The Town Called Dinosaur

Story by Oneyearmuse

Title by Captain Awesome

Jetsam

Ky watched the Outsiders a curious bipedal design he wondered idly who had come up with such an outlandish design, their internal organs are even in more peculiar.  Ky had long since given up on politics and external exploration outside of the home planet but it would appear that the rumours about some of the early trade missions were indeed true.  They had arrive eight cycles ago no wait that's eight days according to the Outsiders terminology, for the conspiracy to work we must always live inside the Outsiders mindset otherwise errors and holes will creep in.

Technically the conspiracy was an open conspiracy in that everybody in town knew about it, it was Ky's responsibility to maintain and refine every aspect of the conspiracy.  The outer markers signaled the implementation of Phase I eight days ago, this time it was not a drill.  The first phase was always going to go smoothly purely because it had been practiced so many times.  It was three days before the Outsiders arrived in orbit and sent down their landing parties.  Phase II was always going to be the more difficult part of the conspiracy since the Outsiders are inherently suspicious.

Of course the first problem for them was one of communications, it took several days for them to discover the radio frequencies.  The Outsiders had incorrectly assumed all language would be written or spoken.  They had observed the inhabitants of the town and discovered that either it was a very primitive species or that they were missing something important.

Phase II was to allow a limited form of communication enough to keep the Outsiders interested and off guard.  Always more questions than answers, phase III would begin on the ninth day.

Flotsam

Ship's Log of the S.S. Grapple Captain Roy T Thompson Commanding:

Sol Day 108

The cosmic storm designated CS/918 has caused severe damage to life support and the main drive unit.  Auxiliaries have given us limited facilities enough to give us a fix on our position unfortunately the communications array is completely shot. Which means we are currently on our own however we have had some good fortunate in that we have located a life supporting planet just in range of us.  We can achieve orbit in 3 days.

Sol Day 112

The planet has inhabitants based in one town on the northern continent, the planet's temperature is inconsistent with its distance from the star in this solar system however we have been unable to determine any form of advanced technology.  Ensign Wallace has dubbed the town Dinosaur because from the air it looks a little like a velociraptor.  Wallace's personnel jacket shows his birth place as Artesia, Colorado, the name has stuck much to the annoyance of some of the scientists.

Sol Day 114

Ensign Wallace was the first notice that the 3 legged inhabitants of the town caused an interference on the radio.  It was then spotted that the rod like protrusions from the tops (heads) of the aliens waved/moved about when the interference occurred.  Their bodies are tube like ending in 3 legs of similar length to the main body, on average they are about metre in height.  Their feet have adjustable suckers, no mouth, ears or eyes in evidence and yet they respond to our presence.

Sol Day 115

Major breakthrough in communications with the Tripods it would appear that they use a radio frequency of 27 Mhz to communicate on.  The computer is slowly creating a basic lexicon, however it has become obvious that the Tripods are perhaps just a primitive animal species and are not the original inhabitants of the town.

Sol Day 117

The Geological survey team to the west are currently overdue, they were sent out to discover the source of a heat bloom that appeared on the ships sensors at 12:42.

Ship's Log of the S.S. GreyStar Captain Wilma Jones Commanding:

Sol Day 109

The S.S. Grapple has been found drifting between the La Grange point between Io and Jupiter, it would appear there has been several explosive decompressions throughout the ship.  None of the ship's crew has been found.

The ship's log is fragmentary and much of the data banks have been exposed to heavy radiation giving us barely any indication as to what happen to the ship and its crew.  Sol Day 108 is the last ship's log that has any useful information:

"The cosmic storm designated CS/918 has caused severe damage to life support and the main drive unit.  Auxiliaries have given us limited.... enough.... position unfortunately the communications arra....   Which means.... own... life...  in range of us.  We can achieve...."

No cosmic storms have been recorded around Jupiter at least not at the magnitude to cause this much damage.  The ship will be towed to Ganymede station where the Space Patrol will have to solve its mysteries.

Jetsam

Ky looked down into the chamber containing the Outsiders stored in stasis, their discovery of Ky's home planet was always possibility which why the plan had been created.  Whilst these particular Outsiders had evolved beyond war others have not and there are always world destroyers out there.  Any sufficiently intelligent species never advertise their presence, it is a miracle of chance that the Outsider's planet has not been attacked and plundered yet.  Of course our own trade mission to that part of space may have something to do with its continued survival.

Oy was pleased with Ky's implementation of Phase III, the Outsiders were caught completely by surprise.  The ones on the planet never knew what hit them since the gas is completely odourless although the ones on the ship attempted to defend themselves which caused some useful damage. Once the Outsiders had been removed from the ship, its systems were mostly wiped and then towed into a minus nine cycle position.  Our secret is maintained.

The three legged Trilon followed its two legged grey masters from the viewing gallery.

Bridge & Rogue One

Bridge

I needed a break from fiction so this is a path that crosses the chasm...

I looked at the news yesterday and aside from the Queen feeding some bananas to an elephant in a zoo it was all bad.  Is my problem that I get most of my news from Google News feeds perhaps there another news feed out there that is only good news who knows.  Okay so there was the announcement that NASA is going to say something profound about the two "water" planets in our solar system tomorrow.  I wonder did NASA make a deal with Trump that every now again they would make a big announcement to distract the public in exchange for less of a budget cut?  Does not appear to be working to me.

I find it somewhat curious that Trump wants China to deal with North Korea since it is:

...naturally abundant in metals such magnesite, zinc, tungsten, and iron; with magnesite resources of 6 billion tonnes (second largest in the world), particularly in the Hamgyeong-do and Jagang-do provinces. ... Coal, iron ore, limestone, and magnesite deposits are larger than other mineral commodities.

And yet he is happy to attack Syria on the grounds that Assad is a bad leader that kills his own people considering Trump is all about profit.  This attack smacks of an opportunistic gamble to grab some limelight for his failing presidency.  There is the rumour that the airbase had been cleared because someone in Trump's admin had tipped off the Russians which just adds to the theater of the whole affair.  Plus there is possibility that Assad do not have any gas left although Syria is a big place so anything is possible.  Women and children died but what did they really die for? Trump's presidency or Russia's support or Assad's need to feel like he is control of Syria.  I very much doubt if any of them considered the dying people except as a tool of publicity.

This is the world we live in everything is designed to distract us from the horrors of the middle east and war torn countries.  The problem is they have become bored and have started on destroying the countries of the west.  Trump is dismantling America piece by piece, Putin is the new Stalin putting Gay men into concentration camps, does the Road of Bones need resurfacing I wonder. If France's Marine Le Pen wins the election in May then that could be another nail in the EU coffin.

We appear to be on a slippery slope, I am just waiting for the Aliens to turn up and say "We told you so!"

Rogue One (SPOILER ALERT)

Finally watched it and it was good, a Star Wars movie that contained almost no Jedi aspects.  It was a refreshing change from the constant light sabre effects and deep things about the force.  Essentially this is a war film, it happens between episodes three and four.  The story of how the plans to the Death Star were stolen in the first place and its origin story.

It does become obvious however what the likely ending is going to be and that wars are won by soldiers.  And in this case there is no concept that war is glorious, if anybody out there still believes such nonsense try reading some World War I poetry.  I have had the good fortunate not to live through or experience war first hand but its effects are everywhere.

Like all Star Wars movies there is an element of comedy which worked much better than in the film The Force Awakens. K-2SO the new droid voiced by Alan Tudyk delivers his lines with almost British deadpan quality far better than C3PO's slightly snobbish voice ever could.

What I found curious is that when the Death Star is first fired it hits the target perfectly and wipes out a desert town however the second time it is used they miss the Empire base by miles despite being told to fire at the base.  Okay so it did destroy it from the resulting blast but did they miss on purpose so we can have the final death scene?

Yet again this film proves that being dead does not mean you cannot still be in a film Peter Cushing's CGI I have got say is quite awesome and the voice was almost spot on.  Carrie Fisher's CGI is also very good although she was in it very briefly at the end.

Overall a very good film and I will be watching it again.

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.