Continuum 2012 - Second Edition - eBook

By Peter E. Lee

You never expect to see beings from the future, because you were taught that Time travel to the past violated the Laws of Physics. Well, it does not. When faced with the inevitable truth of the Continuum, in which you live, you see that violence, fear, and hatred are stitched right through it. Spread curves of reality can intermingle, if the time is right. This story is a glimpse into just one of those possibilities. Time and space are bent and reality twisted, easily, by these extra-terrestiral beings. We realize that we are the endangered zoological fauna of the galaxy, ranched out, on this planet, until the round-up. This tortured science fiction novelette is geared for generation X'ers, struggling to understand this galactic law. Burnouts, bums, and boozers will all find a piece of themselves in this story. You might even find yourself laughing at the incredulity of the possibilities which this book reports. It is an alien story, after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365383595

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Continuum 2012 - Second Edition - eBook

Continuum 2012

Second Edition

Originally, the first edition of this book was copyrighted and published as Spread Curve by Peter E. Lee in 2004 and, then, as Continuum 2012 by Peter E. Lee in 2006.  This second edition has been edited, by the original author, to be as close to the original, as possible.

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Continuum 2012

by Peter E. Lee

Second Edition

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Restricted

Adult R Rated

Adult situations and language,

violence, drug and alcohol use

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CONTINUUM 2012, SECOND EDITION.  Copyright © 2016 PEL Publishing.  All rights reserved.  For information, email the publisher via [e-mail].

Edited from Continuum 2012 by Peter E. Lee by the original author.  Originally copyrighted as Spread Curve by Peter E. Lee, 2004.  Originally published, as Continuum 2012 by Peter E. Lee, by P.E.L. Publishing, USA, 2004.

Published by PEL Publishing, USA, 2016.  Lulu.com assigned ISBN.

ISBN: 978-1-365-38352-6

Second Edition: March 2016

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

This story is dedicated to my true friends.

Author introduction

This is my first novel, and I am aware of its style and size.  I have left intentional gaps in the flow of the story for the reader to use their imagination.  I kept it moving at a fast pace for those of us in the twenty-first century that may suffer a little from attention-deficit hyperactive disorder.  I’ve hidden no secrets and don’t care about revealing the plot.  I intended this novel to be quasi-realistic fantasy fiction in my own vision.  I wrote it, as I would tell a story to a friend in a bar over drinks.  So, just get through the influenced paragraphs, you’ll be glad you did.  It’s all for fun after all.

Noone has made any changes to this original text, except by me, for the publication of the second edition, which you are reading.  The language and content of this book is intended for an adult audience.  Of course, any likenesses to persons or events, real or fictional, are purely coincidental.  This work is the purest form of complete fiction.

Strangely, I am quite sure, now, that this book might, accidentally, have some little scraps of truth in it, somewhere, because I have seen some unmistakable evidence that there are powers at work in this world (or Continuum, if you wish) that do not want this book to be published.  So, that no one would read, share, or understand it.

Perhaps, it’s too crazy, scary, or close to the truth, who knows?  Perhaps, I’ve had an angel watching over me.  One the other hand, perhaps, I am totally wrong, and it’s something different than that, entirely.  Perhaps, fate has taken its toll on my time and me.  In any possibility, I am not the one in complete control.  I am just one person with an undoubtedly flawed vision of the future.  The great thing about this life, though, is that if you look long or hard enough, you will find the truth.  I hope you enjoy my pulp-fiction, doom-porn, pop-satire book.

Preface

The Abrahamic religions inherited their belief of the eventuality of an Armageddon, sent by forces of God.  The American Natives have legends of visitors from the stars.  The ancient Mayans calculated a date of this spacetime celestial moment; December 21, 2012, having had a higher understanding of mathematics and astronomy at the time they learned of the eighth visit to humans.  Charles Darwin also properly deduced that Earth’s species evolve through a natural selection.  For perhaps the highest predator and assumedly most intelligent sentient pandoran beings on the planet, the exact time, place, and nature of this inevitably most important and duly most unnatural selection is tricky.

-          Peter E. Lee

12/21/2000

Continuum

2012

Day One

The Welcome Home

Tom Marshall’s morning started when his alarm clock went off at five-thirty a.m. on the nineteenth of December, twenty twelve.  The Sun was still slightly below the horizon.  Only a slight shade of blue from the little bit on morning light shone in through his east windows.  He threw his covers off his sleep-fatigued body, sat up, and pulled his feet out from under their warmth and swung them over the right side of his bed.  His hand slapped the top of his alarm clock strategically, and it quieted.  Rubbing the stubble on his cheek and scratching his back, he wanted to go back to bed.

Footsteps thudded along the hallway.  Tom turned his head.  He watched his sleepy, blonde, ten-year-old son’s pajama-clothed form drag down his upstairs hallway toward the stairs.  ‘God, I love this time,’ Tom thought.  He stood and turned to the end of the bed.  On his way out of his bedroom, he squeezed his wife’s toes.  Maybe, she’d get up and love him a little bit this morning even though she hadn’t loved him much last night.  In any way, he really didn’t expect her to surprise him during his shower.

Upon reaching the doorway, he stopped and leaned onto his left side in the doorframe.  He turned his head up to his right and said, Mornin’, Daniel.

Mornin’, Dad, the boy mumbled, while he thumped, quietly, down the stairs.  The two continued their morning routines.  Tom turned to his left and walked across the medium-soft khaki-colored carpet of his prefab home to the other end of the dark hallway.  He looked over his shoulder at his son’s room, before he turned the corner into the bathroom.  He felt like buying the boy something else, whenever he thought about it, but the kid had everything.  He smiled, as he stepped onto the shag bathroom rug.

Shower: start, he cast into the empty room, and his bath water began flowing from the massage-spray head.  He took his underwear and t-shirt off and threw them, carelessly, onto the floor.  He scratched his dragging ass, as he stepped into the flowing torrent of hot water.  The shower curtain opened, automatically, as Tom stepped onto the self-drying slip-proof heated shower mat in the tub.  He wet his long blonde hair and lathered up and scrubbed down for the next minute or two.  The shower curtain automatically opened, as the last drips of water fell from the showerhead.

Tom reached over and grabbed his towel from where it hung on the wall.  He dried off and wrapped the towel around himself.  Tom walked over to the sink and waited for the auto-defogging mirror to dry itself, while he brushed his teeth.  He shaved around his sideburns and southwestern-style mustache, and rubbed on aftershave lotion.  He was putting his rechargeable wet-dry razor into its self-cleaning recharging stand, when his son came in and said, Shower: start.  The shower again ran, and the young person took off his pajamas before getting in the hot flowing torrent of water.  Tom gargled some mouthwash and spit.

Don’t forget to wash your face before your ass, Tom teased his son, as he put away the bottle, turned, and left the steamy bathroom.  He sped down the chilly hall to his bedroom and threw the towel, which he had wrapped around his waist, over a chair.  He grabbed his work-jeans, a work-shirt, and work-socks to put on under his work-boots.  He sat down on the edge of his bed and put on his underwear, a t-shirt, and some socks, then his pants, boots, and his shirt.  By that time, he figured his son had rung up the water bill far enough.  He walked back down the hall and entered into the bathroom.  Get out of there.  You’re clean enough for school, he said, as he reached under his shirts to put on antiperspirant.  He watched himself in the mirror, as he braided his hair, secured it with a rubber band, and tucked in his shirts.

After he walked back to his bedroom, he kissed his wife on her warm sleeping check and grabbed his cigarettes, lighter, wallet, watch, and keys from on top of the dresser.  One his way out of the bedroom, he grabbed his wedding ring from, where it normally hung at night, a peg next to his wife’s ring below a mirror on the wall.  Tom loved her with all of his heart.  He took up her ring into his hand, kissed it, willfully, and put it back onto its late-carved dowel.

He noticed that the water was not running in the bathroom and heard his son invoke the radio.  Tom quietly shut the door to his bedroom and softly barked, Turn it down.  Your mother’s still asleep.

Left ya a strudel, his son replied.

Cool, Tom said under his breath to himself, as he turned and walked down the stairs.

He darted across his living room, and his boots squeaked on the kitchen tiles, as he stopped in front of the counter where the toaster sat.  He grabbed the pop-up confectionary, began to eat it, and rummaged in the fridge for a moment before grabbing the milk.  Hmmm, nothin’ good to eat, he growled.  The milk jug, that Tom had grabbed and tossed from the fridge, slid onto to counter, and Tom grabbed the box of Captain Crunch Berries from the cupboard.  Tom’s bowl slid across the counter, and came to rest next to the milk.  Then Tom threw a spoon, which clinked, lightly, as it landed on the counter-top.  Tom poured cereal and milk.  He took a bite of the food and walked over to the fridge.  He grabbed a Pepsi from its cardboard case and opened it single-handedly.   Tom kicked the fridge closed and walked into the living room.

Computer: wake, local news, he said to the room, invoking the computer to load the site.  Slowly, the sixty-three inch flat-panel HDTV that they used as a monitor glowed on.  Tom stood there and began to watch the latest news from China by a Chinese reporter in Chinese.  He couldn’t understand what the anchorman was saying, and he hated reading captions.  So, he missed learning from the early breaking news report about some sort of rebel uprising.  Tom cast, Channel: fishin’, because it always helped him think of something better to watch.  Channel: financial news, he summoned into the empty room.  The monitor showed some Asian fellow telling the world, in Taiwanese this time, how eighty percent of all Eastern banks and exchanges had closed, which was a result of some sort of catastrophic religious uprising.  Tom did not understand or care about any of this, as the man explained that the Tokyo exchange was still open, but trading was extremely heavy.  Channel: cartoons, said Tom finally, as he walked back into the kitchen.  He finished his cereal in three enormous bites and began drinking the sugary milk from the bowl.

Computer: split-screen: movie, ‘Jet Li’s, Kiss of the Dragon’, one hour twelve minutes, his son summoned up his favorite old show while flying down to the bottom of the stairs with a thud and bounding into the big living room.  He was a bit of a Kung Fu buff and had a large collection of new and old digital videos recorded and stored in the disc-changer.  He walked into the kitchen and looked at his father, who wiped milk from his chin after removing the bowl from his mouth.  Gonna bring me a burger at lunch? Daniel asked his father.

Sure, eleven-thirty, huh?  At…uh, Tom paused to think, How ‘bout ya just meet me at the spot, cool?  He opened the fridge, took up a sunny-colored container in his hand, and took a swig of Florida orange juice from out of it.

Cool, Daniel answered.  Tom’s son packed homework and books into his backpack.  The boy walked over to the cupboards for some school snacks.  He grabbed a bag of nacho chips, a Choca-Jing energy bar, and an Inflarrito for after gym class.  Daniel packed the food into the outer pocket of his backpack and walked over to the open fridge.  JD’s got this killer new game for his X-Boy; Victory, Valor, or Vengeance, he said.

Sounds cool.  What’s it like? asked Tom.

It’s all first person with worldview warplaying.  It’s clanned, and they even hold tournaments.  The coolest part is that you can be hanging out at a friend’s house, or anywhere on the network, and win cool stuff, like decks, said the boy.  He took two Pepsis from the case, put one in his bag, zipped the pocked closed, and opened the other.  He drank thirstily from the refreshing fountain of carbonized, caramel-flavored, caffeinated, sugary, salty juice.  He felt instantly invigorated and walked teary-eyed from the carbonation head rush in to the living room to watch his show.

Anythin’ else? Tom asked, following his son into the living room.

Yeah, you can win clothes and free food ‘round town.  The whole thing’s corporately sponsored.  So, they give away a lot of really gay shit, too, like coupons and crap, but if you win the championship game, then you get a new truck and, like, two million bucks.

Christ, I’m gonna start playin’.  Computer: morning paper, Tom loaded the site, showing a movie on the right and automatically displaying the morning newspaper on the left, over his cartoons.

Computer: swap screens, Tom’s son cast into the room.  The monitor obeyed by putting the news on the right and his movie on his side; the left.

Thanks, Tom said.  Ya want it, don’t ya?

Yeah, real bad, his son said, staring vacantly at the monitor.

How much? asked Tom.

Daniel looked into his father’s eyes, I can use my handheld, but it’ll be slow unless I drop another gig’ of RAM in.  That’s ‘bout fifty bucks.  The software and connection cost ‘bout that to hook up.  Then, it’s only ‘bout twenty a month.

Tom sat straight against the back of the overstuffed leather couch, and dug out his wallet.  He pulled two one-hundred-dollar bills from it.  Don’t go losin’ these, an’ don’t wave ‘em ‘round like they’re so fuckin’ cool to look at, either.  Ya’ll end up getting’ ‘em stolen.  So, put ‘em in your wallet ‘til ya pay for the shit.

Thanks, Dad.  I love you, said Daniel.

Yeah, I know.  I love you, too, said Tom.  He looked back at the monitor slowly displaying the scrolling news and read for the next several minutes.  He learned about a local criminal that was getting lynched for selling MDMA to minors.  ‘That guy’s gonna be run up forever,’ Tom thought.  Drunk driving was at an all time low, but Tom imagined that there were just more cops looking for druggies than drunks, and there were still just as many drunks, driving, as before.  The community college was going to put on A Christmas Carol.  Gay, he though aloud.  A choir was getting ready to put on a performance.  The economy was booming with Christmas sales.  The credit report of the nation was pretty crappy, and Tom knew why.  He was up to his neck in the red himself.  I’m gonna go feed the animals, then I’m leavin’ for work, Tom said, standing up.  Have a good day at school  Did ya get all your homework done?

No, but JD’ll let me copy off his, his son answered, unashamed.

Don’t let your teacher catch ya.

I won’t.  Have a good day at work, Dad.

Tom walked through the kitchen and swung the screen-door open with a loud squeak.  He stepped out onto the earth with a pleasant crunch on the frosty gravel.  He stopped mid threshold, as the cool morning air hit his face and condensed his breath into a thin white cloud.  He grabbed his sturdy black denim work jacket.  It had a Tom machine embroidered on an oval patch on the front of it and had the name and address of the construction company that he worked for on the back of it with a phone number underneath it.  Tom put it on and zipped it up.

He hurried across the gravel to his red and white outbuildings, unlocked the door to the barn, and walked in.  He said, Mornin’, to the musty manure-reeked room, and the animals replied in a loud commotion of whinnies, bleats, clucks, quacks, and honks.  He walked over to his pony first, touched the horse’s nose softly, and rubbed his hand on its neck.  It replied by whinnying coolly and tossing its head, playfully.  It smelled the human’s palm for anything nice, but there was no treat this morning.  The man grabbed the feedbags from their stack and filled them all with oats.  He looped them over the heads of his horses one by one, until all five were munching loudly.  He walked over to the sheep’s pens and shoveled some feed into each side.  The sheep shoved and bleated loudly, as they rushed to the trough.

A fly buzzed by Tom’s head, as he walked back to the front of the barn.  He batted at it, but the pest did not even notice the insult, as it headed for its breakfast in the manure.  Tom took a bucked of corn and bird feed from its hopper and a handful of that from the bucket.  He walked outside with a small following of fowl.  He spread the feed out onto the ground, lazily.  He looked out to the horizon and noticed a plume of dust rising and the squeaky noise of an old rusty 2001 GMC truck, as it sped and bounced along the gravel road.  As the neighbor buzzed by Tom’s driveway, he waved to Tom on his way to work.  Tom lifted a hand in reply.  He watched the dust cloud slowly move toward him on the cool breeze.  Just before it overtook his position, he took a deep breath, held the fresh air in, and set down the feed bucket.

‘God, I fuckin’ hate dust,’ he thought.  He turned and faced away from the wind.  Tom walked with the breeze, at the same pace, as the dust cloud, to the front door of an outbuilding that he used for his hobbies.  He unlocked the door and opened it.  He flipped on the florescent lights, which buzzed on over carpentry tools and various things on which Tom had been working.  He shut the door behind him, and the dust cloud passed by outside.  Tom smiled, knowing that he had successfully snuck into his workshop without anyone seeing him, except maybe international infrared surveillance satellites.  He looked over his things to make sure nothing had been touched and bolted the door shut behind him.  An old rocking chair sat half assembled on the floor.  Scattered wood chips and sawdust rested next to it.  And old gaming system machine lay torn apart and pushed to one side of the workbench for cleaning.  It looked like it needed even more cleaning, now that it had been there for so long.

Tom could not believe that his wife was so lazy, that she did not get up with him that beautiful morning, and he really hoped that Daniel would not lose those bills.  He would not have worried that much about the cash, except it was a whole quarter of his fun money.  He stepped over a dusty lawn mower, which he had long ago disassembled for its motor, and walked to the rear of the shed to a darker back room.  He pulled a string, and the light above him clicked on, spraying swaying light from where it hung.

Tom kicked up dust, as he stepped over garden tools, a rolled up old rubber green garden hose and various stacks of wood planks to a smaller door near the rear of the back room.  He jingled his keys free from the stitching at the bottom of his front pocked and unlocked that dead-bolted door with a loud mechanical click, as he turned the key.  A pinkish-red light illuminated next to the door about five feet up from the dirt floor.  Tom placed his left thumb onto the fingerprint reader, and there was another mechanical click, followed by a clank.  The fingerprint reader dimmed, and Tom opened the door and walked into the stairwell.  He shut the door by grabbing a lever and swinging it closed with a soft bang.  The rusty mechanical latch squeaked down and clamped closed with a metallic clank.  It was pitch-black in the stairwell.  Tom hit the light switch on the wall by memory.  The light illuminated the sixteen stairs down to the heavy steel bomb-shelter door.

As Tom walked down, he remembered when he and a friend had put in the automated fingerprint reader and unlocking mechanism.  He was always happy he did, and he admired the wiring job secured beautifully to the wall, as he examined it for any signs of wear.  He found no such signs by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs.  He unlocked and opened the bomb-shelter door.  As the heavy steel bomb-shelter door swung open, Tom could hear the fans running in the pre-lit room.  The sight hit him at the same time the smell did.  It was pure heaven to Tom, and he could almost hear angels singing.

The money trees reflected off the foil-insulated walls and swayed in the light breeze from the fans.  Their musty flowers were in eternal bloom, now, and their color was the brightest golden-green.  He walked into the middle of the room and inspected a leaf for signs of pests or disease.  It was large and healthy.  The hybrid had a slightly purplish hue to the veins and tips of its leaf.  Tom pulled a flower to his nose, and inhaled deeply.  The bud was swollen in sexual anticipation, but this lady would never know the wholeness of pollinating intercourse.  Tom pulled the next plant’s bud to his nose and looked closely at it.  Tom saw a little green praying mantis hiding beneath one of the leafy stems and blew a gentle nudge of air at it.  It swayed, reflexively, but remained mostly unmoved by the wind.  A ladybird beetle flew onto Tom’s leg, but he did not notice the hitchhiker.

He walked over to the control board.  The lights’ timing cycle was set at exactly twelve hours.  Tom made sure that the masking-tape-labeled knob, that read, Sunrise, was set to, 5:55 a.m., and the other knob, labeled, Sunset, to 5:55 p.m..  Tom noticed that the dawn and dusk knobs were still set to five minutes.  This was so that the lights never shocked the plants; a little modification of Tom’s own invention.  He was a little high, when he had put in the lighting system.  He had set the circulation system to four hundred cubic feet per minute.  This provided a slight breeze from west to east from the ductwork vents attached to the ceiling.

Tom became satisfied with what he saw and walked back to the door.  He walked back out of the shed and locked all of the doors along the way.  He walked over to his truck, thinking that the desert did not look all that uninhabitable that day.  The sage was large, and the junipers in his yard were full with berries.  He could see some little desert birds flying amongst some trees.  He grabbed the feed bucket up from the ground and dumped the rest of the feed out with an arcing motion.  Then, he walked back over to the barn, kicking up dirt, and scaring birds along the way.  He leaned into the barn door to put the pail back in the hopper.  He left the top half of the barn door open for the birds and closed the bottom.  His wife would be up soon enough, and she loved to do the chores.

As he walked over to his truck, he pressed a button on his key fob.  The doors unlocked and the engine started.  He opened the driver’s side door and climbed in.  He honked to his son.  Daniel came to the screened door window and waved back to his father.  Tom threw his truck into reverse, backed up to the right for about twenty feet, stopped, put the truck into drive, and peeled out of his driveway to the dirt road beyond.  Tom’s truck fishtailed, as he turned the same direction that his neighbor had been driving, and sped toward the highway.

Tom commanded, Phone: call Justin.  His digital phone rang from its charger in his truck, and it called his friend, Justin, who answered with a, Yeah, Tom? over the speakers in the cab.

Yeah, hey, man.  Come over tonight for dinner.  My wife’s makin’ her world famous fruit salad.  This was their code for a leaf-trimming party.  We’re gonna play some Pinnacle, and drink a bit.  Do me a favor, ‘n’ call Dan, too, said Tom.

Yeah, call Hector, then.  He’ll come out.   Can I haul out Kyle and Kevin?  They’ll behave, if we give ‘em a movie or a game.

Yeah, okay, bring some pajamas for ‘em and Madden two-kay twelve.  I’m gonna trash you.

Ya think so, huh?  I have my own expansion team, said Justin.

Leave your memory card at home, and I won’t use mine, Tom negotiated.

What?!   I wanted to show ya the new Tekken.  I’ve beaten it with all but the two crappiest characters.  I was hopin’ ya’d use your expertise and help me out a bit.

All right, man, but no expansion teams, Tom offered.

Deal.  So, your wife’s makin’ her fruit thing, huh?  Does that mean we get to eat as much as we want?  Justin offered.

Yeah, but what’re you doin’ this weekend? Tom asked.

- Fucker!  Just cut me off! Justin said, his horn blaring over Tom’s speakers.  Prob’ly stop in at Jim’s.  Then prob’ly go out and get drunk.

Where at? asked Tom.

Her sister’s friends are in town.  So, I was thinkin’ ‘bout the Roadhouse, posed Justin.

No way.  Last time, I ended up drinkin’ whiskey and passin’ out in Laura’s trailer, ‘member?

"Yeah, ‘passed out’," Justin said, sarcastically.

"Oh, yeah, like you remember anything," pricked Tom.

"Ya hit that fag, and he fuckin’ ran off.  You remember," cut Justin.

Tom did remember seeing the guy running off in his blurred memory.  Do ya ‘member, if I hurt ‘im?

"Naw, just some cock-sucker, y’know," clarified Justin.

Nope, don’t remember much of that, stated Tom.

Me either.  Those jager-bombs were way too much for me.  I ended up pukin’ in one of the johns, admitted Justin.

My dog licks my balls, if I put peanut butter on ‘em, counter-admitted Tom.

"Ha ha.  It was hell, man!  I thought I was gonna die!"

Tom chucked.  You’re stayin’ over tonight, then, right? asked Tom.

Yeah, but your wife’d better make extra salad for me! Justin said laughingly.

Okay,  see ya at work, Tom closed.

See ya, Justin said before disconnecting with Tom.

Tom said, Phone: end call, and the phone disconnected from where it sat on its receiver.  He quietly drove for the next couple of moments across the desert, turned on the radio and the heat.  The cab and seats warmed quickly, and the radio personality read the news.

… States.  In world news:  The President clarified his intention not to agree to the unilateral arms reduction agreement set by the other NATO Superpowers, citing China’s accelerated military growth as the main determining factor.  The disarmament of reb-,  Tom cut off the newscaster, opting instead for some Nineties and Two-K Rock and Roll.  The morning was pleasant but cool, and the dust rose slowly off the track where the truck had been.  The tires hummed and popped on the loose