Axevictim

By Major Roxbrough

In the future man will have moved on in terms of technological skill, but will he have become any more moral? Will he have learned to live in peace with others? Will the earth still be in the garden paradise it is now? Will the population be under control? Or will man have learned nothing from his past mistakes, read history, and learned nothing?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Dec 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543488180

Major Roxbrough

Major Roxbrough has written several collections of short stories and novels and is beginning to release them through Xlibris publishing. He is a married man in his early sixties and has a great love for nature and animals. He currently has five cats and two dogs. He has been a prog music fan since his early teens and sites this as a source of inspiration for much of his imaginative output. When writing he draws on sources as diverse as Shakespeare, Monty Python, Blackadder, the Bible and every science fiction film and TV series ever produced. His imagination and sense of humour is warped and very dark indeed and nothing he writes should be taken too seriously. But it is fun! Try some of his work and find out for yourself. Glimpserama short stories set in the thirty third century. Remember Next Week set just after Glimpserama and sequential Axevictim two serials commenced together with further short stories Invasion of the Zernoplat A full length novel set in the same multiverse as all the other tales

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Major Roxbrough.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5434-8819-7

   eBook   978-1-5434-8818-0

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/07/2017

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CONTENTS

1.   The Watcher - Part One

2.   Willow Shall Fade

3.   Sandmaster

4.   The Watcher - Part Two

5.   Worth Killing For

6.   The Watcher - Part Three

7.   Axevictim

8.   Worth Loving

9.   The Opposite Of…

10.   Unalterable Law

11.   Professor Marigold

12.   The Watcher - Part Four

13.   Academy 2A - Part One

14.   The Watcher - Part Five

15.   Collage

16.   Vioshock

17.   Academy 2A[II] - Part Two

Dedicated to Dexter Lopez; without your brilliant insights and support, none of this would have been possible, I will never be able to thank you enough.

Also for Mother, of course, without you none of this would have been possible either, I cannot put into words how much your encouragement and support has meant to me over the years, thank you, I love you.

MAJOR ROXBROUGH

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Major Roxbrough is in his early sixties and remembers being thrilled with the first moon landing. This is his third collection of short stories predicting what he thinks the solar system will be like in a thousand years. He lives in Yorkshire, with his wife, two beloved dogs and four cats. He is an ardent supporter of Cats protection, loves Prog-Rock Music and relaxes by canvas painting with acrylics

Glimpserama [first collection].

Remember Next Week [second collection].

NORTHERN NYJORD

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THE WATCHER

Prologue

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Three thousand two hundred and forty nine years after the crucifixion of the Jewish prophet Jesus of Nazareth, Gleve Orchvestige; inventor of the Brain Machine had been sent back to his own body. The wasted, starved body that had no more than seconds to live. He was strapped into the second chair and even if not bound, would have lacked the strength to rise. Had he managed that, he would never have gotten out of the laboratory, hidden as it was in a concealed fortress built into Lomonosov crater on the planet Mars. At the very same instant that the brain machine failed to keep the two brothers in the body of one another; they switched back to their own fleshly shells.

Darcie his entrepreneur brother, with the help of former convict Spider Hourglass, broke into the fortress and the machine was saved, even though, sadly its creator was not. The masterfully talented programmer Fingers Sponsogil then realised the incredible potential of the machine and re-programming it, created the Encaphlotron. The Encaphlotron could project the mind of a human being across dramatic distances, to be housed in another skull.

It could even bridge the awesome vastness of space and one woman helped the beleaguered crew of Iskatel-Seeker to escape the terrors of hyper-space, where they were stranded and helped them land on the planet Nyjord, which orbited the star Proxima.

Thus Nyjord was populated over the centuries by four races of hominids. The aboriginal Khela, Barabora and Banteme and the descendants of those few human explorers who had reached the world hundreds of years before. They were then referred to as Ursin, a bastardisation of Earth.

In the year four thousand five hundred and fifty five, by the same reckoning the story of Barorne’ the violet artisan of Valgralaa and that of the planet Nyjord could be told.

PART ONE. NEX

Encaphlotron, it did entice,

Those who marvelled ‘pon the ice,

Cooling breeze and pure white glow.

Albescent purity, traversing snow,

Air so clear the full solution,

Ether free of dread pollution.

Cross the swirling Sea of Foam,

Chanced such players, they did roam.

Searching for a second screen,

Taking of escape serene,

Ursers then should seek to ford,

From the face of clean Nyjord. Unknown, perhaps the Knight of Urs

1

A CROSS THE ALBESCENT landscape of unsullied snow, the lone figure fled. Death bayed at his heals, cloak flapping in the frigid breeze that gnawed at extremities with teeth of icy fire. He was the violet artisan Barorné. Yet powerful by every thaumaturgical standard known to the world, that day he knew fear and dread. Thus, leaving ebon tracks in his wake, a trail easy to follow, he raced into the fuliginous maw of the dark cavern.

His breath charged from his nostrils in hoary jets, as he laboured to regain composure and calm. He would need enough to ensure his one slim chance at survival. For his twin pursuers were powerful and as far as he was concerned their intention malign. Their intention was murderous. Perspiration ran down features that looked as though they were carved from iron, he was oblivious to the dank chill of the caves’ interior. Its lithic walls ran with condensation, there was the constant natural harmony of dripping as stalactites and stalagmites were being gradually formed.

Barorné the Khela blinked, urging his pupils to become accustomed to the dimness. A lighted brand would have allowed his pursuers too easy a sign and ended the chase before his one slim hope. The illumination would have indicated his position and that he could not risk, he needed time, but it was quickly running out for him.

His unnaturally pale blue eyes were even then trying to see around the rocky womb, when the echoing sound of booted feet told him those who sought him were close. They did carry torches and a momentary chiaroscuro of dancing elongated figures on the sides of the cavern told him he was still one jump ahead of them. At that hopeful moment waves of fatigue coursed through his system, the pursuit had been long and arduous for both parties.

He felt his limbs trembling with an ague, the chattering of fear threatened dominion over his jaw. For an instant he sagged, yet he had come too far to fail now. Had he slipped into unconsciousness, it would not be one, from which, he would ever emerge.

There be nowhere left to hide Barorné, give thyself unto us and we shall determine thy death to be swift and merciful, a voice echoed through the caves. Clarin’s voice was gentle, almost embracing. Had he cried in agitation, Barorné would have drawn comfort from it. The violet artisans mortal enemy was verbose.

Knowest thee that we are aware of impending doom for thee. Thou art depleted so surrender and accept.

Barorné hugged the shadows, knowing that which he sought to be tantalisingly close. If Clarin the Barabora had been alone he might have risked single combat with him, but as ever he had the companionship of his acolyte, the ever faithful Raspurnon. It was said that the latter was unrivalled with the gladius and Barorné did not judge it the right occasion to test that reputation.

Gathering the folds of his violet melton around his slim shoulders, Barorné quested for the tell-tale recess that he sought and when he had almost given up all hope, his long thin, blue fingers found it. With as little issue as he could manage he pressed the hidden control that activated the Encaphlotron. A tiny keyboard slid out from a hither-to concealed slot and by touch the violet artisan punched in a series of codes that he knew would activate the alien device and achieve his objective.

His objective was escape!

An escape so fantastic as to be beyond the imagination of almost every living creature on Nyjord. Barorné was intent upon leaving the planet, not in bodily terms however, but by intellect alone. He jambed his tall blue-veined head in a recess in the dark walls and the Encaphlotron then did as his computed instruction by keyboard, had commanded it.

Hearing some of the soft clicking of the machine, Clarin screamed in fury, Stop him, but it was useless and Barorné’s empty husk of a body fell to the cavern floor. Yet though the body was now dead, the quidity of it, the essential life essence had escaped them and there was no immediate answer to such a desperate and unexpected ruse.

Raspurnon, the diminutive Banteme, slowly turned over the body, illuminating it with the brand in his left fist, he looked upward to his master, his eyes tallow and glittering and he proclaimed,

Thou art victorious, Master, this body be inert, it has ceased to be. The diminutive understudy’s wan features were greasy with the exertion of pursuit and he gasped and leaned against the wall, for support.

Come away from that wall and be in haste, his master hissed. Inside that lithic vault be the machination of Barorné’s escape and to pursue him and make an end to him, I must learn it’s secrets.

I understand not, the apprentice complained, He be the former Violet Artisan, his body breathes no more.

’Tis true enough, Clarin agreed, "But though we have vanquished the body from our world, my Apprentice, he has used this machine and his mind has escaped".

Ma-cheen, Raspurnon had never heard the word before, Be that some new spell, of which I be ignorant?

Clarin nodded, A machine is a thaumaturgical construct of metals and other strange elements, my dear pupil. Once one can master it’s controls then thaumaturgy the like of which thou canst scarce imagine becomes possible and I will master those controls.

Raspurnon grinned, But of course Master, for then thou will be the greatest mage of the four races, the greatest on all Nyjord.

I wouldst be more powerful than that, my dear Pupil, Marn Clarin’s eyes glittered in the guttering ambient light of the cave, I would have more power than the Blue Moon Goddess, Brahma, I would wield more strength than the Ancient Sky Gods who came to us from the stars, arrived in their silver temples. I can only do this though if Barorné’s intellect is no more and so I must achieve it’s destrucción!

2

D ESPITE THE BREADTH of his imagination however, Clarin still had not fully grasped the distance that Barorné’s mind was traversing. The pure intellect alone, that was all that now existed of the violet artisan, hurtled beyond the physical boundaries of gravity and space. In truth it had no mass and thus was not effected by the usual forces of the cosmos. It could not be frozen by the absolute chill of space, it could not be fatigued by the tremendous distance it covered. Yet he existed, for he was aware, he thought and therefore he continued to be. The coalescence of vitality, ideas, experience and energy continued to roam outward, infinitely farther than any native of Nyjord had ever trekked before.

As his mind no longer consisted of matter in the true sense of the word, but possessing of a far more ethereal quality, then even the velocity of hyper-space was not a barrier to him. He attained a speed greater in excess of that which light itself reaches, so he not only travelled through three dimensions, but five. His conciousness flashed through space and also sped back through time. As it progressed through the spiral arm of the milky way in an outward direction it went back through the centuries.

He came to a small system, a series of planets that orbited a main-class star, it was the star So and the system was the solar system. What remained of Barorné knew that this was the place humans had issued from thousands of years later, when their tall silver temples had touched down on Nyjord. He was unable to calculate the date, but he knew he had travelled back several thousand years. If this did not keep him hidden from Marn Clarin, what could?

On warm, verdant Urs, (the name of the third world orbiting the star) according to his ancient grimoires several thousand million humans had lived at any given time. He could not imagine a planet so teaming with a single life form, it seemed selfish and cruel to the other species, but humans, it was believed were far crueller than Barabora could ever be. To he, a Khela, it was therefore the perfect maze.

The question that then presented itself to the malign mage was, once he entered the head of such a primitive and cruel species, would he be able to dominate it to submission? He felt that at least, due to his years of mental disciplines and lessons in the weirding arts that he could hide in a humans subconscious. There to build up his energies once more and conceive a stratagem, that would enable him to have done with Clarin and his little apprentice.

The chill of absolute space could not have made the grim resolve of the magi any the colder, as he darted down through the thick atmosphere of the blue world that reminded him of Brahma. The Violet Artisan existed for those few final moments as pure intellect, unyieldingly cruel, without consideration for anything other than the preservation of self. It fell downward toward the northern hemisphere, for upon such on Nyjord was the initial home of what had once been the Khela and he sought at least the tiniest of customary sensation.

On that world, which was in fact greater in mass than his own, there was a tiny island sovereignty. A country, yet though not of great land mass, had ruled the greatest empire the planet had ever seen and that appealed to Barorné. He sped down toward England and even chose the northern region of that tiny land. A segment of location that harboured the most enigmatic and eccentric of what made those who lived there greatest of the great; Yorkshire. From the countless millions of skulls, the intellect of Barorné could have inhabited, he chose to hide inside one of the folk of the shire of York.

He had fled across space, hyper-space and down the centuries of time and he was hiding in Yorkshire, on the planet the Nyjordic knew as Urs and the year was one thousand nine hundred and ninety two.

3

M ARN CLARIN, THE Violet Thaumaturge, fell to his knees in his castle laboratory, such was his fatigue. He had been bending over his instruments, concentrating all of his energies for so long, his muscles suddenly failed him. Cold dampness from the greasy cobbles of the laboratory floor soaked into his hose, but he was oblivious of such discomfort. Raspurnon, the less vital Banteme slept in a hard backed chair in the corner of the room. Only the slow rising and falling of his chest told the Thaumaturge that his assistant was still alive.

Curses, Clarin began, May all the demons of Czyściec (purgatory) damn the Artisan’s soul! This further delay tarries and taxes me and I am sore vexed. It eats at my resolve, withers my ambition and my schemes canst not come to full fruition whilst I know-est that he lives.

He turned for the Scannertron disconsolately and collapsed into his own piece of furniture. Reflecting;

‘Once his life force finds a weak-willed host it will invade and conquer, he will have flesh, a body and will live and breathe again. I must find him! There be not a corner of the galaxy that he can hide in that will be able to evade my instruments for ever’!

The days passed into months, from two distant worlds the two warring magi made their plans. There was insufficient incident in that period to make it worthy of note. The moment came when narrative was resumed however. Several new players were about to unwittingly be hurled onto the cosmic stage. The drama could begin afresh.

Burton was just walking from the artist supply shop when the first wave hit him. Even in thick-soled boots, the ground suddenly seemed to dissolve beneath his feet. He came to an abrupt halt and the sensation abated for a second, but the next wave was even stronger! In front of his vision the air seemed suddenly to shimmer and distort. It was the same sort of illusion as that when hot air is rising from even hotter ground, but it was not hot enough that day for that to be the explanation.

In his discomfort Burton presumed the oscillation to be some bizarre eye defect that had suddenly struck him. Then an envelope in the ether before him seemed to open into a violet ovoid, he felt a curious tugging at his mind, his brain felt as though thousands of tiny creatures were scurrying beneath his skull.

Was he having a stroke? Is this what it felt like? The air before him seemed to be sucked into the epicentre of the phenomena, which he reasoned, was not real. He stopped dead in his tracks and for him then it was far too late. He felt his mind being pulled into the ovoid, he experienced a sudden out-of-body sensation, that reason told him was not actually possible scientifically.

His mind was spinning then, he wondered that he did not become unconscious, but he could see the centre of the ovoid and it abruptly engulfed him and he was in space! The vacuum did not kill him, for he was not breathing, how could he breathe without lungs, without a body, his mind was journeying with greater and greater velocity,

‘I’m imagining this’, he thought, ‘I’m having and incredible fantasy. But why? How did it happen, what is happening to me, do I have a brain tumour’? Then Burton experienced no more, for his mind tumbled into the sable cloak that was total oblivion.

On Nyjord, Marn Clarin had entered from the wing of the castle the day before. He once more occupied centre stage.

The search has taken me two hundred and fifteen days, Raspurnon, but now, at last, success; I have located that which I seek-est.

Congratulations Master, his fawning apprentice was swift to respond. His expression was one of deeply impressed admiration, for he truly did admire the master’s adeptitude with the Scannertron.

Clarin took a place in his stained, high backed frond-wood chair. The leather that covered it was of Pteranodon and greatly prized for that reason. He massaged the ache from his eyes with the ball of each thumb. Deep brown eyes set in Negroid features, his nose broad, his lips generous. The slightly electrical tinge of aroma from the circuits of his bizarre contrivances flared his nostrils with content. Ozone was like fine perfume to the Thaumaturge.

Before him, just a metre from his chair on a stout frond-timber table, a slim panel resided, bizarre cable coming out of its base and rear. Raspurnon knew this to be the view-screen of the Scannertron, which could be in another room due to the magic capabilities of the electric black-cord. The image on the screen was as swirling miniature clouds, only a Thaumaturge of Clarin’s capabilities could focus the Scannertron, with sufficient accuracy to produce discernible images. With Clarin’s magic skills it was possible to manipulate the electronic brain of the Scannertron in such a way as to see through the parallel barriers of space and time, into the ley-lines of the ether.

Raspurnon glanced at the flowing effect upon the screen asking nasally, Where; Master of unparalleled skill, show me what thou hast located for I find I am sore impatient to see the fruition of thy marvellous conjury? Together we shall reign victorious this time, we shall smash the Artisan to a bloody ruin! Then, the shattered shards of his ruptured soul shall be scattered abroad into total oblivion.

Yet Clarin then seemed to sigh and explained why,

Were it that easily accomplished Apprentice mine, I wouldst have done the deed alone. I would have surprised Barorné and deal with him in just such a way as thou hast described. Alas ’tis not so easily done, Raspurnon. I cannot locate one single soul in the multitude and in the exact time the artisan escaped to. I fear the circuitry of even the Scannertron has not the necessarily fine graduation. There are millions of souls on the bizarre world that Barorné skiddered whimpering to. Many millions of barbarians crowd their concrete cities.

What be this con-creep of which thou speakest, Master?

Oh, a detail Raspurnon, not worthy of thy trouble. ’Tis a sort of super-hardened sand and clay that is moulded into very grotesque buildings on the world the aborigines call Urs. I have mastered their language, which is an ancient form of Standard, but the meaning of many phrases have me baffled I must confess.

The barbarian tongue is like the sound of the woolly sneeps mayhap?

Clarin grinned, a very white smile, his teeth like whitewashed tombstones, Aye apprentice, it be like the issue of such a slow-witted creature, thou art not in error.

Master, one such as thyself with such accomplishments has surely managed to eliminate many of the Ursin by means of thaumaturgical deduction?

Clarin bathed in the glow of his assistant’s adulation, allowing himself a brief smirk of triumph before informing,

The passing of the Artisan’s brain energy left a barely discernible trail through space and time, that is what I have been following these past days. There were times when the trail had drifted, blown about by cosmic winds and I had to cast my sensory apparatus farther afield to pick it up once more. There were dark days when I almost gave up (Raspurnon promptly gasped in astonishment at this confession), for I thought the task too great even for me, but I discovered one thing, no trail became too subfusc to evade my search for ever.

Thou was in search of space like the holy minstrels the Hawkwind, Raspurnon had heard the stik once, from one of the descendants of the Ursin and it had made a deep impression upon him. The holy canticles of the blessed who had been dead and dust for countless aeons.

I suspect that thou hast located the trail and followed it down to a single kingdom, the apprentice dared to hope.

Better than that! Marn Clarin cried in triumph, I have narrowed the search to a single city.

See-tee, Master?

"A massive sprawling town of the concrete we spake of earlier, imagine two towns side by side, then thou hast the scope of it. I found the city in which the mind and soul of Barorné then skulked. I found the street he trod, along with the Ursin. There was a group of several individuals that trod the same road and then the calibration of the Scannertron was at maximum. There was only one course of action open to me Raspurnon.

I brought back several of them, all in one electric snatch of the machine. Eight brains, the thoughts, the engram’s the property of the body which made them essentially who they were. One of them is Barorné, seven are merely irrelevance, chaff on the wind, before the Scannertron and the Encaphlotron blew every circuit they possessed I dumped the brain cores into eight bodies here on Nyjord".

Master, you have him, he is back?!

Indeed however the Scannertron burned out just as I had completed this incredible task of thaumaturgy. It will take me time to assemble parts to repair it. Longer to barter with the Ursin here for those parts. So we are unable to view our enemy just yet.

A question Master, what of the brains of those you deposited the eight into, what happened to them, or are there eight individuals now on Nyjord with the phrenia of the schizo as the Ursin call them?

Clarin shook his head, The Encaphlotron sent them into the eight empty vessels back in time and through space, in essence Raspurnon it swapped them over.

The Mage who created the brain machine and the Scannertron must have wielded awesome power indeed, Master?

Of course, he was one of those from the silver temples that travelled through the slate void and reached us in our own distant past. Travelling through the fourth dimension can be confusing at times Raspurnon. Those who arrived in the silver temples were vastly more wise than the dull plodding farmers and peasants we know as the Ursin.

4

B URTON’S CONCIOUSNESS WAS suddenly back and the strange nightmare was not over!

He was tumbling end over heels down what he perceived to be a violet corridor, yet his reasoning part of his intellect told him that such was not possible by the physical laws of the universe as he knew them. How could he be breathing, when would the inky chasm finally hit him, was he in the midst of some bizarre incubus?

So many questions and not a single answer. Then strangely a tremendous calm settled over him. For, realising he could do nothing, he relaxed and merely waited for the occurrence to end. No sooner had the self-willed logic taken over than the journey ended, he hit a grassy plain with just enough impact to hurt, yet certainly not one to have been from any great height. He was back in his body, he must have merely stumbled then.

As he sought to climb back to his feet he gasped in shock and astonishment. Everything was different!?

The first thing and by far the most shocking was his own hands.

They were not his!

He raised them to his face and he found he had a beard and very long, uncut hair. He was inside the body of a different person.

How was that possible?

Was it possible, or was he losing his sanity? If the latter, there was nothing for it but to go with events until he had more answers. If the former then this was surely the work of an alien technology greatly in advance of mankinds? He examined his bizarre mode of dress. He was wearing hose of some royal blue rough weave, a jerkin on his upper body. Over this was a cuirass of beaten iron, he had mailed cuffs of the same rough metal, boots of stained blue hide that looked more reptilian of origin than bovine. Across his chest was a baldric also of reptile hide and over his shoulder a hilt of a gladius.

He pulled it from it’s resting place, bronze handled by the dim light, with a short blade of tempered iron or rough steel. Then strangely for the first time, he looked upward, expecting to see the Moon. He was so startled by what he saw there he almost dropped his sword. There was no Moon, but in it’s place was a huge blue planet! Even from such a distance he could see that the world had continents and seas of its own. Could that happen, could one planet orbit another? Then he turned his attention to the stars and knew beyond any doubt that he had been brought many light years from home, the constellations had no shape he recognised at all.

This then was alien abduction. Not to be snatched and taken from his home-world and imprisoned in some vast inter-solar vessel, but to have his mind kidnapped and placed into the body of another being.

Yet his body was still human if not his own, so that did not make sense, it was a mystery and one he would have plenty of time to figure out. There was already a nagging ache at the base of his skull, no doubt caused by the transfer, one or two muscles felt a little sore, but that could have been the very recent fall. He squinted into the near horizon, dotted with dark tree silhouettes, that looked strangely shaped and saw a figure coming toward him, it was the shape of a young woman and it was a very nice shape.

"Can you help me Sir!? she asked him in English, well at least they would understand one another.

I will if I can, but I’m new to this ah, area.

You were snatched?

Snatched.

From Earth?

So we shared the same fate it seems, he told her, Yes I’m an abductee too.

Who did this to us?

I’d arrived just before you walked up to meet me, I know as much as you.

She seemed to be having considerable difficulty holding back the tears, she told him, This isn’t my body, only my mind was stolen, I don’t know whether this is some other poor souls or if I’m in a Golem or something. I can’t even remember my own name, for some reason every time I try to remember anything before I was kidnapped it’s all grey and hazy and out of focus. Yet when I try very hard a name comes up that I know is not really mine.

And what would that name be?

Oh, sorry, yes that was rude of me, she held out a slim hand, "Pleased to meet you Sir, I’m not Avilova, Tatyana Avilova, I am in fact English.

He took it in his, realising how large his own were then and returned, Burton Jim Burton, but before you ask, that’s all I remember, just my name.

Helloo, a new voice cried in the semi-darkness of the blue and green planet-moon. It was another female.

This way, Burton cried back and the duo had suddenly grown to a trio. The story of the newcomer, a tall dark-haired woman, ran pretty much along the same lines. She, like Avilova, could only remember a Russian name, which she felt belonged to the body she now occupied, it was Alina Krivova.

Why are we in the bodies of Russian women, when we were English? the newest arrival mused aloud.

Perhaps the names are of cosmonauts previously abducted by the aliens and brought here? Burton deduced, getting part of the puzzle correct, but still way off the actual situation.

I don’t believe in aliens. Krivova declared, The distances between the stars are too great for us to travel them.

But only our minds made the journey to where ever we are, Burton reminded. Before the debate in the dark could become more heated and for no purpose a fourth victim of the transfer came out of the darkness.

After much questioning and answering it was the same story yet again and within an hour the group had thus swelled to eight individuals. The newcomers were another woman, who thought she was called Henti Varety and four men (much to Burton’s relief) who knew the names of their bodies were Draxom Mallunderain, Victorki Blok, Pavelino Garin and Tornell; who could only remember his initials were J.P.

I seem to think I am the leader, Garin told them, So if no one else has any objection, I will assume that role.

I think it’s too early to start with that sort of imposition on everyone, Burton returned, We can elect a leader if and when we feel the need to be led, otherwise we can remain an autonomous collective.

There were murmurings of approval for that and Garin stared at Burton, it seemed at this early juncture, he may have made an enemy.

So what does the autonomous collective wish to do next then? Garin wished to know.

Go over to those bizarre looking trees and get our eight heads down until the sun rises, would be my suggestion, Burton returned; to Garin’s annoyance, that was the decided course of action. It took a good hour for everyone to settle down and no sooner had they all managed to fall asleep than the sound of movement and the fact that the dawn was clawing at the sky with roseate fingers, wakened them again.

Then they saw the world they had been brought to and were all in a state of stunned silence. The grass under their feet was red and yellow and green, but predominantly the former. The sky was pink rather than azure and strange fronds of silver and blue towered into the skyline. When they looked closer the fronds were actually dark blue, the silver was some sort of fungi growing on them. A curious coincidence, for the leaves of the huge fronds were also silver and the most surprising aspect of the growths was that they flowered. Not only that but with white petals and an orange centre the flowers looked like nothing other than fried eggs.

The group then looked at one another. They were all thankfully clearly still human, they were all dressed in various shades of blue.

Perhaps the same colour denotes that we are serfs of some local land ruler around here? Mallunderain suggested.

Or it’s the national colours, Garin did not wish to be outdone for ideas.

Then they saw the dinosaurs!

Well at least they closely resembled dinosaurs until one looked closer.

The creature was massive, fully three and a half metres high when down on all six legs. When it raised itself up on the back pair, it towered in the pink sky, seeking the orange and white growths that adorned the tips of the blue fronds. It had variegated skin, mainly green, but with hints of xanthic and ochre on its rear flanks. It’s back was mainly various shades of green from lime to deep green. The six legs were not its most astonishing features however, but its two barbed tails and its two long necks, upon which; were two heads!

The heads possessed multi faceted eyes, like those of a Fly. Each head had three horns, two above the head situated like a cows, while the third was from the front of the heads, situated like those of the rhinoceros. The eyes gleamed red, but the three of them fancied it was the reflection of the ground, rather than the beast’s pigment. The rear legs were strong and ended in toed feet while the central pair and front pair had more delicate design and ended in sharp claws.

The sound that they had heard was from this monstrous giant! It seemed to make a scream of delight when it found a particularly tasty and large flower-like growth, which it then conveyed to one of its two mouths. They chose to collectively hope that the creature was a herbivore, but it may also be omnivorous so they kept their distance and made no sound and finally the herd lumbered off in search of more of the eggs.

Any suggestions anyone, or do we take a vote on what to do now? Garin had still not gotten over his disappointment at not being elected leader.

We should head south, Avilova offered, If the sun rose in the east then south is that way, then at least we will be heading for warmer climes.

It was a good suggestion for the air did indeed feel fresh perhaps fifteen degrees maybe even less. Another clue was that they were all heavily dressed, as though that day might not even be typical and it would grow colder.

"That sun might rise in the west, or even the north and the