhead.  You may remember back in the eighties when all those green folk were worried about the ozone hole over the North Pole we had maybe a decade of people banning chemicals (CFCs) that's bad for the upper atmosphere and then it all went quiet but the hole is still there but no longer news worthy.  The hole above the Road had been marked for the fringe press only, at one point the Road was known as Sun Tan Alley despite the lack of sun you could still get a tan and in really bad cases skin cancer.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 3 of 9

Flostam

Even before the D-Shifts started up, this Road has seen its far share of history, originally it ran up to the take-off fields of the Space Patrol of course they didn't last long what with the war between Dwells what a nutty bunch of aliens they were.  They blew the Space Patrol right out of its socks and then surrenders for absolutely no reason known to man.  There's still a big crater at the end of the Road some big scientists say it created a negative pole of instability at that end of the Road whatever that means.  The Dwells didn't stay long but they did give us star-drive capability not that it helped us to travel to other stars of course, theoretically we could as long as we were at least four light years away from the Earth.

Then came the Greys, aliens with zero dress sense and I do mean zero.  They landed at the end of the Road I'm currently sitting stationary at in my hunker about three miles northeast in fact.  Turns out the Greys tended to follow the Dwells everywhere not to patch up their messes like my old Dad no such luck not that I believe in luck of course.  Apparently the Dwells are drawn to highly radioactive materials and the Space Patrol had one of the old G-Reactors that belched the stuff on a regular basis of course back then the bulk of the Space Patrol was completely automated using those daft IA series robots. I mean come on, difference engines make terrible cops.  We sold the Greys plans for the G-Reactors a completely unstable technology for a yet more unstable technology to help with the star-drive the Dwells had supplied us with.  The government was apparently on their game that day because they asked for a demonstration so the Greys put a man in a shuttle craft east of the Road and used the tech to travel to the west side of the Road without apparently moving.  Then they left quite quickly not to be seen again I might add and so did the government boys although we seen them all the time.

Five years later came the first of the D-Shifts and no one even noticed it for another year, it was right in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle so who is going to notice something strange there.  Of course when an ocean liner that has been wrapped in a complete circle appears drifting off the coast tends say something was up, it was a bloody miracle no one was hurt.  The incident in Paris however really made an impression particularly I assume on the French since it was their tower that had the make over in pigeon, I'm sure you've seen the video feed that one moment a very small pigeon in the middle distance flying above the tower and the next a twenty ton pigeon failing to fly and falling on top of it.  Speared quite spectacularly by the tower itself not that the tower managed to support the extra weight for very long, which then bent down before snapping completely in two, only two hundred and seven people killed.  One of the worst disasters the city had faced since the last war, I mean to have survived five wars and then to be destroyed by a twenty ton pigeon.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 2 of 9

Flotsam

Here I am hung over looking down a Road which is effectively a deathtrap to all those unwary enough to travel down it and stubborn folk like me who doesn't like to back down from a bet once made.  I can just make out the blonde lass a mile in the distance they got a bunch lights all set up, I'm not sure a piece of tail is really worth risking my life over.  Its not like the bet is for much in the way of credits either.  I know what you are thinking and it isn't pride either,  its more to the wipe the smug smile off that old boy's face.  Still that mile just seems to be getting longer the more I look at it, fortunately or not depends on how you look at it there's only me here at this end.  They've probably thought I've bottled it, not me I maybe a little slow sometimes but I'm not stupid got me a secret weapon.

Okay so as secret weapons go it isn't too secret just a sheet of second hand syntho-shield which I managed to bend over the more weaker points of the hunker and then I also I've got a cloak of the stuff.  Didn't come cheap either the guy that sold it to me says its just like the shields the government uses for rescuing people from unexpected D-Shifts.  Thing is the shields don't last long and government always throws them away after one use so there is quite a trade in them.

The real problem is that The Storm itself isn't a D-Shift, more sort of the waste product of one so I'm not actually sure how good the syntho-shield is going to be against The Storm's effects and there are many.  You see I accepted the bet before I read up on the history of the Road, okay I admit that was stupid.  Though I suspect the whole thing was a frame up, I mean they all know about the new protected zone being built right next to my property.  They were just jealous and this is how they've managed to get back at me.  Its not my fault that I'm risking my life not one bit of it.  I bought that piece of land from one of the local widows two summers back apparently been in the family for centuries dating back to before the war of independence.  Of course the locals didn't like a limey like me buying their land, its good farming land not sure why its never been turned.  The soil is thick and black, had one of them big scientists from the city to test it before I bought it though just in case.  They said it was high grade you could grow anything from it, I think that is why the government blokes decided to build near it so they could use me to farm for them but the locals say the land is protected and its bad luck to farm there.  I don't believe in luck what happens happens, of course the locals tried to stop me from doing any work on the land straight off.

First it was none of the local farm-boys would hire out to me despite the high rate I was offering, then I had the cops down on a tip that my trailer contained government controlled plants and then the local hardware store refused my credits.  I've had bring everything in from hundred miles away at considerable cost I might add, for the amount of credits I've spent so far on this shindig I could of bought myself a nice little flat in a protected zone.  Of course that isn't me, I'm a farmer through and through don't like the indoors too much.

Its the government's fault again I had good farm back in Blighty, saw me a government sign about big money to be had in the land of the yanks.  Lots of spare land since the population drop after the D-Shifts started.  Apparently it effects your manhood not that I've ever had any trouble myself in that direction but since the D-Shifts the birthrate has dropped off quite bit.  Blighty seems fine for that sort of thing but the government says it because there's more D-Shifts in the US,  I'm not so sure on that front.  Still that's why I here looking down that stretch of road cause the locals obviously want me dead and away from their land.

Route 101 – Thunder Part 1 of 9

I am currently a bit fed up with politics so I have decided to post up a short story I wrote in 2014/15 based upon another story I wrote whilst in school.  I have split it up into nine parts and epilogue, Enjoy.

The Freedom Fiddle

The question on everyone's lips at the moment is did Russians attempt to affect the America election, now I do not have access to any high security files or even some fake ones however I can apply some basic common sense to the situation.

First off like the UK the popular vote does not guarantee a win, in the case of the 2016 election Trump lost by 2,864,974 votes however he won more states than Clinton so when the Electoral vote occurred he won but only by 14%  which makes it quite close indeed although the previous 2012 election was close on states but higher on the Electoral vote.  The whole thing just gives me a headache an overly complex system if you ask me.

To affect the Popular vote you would require a huge amount of manpower or they could use fake news articles which whilst it failed in the outcome of the Popular vote it, it could of had enough of an affect to win enough states so that the Electoral vote was effectively in the bag.

However did fake news articles really do all that damage are we really that gullible (yes I know they sold Brexit to the British people from the side of a bus) but still there are other possibilities we have not yet considered.

Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries.  I understand this occurs in America somewhat, the Washington Post has this to say on the subject: without-gerrymandering and this is technically legal.

If all else fails you pick key states and lean on the Electors, does such illegal activities occur in America politics and are the Russians involved?

Well fake news articles did appear mostly by a bunch of kids in the Balkans who were making a packet on the advertising they had no political agenda they just learned how best to leverage the election in their favour.

What were the Russians speaking to the Trump chaps about then or did they just learn from the kids and add to the fog of dodgy news.  Then there is Clinton's emails of which I have read a few on Wikileaks obviously I have not read all them but the ones I did read, are mostly spam, junk and quite pointless emails. Clinton's email server was hacked several times during 2012 and 2013:

"The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Sixty-five of those emails were found to contain information classified as "Secret"; more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information. Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He added it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant..."

Considering the small number of messages you have got to wonder whether they are even real or not especially since Trump did not pursue the investigation.  Why investigate something that you know is a hoax or if not a hoax something you cannot win?

The timing of the pubic statements right of the middle of the campaign, yet more nails in Clinton's Election coffin.

Can you fix an election yes, just use lots of nails.