RoustWriter: Blog

This week with Times 7:

...Thad whistled through his teeth. “This is more than a power outage,” he said while leaning through a glassless window to shine his light around inside an adjoining store. From the looks of things, this must have happened months ago.”

Mack shined the light across the mall, lighting what appeared to be the entrance to a much larger building at the end of the vast parking lot. “That looks like what in my time was called an All-store. It should have a large assortment of sales goods. Maybe there’s something left that we can use,” he said through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.

After looking around for a few seconds, Mack switched the light off. “Look, I’m uncomfortable with all this. I think we had better dispense with the lights while we’re out in the open, and we should be very cautious about anything we do here. I don’t know what’s happening, but almost anyone we attract will probably be trouble for us. The city might even have declared martial law and are shooting looters – which they would take us to be,” he finished grimly...

Have a goodun;

Roust

This week with Times 7:

...It took three trips, but eventually, they had the beast’s remains moved. As they returned to the bottom of the path to the cave, Kathy used the rifle’s strap to hang the weapon over her shoulder before stepping up to Mack. With one hand behind his neck, she pulled him down and locked her mouth to his in as deep a kiss as he could ever remember, though a lot shorter in duration than he would have liked. Afterward, as she stood looking up at him, their bodies still touching, “I know that a kiss isn’t much compensation for saving my life – and for me being such a bitch, but I won’t forget what you did for me when that thing tried to kill me, nor for all the other things you have done for both Thad and me.”

Mack couldn’t seem to come up with anything appropriate to say, so he just quietly said, “You’re quite welcome, but we need to get back so we can check on Thad.”...

Have a goodun;

Roust

This week with Times 7:

...A little later, they found several ground-hugging plants that might be edible. Mack took a tiny bite of the first one but wrinkled his brow as he spat repeatedly. “Trust me. Nothing can eat that.”

Giggling, Kathy handed him her canteen so he could rinse his mouth. “Any ill effects other than the taste?” she asked, seemingly concerned.

“No. And I suppose it was rather stupid of me to just taste it like that, but I only took the tiniest piece into my mouth, and I certainly didn’t swallow it.”

“Some poisons only require a tiny bit to kill,” she offered.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied as he leaned his head back a little to take a sip from the canteen. That was when he saw it...

Have a goodun;

Roust

This week with Times 7:

...In Mexico City, a small school had been bombed by terrorists in 3134, resulting in the death of seventy-three children, five adults, and many more injured. The bombing produced other consequences that resulted in the terrorists’ demands for the release of other prisoners from jails. After much research, Kesslov had moved within a few days of the incident and sent a message to the school’s main system warning of the bomb and providing the exact time it was due to go off. The school was evacuated, and no one was killed. The computers recorded no significant changes in the original timeline.

Authorities located the terrorists, and after a heated battle, had arrested the survivors.

While celebrating their achievement, Temporal’s crew received the official announcement of what had been long suspected – the apparent cessation of aging for all those under the time fields. The only detectable change in body functions was a marked increase in the immune system. Whether aging had ceased because of this, or there was a more direct connection from the exposure to the time fields that maintained Temporal wasn’t known, but the result was there; nevertheless, people weren’t getting discernibly older...

Have a goodun;

Roust

This week with Times 7:

...“Sure. But you’ve got to realize there’s still a part of me that wonders if I’m completely sane. I could still be dreaming all this,” he said while gesturing around them. “Just think about the situation from my viewpoint. I’m a… was an engineer, a practical person. I built things. Sure, I used technology to do it, and I was even aware that there had been breakthroughs in remapping parts of the brain – always thought impossible. But then we got creamed by a drunk. My wife,” he cleared his throat to keep his voice from breaking, “was killed, and I got a blood clot in an inoperable part as well as some tearing in another inoperable part of my brain. I was going to die – period. Here was their chance. They went into my brain with a laser incorporated into the best computer system that hospital-millions could buy.

“They destroyed the clot, restored circulation to the damaged area, and proceeded to regrow and remap the restored parts of my brain using this program some genius came up with, combined with the new cell growth technology. I awakened months later, unable to remember anything after the accident. I thought I was going to be okay, though. After getting over my initial weakness from being in a hospital bed for so long, I finally returned to work, only to wake up back in the hospital again. They said I passed out at work. All I could remember was walking down the hall and the world starting to swirl around me – everything breaking into a rainbow. I kept having these… kaleidoscope attacks, as I called them, until I got fired. Then I eventually found out that I’m a walking time machine. I’ve always prided myself on having a logical mind. Unfortunately, that logical part of me still isn’t completely convinced that I haven’t lost a screw or two somewhere.”...

Have a goodun;

Roust