Instead, he reclined his seat and just let the ocean current carry him for awhile. His communication system started beeping. Someone was trying to reach him, but he ignored it. It beeped again, and he picked it up, looked at the name if the person calling him, and threw it as far as he could. He saw no reason to speak to anyone at the moment. Besides, Paul would still be there when he got back to the capitol building.

He leaned back again and closed his eyes. Eventually, sleep claimed him.

Morning seemed so far away, and I wasn’t sure what it would hold. Okay, I knew, but how would we all deal with Marc and Kari not being there for two years? I just couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of it.

As I continued looking out at the night, I whispered to my best friend, Kari, "Just remember that Rose loves you." Then I started to cry again.

Even Robson turned away at the end, but he heard the gurgling coming through the severed neck as the body’s reflexes tried to draw in another breath. He turned back, and wished he had not. The mouth was trying to draw in air, as if it was the head of a fish. The man spat on the face, then turned, grabbed a cloth and began to clean all of his equipment. He seemed unconcerned at the dying head, still trying to gulp in air. “Good bye, Willem Wallace,” he spat out. It was the last thing Wallace heard. Ever.

Stuck in a Rut.
By Rosalie Redd

Casey Church is dealing with the usual things that any Fourteen year old girl has to deal with. That is... if they are a girl in a world where girls aren’t born, they are transformed. Leaving her male life behind is difficult, and new threats are on the horizon.

He was reluctant to take the power of the government into his own hands, as he wanted to distance himself from his brother. He tried to say no, but the people wouldn’t hear of it. He was their choice, and that was that. Eventually, he accepted the position. For a time. He told the people that there must be a set term. The government made that term be a millennium, followed by a possible second term, but that was the limit allowed. No way was someone going to be president for over ten thousand years!

Fredrik Wallace became the first president of the new Earth Republic. He was Willem’s brother, but they looked nothing alike. Their father had divorced and remarried in the time between their births. Also, while Willem’s mother had appeared generally Scandanavian, Fredrik’s had been African. Thus, the people did not consider the brothers to be any bit the same.

Fredrik wanted there to be even more of a separation, so before he took office, he had his name changed. He kept his first name, but his last name came to signify the people of the new republic. Freeman.

Marc was pretty pissed about everything in general too. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “The fact that they were killed, however, leads me to believe that they may have been onto something.” He sounded very mad as he told me his opinion.

“I’m sorry, Marc. I didn’t mean to sound like that.”

“You really didn’t,” he told me. “I think we’re both on edge. Let me do some more research and I’ll let you all know what I’ve found.”

“Okay,” I told him. I turned to John. “Let’s go back to your apartment. I’ll make some dinner for us.”

“I sincerely hope I can keep it down my dear,” he said as we stood. Well, him sort of.

Chapter 4

The next morning Mark was woken up by a loud mechanical voice. “Wakey wakey sissy, time to start your day, and what better way to start it than with another wank.” Mark groaned loudly but he did as the voice said anyway. With a sigh he grabbed the boxers of his night stand and Pulled them over his head once more.

A few weeks later, John and I met again where I first told him that I loved him. We were not sure what to do now. Do we give in, risking an eventual long term being miserable, or do we remain as we were, risking life and limb?

I know what I wanted to do, and I’m sure John did as well. The bond was getting deeper and deeper. So much so, that I sometimes thought I could feel his emotions when we were in our own rooms.

I was having a hard time sleeping too. He had told me of the same problems. It was such that when I fell asleep, I was jerked back awake almost immediately. I was now getting very little sleep at all, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep going like this. I don’t know how, but I knew if we had sex, I would no longer have this problem.

I told John of it, and waited. I had no idea what he would do, but I didn’t expect his response. He leaned over and kissed me.

---

I know the nanites beheading their host is strange, but then again, my muse appears to have an much odder imagination than I have.

Hilarity ensues when a smart aleck on the run finds himself hiding behind a petticoat and a feather duster in order to elude the gangster who wants him dead. (Or maybe just wants him, period!) A fun and lighthearted comedy of errors filled with elaborate deceptions, mistaken identities, and a guy stuffing his boobs into a French maid's costume! What's not to like?

Raven and Clair couldn’t believe the hotel suite they were staying in. Wolfhart, Harris, and Jackal had picked them up and transported them to Augusta, Georgia for the trial. The law firm also assigned four bodyguards to protect her. One guy among her bodyguards looks like he could be the spitting image of the actor who plays Luke Cage from the Netflix series. His partner looked like she should be in high school or college. She stood about five-foot-tall and had a messy pixie cut hairdo.

Chapter 3

Mark woke up to the sound of his alarm with a loud groan. Taking the bus down town would take a lot of time and he had pretty much made up his mind that he couldn’t afford to be late to the appointment, no matter how much he didn’t want to go. He hadn’t set an alarm clock since school had ended but seeing how he was required to be there at 10 am he didn’t have much of a choice today. Usually he slept that late.

“I guess the feelings aren’t reciprocated.” he said sadly.

He was turning back when he stopped. He heard me say, “They are.” He turned back, confusion on his face. “I backed away, because I didn’t want to turn you into a woman, John.”

He stared at me, then seemed to realize what I meant. I stepped back to his side, and stared at our friend. The Medic walked around us and gave us his report. He was still clearly disturbed by us. I wasn’t sure if he was afraid or angry.

I was having feelings for the man standing to my left, I had no fear of the man on my right, and I was pissed beyond measure at whoever had done this to my friend.

May God help the person when I found out who it was,.

Intro

When last we saw our protagonist:

“John,” I said, my voice trembling. “We need to bury the hatchet between us right now. We are doing exactly what Caesar wanted.”

“I know it,” he said. “I don’t know what I can do about the fear, but I will try to not let it rule me. Deal?”

I almost laughed. “Deal, but it’s a good thing we’re not in the same room,” I commented. “This is where we’d be tempted to shake hands.”

He stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Yes, We would.” A moment later, the smile left his face and he turned to where I knew Marc would be seated. “How many reports of changes?”

“Fifty-seven so far, and they keep coming in.”

John’s face went white. “I need to get off here now.” He looked back at me. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

Chapter Five – The Ranch

Mila and Peter are shown the secrets behind the facade of Redhaven and the Sons of Jehovah church and are made a one time, life-changing offer. Sarah's mysterious past is revealed and Peter and Mila will have to decide how they they plan to spend the rest of their lives... if indeed they even have a future.

When last we saw our protagonist:

I was heading home a short time after Marc left to work on the exterior bay door motors. I was contemplating our situation. It was frightening, the terror I felt when face to face with a woman. Just the thought of one scared me. I hadn’t met up with any other genders yet, so I didn’t know how much they would bother me. The thought of caused fear in an inverse funnel between me and a woman. A bisexual man bothered me a little bit. Then a gay man, followed by a genetically male gender fluid, to intersex, with all the layers in between. The pattern reversed through the genetically female genders as the funnel got wider and wider, until it reached a completely heterosexual female

When I reached the ‘u’ shaped corridor running between levels, I turned to go to my apartment. Now that we knew what was going on, I was a little more at ease. I came face to face with fright again, however as I turned left into the corridor. I was standing almost nose to nose with two women. All three of us screamed and the women spun on their heels and started running downhill to the upper level.

I stared at my hand, unbelieving. When they turned, one of the women’s hands brushed mine. A moment later, my vision began to blur and it felt as if my body was being taken apart and put back together.

When last we saw our protagonist:

For a moment, my vision blurred then it seemed as though I pushed my fists into my eyes, as all I could see was multiple colors swirling around. There was a disconnect between before the blurring and after. It took a moment for me to realize I could see fine again, but then I noticed Perl standing right beside me. I jumped away from her, terrified, and she looked at me wide eyed.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed. There was no need to scream at us, because every one of us seemed scared spitless of her. We were all as far away as we could get.

She kept her gaze jumping from one of us to another. Anytime any of us moved, she flinched. She kept bringing her gaze back to me. No, not me. The open door behind me. I started to inch to the right, where Carter stood. Interestingly none of the others bothered me in the least. Just her.

As soon as I was far enough away, she bolted. Each of us seemed to lose our tension. Whatever it was, it seemed to make us scared of certain others. ‘Total Fun’ was upon us.

When last we saw our protagonist:

A screen came alive and we saw a man. A human, but not someone we knew.”

“Hello, people of N21,” he said.” I am President Freeman of Earth. I know when you were sent away, Willem Wallace, or ‘Caesar’ as you referred to him, was the ‘Chancellor’.

“Approximately three hundred years after you left, Wallace had shown enough of his character to make those of us still on Earth recognize what you had long ago seen. There was an uprising, and we were able to remove him from power. He was in prison until we received a signal from you.

“Every computer around the world came on at the same time, and showed Wallace seated at his desk. He told us that we were all going to join him in a celebration of your exile. We saw what your camera’s recorded, Wallace telling you he wanted to ‘play’; the death of your maintenance worker. Then we saw a bay of the station open, and the people dying on the floor.”

For a moment, Freeman stopped. He looked somber, then rubbed his face with his hands.

“Wallace was questioned at length. That was an experience I never want to have again. He was, quite simply, insane. He wanted to toy with you as a cat toys with it’s prey. Revelling in your suffering was what he wanted most of all.

“He tried to bargain with us with his knowledge. He wanted freedom, but we refused. It took several months to obtain what we wanted. He spent that entire time in and out of consciousness. It wasn’t pretty. What we got from him, we want to pass on to you.

“There are several… surprises, in the computers of the station. They have been left there. There seems to be no way to remove them from the memory. Even a complete shutdown will reload the same information when you start them again.

“Much of what is programmed will be worse that what has already happened. Some not as bad. We will append a file to this message that will tell you what we have found. I hope you can find something on board that we didn’t think of here.”