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Nicia
A farmer orders a new farm implement on-line. What he receives is not a plow, but what appears to be a dismembered young woman contained in seven boxes. She is so realistic that he thinks someone has murdered her and is trying to pin the crime on him.
After he realizes she’s a robot, he decides to assemble her and see what happens.
When she powers up, she tells him she has been sent to spy on a ‘cheese factory’ that is located close by his farm.
The farmer and robot discover that no milk or any other dairy products that might be used in the production of cheese are ever delivered to the “Millstone Artisan Cheese Factory”, and no shipments of anything ever leaves the factory, and they see lots of people coming and going from the facility as well as armed guards with Doberman Pinschers patrolling the perimeter. He decides to help her get inside and install tiny cameras disguised as wasp nests to see what’s really going on.
They enlist the help of a UPS driver who wants to date Nicia. He thinks she is a hot young lady.
Another robot, an H-7 military ordnance officer disguised as a seven-year-old boy, has been sent to eliminate Nicia before she can complete her mission.
Still Waters Run Deep
Excerpt from Chapter Four
It was Sunday, lunchtime. Raymond had just put the food on the table when he heard a soft tapping sound.
Chip and Dale leapt from their exorcize wheel and ran to the bars of their cage, which was sitting in the middle of the dining table. They made chittering noises, like tiny ice cubes rattling in a water glass, while they stared wide-eyed at Raymond.
“Come in,” Tinkerbell squawked.
Beauregard growled.
“What was that?” Raymond glanced at Fuzzle.
Fuzzle was busy with her tuna and mackerel. She paid no attention to Raymond, or anything else.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked Robin.
Robin nodded as he took a bite of his sandwich.
The tapping came again.
"That’s the front door.” Raymond put his sandwich down, scooted his chair back and went to the door.
“Kim!”
“Hello, Raymond.”
"Hello,” Tinkerbell shouted.
Kim glanced toward the dining room.
"How did you find me?” Raymond leaned out of the doorway, looking up and down the hall.
“Phone book.”
“There must be a dozen Raymond Hunters in the City. Where’s your mother?” He closed the door.
“Twenty-three. She’s asleep.” She shifted the seven-pound Manhattan phone book to her left arm and her doll to the right.
“And you just went down the list?”
“Uh-huh.” She went to the window in the living room and looked down at the street, five floors below. She tried to push up the window.
“Why do you want the window open?”
“Policeman.”
“What? You want a policeman?” He rotated the latch and lifted the window.
“No. I’ve already got one.” She leaned out the window.
Raymond leaned out too and down on the street he saw a blue and white NYPD patrol car with a huge black officer leaning against the front fender. The car was double-parked, blocking the right lane. The red and blue lights flashed, but the siren was silent. The cop’s arms were folded across his chest and a cigarette hung from his lips as he stared up at the apartment building.
Kim waved to him.
The officer waved back.
Raymond waved too.
The officer flipped his cigarette away, got into his car and drove away.
"Kim, your mother is going to be so mad.”
“She won’t wake up til four.”
“Do you know what time it is?” Raymond closed the window and latched it.
“12:25.”
“Why did you want to find me?”
“I have to ask you something.”
“What?”
“What’s a disambiguation oscillator? I couldn’t find it in the cycopea.”
“You came all the way over here to ask me that?”
“Actually, my apartment is only five blocks away. Raymond Hunter number five was way down by the Battery.”
“That policeman drove you to all those places.”
She nodded. “We had to make one traffic stop where Officer Benjamin wrote a ticket to an angry redhead.” She looked toward the dining room when she heard the high-pitched “Hello?” She walked to the doorway. “Holy Fort Jesus!” she exclaimed.
There at the table was a calico cat with booties on its front feet, a black toy Pomeranian gnawing a chicken bone while staring into space, a red and green parrot with only one wing, and a pair of hairless mice in a cage. The cat was busy with a small dish of fish. Across the table from the cat was a boy eating a sandwich.
“Are these your pets?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It looks like a subatomic zoo.”
“Sometimes it is a zoo. You hungry?”
“Yes, please.”
He went to the kitchen to make her a sandwich. “Feed Chip and Dale some peanuts, but watch your fingers.”
“Your puppy pushed his bone off the plate and can’t seem to find it.”
“That’s Beauregard. He’s blind. Hold it near his nose, but watch—”
“Ow!”
“—your fingers.”
She laughed. “It’s okay, didn’t hurt.” She rubbed her finger, then held a peanut out to the mice. “Ow!”
The mice began fighting over the peanut.
“Throw another peanut into Chip and Dale’s cage.”
She did and then the two mice went to opposite corners of their cage to gnaw on their peanuts.
Chip and Dale had either been tortured half to death by deranged dope addicts or endured months, or perhaps years participating in some sort of bleeding-edge lab experiments. Both of them had lost all their hair, they were crippled and totally psychotic.
Kim placed her phone book on one to the chairs and then climbed up to sit on top of it. “Why does your kitty have booties on her front feet?”
“Her name is Fuzzle and she has no front feet so I bought the baby booties for her and then stuffed them with cotton balls. You like bologna, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles and mayonnaise on your sandwich?”
“I don’t know. I always have just bread and bologna.” She rubbed her fingers
He leaned sideways to glance at her. “Oh…me, too. But I, um, thought I would try something different today.”
“Hi,” she said to the boy.
He smiled and chewed a bite of food.
Raymond finished making the huge sandwich and sat it in front of Kim.
“Wow, Raymond, it’s beautiful.”
“I know. You like Kool-aid?”
“What’s Kool-aid?” She opened her mouth wide to take a bite of the sandwich.
“This red stuff. Very sweet.”
“Wo tay,” she said around a mouthful of food.
Raymond grinned as he dropped some ice cubes into a glass and poured the red drink.
They ate their sandwiches as they watched the animals.
“Your son doesn’t talk much.”
“My what?” He glanced at the boy. “Oh, yeah. That’s Robin. He’s not my son, but he is my pal.”
Robin grinned as he watched the girl.
“Show her that water thing, Robin.” Raymond bit into his sandwich. “He’s been trying to tell me something about water.”
“Why don’t he just say it?”
Raymond glanced at Robin. “He’s not ready to talk yet. But he will pretty soon.”
“Hmm. Has the patient been bullied at school?”
“He’s not a patient.”
“Okay, has the boy been bullied at school?”
“He doesn’t go to school.”
“Does he have social anxiety?”
“Sure,” Raymond said. “Who doesn’t?”
Robin stood and went to the kitchen.
“Has the patient, I mean the boy had any recent trauma to the head?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I think he has selective mutism.”
“Really?”
She nodded and bit into her sandwich.
“What’s that?”
She put her sandwich down, needing her hands to talk. “This affliction occurs when a person, having no known trauma or social anxiety, chooses to remain silent. Possibly because talking might require divulging unpleasant or injurious information.”
“You’re talking like a book again,” Raymond said.
“It is a book, like a cylopia in my head.”
“Encyclopedia.”
“Yes, with pictures too.”
Robin came back with a glass half full of water. He placed it on the table in front of Kim.
“Okay,” she said. “That looks like a glass of water.”
Robin glanced at Raymond, who smiled and nodded to the boy.
The boy pointed to the water and held his hands out flat in a hushing motion.
“Quiet?” she asked.
He nodded and wiggled his hand.
“Sort of quiet?”
He nodded, then pushed the water glass to the side, brought it back and pushed it again.
“Moving water?”
He put the glass back where it started and held his hands out to the side.
“Now it’s not moving.”
He pointed to the water in the glass.
“Quiet water not moving?”
Robin nodded.
“See,” Raymond said. “I always get the ‘quiet water’ part, but I can never understand the rest of it.”
The boy made a running motion with his fingers.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
He pointed to himself and then at her, then ran his fingers along the table.
“We’re running?”
Robin pointed at the glass and made the running motion again.
“The water is running?”
He nodded, then he stood and held his hand close to the floor.
She started at him, wrinkling her brow.
He brought his hand up a few inches, stopped and brought his hand up more.
She shook her head and shrugged.
He pointed to himself, put his hand down to the floor, brought it up a bit, then held up one finger.
“One,” she said.
He nodded, brought his hand up a little and held up two fingers.
“Two. Go on.”
He went on up to five, then pointed to himself.
“Okay, you’re five years old. Me too.”
Robin pointed to Raymond, then stood on the chair and held his hand out flat.
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s a lot more than five.” She glanced at Raymond.
“Probably a hundred.”
“Cute,” Raymond said.
Robin got down and put his hand on the floor.
“Down?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Below?”
Robin stood, held his hand up high, then slowly lowered it toward the floor.
“Lower? Deep?”
He nodded.
“Deep quiet water,” she whispered.
He smiled and made the running motion with his fingers.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Still waters run deep?”
Robin nodded and held his fist out for her to bump.
“So that’s what he been trying to tell me,” Raymond said. “Still waters run deep. Where have I heard that before?”
“Where’s your cylopia?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Seriously?”
“But I have google.”
“What’s a google?”
The Journey to Valdacia
The year is 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev has resigned as Soviet president marking the collapse of the USSR.
On December 26, 1991 the Soviet Union had 1,334 intercontinental ballistic missiles deployed. Two SS-19 ICBMs (a heavy liquid-fueled missile carrying 6 nuclear warheads, which served as a backbone of the USSR's retaliatory force) are unaccounted for. Each SS-19 cost 21.6 million rubles, or approximately 12 million US dollars.
Donny McKenzie, a satellite cartographer has discovered on his latest SkySat images, the ruins of an ancient city in the Sahara Desert. It has been uncovered by a recent sandstorm. Donny slips away from his job at SkyPace Corporation to go explore the ruins before anyone else, especially his colleague, Kelli Wilson, spots the location of what appears to be a very large city. However, before he can reach the ruins, he’s entangled in a secret and deadly activity.
