Doc Sherwood
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Creating Some Content
Grindopolis was equatorial, but the climes to which Neetra and Joe’s interplanetary teleport brought them would on Earth have been somewhere in the darkest South Pacific. Waves blasted themselves white against a coastline of sheer basalt cliffs, while volcanoes grumbled redly in the distance. All Nereynis would have been thus before the world so much as froze, and the universe itself was still cooling. Lingering vestiges of sunset hung on a sky of luminous black.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
4-H-N
The first sun of Grindotron was still some hours from appearing above the horizon, and in the general grey of 4-H-N’s room the tiny square ink-bottle sitting on the nightstand looked blacker even than something black had any right to look. 4-H-N supposed that was not surprising, given what she knew of its contents.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Special Program
At Flash Club Headquarters was an unfrequented wing where the dormitory and refectory doors had lately been magnetically sealed. From the practice-room, which was the only area still lit on a daily basis, one exit not barricaded likewise led to individual stasis-pods for out-of-hours use. Arching overhead, emergency blast-shields had been promoted to a permanent post. The Special Program was in lockdown.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Masterclass
The land lay level, gold gradually mellowing to amber, and here and there the foamy jets of irrigation-hoses seemed as still as scattered brush-strokes on an oil-painting rendered in sun. Against a sky whose blue bore the first deepening tints of afternoon was suggested Nottingham’s distant outline, each slender rectangle blocked-in with the same hue of haze. Through the flat fields the road ran, and parked haphazardly along its grass verges were a black space-racer and a red, the occupants of each sitting atop their hoods.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Pursuit
Auntie Green shrugged off the hunk of roof that had fallen on her. There were times she was almost willing to swear that one of these days she was going to get too old for this. Not today though. Nor had Auntie Green reached the age she was now by being unprepared. She hastened through the ruination to the discreet private exit she’d insisted on having installed immediately after the first Special Program incident, and flinging aside with her bare hands the rubble in front of it finished her swing by caving in the closed hatchway with the sole of one boot. Possibly the manual release still worked, but why waste precious seconds finding out?
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Four
Picking up speed the Silver Cat Lord seemed to tense its suspension-springs. Powerful pneumatic hind-legs slammed tarmac and in one phenomenal pounce the mobile mass careened clear over beachside apartment complexes, its spinning tank-treads passing penthouse gardens while a purposeful prow and flying forepaws pointed to the path of inevitable descent. Landing in an explosion of sand the Silver Cat Lord growled about to face across open shore the stalking Grindostater unit, for the etherium actualizor had replicated geography as faithfully as it had architecture, and an inland sea shimmered as far as this new Nottingham’s crest. Above the waves Heaven’s arch was all but taken up by the orb of Nereynis, like a moon far nearer than Earth’s own, and whose celestial ring made the Mini-Flashes think of Xandreth while Joe’s reflections, as they had done earlier that day, ran on Saturn. A relatively recent astronomical feature, it was made of rubble which had been a sister-world called Drenthis before Dylan cracked that planet.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Three
Joe strode down the Stronghold’s cold corridor, thankful Mini-Flash Splitsville had given him something to smile about. Her regular warnings that theirs was to be a strictly casual affiliation had commenced the very day they met, as if she herself had yet to notice she’d become a key member of Joe’s most trusted inner circle from effectively that moment on. Indeed, our hero wondered whether the moody loner of her own self-perception would recognise the Mini-Flash Splitsville he knew, that small silver-blue-haired permanent presence asking him endless questions about Rebel Without a Cause. Joe wished there were more like her. No Mini-Flash besides Flashtease gave him greater reason to suppose his theories on this galaxy were valid.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Two
Petunia’s performance of the three odd-numbered songs from her repertoire had gone down well on the Rings of Xandreth. True, it was only a small nightclub some distance from the VIP ascension of that galaxy’s ten thousand mega-mile orbital pleasure-strip, but if Petunia had touched even this handful of lives with that which she represented, she was satisfied. From their hoots and howls and waving pseudopods it sounded as if she had, so with a last half-circle twirl she treated them to one more look at the symbol they were doubtless cheering for.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter One
Beyond the ornate railings a rock-lined lane wound its way through parkland densely roofed by trees in the thick of their late-summer leafage. Breaks in the black boughs disclosed a sky gilded with sun, and to exit the deep green tunnel was to move through heat. A light patina of sand that crunched in whispers underfoot hinted at seaside nearby. Along this track of cooling shadow slanted and dappled through with gold, Joe and Flashtease were strolling.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Neetra and Joe, Chapter One
“I wanted to save her, Joe,” said Neetra. “I tried.” These remaining two members of The Four Heroes were alone atop the hill from which Nottingham Castle once towered, their backs to the wreckage that was all the war had left, and Joe’s eyes fixed on a point far beyond the rubble-strewn grass and the cliff’s edge directly ahead. He was staring somewhere above the outspread rooftops, somewhere into the heart of the endless sky. The news had not been good. Neetra and Joe were at more or less the very same spot on the castle grounds where they had sat together the day the Next Four completed their moving-in, and then they had laughed and made fond jokes to each other about how well their relationship seemed to be going. That memory now felt like something from another century that happened to a pair of strangers who lived then.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
