Agents Of Fortune (eBook)

Marisol's Window

jeffrey todd evans (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
296 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-8622-1 (ISBN)

An advanced alien species, stranded on Earth a millennium ago, manipulates Mankind's technical time in a bid to return to her home world.

When misanthropic fifty-year-old Seth Bridges, on the cusp of suicide, spots a strange woman heading towards him, he is transported back in time and into his former childhood self. Determined not to squander his second chance, he graduates from high school--for the second time--and heads off to a 1979 Las Vegas with one hundred thousand dollars taped to his waist: cash he has accumulated betting long odds against old money. All the while, he is haunted by nightmares of an impending pandemic that will wipe out ninety-nine percent of the world's population. His plan is to continue betting on sporting events he has prior knowledge of, then use the winnings to ride out the looming disaster. His uncanny luck draws the attention of other time travelers, some are friendly, others not so much. They tell him they are Shifters and their purpose is to serve the Progenitor. Seth's nightmares become guiding visions, and he must choose between saving the people on earth or preserve mankind the species. Agents of Fortune is a time-traveling, sci-fi fantasy novel that is loosely based on Blue Oyster Cults song "e;(Don't Fear) The Reaper."e;Seth puts together a team and a plan: ride out the virus in space. Attempts on his life are made by a series of eight clones sent back in time to kill him. With the help of a holographic box containing future technology-an inheritance from his grandfather-and his visions, Seth, and his new friends construct a manned spacecraft that is outfitted with an anti-gravity device. Soon, the government wants in on Seth's aerospace venture, and they'll do anything to get it.

CHAPTER 5

“Hi Seth, it’s Mom.”

“Oh, hey Mom, how’s everything?”

“Not so good. I have bad news. Grandpa, he ahh, he died yesterday.”

“Oh…”

“The doctors said he went quickly, so… there’s that.”

“Jeez, Mom, I’m sorry. Are you OK?”

“Oh, I’ll be alright.”

“When is the service?”

“Well, there are plans that need to be made… I know you two were close.” “Mom, he was your dad; what about you? Are you going to be alright?” “Yes, yes. I’ll be fine. I have to make some calls; you take care, Seth.” “You too, Mom.”

I had known this day would come—but now?

I thought he had lived a few years longer.

Grandpa had been born in Czechoslovakia in 1898. He had fought in three wars—the first one from the back of a horse. A man among men, he was an actual count from a family of aristocrats that had been around since the fourteenth century. He had owned forests, industries, palaces, and castles before the Nazis confiscated it all. His unwillingness to bend to Hitler’s tyranny had seen him buying passage for his family and himself on the SS America. They had landed at Ellis Island, New York. Eventually, they had made their way to Western Massachusetts and bought a dairy farm for 250 pieces of gold.

I had a few more whiskeys, entered some notes into my journal, then hit the hay. Right before I fell asleep, I glanced down at the glass’s crumpled sanitary wrapper: someone had drawn a drunken smiley face on it. And for the slightest part of a moment, I swore it winked at me.

That night I had my recurring dream again, only this time it was lucid, immersive, and things had changed: as I was staring at the pack of dogs under the statue of a man holding a book, like I normally did, a wall-like invisible wave washed over the place and it became alive again—well, half-alive. Someone had removed the bodies, cleared the streets, and the pack of dogs no longer waited under the statue of the man holding a book. There was a slight breeze, and above me the sun grappled with cloud cover. Here and there, dust devils dervished with clumps of migrating trash. Up ahead, just past a hub of crumbling buildings, dark cloud banks gathered—as if they were preparing to wall-in the metropolis.

Just as I was admiring the details of my own dream, a rudimentary Heads Up Display appeared in my mind. That’s pretty cool, I thought. The HUD indicated the city was San Francisco and the year was 1995, five years after the Soul Breaker virus had run its course. Hm… Soul Breaker Virus, that’s a cool name. Nice one, Seth.

I stood and tried to jump up and float—a test I’d developed to determine if I was in a dream or not. Nope couldn’t float; this was not a dream. Probably a vision of some type. But wasn’t I asleep? A hovering, box-shaped van pulled alongside me and whooshed open its doors. Inside, leathery human skeletons lay crumpled-up on the floorboards. An electronic voice said, “Thank you for choosing Bezos Peoples Transport.”

I waved it off. “No thanks, I’m good.”

The zombie cab sputtered away like a cartoon mash-up of a Jetsons car stuck in a Scooby Doo ghost town. Up ahead, the statue of the man holding a book was, on occasion, moving like an idle character in a video game. I jogged the block and a half between us, looked up at the twelve-foot bronze, and said, “Hey! Is somebody in there?”

He lowered his book—which I recognized as the Bible—stooped slightly and said, “Greetings, traveler. Welcome to the fair and humble city of San Francisco. I’m an animatronic representation of our recently deceased mayor: the most honorable and enlightened Reverend James Warren Jones. The time is 10:00 a.m., and all is well. Can I help you with directions to a restaurant, a nightclub or bar, a museum, a sexual encounter—or perhaps you’re in need of spiritual guidance?”

“Where are the dogs that used to hang out here?” I asked.

The animatronic Jim Jones pondered my question for a moment before performing a Nazi-style hand salute. “Heil Ted,” he said, then pointed to a five-story building that held a large vertical arrow pointing down to a neon sign that blinked out: Kaczynski’s Doomerville Lounge & Surgical Saloon.

“Thanks,” I said. “And lay off the Kool-Aid; you’re starting to look a little rusty.” Just as I turned to cross the street, I noticed somebody had sloppily painted “Heidi Was Here” onto the base of the statue.

A half-block down, I caught my reflection in a dirty, cracked storefront window.

“Oh shit.”

I was old again. I had a scraggly, greying beard, an old New England Patriots tee-shirt was wrapped around my head like a turban, and I was wearing a faded one- piece striped jumper. In the reflection, a dinner-plate-sized flying saucer was silently hovering a yard behind my head. The drone bore an uncanny resemblance to the Jupiter 2 from the TV series Lost in Space. I turned around quickly and swiped at it a few times, but like a dog playing a game, it was too fast to catch. I headed over to the giant arrow with the Jupiter 2 in tow.

Kaczynski’s Doomerville Lounge & Surgical Saloon was sandwiched between two dilapidated storefronts. It had mottled spray-on siding and a boarded-up window protected by rusty steel bars. Amazed at my mind’s capacity for creating such a scenario, I went inside for more.

The place was dark and smelled of musty zombies—if there was such a smell. Celtic dirge music drifted innocuously in the background. A half dozen ugly peo- ple—probably descendants of the Village People, or at the very least, escapees from the Island of Doctor Moreau—sat on red stools tucked in close to the bar. Cool: a seedy club in a post-apocalyptic San Franciscan slum. I should remember all of this, I thought, and write it in my journal.

I sidled up to the bar, tossed a few smiles at the other patrons, then looked down at the electronic menu embedded into the bar. As I ordered a cold beer, a Chiron scrolled a news-vert along the bottom of the screen: Eugenicist Doctor Octavius Sun Taziu, from the New Caltech territory, has submitted his final plans to repopulate the planet.

“Octavius? Hmm…?”

“Are you talking to me?” The bartender draped a small towel over his shoulder. “You must be talking to me.” He came closer, groaning out pieces of mental anguish along the way. Then he stood before me. “You got something to say, honey, you just go ahead and say it.”

Dear God. The dim overhead lighting revealed a visually disturbing bar-keep of mixed gender. They, he, or she stood around six-five and was wearing a sleeveless plaid shirt that showcased toned biceps and grotesquely swollen, Dolly-Parton-sized breasts. He batted his Tammy Faye eyelashes, nodded at the electronic menu, and said in a deep, cigarette-damaged voice, “Menu’s dead tech. Died with the dog people. Just a stream of news-verts now—pretty, though. So, tell me, friend. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Nearby, two booze-sodden barfly queens, who were nursing dildo-shaped steins of beer, snickered. A third, who appeared to have constructed a bathhouse-sailor personality around his Tom Selleck mustache, pulled a wet, stubby cigar butt away from his mouth long enough to jeer, “Yeah, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Heh, heh, heh.”

Where in my mind had these guys come from? I looked around the bar, then at the barkeep, and said, “Since you’re all figments of my imagination, and I’d like to keep my buzz on, I’ll take a beer and a shot of rum. Please.”

The bar-keep tossed me a friendly nod, motioned me closer, and said, “I need to scan your PIC.” Behind him, a cockroach the size of an anemic lab-rat scampered along an empty display shelf. My HUD flashed: PIC. Personal Identification Chip, used for transaction facilitation. Location: underside of right wrist. Caution! All subjects in the immediate vicinity are exhibiting high levels of deception. I held out my right wrist.

A pink laser beam shot out of a small lens embedded between the barkeeper’s eyes.

“Says your BlockChain is empty.”

I looked closer at the gender-phobe’s face and could see botched surgery scars underneath his smudged mascara. Damn, I thought, Snake Plissken would love this place.

“Listen, buddy,” I said, “this is my dream, and you’ll give me whatever I...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	24.6.2021
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
ISBN-10	1-0983-8622-1 / 1098386221
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-8622-1 / 9781098386221

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