textfiles/magazines/TWILIGHTWORLD/twilight.world-2.3

                         T W I L I G H T   W O R L D




                              Volume 2 Issue 3

                                May 14th 1994









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= LIST OF CONTENTS ==========================================================


 EDITORIAL

 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE!

 by Kai Holst
 A story of the two L's: Love and Life.

 SAVAGE

 by Richard Karsmakers
 Where Cronos rescues his mother, foster mother and fiancee.

 ALICE THROUGH THE FLAMES

 by Roy Stead
 An interesting story of Parallel Paradox (or something or other).

 BLOOD MONEY

 by Richard Karsmakers
 Where a Compact Universal Nuclear Teleporter confuses someone mightily.


= EDITORIAL =================================================================
 by Richard Karsmakers


 I  have a goal.  That goal is to make "Twilight World" the  biggest  fiction 
magazine  on  the  net.  I know it will be hard,  because there's  a  lot  of 
competition that's older,  more seasoned, more experienced and simply better. 
Nonetheless  I have this goal and I am confident it will be reached some  day 
in  the not too distant future,  if only you will help.  Write for  "Twilight 
World" so it'll get better.  Tell your friends about it so they'll subscribe. 
Spread the word - *and* the magazine!
 That's  all I have to say this time,  apart from the fact that I'd  like  to 
thank  the  people at America OnLine who constitute almost a quarter  of  all 
"Twilight World" subscriptions.
 Anyway, plenty of fiction lined up so I'll leave you to it.

 As usual, I hope you'll enjoy reading this issue.


 Richard Karsmakers
 (Editor)

P.S. If you no longer want to receive "Twilight World",  *please* unsubscribe 
     and  don't  let  me wait for the messages  to  bounce  instead,  totally 
     flooding my email box! This especially goes for America OnLine people.


= THE SCHOOL OF LIFE! =======================================================
 by Kai Holst (with riddles by Scott Roach)


 Neisha  sighed.  Already a minute after she entered the school bus life  had 
given its first sign of the day of being against her,  as it always did.  The 
predictability of her life never failed.
 The  bus  ride  took only seven minutes,  but the minutes  felt  like  hours 
because of Shannon, who was pestering her life by pinching her or calling her 
names.  She could not believe that she had once been in love with him.  Maybe 
she  should  have said yes when he had asked her for a date two  months  ago? 
He'd been a pain ever since she had turned him down.
 She sighed again,  and almost choked as she felt the pain in the back of her 
head as Shannon pulled her hair.  A lonely tear rolled down her frail  cheek. 
"How childish," she thought while fighting her desire to hit him.  One day he 
would regret being so unkind to her. One day...
 Her thoughts trailed to the letter she had spent all day writing  yesterday. 
Jeremy's  letter.  She  kept it next to her heart,  keeping  it  warm.  She'd 
written  the  address on the envelope gracefully and sealed it  with  a  soft 
kiss,  and  had selected beautiful stamps for it,  with flowers and birds  on 
them.  She  knew he would write her a reply the day he got it,  as he  always 
did.  Dozens of letters,  and even more brief phone calls had been  exchanged 
between them since Jeremy had moved to Europe three months earlier.  They had 
been  going  steady  for almost a year,  and both intended to  make  it  much 
longer. Neisha knew that Jeremy was her only friend.
 All  her life Neisha had been lonely.  In her world,  nobody but Jeremy  had 
ever cared about her, and that care was the key to her love.
 Jeremy was special of himself.  As long as Neisha could remember,  the girls 
of  her  class  had  been dreaming about him.  But  in  spite  of  his  merry 
appearance,  he had no friends before he got to know Neisha.  He knew how  to 
hide his loneliness. But Neisha knew. She had found out the first time he had 
asked  her  out.  He  told her it had taken him all summer to  build  up  the 
courage to do so.
 He  took her walking in the park on that beautiful August day.  It was  warm 
and cloudless,  and the frail ring he gave her carried the warmth of that day 
in it. Neisha still wore it.
 The daydream faded away as Janie,  one of the girls of her class,  shook her 
shoulder. Her kind face looked down at Neisha. "Are you going to sit here all 
day?"  Ignoring the friendly sarcasm of the question,  Neisha slowly  grabbed 
her bag and followed Janie out of the bus.
 This  was her greatest fear.  She had a tendency to dump into some  sort  of 
trouble every day.  Some punks had a tendency to bully her whenever they  met 
her,  but what she really hated was being asked questions in class. No matter 
what happened,  she managed to make a fool of herself one way or another, and 
there was no-one to comfort her any longer.
 The rain of the night had left the asphalt wet and slippery,  and as  Neisha 
left the bus she slipped on the wet ground. Fighting to keep on her feet, she 
felt Janie's firm hand on her arm. Her face almost cerise she uttered a quick 
word  of  gratitude,  and looked around to see if anybody else had  seen  her 
slip.  The school yard was void of people save themselves.  A swift glance on 
her watch confirmed her suspicion: They were late again.
 The first period went unusually smooth.  The subject was History, one of her 
favourites.  Ever  since her early childhood it'd been her special  interest, 
and  this  came  in  very handy as the teacher bombarded  her  with  tons  of 
questions.  A sparkle of confidence was lit in her as she unerringly  brought 
forth  reply  after reply,  and she felt great when the teacher moved  on  to 
question Thomas.
 Speaking  out  loud  in  class was usually an  exercise  in  stuttering  and 
embarrassment to Neisha, but when she got something right, the triumph was so 
much bigger.  She smiled inward at herself as the story of religious  trouble 
and  witches  was cast upon the rest of the class.  She dutifully  made  some 
notes as the teacher spoke on at the blackboard,  but the only legible  thing 
she produced was a single word,  written at least a dozen times.  Jeremy. The 
letter was still next to her heart,  providing warmth. The only warmth in her 
entire existence.
 The corridors of her High School were too long. Neisha never had enough time 
to  get from room to room during the five minute break between  classes.  She 
had to run down the stairs to get to English class at a quarter to nine,  and 
already knew she was going to be late.
 With  a  sizeable  bunch of books in her left hand,  she  entered  the  last 
corridor and collided with a medium-sized young boy wearing a leather jacket, 
worn-out  jeans  and a pair of gloomy shades.  She cursed her bad  luck  long 
before their books hit the floor.  Those shades were the trademark of one  of 
the hall gangs that haunted the corridors.  She only caught one short glimpse 
of his face before she bent down to pick up all her books, and cursed herself 
for being in such a hurry.
 She  had collided with a boy she knew as Mark.  He was of her age,  and  had 
been  in  her parallel class for seven years,  but she only knew him  as  the 
leader of The Shades. He was alone.
 "Well, what have we here?" The penetrating voice was colder than ice, and he 
regarded her with an expressionless face from behind the shades.  "A peach in 
a hurry?" Neisha froze, her face turned away from him. Peach?
 "Listen,  I,  I,  I'm  sorry  I  hit you like that." Her  thoughts  were  as 
scattered  as her books as she desperately sought a way out of this  delicate 
situation.
 "Now you listen!" As she heard his voice,  Neisha turned towards  him,  felt 
like  she was facing her own doom.  But she had not anticipated the  reaction 
she caused.
 It was Mark's turn to freeze.  He lowered the hand he had pointed accusingly 
at her, and paled noticeably.
 "Neish?"  He  gave her a hand and helped her  up.  This  unexpected  gesture 
bewildered  her.  When  he bent down and quickly picked  up  her  books,  the 
confusion only grew.
 "Tell  me,  how is Jeremy doing in his new home?" The tone of his voice  had 
changed,  and was now silent and comfortable.  He handed over her books,  and 
smiled apologetically at her.
 Neisha  couldn't see his eyes,  and couldn't make up her mind on whether  it 
was a fake smile or not.  She had never known that Mark and Jeremy had  known 
each  other,  and Jeremy had loathed all the problem youngsters who  gathered 
into gangs.
 The  school bell interrupted her train of thoughts as she was just about  to 
tell Mark that Jeremy was doing fine.
 "You  had better get to class in time," Mark said,  and hesitated before  he 
continued.  "Can we meet in the canteen at noon?" It was a proposal she would 
usually have turned down.
 "Huh?  I mean,  yes,  why not?" She could see a poorly hidden grin on Mark's 
face as he turned away with a quick nod and ran to get to his class.
 Behind him,  Neisha stood bewildered.  She didn't know what is was that  had 
made  her accept the unusual invitation.  Noon.  That would be  during  lunch 
break. As she slowly walked the ten yards to her English class it struck her. 
Mark  had used her nickname.  Only her father and Jeremy had ever called  her 
"Neish".
 Neisha  suffered herself through English class with Jeremy on her  mind  all 
the  time.  There were no connections between him and Mark that she knew  of, 
and the mystery tormented her. She rejected the thought of adding a few lines 
in her letter to Jeremy because she had already sealed it shut,  and couldn't 
do anything but wait.  Her preoccupation irritated the teacher a bit, but not 
as  much  as the feeling of not knowing that  something  irritated  her.  She 
wanted to know what the connection was. And she would make Mark tell her!
 Only four rooms away, Mark regretted the impetuous invitation he had offered 
Neisha.  It had been a brash thing to do,  but he could not back out  now.  A 
quick  glance at some of his fellow members of The Shades revealed that  they 
knew about it.  Mark already had too many problems,  but this one felt like a 
yoke around his neck.
 Totally ignoring the Spanish teacher,  he sat down with paper and a pen, and 
started  writing the words he had been thinking of for too long now.  He  had 
always been in love with Neisha, and now was the time to show it. But how?
 "Miss Morrison, will you please pay attention?"
 The cutting voice of her teacher tore Neisha out of her thoughts in time  to 
see the other students leaving the room.  Flushing,  she picked up her things 
and walked out of the room, embarrassed.
 Neisha again found herself running through the corridors towards her locker. 
This  time,  though,  she was careful to avoid incidents like the one of  the 
previous  recess.  She needed to find out where she had to be  the  following 
hour,  and as she was searching for a schedule in the mess of her locker  she 
missed  Jeremy  more  than ever.  He always knew where she  had  to  be,  and 
followed her there before he had to get to his own class. Would Mark do that? 
Neisha omitted the question as she found her schedule under a book.
 The Literature classes were not too bad. Neisha was able to get her mind off 
the appointment with Mark and concentrated on doing the assignments. What she 
didn't was that Mark,  sitting in the adjacent room,  could not get his  mind 
off her. He was trying to write down his feelings, but the words did not come 
out  right.  This whole deal was getting on his nerves as the idea  hit  him. 
Things  suddenly  seemed to fit,  and Mark quickly produced the  keywords  he 
needed. Then the six lines were in his mind, and he smiled.
 After  what felt like days of torment to Neisha,  the Literature  class  was 
finally over at five to twelve,  and the recess she had been waiting for  was 
there.  Walking  steadily  down the now almost empty  corridors  towards  the 
canteen,  Neisha  saw  that  the "Corner of Shadows",  as  the  students  had 
nicknamed  the  junction where The Shades were usually  found,  was  void  of 
people. But the corridor between the junction and the canteen was not.
 Shannon  was  in trouble.  Three guys were standing around him  in  a  semi-
circle. Neisha knew very well what that meant.
 "Where's  our five bucks?" The three guys standing around Shannon looked  at 
him with a threatening glare.  Neisha walked past as if she saw nothing.  She 
heard Shannon swallow hard.
 "Why  should  I  give you five bucks?" For  a  moment,  Neisha  admired  his 
courage.
 "Does survival ring a bell?" Shannon gave in to the brutality of the  answer 
and  picked up a fiver from his pocket.  His face looked  weary,  and  Neisha 
registered that he was very pale.  Pity replaced her hate for him as she  saw 
his hooked back move away from her.
 The set of stairs on the right side of the hall and the entrance area on the 
left  side gave the canteen a shape closely resembling the  letter  "H".  Two 
lines of supporting pillars ran down the mid-aisle of the room,  and a  large 
number of tables were spread about on both sides, most of them occupied.
 At  their  usual table near the stairs,  Mark was trying to get rid  of  his 
gang. Even in the darkness of the corner, all of them wore the characteristic 
shades.  For the first time,  the guys refused to do what he told them to. He 
gave it another shot.
 "Guys,  I  don't care where you go or what you do,  just get off  my  back!" 
Nobody moved.
 "The boss is having a date,  and won't let us witness it." It was one of the 
youngest kids who spoke.
 "That's  right," Mark replied smoothly.  "Any of you want to argue  with  me 
about  it?"  The calmness of his voice carried a threat  in  it.  Thought  he 
couldn't  see  their  eyes in the shadows,  Mark knew that  they  would  have 
respect in them. Nobody replied.
 "No?" Still nothing.
 "Then  get  lost."  With  an inward sigh of relief  Mark  watched  the  gang 
dissolve  around him,  and a minute later he was sitting alone at the  table. 
Surprised, he noticed that he was sweating.
 In  the  corridor above the stairs Neisha was standing next to  the  mailbox 
with  Jeremy's  letter  in  her hand.  She  hesitated  a  moment  before  she 
decisively  put  the letter in the mailbox and strolled  with  self-confident 
steps down the stairs.
 Mark rose as he saw her coming near the table.  With a slight bow and a warm 
smile  he  invited her to sit down,  and then removed his shades  before  she 
accepted his invitation.
 "And  they  said  chivalry was dead?" Neisha deliberately  chose  the  chair 
facing Mark and sat down. She felt eyes staring at her, and ignored them. But 
she could not ignore Mark's eyes.
 They  were  a  warm green,  and shone at her like  beautiful  emeralds  from 
heaven.  It was the first time she had ever seen Mark's eyes,  and they  made 
him handsome!
 "Glad you could make it," he said, still smiling friendly.
 "I'm  glad you asked me," Neisha replied truthfully.  She had been  spending 
most lunch breaks alone since Jeremy had moved. Although she was often bored, 
she got along. But this was exciting. And Mark's eyes were beyond belief.
 "I  like your new hairdo," he commented as he was regarding  her  carefully. 
Was  that  an  admiring look he had?  Neisha cast a glance at  his  hair  and 
suppressed  a smile.  It was cut way too short and stood to  all  sides.  She 
offered a short and cold "thanks".  Quite unaffected, Mark picked up a cup of 
coffee Neisha had not noticed before and sipped at it.
 "Tell  me," he said after a short while,  "How's Jeremy doing  over  there?" 
Picking  up a brown lunch-bag he added "Aren't you going to have lunch?"  His 
face spoke of honest interest and curiosity, and Neisha elaborately picked up 
her own.
 "Well," she said as she chewed lazily,  "He is doing fine." That was what he 
told her on the phone and in all the letters. His new school sucked, but he'd 
made many friends already. "He hates the language they speak, though."
 "That's understandable." Mark made a recognizing nod.
 "Why  did you ask?" Neisha decided to start asking questions.  On the  other 
side of the table, Mark grimaced lightly.
 "Jeremy and I go way back," he started.  Neisha urged him to tell more,  but 
Mark shook his head.  "It's a long time ago,  and doesn't matter anymore." As 
Neisha remained silent, Mark decided it was time to change subject.
 "Are you good at solving riddles?" Neisha again found herself being torn out 
of her daydreaming. Mark repeated the question.
 "Not  much." Neisha pondered on the question a while.  She used to love  all 
sorts  of  riddles  when  she was a child.  Years  ago.  There  was  one  she 
remembered at once.  In the darkness of room it seemed appropriate,  and  she 
wanted to test Mark.

                        In the window she sat weeping
                  and with each tear her life went seeping

 Mark immediately knew the correct answer.  "It's a burning candle on a sill. 
It  was  a beautiful rhyme." Neisha felt a strange surge run through  her  as 
their eyes met again.  His stare was inviting and seductive. And challenging. 
He came up with another riddle.

                     I'm often held, yet rarely touched
                       I'm always wet, yet never rust
                   I'm sometimes wagged and sometimes bit
                      To use me well, you must have wit

 "What is this?" Neisha demanded,  "Some sort of competition?" She felt silly 
sitting there doing word-puzzles like that.
 "You might say that," Mark replied,  smiling.  "Want to know what you  might 
win?" It wasn't meant to be insulting, but Mark almost bit his tongue off the 
second he said it. Neisha ignored him.
 "Tongue,"  she said sharply.  "The answer is tongue.  Now you think of  this 
one!" She began to remember the hard ones.

                    There's someone that I'm always near
                         Yet in the dark I disappear
                         To this one only am I loyal
                    Though in his wake I'm doomed to toil
                      He feels me not (we always touch)
                     If I were lost, he'd not lose much
                        And now I come to my surprise
                       For you are he - but who am I?

 "Ouch,  that one is tougher." The admission came easier than he'd thought it 
would, in spite of a sting in his side from his pride.
 "...he'd not lose much," he said thoughtfully and had some more coffee. Some 
fascinating  reflections in the dark fluid caught his eyes as he put the  cup 
down.  He glimpsed up,  and noticed the blue sky outside.  The small  windows 
high  up on the wall spread fragile beams of light throughout the  room,  but 
still the corner in which they were sitting lay in darkness. The rain showers 
had obviously ended while he hadn't been paying attention.  Mark though  that 
the  canteen looked much better in decent light.  It was overcrowded by  now, 
but he barely noticed the people. They ignored him, and thus he ignored them. 
A  few seconds went by,  and as he realized he was not getting any closer  to 
the solution of the riddle, quiet panic struck him.
 The Freshmen at the neighboring table rose to leave,  and some of the  older 
students  standing impatiently at one pillar immediately moved to occupy  it. 
Their faces stood out from the shadows in the background,  luminously flooded 
in sunshine.  The dancing movements their shadows made along the floor caught 
Mark's attention.
 "My shadow," he whispered thoughtfully.  "That's the answer." The relief  in 
his voice was easy to hear and made Neisha smile.  She'd been very close. The 
uneasiness she had felt disappeared.
 "I  have only got one more," Mark said.  "It is not a true  riddle,  though. 
It's  a  confession."  He  tried to put forth a smile,  but  it  ended  up  a 
strangely distorted grin. Neisha narrowed her eyes and tilted her head a bit, 
suspicion once again growing in her.
 "Well  then  get on with it." A confession?  She caught Mark's  eyes  for  a 
moment,  and wished she hadn't. They were intense and poured impressions into 
her own.
 Mark  took  his eyes off her and inhaled deeply.  As he closed his  eyes  he 
pleaded himself not to lose courage. And begun.

                Five words of passion, with honesty to blame
                 Directed by my valor I swallow all my shame
                Determined to solemnity, a feeling very true
                My words are also sober: I truly do love you

 She sat mute for a long while with her mouth half open.  Shocked, she stared 
unbelievingly at him. Of all possible words he could have uttered, these were 
the ones she had expected the least.  The air suddenly seemed hard to breathe 
for both of them.  Mark focused on the table,  and felt that he was  blushing 
with embarrassment.
 To Neisha,  the shock was complete.  Words failed her as she tried to regain 
self-control. She thought of the letter, and closed her eyes.
 "I  love Jeremy." The sentence hung in the air a while.  On their left  they 
heard laughter in the distance.
 "I  am aware of that." Their eyes did not meet.  The chance to end years  of 
unreciprocated feelings meant a lot to Mark, but now he regretted that he had 
even invited her. He decided to give it his best shot.
 "But  he is far away." His sympathetic tone made Neisha look into  his  eyes 
again.  For a brief moment they just sat there,  looking indecisively at each 
other.  Neisha studied him carefully,  and was not surprised to find  herself 
attracted to him. Only Jeremy had ever appeared handsome to her, but Mark was 
perhaps even more so when he wasn't hiding his eyes behind a pair of shades.
 Their eyes met,  and she felt his thoughts.  An image of a spring picnic her 
class had made a long time ago flashed in front of her as if they were inside 
Mark's eyes,  and she recalled him sitting close to her. Then the sixth grade 
school ball was there, and she was dancing with a boy from seventh grade. And 
Mark was standing at the entrance,  looking at her shyly. The basketball game 
she'd watched with her friends the same month back then, with Mark just a few 
feet away.  A series of image flashed by,  and she recognized them all.  They 
were the only times she'd ever looked directly at Mark,  and she saw them  in 
his eyes.
 "That long?" she asked with sincere disbelief in her voice.  "You have  been 
in  love  with me that long?" Mark nodded his head a bit,  an  almost  bitter 
expression on his face.
 "I  don't  want  to  rush  you,   though,"  he  added  quickly.  "Your  good 
relationship  to  Jeremy  is  the last thing in the world  I'd  like  to  see 
ruined." His upper lips trembled as he continued.  "But please don't turn  me 
down  until you have thought about it." Neisha could see that he was  on  the 
verge of bursting into tears.
 The  angry noise of the school bell signalled that recess was already  over. 
Neisha glimpsed at her wrist watch and then put her hands into her lap.
 "I need some time," she finally said, and Mark smiled.
 "We  should  get  going," he said,  "this time without  bursting  into  each 
other." Under the table he took gently hold of her hands and held them in his 
own. "Neisha," he began, but was interrupted.
 "We have no time for this," Neisha said and pulled free from him with  ease. 
"At  least I have to get to class." She moved her chair away from the  table, 
and  began to rise in the same instant as her chair was being  snatched  away 
from under her.
 Only Mark's quick reactions kept her from falling as her balance disappeared 
along  with the chair.  He thrust himself up and seized Neisha's arm  as  she 
tumbled towards the table, and cast a vicious glance over her shoulder.
 It was only by sheer coincidence that Shannon had seen Neisha at the  corner 
table  as he was leaving for class.  He'd not even cared to see who  she  was 
sitting  with  before  he  had decided to pull her  chair  away.  It  was  an 
impulsive act, provoked by the feelings she had hurt when she turned him down 
eight  weeks earlier.  She simply rejected him without even looking twice  at 
him,  and that had made him feel lonely.  He wanted revenge, and came just in 
time to yank her chair away.  He'd smiled then,  as she struggled to stay  on 
her  feet,  but  the moment of triumph ended as he saw Mark jump up  to  give 
Neisha a hand. His smile vanished.
 Neisha whirled around and faced him, only to be ignored. Shannon stared past 
her  shoulders  as he slowly backed down the aisle with  uneasy  steps.  Mark 
beheld  the despicable sight with a cold stare,  and put on his shades as  he 
walked slowly around the table.
 "Mark!" Neisha grabbed his right arm when he moved past her,  and he  turned 
towards her, his eyes hid behind a pair of pitch black glasses.
 "Leave  Shannon alone," she commanded.  "Our enmity has nothing to  do  with 
you, and he doesn't deserve your rancour." She cast one last look at Shannon, 
who was still backing away from her,  turned around, and ran into the nearest 
corridor.
 Mark was detained by her words,  as she knew he'd be.  He looked in surprise 
at  her  diminishing back in the corridor,  and knew she meant what  she  had 
said,  but he had never heard the authority in her voice before.  Grinning at 
himself,  he turned back towards the spot where Shannon had been standing and 
faced a void area.  With the sole exception of himself the canteen was empty. 
With a thin shrug he left the canteen,  still smiling at Neisha's outburst of 
authority. Yes, they did have something in common.
 To keep her mind off the upheaval of her emotions,  Neisha spent the rest of 
the day concentrating on her school work.  Even though she hated Spanish  and 
Psychology, she couldn't care less. Riddles and poems urged through her mind, 
but were kept at a distance by the uncanny preoccupation. Even Jeremy was not 
on her mind.
 This sudden interest she took of the subjects came as a positive surprise to 
her  teachers.  After months of avoiding questions,  she now  volunteered  to 
answer  anything,  and never failed to concoct a correct answer.  Because  it 
kept her mind off Mark she enjoyed it herself, too.
 It was not until she was on the school bus heading for home that she thought 
of Jeremy again.  The yellow scrap-metal bus tried its very best to shake her 
brains out of place, and failed.
 Neisha felt she had learned a lot. Life educated her better that school ever 
would,  and  the school of life had also given her some homework.  She  would 
have to phone Jeremy when the time difference didn't matter,  and was already 
thinking of what to tell him.
 These  thoughts  consumed her as the bus went turbulently  down  the  uneven 
roads of the suburban town,  and when Shannon touched her shoulder softly she 
jumped  in her seat.  He looked embarrassed at her from the seat behind  her. 
Every time she had to confront him in the bus she wished she'd had a car, but 
she felt relaxed about him now.
 "I...",  he began,  and stopped. She gave him a friendly smile and looked at 
him.
 "I just wanted to say that I am sorry about bugging you so much lately."  He 
looked down guiltily.  "I thought I had a reason to do so,  but I was wrong." 
He  still didn't want to face her stare,  and his eyes fixed at  the  window. 
They were almost alone.
 "And I'd also like to thank you for stopping Mark from giving me a hard time 
at school today." He could see her smile reflected at him in the window,  and 
turned towards her.
 "That's  the  most  adult thing I've ever heard you say," she  said  with  a 
radiant warmth in her voice. "Of course I forgive you."
 With a relieved sigh he smiled back at her.  Catching an impulse,  she  went 
on.
 "Would you like to come over to my place later on today and talk about  it?" 
The question caught him by surprise, but he cheered up and smiled ever wider.
 "Of  course  I  would." He glanced at his watch and though about  it  for  a 
second. "At five?" he asked.
 "Five  will be fine." They shared a smile before Shannon left the  bus,  and 
only two minutes later, Neisha walked up the garden path from the road to her 
mother's house with her heart in her throat and the thought of Jeremy  racing 
through her head.  She lingered a second after she'd unlocked and opened  the 
door,  and took a deep breath with her back towards the door, thinking things 
over.
 She walked into the kitchen to look up Mark's number.  An instant later, her 
fingers  were  already  dialing the number while she was on her  way  to  the 
telephone.  The hall mirror reflected her delicate face and thin body as  she 
passed it,  and she beheld her own reflection with new eyes for a moment. She 
had never been popular with the boys, and had used to believe that it was her 
outlook they didn't like. Maybe it wasn't so, after all.
 With renewed confidence she walked on towards the phone. She had two boys to 
let down, and an unexpected date to prepare...

                                   THE END


= SAVAGE ====================================================================
 by Richard Karsmakers


 Somewhere in the universe there's a planet.  You probably won't find it even 
on the best of galactic maps, but it suffices to know it exists. It is called 
Sucatraps,  located  at approximately 92 million light years'  distance  from 
what will probably be best known to you as the planet Earth. Like Earth, with 
which it shares most of its types of vegetation,  animal life and climate, it 
is quite small. Its only large city and main capital is Eceerg.
 Although Sucatraps  might  be  unknown  to  the  best  galactic  maps,   its 
reputation isn't.  As a matter of fact it is a planet shrouded in legend  and 
myth,  the  rumoured  location of the six known universes' best  Assassins  & 
Terrorists Academy.  Hidden Sucatrapsian vassals are thought to covertly seek 
out  and  kidnap  male  babies  they  consider  likely  to  succeed  at   the 
academy. Mothers throughout the multiverse are known to hide from common view 
young  boys  that are apt to violence or that have developed  a  rather  good 
physique.

 Sucatraps  used  to be ruled by a king called Drahcir.  When his  wife  gave 
birth to a male triplet instead of the usual girls,  he got the idea that his 
offspring might eventually cast him off his Royal Throne.  Like  Cronus,  the 
Greek  god  of  old,  he killed and devoured  them.  His  wife,  Adnarim  the 
Beautiful  - like Cronus' wife Rhea - managed to hide from him an  unexpected 
fourth child,  a horribly frail and feeble baby,  almost too small to  remain 
alive.  This  son and Royal Heir,  Elmer,  was raised on a farm just  outside 
Eceerg,  receiving all the love a trustworthy peasant's widow had to  bestow. 
Drahcir  never  knew  about Elmer,  not even when he died  without  an  heir, 
leaving Sucratraps behind in the turmoil of succession.
 Elmer,  whom his foster mother called Cronos, based on that Greek god, never 
quite  became  the trained killer that any other Sucatrapsian male  would  be 
made into.  She taught him to the best of her ability,  and fed him a lot  of 
fresh  food,  vegetables,  milk  and Marmite.  Despite his  positively  frail 
babyhood,  he  soon grew to be a naturally strong and healthy  youngster.  He 
even  did his first killing at the age of fourteen,  when he sat down on  his 
foster mum's cat.
 When  he had reached sixteen and his foster mother chastized him for  coming 
home after nine one evening,  he decided he had to run away. Sucatraps was no 
planet for him, anyway. There wasn't enough action. He hitched a ride on some 
sort of interstellar craft and disappeared into the distant universe, looking 
for work. If all else failed, he could always become a hired gun.
 Through  many  jobs he eventually became an Airborne  Ranger.  It  has  been 
tough,  but  not enough so to his liking.  He resigned after helping to  kill 
that   darned  Ayatollah  Mokheiny,   and  went  back  to  what   he   rather 
affectionately  tended  to refer to as 'home' - a  cockroach-ridden  room  he 
rented in a semi-dilapidated building.
 There  he just sat,  sat and watched TV,  watched TV and sat,  and read  the 
occasional newspaper. Time passed at an agonizingly slow speed. At times he'd 
go  out and check for job vacancies.  He usually came back  depressed.  There 
weren't any ads in the papers either; nobody wanted any mercenaries and there 
seemed little demand for lean mean fighting machines nowadays.  The world was 
just too goddamn peaceful.
 Until,  one day,  he got a letter. It had a note attached, requesting him to 
pay shortage mail costs plus a significant fine.  Thirty dollars  twentyfive. 
For a letter? He examined the stamp, marked 'nonvalid' by a zealous mail man. 
It  was bescribbled with a writing only he understood.  It was  Sucatrapsian. 
Heaven knew how it had got there.  Cronos went a bit pale around the nose  as 
he hastily opened the envelope, tossing away the note.
 He  recognized his foster mother's handwriting.  He had to swallow  to  keep 
something down.
 "My dear bunny," Cronos read aloud, "How are you? I am very well, thank you, 
but at the moment in Eceerg Main Prison,  too,  and destined to be hung  when 
the moons are full if you don't do something soon.  Your mother,  Adnarim the 
Beautiful,  has also been captured,  as has the girl you always professed  to 
love."
 Loucynda.  No. Not her. Not her of all people. Who did they think they were? 
He continued reading.
 "I am afraid Drahcir's replacement,  Saurus, insists upon us being killed in 
some slow and agonizing way unless you hand yourself over to him to be killed 
in our stead.  You know,  dear, he seems to have found out about you and he's 
rather  reluctant  to have to leave his throne and his power if one  day  you 
might decide to come back and claim what's yours by birthright.  Please  come 
and  get yourself killed,  sugarpie,  or else we'll be history.  This  Saurus 
character seems to enjoy all of this. I think he's serious."
 Cronos stared at the ceiling for a couple of minutes,  and on it he imagined 
the faces of those he loved,  now rotting away in some Sucatrapsian  dungeon, 
92  million  light  years away.  His foster mother had raised  him  for  over 
fifteen  years,  had cared for him and loved him like...well...like her  cat. 
His mother was certainly one of the most beautiful woman unknown to  mankind, 
and his heart missed a beat at the sheer though of Loucynda being in jail  as 
well.  She was far too refined - and her nails far too meticulously manicured 
- to be submitted to the rigours of prison.  He ground his teeth and  smashed 
his fist on a small chair, which disintegrated.
 It  would last a bit more than four days before all the moons would be  full 
again,  he  reckoned.  He phoned the A-Team,  had them build  a  Subuniversal 
Wooferflooper (with built-in antenna and CD player),  and took for the  stars 
that same night.  Ninetysix hours left. Travelling much faster than the speed 
of  light  (the A-Team has several patents  on  post-lightspeed  travelling), 
Cronos was scheduled to arrive at Sucatraps early next morning.

 He  decreased  velocity when orbiting the small planet.  Again,  he  had  to 
swallow  something as he saw the globe he had not seen for such a long  time. 
Memories  of  sunsets with Loucynda came back to him quite  vividly,  as  did 
memories of his dear mother, heavenly orgies, and a dead cat.
 What was that thing in the sky?  At first, he mistook it for a Golden Eagle, 
but on second sight it seemed more like another spaceship.  After a couple of 
seconds it had disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
 He put his Subuniversal Wooferflooper (including the built-in antenna and CD 
player) down behind a couple of bushes and disembarked.  He was going to show 
king Saurus hell!
 But first he had to get into the castle.

 He  remembered him and his friends (girls,  mostly) playing in the  passages 
under the castle in his childhood days. Back then, these passages and tunnels 
were a secret known only by a few explorative children.  He wondered if  king 
Saurus had in the mean time gained knowledge of them. If he didn't, then this 
would probably be the best way to enter the castle.  If he  did...well...time 
would tell.
 He  came to the castle unscathed,  and indeed found the lower  passages  and 
tunnels with ease.  He removed some bushes that blocked one of the  entrances 
he knew of old,  and was glad to find it only partly collapsed.  He took  for 
granted  the dozens of spider webs and the many plants now firmly settled  in 
the entrance and entered.
 Like  he could have foretold,  it was pitch dark.  He used to know  the  way 
blindfolded but wasn't too sure now.  When he came to a stairway after having 
walked into a few walls too many,  his nose was bleeding and his hands ached. 
He cursed below his breath and fumbled his way up the stairs.  He froze for a 
moment.  Did he hear footsteps following him?  When he stopped to listen more 
intently there was only silence,  but when he moved again the sounds appeared 
like forgotten echoes in lost sand.
 He came into a room that,  judging by even more cobwebs everywhere and  some 
objects  lying around covered by a layer of dust that would drive  any  half-
decent mother crazy,  was obviously just as forgotten as the staircase. There 
were some old wooden chairs,  the skeleton of an old warrior and some  broken 
toys. Cronos wondered how the warrior had died and, indeed, if he had died in 
this  room.  He  moved closer and saw an enormous battle  axe  partly  hidden 
behind the corpse.  He bent over to take the axe when, suddenly, about twenty 
darts crashed over his head and into the opposite wall.  With his hearing aid 
forgotten he didn't even hear them. He felt quite safe.
 He  stood erect again after taking the weapon from the dead warrior's  grasp 
and  looked around.  He wondered where all those small darts in the wall  had 
suddenly come from.  His wonder lasted only a moment,  for he was trained  to 
fight, not to think.
 He opened the door.  It made a hell of a noise that was quite deafening even 
to  those  wearing hearing aids forgotten somewhere  on  another  planet.  He 
looked  at the door threateningly.  It wisely decided to refrain from  making 
any more sound as it was pushed open further.
 Cronos spied into an empty hallway.  Nothing moved.  There were some  pretty 
scary drawings hanging on the walls. Warchild crept out of the forgotten room 
slowly. When he closed it behind him, suddenly realising he might have put to 
good  use  the wariors' helmet,  he found the door having  mysteriously  (and 
meticulously) locked itself.
 Maybe the forgotten room wasn't half as forgotten as he considered it to  be 
- nor were the tunnels,  probably.  For a moment,  it occurred to him he  was 
trapped.  His  fighting  instincts  quickly suppressed  this  mental  action, 
however, all according to his training.
 He  carefully proceeded into the depths of the castle when suddenly he  came 
across a sign that read "DUNGEONS;  *NOT* THAT WAY".  The arrow pointed right 
into a door that was hospitably ajar.
 "Aaah!" Cronos cried, loud and triumphant, "they must think me a fool!"
 With  this  exclamation  he dashed through the door  opening  into  what  he 
reckoned to be a dungeon,  menacingly swaying the heavy duty battle axe above 
his head. If his loved ones were here, they'd be safe before they could blink 
their eyes and say "Please Cronos, get yourself off my feet".
 "Click," said a latch.  The door that had been ajar in such a hospitable way 
had  quite  suddenly  closed and locked  itself  mysteriously  (and,  indeed, 
meticulously).
 A mental process took over. He was trapped. He looked around him. There were 
no exits,  which he was quite able not to see in the dim light that was  cast 
into  the  room  through  a small window  meticulously  (though  not  at  all 
mysteriously) barred by some pretty thick steel grating.
 "Great," he thought, but not for long.
 Warchild had been in the damp prison cell - for indeed it was one, including 
a few rats thrown in for good measure - a couple of hours when he heard  soft 
steps outside. They stopped for a moment right in front of his cell door, and 
that  moment it seemed as though hands were touching the solid  wooden  door. 
One more moment and the steps continued,  fading.  Some more moments later he 
heard steps again, as well as the sound of suits of armour, this time of many 
men.  Someone  stopped in front of the dungeon door and turned a key  in  its 
lock. Cronos hid the battle axe in his pants, as good a place as any.
 The  door  opened  and in stepped someone who Cronos  reckoned  to  be  king 
Saurus.  He had never laid eyes on the man before, but what with him having a 
tail and a T-shirt with "REX" written on it,  even Cronos couldn't be all too 
far off.
 The  king looked disgusted when he inquired,  "Are you glad to see me or  is 
that a battle-axe in your pants?"
 Cronos didn't heed the question and instead insisted upon knowing what would 
happen to him now he was taken prisoner.
 "Of course,  you will be killed," the king replied, rolling his eyes, "after 
which you will be hung by the neck until you're tender enough to be eaten."
 Cronos felt a lump in his throat. This didn't seem right. The good guys were 
supposed to win, and he was pretty sure he wasn't the bad guy.
 The king continued, "We have transported the ones you've come to rescue to a 
place to the south of my castle - beyond the Valley of the Dead."
 The last words were pronounced as if by a madman who knows he's won.  Cronos 
didn't like it.
 "Over  my dead body!" Cronos cried as he uncovered the enormous battle  axe, 
finding  no  time to further contemplate the stupidity  of  the  phrase,  and 
started to hack and slash around him.  King Saurus ended up with a torn "REX" 
T-Shirt  and  five  decapitated guards before  Cronos  succeeded  in  barging 
through the door and dashing off into the hallway.
 Why the heck had he left all his killer gadgets at home?

 He  had  hardly been free for half a minute when,  from all  corners  so  it 
seemed,  strange beings cast themselves upon him. They varied from small bats 
to vaguely familiar and very smelly little flying animals. They seemed intent 
on  ejaculating the wastes of their metabolic systems on the mercenary  annex 
gun.
 In  the  way  movie stars often produce rather handy  but  hitherto  useless 
things from their pockets, Warchild took from a peg from one, put it securely 
on his nose,  breathed as little as possible and dashed further. All the time 
he still wielded the mighty battle axe. Many a beast dropped dead around him, 
forming  pools of blood through which he waded.  They seemed not  to  relent, 
each corner he took releasing upon him new hordes.  Just when he was about to 
give  up - an option he had never found necessary to contemplate so far -  he 
saw light at the far end of a corridor.
 Light! Light meant freedom or,  at least, a place where these nasty monsters 
would  perhaps  no longer be around.  The stench was doing good  attempts  at 
entering  his  pegged nostrils,  a fact that irritated him  and  clouded  his 
judgment.
 He  came closer and closer to the light,  which indeed was a  door  standing 
wide open and leading into the open air. This was almost too good.
 He looked back into the seemingly bottomless darkness of the tunnel.  Was it 
his  imagination or did he hear someone else in there,  someone else who  was 
also fighting the hordes?  Whatever might be, it wasn't important, as opposed 
to his life and that of the women he loved.

 When he came outside he wanted to embrace the light.  The creatures  shunned 
it,  seeming  mortally afraid of it.  They licked their fangs as if they  had 
just lost a month's worth of food, which they probably had.
 Once  his eyes grew used to the sun,  its light revealed the Valley  of  the 
Dead  of which King Saurus had spoken.  Stretching far beyond the  limits  of 
sight there was only the southern desert of Sucatraps;  a vast area that  was 
only covered with dry sand and solitary monoliths.
 According to legend,  this was where the young Sucatrapsian boys became men. 
They  simply got dumped in the middle of the Valley and basically had to  get 
out all on their own. Most didn't make it, but those who did had passed their 
final exam. Cronos thought about the possibility of accidentally encountering 
one.  They  were  highly trained assassins that would probably see in  him  a 
welcome  change  to  their  regular diet of raw  desert  rat  and  even  more 
unspeakable  things. He  basically had to take care to eat instead  of  being 
eaten.  Shouldn't be altogether that much of a big deal, now he came to think 
of it.
 He  looked at the nearest monolith with a certain amount of awe.  They  made 
him  think  of totempoles that Indians on earth used  to  worship.  Its  face 
looked fearsome and a large red tongue hung from its mouth.  He knew some  of 
them  were  boodytraps.  Not too friendly a place having to cross in  such  a 
short time.
 Short time? Holy cow! He would never have enough time to cross the Valley of 
the  Dead  within the day or two that were still left before the  moons  were 
full!
 The sound of a vehicle behind him made the thought of a faster way to get to 
the  other side dawn upon him.  He hid behind the ghastly monolith and saw  a 
sandswooper  closing in at quite a dazzling speed.  When it was about  twenty 
feet from him, he jumped from behind the monolith and was totally run over by 
the thing.  It bumped wildly in the air,  throwing its two occupants off  and 
leaving Cronos lying on the ground for a couple of moments,  dazzled. The two 
occupants of the sandswooper were struck unconscious by the crash, but Cronos 
seemed  only  to have hurt his shin bone (the same one around which  a  large 
black  American  car had folded itself some time earlier).  He looked  at  it 
painfully. He cursed, as usual.
 When  his  shinbone  seemed to have recovered  sufficiently  from  the  pain 
throbbing  through  it,  Cronos got up and boarded the  dented  vehicle.  Its 
controls  were still intact and looked rather much like those of the  average 
low  budget  British Leyland car.  He wondered who had been so insane  as  to 
mimic the other. He headed south.
 He  didn't  heed  the reflection in his rear view  mirror  of  someone  clad 
entirely in white who stumbled out of the castle.  His life and those of  the 
women he loved were still more important.  He had no time to rescue others  - 
as if he ever did!

 He had driven for about two hours through the Valley of the Dead,  carefully 
evading  all those monoliths and shooting frightful creatures of  the  night, 
when  he opened the glove compartment.  Apart from the usual stuff  that  one 
tends  to find in glove compartments - sunglasses,  detailed maps and  strike 
schedules  of  the London underground and suppositories - he found  a  sealed 
letter of which the seal was broken.
 "CONFIDENTIAL" was written on it in large Nairobi-beige capitals.
 An  inquisitive  kind of person,  Warchild opened the envelope to  read  the 
letter contained in it.
 "Distract Elmer son of Drahcir son of Naj son of Tsirhc son of Sutrebuh  son 
of wotsisname - stop -," Cronos read aloud to himself,  "make sure he doesn't 
go  back  to castle - stop - hostages still held there -  stop  -  annihilate 
subject when moons are full."
 It  took  about a minute for the meaning to penetrate his  mind.  A  record-
breaking speed.
 "The  bastards!" he cried,  turning the sandswooper around with a  handbrake 
turn. They still held his loved-ones in bondage and, what was worse, they had 
lured  him into going the wrong way!  One of these days they'd push  him  too 
far.  Even  so,  he'd fallen for it.  Maybe,  had he used his mind (which  he 
hadn't and wasn't supposed to),  he wouldn't have taken the bait. Now he came 
to think of it, his escape from the castle had been too easy.
 On  his  way back to the castle,  a break-neck velocity  venture,  he  could 
barely avoid crashing into another sandswooper carrying someone who, at least 
so it seemed in the haze of highest humanly possible sandswooper speed,  wore 
white clothes.

 In reasonably less than two hours (which is quite breathtakingly  remarkable 
what  with  him  running out of gas half-way) he  arrived  back  outside  the 
castle.  Nobody expected him, the bridge over the moat was closed. He had the 
element of surprise, but be that as it may he would first have to get in.
 He  cursed once more,  not exactly below his breath now.  He could  drive  a 
sandswooper  and fly a subuniversal wooferflooper.  He could squeeze  himself 
into an East-German car and ride any mother-in-law.  But swimming,  *that* he 
couldn't.
 Lucky for him, a gigantic Golden Eagle at that instant found it opportune to 
land  almost next to him.  The bird eyed him with suspicion.  Cronos eyed  it 
with  suspicion,  too.  If  Golden  Eagles had the ability  to  turn  red  of 
embarrassment, this one would have. It had peculiar marks on its wings.
 Cronos  carefully  moved closer to the Eagle,  that shook  its  feathers  as 
though  it  couldn't care less - but still keeping an eye  on  the  mercenary 
annex hired gun.  When Cronos came a too close, however, the Eagle leapt into 
the  sky  and beat its wings in the hot desert wind.  Cronos was  still  fast 
enough  and thought he grabbed the enormous bird by its paws just  before  it 
lifted off.  Actually, however, the bird had grabbed *him* and it now carried 
Warchild to its offspring, on a nest deep in the innards of the castle.
 Although  it got him across the moat,  what to do once he was dumped  on  an 
enormous Eagle's Nest,  about to be preyed upon by some eager and very hungry 
young but no doubt dangerous Golden Eagles?
 It made him think of a Richard Burton WW II movie he once saw.

 After a short and quite hazardous flight,  Cronos was rather  unceremonially 
dumped on a nest that was constructed of wood,  bits of iron and fragments of 
human bones.  His nose was penetrated by the pong of Eagle dung. He shook his 
head.  He had no time to get agitated about the offensive stench,  for he saw 
three  ugly  and rather big young birds coming towards him with  their  beaks 
opened  wide so that he could see tonsils,  uvula,  and the  frightening  red 
colour of their throats.
 "Time for some defensive transactions," he murmured, and did his best to act 
like he was the Golden Eagle that had just flown off again in search for more 
food.
 The small creatures,  stupid though they may have seemed even to someone  of 
Warchild's intelligence,  didn't buy it.  Instead,  they started gnawing on a 
leg  and  seemed to find a certain pleasure in pulling out small  strands  of 
hair from there.
 "OK.  In that case,  it's time for some offensive actions," Cronos murmured, 
now  visibly  agitated.  There  was only one thing left for  him  to  do.  He 
released upon them his Ronald Reagan impression.
 "You  ain't  seen nothin' yet!" he said,  with as much fake  feeling  as  he 
could put in it. The birds stopped gnawing and eyed him suspiciously.
 "Well...shred the proof!" Cronos continued. They stepped back uncertainly.
 "I have never seen Ollie before in my life!" he now intoned as  convincingly 
as possible.  The birds retreated for now. They were hungry, but they weren't 
suicidal. Cronos had bought valuable seconds.

 "Help me! Help me!" he heard a familiar young woman's voice yell.
 "Oh,  sugarpie! Bunny dear!" he heard another voice, croaking with age, mere 
seconds later.
 "Elmer!" he heard a third voice cry.
 He  looked  around frantically,  trying to determine where the  voices  were 
coming. He then realized they came from below. The Golden Eagle had sought to 
build  its nest on top of a dungeon where his loved ones appeared to be  kept 
prisoner. An excellent guard.
 He looked above him and became concerned. Above the nest - and the dungeon - 
an enormous boulder hung on a rope. Should it break, even Cronos saw it would 
shatter both utterly. Through a small barred window in the damp and dark hall 
he could see the young moons of Sucatraps. Both of them were almost full.

 He leapt off the nest athletically and started examining the door.  It was a 
very solid one, the same kind that had kept him locked some hours earlier. No 
chance of getting through that one, unless...
 He could hear the women crying inside - they were very eager to be  rescued, 
and thought they already were.
 "Loucynda," Cronos whispered excitedly, "give me one of your hair pins!"
 "But  that  will ruin my coup,  darling," he heard her  inside,  after  some 
thought, hesitant.
 "Damn it, Loucynda! DO IT!" Warchild said with more force.
 After some seconds, a hair pin was pushed under the door. Cronos grabbed it, 
folded it in some arcane way and started to attempt to pick the  lock.  Sweat 
was becoming visible on his forehead.
 There was a "click".

 Bestial  laughter  suddenly filled the hall.  Cronos looked up and  saw  the 
silhouette  of someone standing on a stone balcony,  about thirty feet  above 
him. The figure standing there had a tail.
 As it stepped forward,  Cronos saw the "REX" logo on a torn  T-shirt.  There 
was no mistaking who that was.  He was too pre-occupied being aghast that his 
lower jaw hung foolishly.
 "YES!" he heard the king cry out triumphantly, the voice echoeing, "YES!! My 
time has come! Here and now I will establish my power once and for all!"
 More bestial laughter echoed through the hall as king Saurus unsheathed  his 
sword.  There was a rope. The sword moved to it as if in slow-motion. Cronos' 
eyes followed the rope. The enormous boulder was attached to it.
 Four archers had their arrows pointed at Cronos' heart. There wasn't a thing 
he could do.  He was going to die and the only comfort would be that he would 
arrive in the world of the Dead with the three women he loved most.  He faced 
death with pride in his eyes.  He unbuttoned his shirt, displaying his chest. 
He wasn't afraid to die.  His time was bound to come one day anyway, and this 
wasn't even the worst of deaths now he came to think of it.
 The women in the cell started to cry hysterically.  They seemed to think  of 
death in quite a different way.
 "Har!  Har! Haha!" laughed king Saurus. The sword touched the rope. It began 
eating through it,  which went rather easier than Cronos had  expected.  That 
surely was one very sharp sword.
 He climbed back onto the Eagle's Nest. This way at least he'd go first.
 The  two moons were full now.  Their powerless light shone on  the  defeated 
figure of the battered mercenary annex hired gun. The young Eagles seemed the 
only  ones  still afraid of this strange man that used to  talk  about  paper 
shredders.
 Below them, the women still cried hysterically, frantically, desperately...
 "I will keep on loving you, Cronos!" he heard Loucynda cry.
 "Farewell, honeypie..." he thought he heard his foster mother croak.
 "See you beyond, Elmer..." his real mother sighed.

 At  that  precise moment a syringe flew through the  air  and,  with  almost 
surgical precision,  hit king Saurus right in the posterior. He faltered. The 
razor-sharp  blade dropped from his grasp.  For a moment he looked around  in 
disbelief,  then keeled over and fell down on the harsh stone  floor,  thirty 
feet below.
 "Thud," it went. Deader than a Dodo.
 The archers looked at each other and decided to leg it.  This was surely  no 
place to hang around for peace-loving dudes like them.
 Cronos,  quite oblivious of what had happened,  still stood on (and in)  the 
Eagle's Nest,  eyes closed.  His chest was thrust forward proudly,  his hands 
keeping  his shirt aside so it wouldn't be stained by the blood gushing  from 
his torso should the arrows pierce him.
 The  women  now found out that Cronos had already succeeded in  opening  the 
lock  (the  "click",  remember?) and ran out into the hall.  Their  cries  of 
hysteria were replaced by cries of happiness. There barely was a difference.
 Cronos  opened his eyes to see the body on the ground,  a  syringe  labelled 
"Cyanide"  dangling in one of the king's buttocks.  He saw the  women  crying 
happy hysterical cries and he also saw someone else, dressed in white.
 It  was another woman,  a nurse,  and she looked like an identical  twin  of 
Gloria Estefan.  For a moment, he looked her right in the eyes. That sure was 
one hell of a lady.  He muttered something in gratitude, after which she left 
promptly. "Ambulor Eight Hospital of the Very Very Splattered" was written on 
the  back of her white uniform,  in blood-red writing like that is  generally 
used in cheap horror film logos.
 "Hey!" he cried into the darkness of the hallway in which she had gone.  His 
voice lacked strength. She had vanished, anyway. He climbed down, immediately 
to be assailed by women.
 "Oh...Cronos!" Loucynda sighed, kissing her hero firmly on the cheek.
 "Swell job, bunny dear," his foster mum croaked, patting him on the back.
 His mother just hugged him tight and said nothing.  They held each other for 
seconds. Warmth flowed from her body to his.
 "Mother, there is so much I have longed to say for all this time," he wanted 
to  say,  but  his voice seemed to cling to his throat and instead  he  said, 
"Okay". He patted her back as gently as he could. She suppressed a cringe.
 Loucynda waited until this emotional gathering had passed its climax,  or at 
least what *she* considered its climax, after which she interrupted.
 "Did you bring the keys?" she inquired.
 "The keys?" Cronos replied.
 "The keys," she acknowledged.  She pulled down her skirt with a look in  her 
eyes as though it would surely explain everything.  He beheld a large belt of 
leather and metal strapped around her waist.  There was a sturdy,  rusty lock 
located hanging between her legs,  and two others - equally sturdy and  quite 
rusty - on each side on her hips.
 Her  chastity  belt.  He  remembered  having put it  on  her  when  he  left 
Sucatraps,  now almost six years ago.  He also remembered having lost the key 
somewhere on a vague planet somewhere in a vague milkyway on a vague edge  of 
the galaxy.
 "Ooops." Cronos sighed.

 Original written September 1989. Rehashed March and May 1994.


= ALICE THROUGH THE FLAMES ==================================================
 by Roy Stead


 Another day at the office over with, Colin had decided to settle down with a 
good  book.  The year before,  he had had installed a 'real fire.' As he  had 
said at the time, "It gives the place a homely look - with a log fire blazing 
merrily away in the living room,  you can really believe that your home is an 
impregnable  fortress,  gallantly keeping the elements at bay whether you  be 
sleeping  or  awake."  Colin smiled to himself,  as he  often  did  at  these 
moments,  and gave thanks that his wife had taken Jason, the two year-old, to 
her  parents  for the weekend.  A long,  pleasant and - above all  -  *quiet* 
weekend  stretched  out  before him as he lowered his  body  into  the  comfy 
armchair  by  the fire.  Colin shifted slightly,  to get  as  comfortable  as 
possible,  then  adjusted  the table lamp to *just* the  right  angle  before 
picking up the book and beginning to read...
 Just  as the hero was about to decapitate the gargantuan nine-headed  beast, 
Colin's  attention was diverted by the sound of someone moving around in  the 
next  room.  "Strange,  there's  nobody home.  Maybe Karen had to  come  back 
early,"  Colin  said  to himself.  "God,  I hope not -  I  think  I'd  prefer 
burglars!" The middle-aged civil servant hoisted his bulk from the chair  and 
wandered into the other room to investigate,  pausing only to procure a poker 
from beside the fire. "Just in case..."
 "Odd," thought Colin as he approached the door.  the sounds from within  had 
started  to  collect into words.  Speech.  In a very strange  accent,  but  - 
nonetheless - English. He slowly opened the door and, poker brandished at the 
ready,  strode  into the room.  "Who are you,  and what are you doing  in  my 
home?" Hardly an original line,  but then nobody awards points for creativity 
at these moments.
 Colin  stopped.  There were four people in the kitchen.  Three of them  were 
arguing over the toaster,  while the fourth - a tall,  and rather attractive, 
blonde woman - looked on.  Deliberately and carefully,  the blonde turned  to 
face Colin.
 "We come in peace." she stated,  simply.  It looked like cliches were to  be 
the order of the day.  Was this some kind of joke?  She didn't look to  Colin 
like she was joking but, nonetheless, her words - and that weird accent!
 Colin hesitated a moment, then: "Do you, now? Do you usually 'come in peace' 
by breaking into someone's house, and ransacking their possessions?"
 "I must apologise for my friends.  They are being,  perhaps, a little...over 
zealous..."  The  three,  dressed  -  as was the blonde  woman  -  in  brown, 
discoloured  rags and bereft of shoes,  now seemed to be in the throes  of  a 
disagreement  over whose turn it was to drink from the cold  water  tap.  The 
blonde followed Colin's gaze,  looked at her friends then returned her  stare 
to the house's owner. She shrugged.
 "Perhaps I should explain myself," she continued.
 "Yes, I think maybe you ought to!" snapped Colin, who now looked on, bemused 
as the strange blonde's three companions had a fight over the contents of the 
icebox.
 Unperturbed,  the blonde introduced herself as,  "Just call me 'Alice.'" and 
went  on  to  describe how she and her three companions  were  refugees  from 
Colin's own future.
 "Oh.  Of  course,"  burst  in Colin,"I had somebody  from  the  twenty-fifth 
century for tea last week.  Why didn't you say so?  Perhaps you would like  a 
quick cup of coffee, before going back to battle daleks or take a spin around 
Saturn's moons?" His voice cracked,  as he shrieked, "Do you think I was born 
yesterday? You come in here, argue about who gets what in my home then expect 
me  to  believe  any cock and bull story you care to spin  about  being  time 
travellers? Well, you're not time travellers!"
 "How can you be so sure?" broke in the blonde, Alice, smoothly.
 Surprised  by  the simple audacity of the question,  Colin  was  momentarily 
nonplussed,  before spluttering:  "Well, for one thing, time travellers would 
be better dressed!"
 "Look,  just hear me out, then - if you still don't believe me - we'll leave 
you. Okay?"
 No, it's *not* bloody okay! Get out now, or I'll call the police!"
 "We're not going.  I am not going.  Not until you've at least heard us out." 
Colin sighed.  He'd had a wonderfully peaceful weekend planned, and it seemed 
to  be  falling  apart about his ears.  But he resigned  himself  to  hearing 
Alice's story,  and led her - followed by her retinue - into the living room, 
where he settled down in his comfy chair and awaited the tale. At least there 
would be some entertainment - if only he could find the popcorn...
 "Picture it:  North America,  ravaged by war and plagued - yes,  *literally* 
plagued  - by disease.  The Statue of Liberty toppled like a house of  cards, 
the  remains  used by destitutes as stepping stones across  the  Hudson.  The 
Capitol's roof destroyed,  caved in by the backwash from an atomic blast. The 
Golden  Gate  Bridge no longer capable of supporting the weight  even  of  an 
anorexic  ant.   The  United  States  now  disunited,  and  battling  amongst 
themselves  for what remains of the spoils of war,  while Mexico and  Canada, 
themselves  war-torn lands,  sit on the  sidelines,  occassionally  swooping, 
vulture-like,  on the carcasses of shattered principalities.  Picture it,  if 
you  can.  That is the world I - *we* - left behind.  And,  unless we can  do 
something  -  unless we can convince *you* to help us - then  the  war  which 
began  the  nightmare  will  come to pass.  And The  United  States  will  be 
destroyed, along with the rest of the world."
 Colin,  mouth  gaping,  stared  a moment at Alice.  Then,  taking  ahold  of 
himself,  shook  his head as if to clear Alice's description from  his  mind. 
"You're  serious."  It was a statement,  not a  question,  but  Alice  nodded 
nonetheless. Colin picked up the 'phone and dialled, carefully: 9...1...1.
 "Hello,  emergency services?  I'd like a - what the Hell..?  What? Oh, never 
mind..."  He put the 'phone down,  replacing the receiver in its cradle  with 
all  the  care  of a raw-egg juggler.  Emulating  the  studied  patience  and 
concentration of a Zen master,  Colin watched the receiver settle in its  bed 
before looking up to check what had so startled him a moment before.  It  was 
still there.  Or, rather, *they* were still there. The original group of four 
had  multiplied to eight *while Colin was watching*.  Nobody had entered  the 
room  - not by conventional means,  anyway.  Yet four people  had...appeared. 
Colin was, to say the least, mildly surprised.
 The  four newcomers were dressed far more smartly than the  first  arrivals. 
Perhaps  they came from a different time period.  Colin caught  the  thought. 
Time travellers? Well, let's face it - either the second group teleported in, 
which is impossible, or they arrived via a time machine, which is impossible. 
The  difference lay in the fact that they *claimed* the latter.  And  so  the 
pendulum of decision hung in that direction, for the moment.
 Colin looked the latest group over. The clothes were definately plusher than 
Alice's  band - they wore loose-fitting robes,  after the fashion of  Ancient 
Roman togas - each robe being a single solid block of a bright  colour:  red, 
blue, green and...a tall, statuesque brunette wore a white 'toga.'
 That brunette turned to look at Colin,  as he gasped in astonishment. Alice! 
The two Alices noticed each other then - and paused to look one another over. 
Ragged  Alice was the first to speak:  "You dyed your hair.  It doesn't  suit 
you."
 "Who *are* you? No - don't answer that," began the be-toga'ed Alice, "I know 
who  you  are  - you're me.  But how?  And why do  you  have  such  goddawful 
clothing? Are you *Me*, from my future? If so, why are you here?"
 "I was about to ask you the same things.  Since I have no memory of   having 
been  you - and you seem to have none of having been me -  perhaps you  would 
be kind enough to tell me why you are here?"
 "You  know  as well as I why I'm here - your presence indicates  that   your  
research has led you to the same conclusion to which mine led  me. This  is a 
junction  point.  To be more precise,  this *man* is a  junction  point.  His 
actions can start, or prevent, a world war."
 Colin burst in,  "What are you two talking about?  I'm no world leader - how 
can I start off Armageddon?  I'm just a government clerk. I'm good at my job, 
sure. But that's as far as it goes."
 The trampesque Alice broke into Colin's monotribe:  "Tomorrow,  a memo  will 
cross your desk marked 'SFF-524G/Q.' If you fail to pass it on,  the Pentagon 
will  be  unaware of a small,  but significant,  item  of  information.  This 
ignorance will lead to a breakdown in communications and then,  gradually, to 
a small conflict between states within what you know as the United States  of 
America.  As further states join the dispute,  so the conflict will  escalate 
until  those states which currently maintain a nuclear arsenal - in the  name 
of  the  National  Defence - use them on those regions  which  they  view  as 
enemies.  The automated defence computers will register a first strike on  US 
soil,  and launch a counter-attack - against the Eastern Bloc.  The resulting 
conflict destroys most Life on Earth."
 "My God," Colin breathed,  "For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost...Well, 
I  must ensure that I don't lose that memo!  Will that make  things  alright? 
Will that stop the war?"
 "We think so," began The war-torn Alice, "But, just to be sure..."
 "Wait," blurted the more refined Alice,  "Think this  through.  Sure,  there 
will be no war. But - well, perhaps I'd better tell you why *I* am here...
 "In *my* history,  which seems to be different from yours," she gestured  in 
the other Alice's direction,  "the memo got through.  There was no  war,  and 
consequently  no massive investment in research - How long from now  is  your 
war  due  to  begin,  if the memo fails to get  through?"  The  question  was 
directed at the other Alice.
 "Twenty-four  years  before  the opening of  hostilities,  One  hundred  and 
sixteen years before the first atomic weapon is used. Why?"
 "Just a thought.  Don't you realise that mankind *needs* this war?  If there 
is no war,  then there is no impetous to survive - to *live*. War means money 
poured into research - defence systems, weapons systems, computers, space. No 
war,  no research.  No research,  no advancement.  In short,  stagnation. The 
human  race will reach its demise gradually,  through apathy.  Nobody  caring 
enough  to *do* anything anymore.  The world ending,  to borrow one  of  your 
phrases," she nods at Colin, "Not with a bang, but a whimper."
 Colin,  half out of his chair,  sank slowly back until he felt the  cushions 
enveloping his body,  moulding to his shape. "So," he said, eventually, "If I 
send  this memo through,  then - according to you," he pointed at the  second 
Alice,  "there will be no war,  and the human race will bore itself to death. 
If,  on the other hand,  I withhold this memo, then *you* say," He pointed at 
the  ragged,  and now rather pensive,  first Alice,  "that there will come  a 
world war which will destroy the human race.  Whichever I choose,  the  human 
race doesn't seem to stand a chance."
 Alice one's brow furrowed,  as she thought furiously.  Turning to the rather 
flashily dressed Alice two,  she said, "I've been thinking. Maybe a war would 
be  a good idea,  after all - at least then we go out with a bang -  a  light 
show which aliens might point to in their skies.  A kind of last funeral pyre 
for mankind."
 The second Alice considered this a moment,  before saying,  "No,  I think no 
war would be better - after all,  humans *might* recover from this period  of 
apathy, you know..."
 "No - war would be a good idea, we can re-build the world..."
 "Uh uh. No war is better: that way, there's no *need* to rebuild!"
 Colin broke in,  laughing, "Ladies! Ladies!" he shouted, "You've both done a 
rapid volte-face,  have you not? Why is this?" He silenced their explanations 
with  a wave of his hand,  "No,  don't bother to lie - I can see it  in  your 
faces.  You've  both realised what has just become clear to me.  If  you  had 
succeeded  in your original mission,  then my future would be  altered.  Your 
future would cease to exist:  *you* would no longer be 'real'.  Instead, your 
counterpart - the woman you are arguing with at the moment - would be in  the 
'true' future.  However,  now your pleas are not so much for the human race - 
that seems doomed either way - but for your own existence."
 The  women  looked sheepish.  Colin was correct,  and all of them  knew  it. 
Walking  across the room,  Colin replaced the poker - which he found  he  was 
still  gripping in his right hand - in the stand beside the fire.  He  turned 
from the flames and, with a wry smile, stated,
 "Well, I will toss a coin to decide which future shall come about. Does that 
seem reasonable to each of you?" The women nodded.  Reluctantly, they nodded. 
Colin took a quarter from his trouser pocket,  then flipped it:  "Heads, war; 
tails, peace." Even raggedy Alice's companions stopped bickering over a toga, 
previously  belonging to a now-unconscious cohort of the  other  Alice,  long 
enough to watch the coin come down.  It span in the air, glinting brightly in 
the flames of Colin's real fire like a single phoenix feather before hurtling 
toward  the  carpet,  and  - as it landed - nobody in that  room  dared  draw 
breath.
 The coin landed on its edge.
 "Well,"  came a familiar voice from the corner of the room,  "It  seems  the 
human race has a chance after all."

 Written April 1990.


= BLOOD MONEY ===============================================================
 by Richard Karsmakers


 Cronos  Warchild,  mercenary annex hired gun,  sat in his chair holding  the 
evening paper.  A dim light shrouded his being into what seemed to be ominous 
mystery. Everything seemed to be quite normal.
 The fact that Cronos held the newspaper upside down, however, suggested that 
at least *something* was not entirely normal.  Some careful observation would 
reveal  that  his eyes were not,  as may have been  expected,  aimed  at  the 
newspaper. Not even at the cartoons.
 Yet  more detailed observation would reveal that his eyes weren't  aimed  at 
anything,  unfocused at something that seemed to be beyond the paper, perhaps 
even beyond his vision.
 Sounds were coming from the kitchen.  The sounds were anything but unusual - 
the  sound of cutlery and the metal of pans and the burning of gas  on  which 
someone was apparently preparing a meal. The only other sound was that of the 
clock that slowly ticked its way in another corner of the room. Since the dim 
light  near the chair didn't suffice to shed light upon that  corner,  it  is 
beyond  any  means  to specify what kind of clock  it  was,  but  the  sounds 
indicated that it was one of the standing type.  A big one with  slow,  heavy 
beats. The kind that you would expect to stop working when its owner dies.
 It tolled eight.
 The  sounds  of cutlery in the kitchen ceased and there seemed  to  be  what 
could not be mistaken for anything but a "thud" followed by a muffled cry.
 Another very careful observation would reveal that there was nobody  sitting 
in the chair near the dim light any more. A paper lay there as if it had been 
abandoned in haste. Which, to tell the truth, was exactly the case.
 A sound, loud and penetrating, could be heard. And then a second.
 Two large holes seemed to have appeared in the chair quite spontaneously.
 "Shit!"  a silhouette spat.  It held a smoking .45 in its hand and could  be 
seen  standing  in the kitchen door.  Its eyes gleamed  eeriely  and  glanced 
around, frightened.
 Another  sound broke the silence - this time a soft one,  the  kind  usually 
caused by something very small flying through the air at great  velocity.  At 
the  end there was a "plop",  the kind that tends to be caused by  an  object 
hitting flesh - and penetrating it.
 The eyes rolled,  went dull,  filled with something red,  and the silhouette 
sighed  to the floor.  Light from the kitchen falling on the face revealed  a 
small black hole in the forehead from which poured a dark fluid.  In it sat a 
tiny dagger.

 Cronos came from his hiding place to pull his dagger from the lifeless  body 
of  the assassin.  He cleaned the blade on the man's shirt,  after  which  he 
inserted it in a sheath that was hidden within one of his trousers legs.
 In  the  kitchen  an old woman,  probably in  her  late  eighties,  regained 
consciousness, caressing carefully a bump on the back of her head.
 "What happened?" she asked no one in particular. Cronos was about to concoct 
a story that would explain all this when more questions assailed him.
 "Who am I? Who are you? Who is he? Why am I? What's the time?"
 "It's  time to get ill," Cronos grunted and knocked the old woman  out  cold 
with  a  massive  pound of his rather square and  equally  massive  fist.  He 
believed  a well-aimed knock on someone's head was always better than  having 
to come up with a most elaborate explanation.

 Cronos Warchild,  let's face it,  is a primitive being, primarily trained to 
fight and not to think. Predictably, he was never taught how to treat amnesia 
in the case of female housemaids roaming in their late eighties.  He  assumed 
hitting her hard would have the same effect it had on his enemies,  i.e.  put 
her out of her misery.
 He does not, I repeat NOT, hate female housemaids in their late eighties who 
suffer amnesia - nor ANY females,  ANY housemaids,  ANY people in their  late 
eighties, or ANY people suffering amnesia (should any of these read this).
 Let the story continue!

 He directed his attention back to the unfortunately deceased person that was 
soiling the kitchen floor tiles with his blood. The colour didn't quite match 
the orange of these tiles, Warchild was shocked to establish. He searched the 
assassin's  pockets and found a piece of paper.  Apart from the fact that  it 
was wrinkled, its primary feature was some writing on it. Although Cronos was 
as much a reader as he was a physician, he was still able to decypher some of 
what was scribbled on it.  Enough to know what was happening,  anyway,  or at 
least to *think* he knew what was happening.
 "20:00 h. Kill Cronos Warchild," he read aloud. He lifted his eyebrows.
 "21:00 h.  Report at ASP." He lifted his eyebrows even more, on the verge of 
them popping off. It didn't make a lot of sense to him.
 He searched another of the body's pockets and found some ID that revealed to 
him that he was called Spondulix,  from a planet of which the name was beyond 
interpretation.   Further   pocket  examination  revealed  an  Alien   Safari 
Promotions  Inc.  brochure,  a  draft ticket for an examination  on  Venusian 
Accountancy and 200 Thanatopian credits as well as a brief user manual for  a 
device called a 'Compact Universal Nuclear Teleporter'.
 "Hmmm..." he said.
 "Hmmmm..." he said, with some more feeling.
 The female housemaid in her late eighties regained consciousness again -  or 
at  least  her  moaning  and moving seemed to  indicate  her  joining  waking 
sentiency.  This  drew  Cronos' attention off the dead man and  the  puzzling 
pocket contents.
 "Winston? Where are you?" the woman asked with a powerless voice that seemed 
to utter each word more like a sigh,  "Winston?  Winston?!  Are you sure  you 
will go on 'till the end?  Are you sure you'll never surrender? And can't you 
ever stop smoking those blimmin' smelly cigars?"
 As  Warchild  was  not aware of the fact that the old woman  had  been  Mrs. 
Winston  Churchill  in  an  earlier life (nor was he  aware  of  the  distant 
possibility  of reincarnation or,  for that matter,  of  anything  pertaining 
Winston  Churchill,  the  Battle of Britain or even the entire  happening  of 
any  World Wars),  he once more had his rather squarely built,  massive  fist 
connect  to  the  woman's head.  Before she passed  out  again  she  muttered 
something  about  the  invasion of Sicily  and  something  called  Mussolini, 
something Cronos reckoned has something to do with noodles.
 Cronos  read  most  of  the ASP  brochure,  which  presented  not  a  little 
difficulty to him. When he finished he suddenly noticed something gleaming on 
the dead man's hand.
 A ring.
 At first sight,  it was a very cheap brass ring.  At second sight,  it still 
was.  On the inside was a small button,  as if designed for a thumb to press. 
He took it off the deceased's hands and tried it on himself.  In spite of the 
fact  that  his hands were much bigger and his finger much thicker  than  the 
corpse's,  the  ring  seemed to fit like it was forged  especially  for  him. 
Really weird.
 He pressed the little button on it.

 He found himself laying on a bed.  The bed was tidily made, and the distinct 
odour  was that of ether.  He immediately recognized this place.  It was  the 
only  place he feared,  the place he loathed even more than dog's  excrements 
stuck under his shoe or hair on a bar of soap.
 The Ambulor Eight Hospital of the Very Very Splattered.
 He  now  also  recognized a nurse sitting in the far  corner  of  the  room, 
reading  a cheap James Hamilton doctor novel.  She didn't seem to notice  him 
and instead seemed to be absorbed truly by whichever female kissing whichever 
doctor at whichever hospital.
 A  graphic  Warchild's state of health was located above  his  bed.  It  was 
shaped like a mountain range ending in a negative peak stretching beyond  the 
lower limits of the paper.  The line was continued on the wall, but it seemed 
the doctor responsible for the graph had given up the attempt when eventually 
the  floor  was reached.  A wreath of lilies was nonchalantly draped  on  the 
chair  to  the right side of the bed,  to which a thin banner  stating  "Bye, 
Honeypie" was attached.
 He  was dressed in white pyjamas but was glad to discover that he was  still 
wearing  the ring.  It seemed some kind of Teleportation device,  and a  very 
compact one at that!
 He pressed the little button once more.

 He was knee-deep in what he thought was mud.
 Of  course he was wrong.  He was trained to fight and not to think.  It  was 
quicksand.
 He discovered his error quickly,  when the depth started to tug at his  legs 
slowly but certainly,  sucking them into the dark abyss that could only  mean 
death.  He  already saw his entire life flashing by him in the  moments  that 
passed  before he was entirely submerged in the murderous trap.  Most  of  it 
was bloody,  or gory,  or both. He closed his eyes and held his breath. Then, 
suddenly,  he opened his eyes and saw a man clad in a black robe, wielding an 
enormous scythe. He made beckoning gestures at Warchild, crying, "COME. COME. 
LET GO. COME."
 Cronos  shook  his  head,  filling eyes and ears with  mud.  He  was  dying. 
Suffocating. There was no doubt about it.
 He  tried  to locate his right hand and felt something like panic  surge  up 
inside of him when he couldn't find it.  He regained his senses when he found 
it was quite impossible to grasp a right hand with one's right hand. He tried 
with his left one and succeeded.  There was a cheap brass ring on one of  the 
digits.
 He pressed its little button.

 He  stood upright,  shaking his head in wonder at what once again seemed  to 
have  happened.  He was afraid to open his eyes,  fearing what he might  have 
teleported himself to this time.  He gathered a tremendous amount of courage, 
opening them nonetheless. Fear could be suppressed. He did.
 There was nothing around him but a restaurant and some people eating in it.
 First  thing  he could actually distinguish *in focus* was  a  sign  hanging 
above a stage, on which was a name reminding him of a chocolate bar.
 Next,  he saw an excited couple of beings talking about time,  past, present 
and perfect with a waiter.  There was a man dressed in pyjamas,  another  man 
dressed in what appeared to be normal clothes,  a woman,  and a man that  had 
something distinctly odd about him. No mistaking it. Two heads. Weird.
 Apart  from  the aforementioned gathering of humans that  continued  talking 
quite agitatedly to the aforementioned waiter,  Warchild saw some people clad 
in white robes chanting about a Great White Handkerchief,  and a big fat  man 
dressed  in black leather sitting at a table.  The latter didn't look at  all 
happy and didn't utter as much as a sigh.
 Cronos was startled to hear someone speaking close to him.
 "Good evening,  sir," something that had been a green blur (but that now was 
a  waiter)  asked  him while trying to suppress a cough  and  looking  rather 
disapprovingly, "do you have a reservation?"
 "Reservation?"  Warchild said weakly,  and decided to give a go at  pressing 
the little button once more.
 Just before he left the time and space of Milliways, he thought he heard the 
waiter ask: "Can't I at least get you interested in ordering one of our quite 
excellent Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters?"

 He thought he sensed nothing but the distinct smell of a forest.
 And,  for  once,  Warchild indeed appeared to be right.  He seemed  to  have 
forgotten all about sensing the sweating horse right in front of him, though. 
It was black like the night,  black to such extent that it seemed even to  be 
an obscure, very dark schade of the utterly blackest black.
 Cronos stood aghast, gazing at the horse. Not only was it black, it was also 
very big. On top of that, its eyes radiated with what seemed hot, red malice.
 He  had never felt any fear for animals as long as they didn't happen to  be 
mice. He was stunned by the fear this animal seemed capable of arousing.
 "Grrmmppffff..."
 He looked up and saw a shape sitting on top of the black horse,  dressed  in 
an  equally black robe.  From the hollowness of its cape,  only two red  eyes 
seemed to glow with what seemed uncannily like hot, red malice.
 The  shape on the horse did not seem te be interested in  him,  didn't  even 
notice  him.  Instead it watched intently a group of beings that  Cronos  now 
also  saw:  Four rather tiny creatures with hair on their feet,  a large  man 
that  was constantly fussing around with what seemed to be a hearing  aid,  a 
dwarf with a long beard,  another dwarf, and an elf. The latter two seemed to 
be  constantly  arguing about something,  and one of the creatures  with  the 
hairy  feet  was wearing something very similar to his  own  ring.  The  only 
difference, Cronos noticed aghast, was that it seemed golden instead of cheap 
brass.  To Warchild's satisfaction,  however,  he also noticed that the other 
ring didn't have any buttons on it.
 The creature atop the horse seemed very intent on getting that gold ring.
 When  the  black  rider turned his steed to attack  the  harmless  group  of 
beings,  Cronos  lost interest and pressed the little button on  his  Compact 
Universal Nuclear Teleporter.

 When he opened his eyes again,  he thought he wouldn't mind a single bit  of 
dog's  faeces whether or not he was going to like what he would  see.  If  he 
wouldn't,  he  would simply press his ring again to vanish to  another  time, 
another location.  But after he opened his eyes he was quite shocked,  to say 
the least,  at the fact that the digit of his finger that had formerly worn a 
cheap  brass ring was now almost offensively nude.  He had,  in some  way  or 
another, succeeded in dislocating the ring.
 Anyway,  now  he  thought of it,  the brief manual he had found  in  one  of 
what's-his-name's pockets *had* mentioned something like, "Mini-reactor power 
lasts for a maximum of five to six nuclear teleportations  only.  Replacement 
reactors  only  for  sale  on Thanatopia.  Please  dispose  of  old  reactors 
properly, and preferably do not litter locations where future cities might be 
built.  Do  not  dispose of improperly when environmentalists  are  watching, 
either."
 An often-used synonym for an animal's excrements passed his lips.
 He  looked  up from his naked finger and found he was standing in  front  of 
what seemed to be a traveller's agency.  In large coruscating letters he read 
"Alien   Safari  Promotions"  above  the  shop-window.   This   couldn't   be 
coincidence. The small print of the "Alien Safari Promotions" brochure sprang 
back to his mind vividly.
 "Alien  Safari Promotions Inc.  can accept no responsibility whatsoever  for 
any  accidents  that may occur on our holidays,  nor for any loss  of  limbs, 
eyes,  internal organs or any other parts of the body.  Travel is entirely at 
the customer's own enormous risk. It is not possible to arrange insurance for 
any of these holidays."
 A smile wrought itself upon his lips.  There were few things that could seem 
more  appealing  to  a mercenary annex hired gun who wanted to  keep  up  his 
skills  and  achieve  some  decent training.  He  remembered  more  from  the 
brochure.  If  he'd fail on one of those space safaris,  he'd die.  It  would 
become a holiday his loved ones wouldn't forget. And nobody had yet returned.
 He  realised he didn't actually have any loved ones apart from  some  people 
far away whom he hadn't seen in quite a while and probably wouldn't ever.
 He stepped into the shop.

 Original written September/October 1989. Rehashed March and May 1994.


= SOON COMING ===============================================================


 The next issue of "Twilight World",  Volume 2 Issue 4, is to be released mid 
July  this  year.  Please refer to the  'subscription'  section,  below,  for 
details  about automatically getting it in case you're  interested.  If  your 
email account is disabled during that time, please send me a message.
 Please  refer to the section on 'submitting',  below,  for more  details  on 
submitting your own material.
 The next issue will probably contain the following items.

 THE BUS
 by Mark Oliver
 A disconcerting story about The Safest Place.

 THE LEGACY OF THE HOWLING
 by M.J. Aylor

 PRINCE OF DREAMS
 by Jo Ellen Stein

 GODS
 by Richard Karsmakers
 The True Story of Creation. Perhaps.

 AND MORE


= SOME GENERAL REMARKS ======================================================


 DESCRIPTION

 "Twilight World" is an all-format on-line magazine aimed at everybody who is 
interested in any sort of fiction - although it usually tends to  concentrate 
on fantasy-and science-fiction.
 One of its sources is an Atari ST/TT/Falcon disk magazine by the name of "ST 
NEWS" which publishes computer-related articles as well as fiction. "Twilight 
World" principally consists of the best fiction featured in "ST NEWS" so far, 
with added stories submitted by dedicated "Twilight World" readers.

 AIM

 "Twilight  World"  has no particular aim,  but it would like to be  a  fresh 
breath to all you people out there that don't mind a magazine that tries  not 
to conform to too many preset rules.

 SUBMITTING ARTICLES

 If you've written some good fiction and you wouldn't mind it being published 
world-wide,  you can mail it to me either electronically or by standard mail. 
At all times do I reserve the right not to publish submissions.  Do note that 
submissions  on  disk  will have to use the  MS-DOS/Atari  ST/TT/Falcon  disk 
format on 3.5" Double-or High-Density floppy disk.  Provided sufficient  IRCs 
are  supplied  (see below),  you will get your disk back with  the  issue  of 
"Twilight World" on it that features your fiction. Electronic submittees will 
get an electronic subscription automatically.
 At all times, please submit straight ASCII texts without any special control 
codes whatsoever, nor right justify or ASCII characters above 128. Please use 
*asterisks* to emphasise text if needed.

 COPYRIGHT

 Unless  specified along with the individual stories,  all bits in  "Twilight 
World" are copyrighted by the individual authors but may be spread wholly  or 
separately  to  any  place - and indeed into any other  magazine  -  provided 
credit  is given both to the original author and "Twilight World" and/or  "ST 
NEWS".

 CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS

 All correspondence and submissions should be sent to the address  below.  If 
you  need a reply,  supply one International Reply Coupon (available at  your 
post  office),  or two if you live outside Europe.  If you want your  disk(s) 
returned,  add  2 International Reply Coupons per disk (and one extra if  you 
live  outside Europe).  Correspondence failing these guidelines will be  read 
(and perused) but not replied to.
 The address (valid at least up to summer 1995):

 Richard Karsmakers
 Looplantsoen 50
 NL-3523 GV   Utrecht
 The Netherlands
 Email R.C.Karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl

 SUBSCRIPTIONS

 Subscriptions (electronic ones only!) can be requested by sending some email 
to the address mentioned above.  "Twilight World" is only available as ASCII. 
Subscription terminations should be directed to the same address.
 About  one  week prior to each current issue being sent out you will  get  a 
message to check if your email address is still valid.  If a message bounces, 
your subscription terminates.
 Back  issues of "Twilight World" may be FTP'd  from  atari.archive.umich.edu 
and etext.archive.umich.edu.  It is also posted to rec.arts.prose,  alt.zines 
and alt.prose. Thanks to Gard for this!

 PHILANTROPY

 If  you like "Twilight World",  a spontaneous burst of philantropy aimed  at 
the  postal address mentioned above would be very  much  appreciated!  Please 
send  cash only;  any regular currency will do. Apart from keeping  "Twilight 
World" happily afloat,  it will also help me to keep my head above water as a 
student  of  English at Utrecht University.  If  donations  reach  sufficient 
height  they will secure the existence of "Twilight World" after  my  studies 
have been concluded. If not...then all I can do is hope for the best.
 Thanks!

 DISCLAIMER

 All authors are responsible for the views they express. Also, The individual 
authors are the ones you should sue in case of copyright infringements!

 ST NEWS

 If you have an Atari ST/TT/Falcon you may check out "ST NEWS", the "Twilight 
World" mother magazine.  The most recent issue can be obtained by sending one 
disk plus two International Reply Coupons (three if you live outside  Europe) 
to  the  snailmail correspondence address mentioned above.  If  you  want  to 
automatically  receive the NEXT issue of "ST NEWS" via email as soon as  it's 
finished,  just ask me to put you on the "ST NEWS" mailing list. You will get 
approx.  12-14 100 Kb UUencoded text files which, when merged, will allow for 
the creation of a ZIP archive.
 "ST NEWS" should run on any TOS version, needs a double-sided disk drive and 
prefers 1 Mb of memory or more.

 OTHER ON-LINE MAGAZINES

 INTERTEXT  is an electronically-distributed fiction magazine  which  reaches 
over  a thousand readers on five continents.  It publishes fiction  from  all 
genres, from "mainstream" to Science Fiction, and everywhere in between.
 It  is published in both ASCII and PostScript (laser  printer)  formats.  To 
subscribe,  send mail to jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu.  Back issues are  available 
via anonymous FTP at network.ucsd.edu.

 CYBERSPACE VANGUARD:  News and Views of the SciFi and Fantasy Universe is an 
approximately  bimonthly  magazine  of news,  articles  and  interviews  from 
science  fiction,   fantasy,   comics  and  animation  (you  get  the  idea). 
Subscriptions are available from cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu.
 Writers contact xx133@cleveland.freenet.edu. Back issues are availabe by FTP 
from etext.archive.umich.edu.

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longer than 6 lines with a length of 77 characters maximum. No logos please.