To Live Without Warning

By Timothy LaBadie

To Live Without Warning is a story set in a future San Francisco, where public transportations is the only way to travel, and people with colds are required by machines called breathe-eraters to wear masks. Within this speculative fiction novel, there are aliens who disguise themselves as homeless people, and there are twins from an alien abduction, one human, one not, plus a virtual couple who live in a bungalow on a beach in a virtual Costa Rica who mix up their computer code to have a virtual child, and then there is a cat woman who can do all sorts of erotica with her tail, and a drummer who leads more than a band called Death, Ax and Grind.

"Joshua Cromwell has a dream, one he has had for some time, where he's a planet. After a mysterious woman tells him of the aliens that are about to attack the Earth, she takes him to her home in the tenderloin where he meets a robot the color and texture of an orange. His life seems to be very, very important to these aliens called the Hymenopts, but he would really rather not participate in whatever is about to happen, if only he had that choice.

"This is a love story, a growing up story, and a coming home story. It's about friendship and family and about the planet Earth. This is the story of how we begin to remember." If you enjoy sci-fi fantasy fiction, you'll probably enjoy To Live Withour Warning. Most of my readers know that I'm not a great fantasy fan; however, as I grew up in San Francisco and play the drums myself, this novel had a unique appeal, plus I enjoy novels with an element of the metaphysical.

Timothy LaBadie is a good writer with a colorful imagination and spicy style. The novel is well-written and well-edited. LaBadie is the author of essays and fiction which stand out for their offbeat settings and timeless humor. Give him a try.

- Kaye Trout, Kaye's Bookshelf, Reviewer's Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review, January 2008

For more information, please visit http://www.tolivewithoutwarning.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 5, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462825219

Timothy LaBadie

Timothy S. LaBadie is the founder and chairman of the board of CrossCheck, Inc., the nation’s largest independently owned payment guarantee company. He is the past president of American Marketing Corporation and The Green Sheet, Inc., a national financial services newsletter and magazine publisher. He is also founder and past president of Hasslinger Studios, a fine art cast glass sculpture studio, and Planetspin Productions, which included retail record stores as well as concert and music video production. Mr. LaBadie started writing stories in the third grade and his writing now includes numerous essays, short stories and novels. VTT, his fourth novel, is the first to be published. He has also published Evolve or Die, a collection of essays on business. Mr. LaBadie lives and writes in California. He resides with two kids, two dogs and one wife.

Book preview

To Live without Warning

Timothy LaBadie

Copyright © 2007 by Timothy LaBadie.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2007900719

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4257-5370-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4257-5364-1

                   eBook                                 9781462825219

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

38470

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

I wrote this book for Bob Ficarra.

Only he knows why.

The title of this book comes from a song by Green Day

but the content of the novel has nothing to do with the lyrics.

. . . why should creatures have the burden of existence

forced on them without their consent?

C. S. Lewis

This is the story of how we begin to remember

Paul Simon

. . . is it arrogance that leads to the belief that a

planet such as Earth could spew forth sentient life

without being sentient itself?

Bradley

Chapter One

Joshua Cromwell

Welcome

Joshua Cromwell was dreaming. In his dream, he wasn’t Joshua Cromwell; He was something else entirely:

I’m hurling through darkness headed toward I don’t know where. Inside I’m burning, molten metal ready to explode through the solidity of being, rupturing my body. My surface is on fire too, flaring blue and orange. Small sparks of solid ember burst from my surface leaving a tail aglow behind me. I spin and tumble in a trajectory outward.

Instantaneously my awareness came forth, from nothingness to somethingness too fast to fathom. I move at such high velocity that I want to scream; but I have no mouth; no atmosphere to carry it, only blackness and soothing cold, except something bright it seems from where I came.

It seems as if I will travel forever. Time and time again, I tumble and turn. My surface cools, the flames go out. I wonder where I might be headed, but learn to relax and enjoy the ride. Motion for its own sake consumes me; tossing and turning, I shoot forever outward. The blazing heat within me settles into a throbbing pressure, a forceful glow. I just wish I knew where I was going and what I might do once I get there.

Joshua Cromwell woke with his head sweaty and hot. His sheets were soaked. It had been getting worse, nightly. The shakes lasted longer each morning. He sat up in bed. Something must be terribly wrong with him; He was sure that The Dream was more than a dream. He was having it so often that much of the time he was awake he spent thinking about The Dream. Maybe his ancestors were aliens from outer space and he, unknowingly, was marooned on this planet.

He giggled then shook his head to make the thoughts within subside; his head wobbled and throbbed. He reached over to the bedside table to find his glasses, super thick lenses, eyeballs he called them. Where are my eyeballs? he thought. But they were right there on the table once he reached far enough to knock over the bottle of water that he always kept there.

He tried to grab the plastic container before it hit the floor, and missed, but it was capped, so it fell to the floor without spilling onto the carpet without making a sound.

Joshua bent over with his butt still on the bed feet on the floor and picked the bottle up placing it back on the table. His back muscles felt like he was a lot older than thirty-three, his mind wanted to be twenty again. He frowned and stretched, got up from the bed and put on a pair of faded purple and off white striped boxer shorts, larger than he needed but a size he preferred. Listening to the sounds Auntie Alice, his mother’s sister, his only roommate, made in the kitchen, Joshua headed that direction, shaking all those dream thoughts out of his head. He snapped his fingers instead of using voice commands to turn on the lights from room to room as he went. Without a voice command, they’d automatically turn off in five minutes. In the kitchen his auntie was at the counter cooking something, probably eggs, which was the norm. On the opposite side of the room, the digital wall screen was on, tuned to the WTN (World Talk Network).

All the politicians of the world vied for airtime on WTN to address what they thought the people of the world wanted to hear. The president of the United States of Earth (US of E) was on now, talking softly because the volume of the wall screen was set low. Even so, Joshua could hear her say something about the playgrounds in these United States must be made safe for all the people of the world, including the handicapped. Joshua remembered some article he’d read in the last month or so where the young daughter of some big mucky muck politician had burnt her butt on a metal slide. So now they were not only retro-fitting all parks and playgrounds with a new high tech plastic, but some shmuck had actually lobbied and won for all the new slides to have wheelchair accessibility. How does a wheelchair go down a slide anyhow?

Sitting at the breakfast nook, bare legs on wood, and facing his aunt’s back, he said, Morning Al. Sleep well? Joshua always called his aunt Al: it was an endearment he thought cute and never thought twice about whether she liked the name or not. He just assumed she did. Yet, she never said one way or the other.

It took her a moment, presumably because she was busy cooking, before she answered, Fine. You?

Yeah, okay, though I feel a little restless this morning. Can’t quite understand it. Feels as if I forgot to do something, like something important. Like when a dream fades but the feeling remains.

Joshua turned off the wall screen with a command word spoken softly. The wall screen turned to wallpaper matching the rest of the kitchen. He knew Al rarely turned the damn thing off, hell it was like her only companion while he was at work, but, while he was home, he preferred not to have the outside world constantly intruding on his own thoughts. His thoughts at the moment were wandering.

Out of nowhere he said, Tonight after work, I’m meeting Bradley. I’ll grab myself something to eat while I’m out. His band’s playing at some new club in the SOMA District. Seems a little bit too much Scatter-ville for his kind a raw talent, but I guess the young, up and coming rich are always looking to do a little slumming, rub elbows with the street urchin. He paused a moment then said, They don’t know what they’re in for inviting Bradley into their neighborhood.

Al turned from the counter holding a plate she carried over to the breakfast nook and presented with delight to her nephew. Joshua smiled at her. Her expression quickly changed to one of concern. While standing next to the table she said, That’s the question I would ask you. Why do you continually go slumming with him? I know you were roommates in college, she held up her hands as if to stop him from answering for a second, but your lives have gone such totally different directions. He dropped out and you graduated. I mean, you don’t belong in his world and he couldn’t possibly function in yours. She handed Joshua a fork. Does Bradley even use a fork when he eats, or does he just stick his face into the plate? She giggled and smiled showing she wasn’t really judgmental of Bradley but just didn’t understand her nephew’s obsessive fascination with him and his life style.

Al went to the counter and retrieved her plate, joining Joshua at the table. Joshua sipped his coffee from a chipped mug he had inherited from his parents. As he held it in his hands, he wondered how it had been chipped. What was the story behind it? It was white with a cow face in black. Joshua placed it gently on the table. He took a big bite of his food and talked around it. "Bradley lives the rebellious artistic life, one that I’ve always admired. All those young creative types live fast and die young. These people are screaming with life; they’re so alive it almost drives them crazy, this passion to live. I’ll never live that kind of life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get a contact high from it once and awhile.

So many of the artistic crowd, living their entire life in academia, think that doing art makes them better than the average human being. They’re above money and deals and politics. But art is a celebration of life. Life comes first, art second. Sometimes when I look, or hear, or read real creativity, I think my life is worthless within the cosmic picture. But, being with Bradley makes me feel as if every little thing on the planet is just as important as anything else. Even me! I’m important!

Al shook her head, then smiled with her mouth full and nodded.

I won’t be out too late, promise. But don’t wait up.

As Joshua left the kitchen for the bedroom, he heard the wall screen turn back on.

When Joshua was dressed and ready for work, he stumbled for a second and then went to the front door and put his lips to the breathe-erater. Doing the normal pattern of his life made him forget the weird thoughts he had been thinking; some weird unconscious guilt feelings of his mother dying during his birth remained. He was having trouble shaking those feelings this morning. Sometimes he felt guilty for just being alive.

The breathe-erater cleared him and passed an infrared beam to the multifunctional badge on his chest, which then glowed green with approval. From now on for the rest of the day that badge was his ticket to walk safely the streets without a filter mask on his face. The public safety officials were always on patrol to help protect the public from the people who didn’t have the preventative protection required. Mistakes do happen. If Joshua had not passed the breathe-erater, his front door to his house would not have opened until he strapped a protective mask on his face. The use of the breathe-erater had eradicated probably sixty percent of communicative diseases. The number of people wearing the masks went down dramatically in the first six months after the law had passed requiring the device at every home. Joshua wondered whether that was because the people decided that they’d rather stay at home then wear the mask or whether the events of the common cold were actually being reduced.

Joshua walked out the open door onto the street to the silent public transportation that would take him to his office. There were no private vehicles in any metropolis anymore, due to the Federal Mandate of 2008, a long time ago. There was no pollution either because there were no internal combustion engines here.

Joshua hopped aboard bus number 6 to the financial district. It was big enough to carry forty-five people to work. So it was personal in a way, the same people every day going to work. But Joshua chose the back of the bus so that he could read while still having the rest of the people in view. He never did get to read today for as he sat down and the bus began to drive away, Joshua noticed a small woman staring at him from the sidewalk. Her long black hair was sweeping back and forth across her face with the wind. Her coffee-and-cream colored skin belied the steel blue of her eyes, which colored contacts must have tinted from their natural brown. Beyond the feelings of vague recognition, down to her inquisitive face at the end of the tunnel of his vision, ran his heart as if chasing a kindred spirit in flight. His nose bumped against the plastic of the window, and she, watching, smiled a laugh as he jerked himself back from the pain. But his eyes never left hers, even while he rubbed his nose.

A static sound came to his ear and then words from within his head screamed in a soft voice that was not his own, So you’re the other one. He turned to watch her until she was out of sight shaking his head to dislodge the sounds there. Had that been her voice?

And all the way to the office, hell, for the entire rest of the day, Joshua couldn’t get her face or voice out of his mind. Working at calculations at his desk, or dazing off during a meeting that didn’t have anything to do with his specialty in mathematics, he would watch the vision of her face smiling at him. And though his imagination carried him further, he knew in his heart that once you walked away from a stranger in The City, the odds were astronomical of ever seeing that person again.

So toward the end of the day, Joshua was feeling somewhat sorry for himself, yet he looked forward to his rendezvous with Brady. And he really didn’t have that long of a workday, seeing how the federal government had restricted employers from having their employees work more than four hours a day.

Just then, the multifunction badge on his chest beeped. He answered it. Joshua Cromwell here.

Cromwell!

Bradley!

Thought you’d be here by now. Got to work late?

It’s one minute after.

That’s one minute too long. In fact, going there at all is a waste of time.

I was just leaving.

See you in a minute.

Or less. And Joshua pushed the badge to turn off the communication. He slid all his work off his desk using both arms to slide the stuff off the edge and into the drawers. The surface was clean, clean desk means clean mind.

He fled out the office door, sprinting from heel to toe like an elk in the park.

Joshua traveled through town in a daze, not really aware of his current surroundings, thinking of his destination. And as Joshua bounced up to the table where Bradley was sitting, he looked over Bradley’s shoulder from behind at the paper place mat on which he’d been scribbling. At the top of the placemat, he’d written a song title: A Train of Thought. Then abstract thoughts without any rhythm or rhyme, just notes. Such as: Like a train moves through the landscape, my mind moves through time; Time doesn’t move, only my thoughts through the landscape.

Bradley turned his head and said, What the fuck gives me the pleasure? Are you going to sit down or what? No? So go ahead, stand there and drool on my shoulder. I don’t give a shit. He went back to writing on the paper.

Joshua Cromwell sat on a chair close to Bradley and stared at the words on the placemat. He said, New song?

Yeah, well, an idea for a song anyhow. I finished the song from your PlanetSpin philosophy the other night. We’ll play it this evening, second song first set.

Since college, Joshua had a certain way of looking at the rest of humanity. He’d only shared this thought with Bradley. He had done so half-jokingly because he wasn’t sure how Bradley would react. That is why he had never told anyone else, he couldn’t take the risk. Anyhow, when he was inebriated he often repeated it to his best friend, over and over again, year after year, until finally, Bradley had written a song about it. Joshua’s philosophy went like this:

The Planet Earth at the equator is about 25,000 miles around. Dividing that by twenty-four hours gives the speed a person would be traveling if that person stood somewhere along the Equator: roughly, 1000 miles per hour.

The Planet Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. Squaring that distance and multiply it by π will equal roughly the distance the Planet Earth travels around the sun: 27.171 billion miles. Taking this number and dividing it by the number of hours in a year, will equal the speed the Planet Earth is traveling around the sun: 3.1 million miles/hr. Now add the 1 thousand miles/hour the Planet Earth is spinning.

People on Planet Earth were definitely moving very fast and didn’t even know it. And that’s without even considering how fast their galaxy was moving through the universe.

Now, taking all that into consideration, Joshua, being a mathematician, figured that if human beings can’t even tell that they are moving at such a tremendous velocity, that to expect them to notice anything at all would be unrealistic.

Nowadays when Bradley or Joshua knew someone was full of it, or opinionated because of their limited experience or awareness, they would look at each other and whisper the word: PlanetSpin. And because the concept could be reduced to just this one word, it was an inside joke between them, one that never failed to raise a smile.

Joshua looked forward to hearing the song when he asked, What’s the title?

‘Keep Your Bullshit to Yourself.’ But I think it might need a different title. Who knows what? It’ll come to me eventually.

A big bull of a man bumped into Joshua’s chair as he was walking by. Immediately he got pissed because Joshua’s chair was in his way and without warning slammed the heel of his palm into the back of Joshua’s head, saying, Fuckhead! Then continued on his bullish way.

Bradley, without missing a beat, pushed his wooden chair back, stepped on it and leaped over the table without touching it, and grabbed the man’s arm spinning him round to face him.

Now Bradley, at five foot seven, was clearly eight if not ten inches shorter than this man and at least a hundred pounds lighter. But Bradley stood there in his black leather jacket and blue jeans with a smirk on his face. He wasn’t angry or out of breath. Hell, he didn’t even take his sunglasses off. He spoke clearly and succinctly but softly almost seductively, when he said, Too late to apologize. Bradley’s knees bent and he jumped. Rising off his toes with his arms swinging in a blur, Bradley pounded the guy four times in the nose before his feet returned to the ground. While flying backward, the man was unconscious before he hit the floor. People at the nearest table jumped up and wiped the guy’s sprayed nose-blood from their faces. The bartender gave Bradley a thumbs-up. Bradley nodded and calmly returned to his seat without another word and continued writing on his placemat. He looked up at Joshua, paused and said, Guy almost broke my train of thought.

Joshua, looking at the title of the new song Bradley had written on the placemat, laughed long and hard and then waved to the waitress who quickly delivered his drink. Everyone slowly went back to their drinks, mumbling among themselves, leaving the guy on the floor, with intermittent glances in his and Bradley’s direction.

Joshua wondered what the club would look like where Bradley was playing tonight, and then decided to ask. Okay, here we are in our normal dive having drinks and all, but how the heck did you get a gig in scatter-ville? I mean, SOMA for God’s sake. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?

Bradley puckered his thin lips and then smacked them open, pushed his tongue out to touch quickly the tip of his nose as if in concentration. He slid it around his lips and then loudly sucked it back into his mouth. He smiled. Rock and roll, man. No plan. Just whatever! You want to go over and see the setup. It’s a cool place. I promise to kick ass there, honest. I should head over there soon, anyhow. He snapped his fingers at the waitress who instantly brought him his bill, grinning, giggling and shooing his hand away