"Dis won's a hardie gameboy." Daniel Archer heard the sweet, male sing-song, and would have liked to hear more, but then he shivered from the chill, and his nakedness.

Naked?  How?  A bewildered Daniel drew on his memories like as a woman at a well.  Car. He had been in a car.

Covering himself as well as he could, he forced an eyelid to crack open.  It felt like breaking the skin of a rock as if his eyes were destined to stay shut a million  years.

"Ruffentuff. Genmon be coming lahive."  The accent baffled him.  It had traces of Jamaican, but also Mexican, and Texan.

"PopM." Another bored male voice spoke from out of his possible line of sight even as a pleasant, brown face swam into view in front of him.

"Clothes." He muttered, and the face grew perplexed, but with the same professional benevolence.  And then two things happened.  A sheet, slithery, cool, of some kind landed on his lap, and a snap-stick hit his arm.  Awareness and mobility flooded through him.

Jerking upright on the plastic bench extruded from the wall of the small room, he yanked on the white pants and dark blue t-shirt offered.  They were made of some odd material, both slick and cool.  Even without shoes, he felt more comfortable.

His thoughts spun as he evaluated the small, plastic walled room, which seemed to be moving.  And both men, well one had the frame of a large man, but breasts, so a girl he decided, the one with the bored voice, were crouched over.

What happened? He recalled his Dad lending him the keys to the new car.  Laughing.  Calling it 'Dad's New Toy.' No, that had been Mom, standing in the driveway, blonde, happy, stirring a bowl of cookie dough.

"Daniel." The first voice, the man, spoke to him.  A quick murmur, and something about 'well, e's got a 'male' in the gender slot so...'  "Mister Daniel Archer.  Are you with us?"

Daniel looked up and nodded.

"Gudra, ah, good. You're a pretty hardcore gamer.  You should have your real id on you, but we're not going to bust you for that."  Daniel apprecitated the gesture even as he realized it was a calculated attempt to build goodwill.  The problem was, the statement made no sense.  But he knew from his father not to interrupt cops, nor to give them answers to questions he was not asked.  Do not confuse or irritate the man with the gun was the rule of thumb.

"You had a prescription for a minor pneumoccoccal bacterial infection, so we gave you BroadSpectrum Three.  Hopefully that will clear it right up."

That did not sound good.  Daniel remembered a week ago coming in to the doctor. Doctor Abrahamson with a complaint of coughs and generally feeling cruddy.  The doc, who had been Daniel's doc since his folks moved into the Denver area in the fourth grade, had given him a prescription for antibiotics and a warning to take them all or else the infection might come back, and be resistant.  Daniel had assured him he would, and left to get the prescription filled at Hollander's Market where a pharmacist gave him the same warning.

but what was done was done.

"Now what happened?"

"I..." There he was, top down, enjoying Dad's new convertible, which was to be honest, a lot more fun to drive than the old truck he owned, especially on a beautiful fall day like today, when....

"I...I'm not sure."

The two nodded.

"Looks like you got tagged with some MemPop.  But we didn't find any evidence of sexual behavior recently so nobody took advantage."

Daniel blinked, and wanted to scream, but instead he bit his lip.

"BP topping." The strange accent was back.  And then a snap and a stick, and he was calm, very, very calm.

"Its okay, kid. Nobody did zilch to you.  You just got tagged by some cocktail, and went to sleep for a few minutes by the pathside.  Not a big deal."

Curious definition of 'nothing'.Daniel's thoughts were cool, clear, and odd, so odd, but not in an unpleasant sort of way he noted with a disspassionate analysis.

"We're going to let you off, kid. You're clean,  heh, cleaner than a fresh zeked shirt.  Just take this card..."  The charming fellow pressed a bit of cardboard into his hand, as the two guided him to the back of the now not moving room.  The wall parted, and swung back.  They helped him step down to a sandy path.

"Go to your left, kid. Get a meal on us.  The CCS-EMT's are looking out for you, remember that."

And Daniel turned about to see the two  wave, the doors close on the back of an ambulance, and the ambulance float down the sandy path as others walked around it.  As his dispassion began to fade, he wondered why a hovercraft did not kick up sand.  And then, as if programmed, he turned, and walked into the Coconut Hut.

There he presented his cardboard rectangle to the bikini topped girl behind the wood counter.  She smiled gently at him, and spun about, and got him a tray with a plate piled high with something white, with a sauce full of colored other somethings all shredded that  he did not recognize.

Then he turned back, faintly enjoying the view of the cashier in his mind, and looked for a table, but all the tables were occupied.  This held him there for a long second, until one guy at a table with three girls, and one strange looking 'fellow?', and another guy waved him over.

"Kimmen sitten down, heah. Yah?"  And this was a whole other accent, but the meaning was clear enough so Daniel came over, and found himself sitting between two girls who would pass for supermodels back in Denver.  If not for the remnants of the calming potion he would not have been able to start the food.  But once he stared it, he found it delicious and creamy with a honey and meaty mix on top.  Plus the occasional spark of sour or flash of heat from one of the shredded veggies atop.

Once the plate was done, he looked up to see smiling faces.

"Sometimes the CoolIT Juice takes people that way.  Makes them starved."  Said the supermodel, a divine blonde to his left.  "What game are you playing?"
"Shush, you don't ask a gamer what they be play.  You ask who they be are?"
"How do you know..."  He wondered how they had found out what the EMT's had thought.  Was it that obvious to them that he was a 'hardie gameboy'?"
"We lookie you up on da perNet, natchie?" Said the ebony skinned supermodel to his left.
"I'm...Mister Daniel Archer.  I...run a software business."  Actually, in his real life he was a programmer in a small firm, well respected yes, but not running the shop.  But he figured if this was a game then there would be more chiefs than Indians.
"Veely twencen. Neatium." Said Miss Ebony Dream. "So, Mistah Daniel Archer, how do you like your visit to Cancun City-State so far?"
He blinked at her, and said the first words to shoot out of his mouth.
"A whole lot."
She blinked at his focus on her, and his enthusiasm, and then laughed, not displeased.
"I think he likes you, Gail." Said the man who had first invited him over, and gentle laughter flooded the table.
Meanwhile, Daniel's head spun.  He was too shocked to be embarrassed.
Cancun City-State.  Could be a joke. Twencen....odd, but ...but ambulances that float.  Oh, dear Lord, what is going on?
Pale and trembling,  he got up, thanked them for their hospitality, which got more laughter, and staggering made his way out.

Title: Timeline Therapist: Multiverser Novel
Doctor Gregory Schmidt
The pschyiatrist had a substantial failure in Germany, and was done.  So he immigrated to America to get a second chance.  Here he set up his practise (he is divorced with no kids as his wife left him after he failed). and was doing reasonably well when he got a strange patient who complained of never being able to finish things.
He was counselling the strange man to 'bite off smaller quests' when the stranger apologized....one of his larger quests had come back to bite him.

In come the Yakuza, ready to spill some blood.  The stranger fights back against many more men.  He strikes with weapons and skills not of this Earth.

He drives off the enemy, but the doctor and he are dying.  The doctor holds him to comfort the man, tells him 'at least your quests are over', and the verser laughs back...so not true.

And so our hero is infected with scriff, the verser dies and so does the hero.


six months later....a new practise in a new universe with various trobled climntes. His responses and inteactiomns with them are the cor of th ebook.

Multiverser: Cases of a Timeline Therapist.

1. The verser in his home world.
2. Six months later: First client in the new world, new office.
3, Man and woman on the verge of wife 'firvorcing'.  He counsels her to submission, and teaches him to become more manly by playing touch football on the weekends.
4.  A single woman being abused, yet again.
5. A married couple trying to their kid back from CPS.
6. A woman on the verge of killing her kids.
7. A young man who is under the control of a demon.

Our hero has Read Surface thoughts, Analyze emotions, minor illusions.  When he faces the demon, he is infomred 'Your petty tricks of mind and will will avail you mothng.

"This is yours, kid." Janks spoke to me as we slid up the push-walk.  I took in the red light on the top of the F6 tornado proof, vine shrouded delivery box.  It was not a 'Help Please' light as one got informed on public holovid at least thrice in a four hour cycle, but a 'If you like, you could help.'  And that was what Janks, and I, Lukuc Radici were here for, was it not?

Janks leapt out into the midst of the driveway, spun about and shouted to me.  "Lose the tude, kid."  He then snap spun back around and headed toward the no doubt nicer job on the far side of the road.

I pushed off on the push-walk, but not as precisely as Janks, which turned out to be good.  For I whipped around the delivery box, and up the antiquated drivedway, gravel, of all things.  I hit the ground on my gloved hands, and rested there, my fingers scraped and burning even as a door somewhere up in front of me opened, and a space of silence was followed by a huff.

A Landowner could afford anything, even a push-walk, which had little microscopic fibers imbedded in its surface to push at the wheels of an in-line skate.  To choose gravel was to pretend, very loudly that one was poor and hardworking like someone out of a prior generation before robotic factories made the most common items.

I rose to my full height, slowly, balancing, without the aid of a push-walk to calmly stare at the short man down the stairs who had begun to tap his foot in front of what I, a visitor from another universe, called the Hobbit hole doors.  Landowners typically built most of their houses underground.  My even stare got him to stop toe-tapping, but I remembered Janks saying to me earlier 'don't make them mad'.

I told him that did not make any sense to me.  We were doing jobs for them, volunteering, getting paid tips, if that, and I was supposed to be worried about his good opinion?  Janks had nodded seriously in the affirmative before going off to take another job that was easy, leaving me at that time to cool my heels in a cool box by the roadside.

"I have two jobs, if you can manage them." I gritted my teeth.  This was the typical thing, and by now I could mostly ignore it.

"Show me the problems." I said shortly to the elbow height man who glanc-glared me.  He led me in, down hallways that could have served as rooms in my apartment, and to a desk.

"My grandfather's Snap-It. Do be careful."  The metal desk was formed from shining panels and micromachined cuts so tight, by a laser fab (the ancestors of the giant robo factories that covered tens of square miles without a single human) that all you had to do was snap them together, and they were pretty much good for, well not as long as people expected.  After four decades, some started to develop bounce and sway.

The room was somewhat dirty, and nearly empty, but spacious which made it the Mechnician room.  And that was what I was, a mechnician.  Notably despite passing many pleasant chairs and tables there were none here.  Nor was there any form of outside link, which I found a little understandable.  The Landowners formed great coalitions to vote stock to control the robofactories, and so inside information from sinside their house could be quite valuable.

"I also..."
"I'll work on this first."  It had been my experience that the second problem would be harder, and that the homeowner would be unavailable for questions if I took both now.  He humphed, but hey, I was 'volunteering' so its not like he could order me to do it his way as long as I did the job.

Upset, he left me upset.  I do not understand the economics or social structure of this new universe I had found myself transported too.  They had fusion reactors and giant factories, and yet, no one had been to the Moon in over a century and a half.  But I do understand that I felt insulted.  Still, a job was a job, and interesting in its own right.

I examined the desk, and wobbled it a bit.  It had the insert cut on the left side of the top panel had under decades of pressure carved out some more space to make it not Snaps-Tight, but a Bull Loose.  Taking my laser dabber from the mechanician' tool box, I held my ammo box opne with one home for metals and another for plastic.  Heating it up took seconds, and then I laid down by laminating a layer of metalo-plastics.

It cooled in seconds, and then another shower.  The second one is coming your way.
And that micrometer expansion led to another and another.  Soon all the desks had their weakneese graded over, leven by level.  And now it was Snap-Tite again.

David Jessup, Jr.. is the verser hero who wonders if he dreams, or is he's lost to Home.  This is his hanging doom.

The murder method is a laser burst fired from outside the spaceship from far away so as to rebound from a patch on the solar sails, hit the prism in the villain's hand in the main observation deck, and zap a target.

The different locale is 3/4ths of the way to Saturn in 1973 on a nuclear Orion drive shpaceship.

The villain wants to steal the ship and deliver it to the Commies on the Moon.

Need more murder methods.

===============================

Deep Space Burn
By Eric R. Ashley

Everyone at the West Hessend Community College's Faculty Christmas Party stared at David Jessup in horrified awe as he fell back over the river of wires laid upon the floor.  A vengeful harpy, young and delicious, but furious screeched at him, Dr. Ms. Esmerald Taylor-Whitham.

"We haven't tried it enough. I am not a bad person!"  And she swept up a glass of mostly melt ice in crystal, and with malevolent awareness in her eyes tossed the liquid straight at him, and above the many electrical connections.  A flash of white, followed by yellow globules swarmed about him.  And then he knew no more.

"Everyone sit down." The Mage spoke soothingly to the class of eight year olds, all dark-headed, and black eyed except for the blonde young man in the back with green eyes.  One of his eyes was shadowed by a purpling circle, and the Mage noted the boy's tense posture.

The dimly lit room had only stone chairs and no flammables in it.  This job was in many ways well beneath a mage of Charidion's abilities, but for the very fact that one in a hundred casts by newcomers to the Arts spun out of control.  Most likely he was in for a boring morning, but if it got exciting, it would be very exciting.


The boys and girls sat, and he began to speak to them.  Belief is needful.  Without an awareness that there existed more than crude matter to the world, magic was impossible.  Just as seeing was impossible to those who willfully closed their eyes.  The mage looked about, but did not find any sign of the skeptic or mage hater.  Such were more common, but still few, in the large cities.

They claimed he summoned fire by means of ingenious tubes.  When he volunteered to 'do it stark naked, if that won't frighten your wives' they had walked away, not wanting to talk to him anymore.

"So, while you all believe, the stronger the belief the easier this is....so..." And he began to count back from twenty.  By eight, they all were in a light trance.  He then spoke words, first given to Men by the Angels, and deepened that trance, and gave them a temporary boost of faith.  Then he brought them back to the present moment.

"Cast." He snapped his fingers pointing at one lad in the first row.  With a gasp of surprise, the boy oopened his hand and saw a ball of fire hover over his palm.  "Cast." He snapped out, jabbing a finger at the next.  This one, with his faith boosted by seeing his comrade succeeed created a ball the size of a grapefruit.

"Cast." "Cast." and "Cast." again. One failed to produce anything, and the mage snarled terrifyingly 'cast'.  Petrified, the boy did.  Another row on, and the same, although this time, the mage merely sighed.  This insult motivated the proud lad, as the fear had motivated the fearful lad earlier.

And then he came to the last, and the boy opened his palm to reveal a ball of blue, and white, and transparent flame.  The mage was shocked, many masters could not produce so hot a flame.

"What? How?"
"Used to watch the funny cars at the racetrack." The lad at the back said, and the magi suddenly knew that the Powers Above had given him a quest, and an apprentice.

Taylor Howell, former Ranger, big man, Iraq war vet, History teacher at a community college, got a bum knee, could have been college, maybe NBA.
Tall, sandy blonde, spiky hair, not neat, coldly impassive stare that he works on softening, very confident, very alpha, but aware of use of betas.  Softspoken, except when very angry.  Sgt.  Infantry.

==============

"The Fall of Rome, ladies and gentlemen. That's your topic. Questions before the weekend break?" The soft-spoken voice from the sandy haired man at the front of the concrete block classroom reached the far corners easily.
"Did Rome really fall, after all, what exactly is Rome, and..." The girl in black goth spoke up from the left side of the classroom, a bag of Doritos on her desk, and a snarky tone hinted in her voice.
"And the Romans themselves did not consider themselves to have fallen, and to make things more complicated, the Eastern Roman Empire, what we call Byzantium went on for centuries. Question for you, Miss Miles, if a single drop of rain falls in a day, is it raining on that day?" The professor, Taylor Howell, replied with his cutting impatience not as well concealed as he hoped.  The flicker of smiles across the faces of those he privately considered the 'most likely to survive on point' warned him to tone it down, so he nodded amicably to the little troublemaker.
"Is there anything to get us out of the paper?  I mean, come on, five thousand words is....epic." The words might have been infuriating, but Paul Stinson never went there.  His jokes lightened the mood without suggesting rebellion.  The professor would have loved to have Paul with him on tour in Iraq.  He would have been worth an extra two days of R&R for the whole platoon all by his lonesome.
"Only if Alaric invades Campesino, Cali...fornia." That was another near miss.  Calling "California" "Cali" was a great way to get the anti-racists down on your tail despite Mexican not being a race, and the illegals themselves claiming the name.

Its my fifth universe, and my first quadruple canopy jungle.  Gravity is low, but air density is high, so is the heat, and the humidity.  Water teardrops down vines, and leaves a thin, irritating film on the bark of some trees. Fog drifted up from the coiled tangles of vegetation at my feet.

A rustle to my left, and then s blurring motion out of the corner of my eye left me running before I could think about my choice.  Crashing behind me, bellowing in a baying call, almost melodious if you appreciate a bass cello played in its lower chords came something large, much larger than the hundred seventy-two pound me.  So, I bolted, but in a zig-zag formation to take maximum advantage of my much lower turning radius.

It swung wide left and right, whipcracking at the end of an imaginary line centered on my tasty with ketchup body, shattering tree trunks behind it, bouncing off others too large to be broken by a megafauna.  I took one of these, a mangrove like tree, and spun about it, forcing the beast to spin through a full 360 degrees of turn radius.

But the huge thing, a mass larger than an elephant, with a breath composed of sewage and carrion issuing from its great, beaked mouth was smarter than me, and had turned about so it came directly at me.  I leapt for one of the hundreds of tree trunks that formed the main trunk, and scrambled aloft.  But its beak snapped off the foot wide pole I was clambering up, and I fell, down, down, to land on its back along with a thirty foot long pole.  Which I used to pole vault off its forty foot back, leaving my hands torn up, and my right shoulder screaming at me for surcease.

This finally let it understand where I, Tasty Kibble Bit, had gotten too, but I took my slim advantage and just ran for it.  Hoping somehow to find a way away, but then I came, and stopped, for I had arrived back at the fallen tree upon which I'd entered this world.  I'd spent three whole hours traversing a jungle, only to arrive back where I started, only this time, I had megafauna in tow.  Gasping for breath, I ran on.

"Okay, so you have a time machine."
"Temporal Displacement Unit, please.  Its like taking a submarine down, you have to be heavier with temporal energy to sink into the timestream, and travel into the past." Doctor Schlieffen sniffed.
"Right. So as time unwinds toward the End of the Universe, temporal particles lose ma"ss? And the Present is ...?"
"The center of the probabiiity chart on the temporal radioactive half-life.  We all experience slightly different Presents, but the universe and our brains average it out to present a seamless existence."
"Uh, okay, now you've lost me, Doc."
"Microstructure, or quantum mechanical events tend to average out in the macrostructure which is where we live.  A billion grains of salt dropped twice is going to look roughly the same to the human eye.  And the eye may well ignore discrepancies to search for the core truth.  Just like our brains with the Present Moment. If your true love says she loves you a tenth of a second too early for your Present, does it really matter to the brain?  Isn't love more important?"
"Hunh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
"Now you need to understand two things about the Past.  One, we have the Internet data....which means we have a hundred different major theories on what went down.  Many of them directly contradicting each other.  Two, many of the major factors in play, are too large to be bent by one man, no matter his advantages of future knowledge and cyberwarfare."
"Gotcha. So now what?"
"Now we bathe you in temporal energies which should increase your temporal mass."
"Should?"
"I definitely reccommend prayer." The Doctor said flipping a switch.  The universe went away for a while.
And when it came back, the chair was no longer there, instead a bench underneath him was.  And the small room, filled with devices, was gone, replaced by a bright, well-lit diner.  And instead of Dco, there was an attractive lady for a waitress.
"Would you like a coffee?"
"Would I? Oh yes." It had been a while since he had gotten coffee.  His taste buds craved the hot beverage, and so he sat there with a smile waiting for his drink which he had not tasted  in weeks.

Title: Multiverser: The Merciful Goddess
by Eric R. Ashley

Hero: James Clark
Positive: Deep; kinda honest even when he wishes otherwise
Interesting: Sentimental
Negative: Angry at God; tendency to jump in before all the evidence is in.

Question: Was Noah's Flood neccessary?  Answer: Yes.

Setting, another universe, much like our own before a Global Flood as wickedness reigns triumphant, and a Merciful Goddess dithers.  The primary modes of behavior are treachery and thuggishness with occasional outbursts of demagoguery and hideous religions.
Dragons, Nephilim, and Giants along with small Humans.

Scene One: Jim is being witnessed too at his front door, and poses the Problem of Pain in the strongest way.  His witness replies in part, but Jim explodes and turns back and slams the door and stalks across the wet floor, spilling a bucket of soap water and hitting his cell phone....

Verse out.

Scene Two: He wakes feeling angry, put upon, but the sheer good feelings of the place make it hard for him to stay mad, so he rises to his feet, sees a blackberry the size of a kiwi, and disentangles himself, and runs to the top of a nearby hill...not planning on going the whole way but he has to his surprise energy for the whole trip.

"I can't be dead because there is no Heaven nor Hell. So...perhaps I've gone to the Future with advanced cyborg tech."

Scene Three: He's examining himself for cyborgization, and enjoying his new skills when he hears a scream.  He's away like a shot, and he wonders why, but he realizes that his new found strength makes it easier to just jump in and go for it. He spots three guys chasing a girl.  Fight scene.

Scene Four: He's shocked and dismayed at killing a couple men, and then the girl tries to come on to  him, and while she's very attractive, he's not in the mood, and so pushes her back...which saves his life as she held a stilletto she was going to sink into his back.  He still gets injured, and considers taking her on, but when she realizes he won't fight she grabs some of his stuff and runs for it.

At first she had considered just running, but when she sees how weak he is, she goes for more.

Later, she stalks him, hoping to wait him out to steal more stuff.

Scene Five: He's broken and collapses in tears.  A glowing female appears near his camp, and walks up to him.  She soothes his pains, and eases his soul hurt.

She explains that she is 'not quite an angel' for she is neither warrior nor messenger for the Creator, but instead an attendant spirit on the Goddess of Mercy and Kindness who rules this world given to her by the Creator.

Scene Six: He wakes the next day, with no guidance, but happy that Mercy is in charge.  He decides to set out for a city.  He observes much about the world as he travels.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:15, Thu 15 May 2014.

Hero is a moderately travelled verser.

Scene One: Woods and smell smoke.
Scene Two: Burnt cabin, dying mother, baby.
Scene Three: Diaper change while sensing that he is being watched.
Scene Four: The Apple Orchard Man
Scene Five: Across the wooden bridge and by the ruined temple.
Scene Six: Wolf attack at night. Retreat to temple, not followed.
Scene Seven: In morning, pass unfriendly group of youngsters, one notably injured in side just like the wolf from last night.
Scene Eight: Arrive in town.
Scene Nine: Not eager to take child (relatives), and when does does so ignoring child....possible drug use with red berry.  Hero takes back baby.
Scene Ten: Meet businessman who agrees that its terrible, and how he can't get in shipments is terrible because of the wolves.

Hero: Reeve Campbell
Positive: Tough, Hardboned Cracker and Toughminded
Negative: Fury
Interesting: Box Breaking

Lots of flashbacks, mostly violent. Good with a knife.
Former vet, military lineage going back to the War of Northern Agression and then the fight at King's Mountain.  Men's adventure book.

Intro: Welcome to the New World, flashbacks of a couple sentences to compare to the old world of Earth.  Coal smoke. Peak oil passed.  Fracking is sent to China to pay down debt. Chinese own much of America and are rather thuggish about it.  Flashback to knife fight with cuckolded husband because truck out of gas, that is getaway truck.

Scene One:Search out the wider world, and get in fight with Chinese punk robbing convenience store. Thrashes punk.  Gets warned he's going to be made an example of.

Scene Two: Well Forget That!  Hero goes on sneak into local Chinese encampment to find and terrorize someone sufficient to call of the dogs....instead finds data on movement of Han nukes.

Scene Three: Book Larning.  Hero goes to the local library in Butte, Montana or thereabouts.  Has to hitchhike and walk through blowing snow to get there.  Reads up on nuclear bombs.  After five hours, really hungry, he gets a visit from two Gray Men of the US warning him not to cause trouble.  He takes offense, they do, and soon enough its a fight in the library.  He escapes by throwing an Oxford dictionary through a window and jumping out.

Scene Four: He steals nukes intended to blackmail US into final surrender.

Scene Five: He finds that his plan of nuking China won't work as the bombs will blow if they go too far toward the Far East.  And neither will turning bombs into fuel for nuke power, which would have helped. And so he thinks that he can nuke Chinse encampments on America or Orion Drive.

 Jaime Walter , martial arts student, seeker after truth, STEM student

Scene One: Use of electron microscope. Professorial sneer at biologists in favor instead of God.  Scriff out.Griffin

Scene Two: This is not real. The Mud comes.  He spreads mud wherever he goes.

Scene Three: Attempted rescue by MRT, Mud Response Team, but fail so they sedate him.

Scene Four: Wakes in hospital bed, hearing some people saying he has an unusually strong MP.  Tries to sneak out, runs into Da Bear, a member of the MRP team, and very big.  Uses martial arts, Bear closes in, clobbers him.  Is requested to stop, gives hero open hand slap and lets him go.

Scene Five: Going to roof with pretty girl who its decided by looks is most likely to get thru to him when an alarm goes off.  One of the permanent detainees is mudding in his cell, breaking through the mind shields.

Scene Six: At the cell.  Unexpectedly Hero has break thru and also helps detainee.

Scene Seven: "Let's get lunch." Says the like metal but alive young leader.  They get ambushed on the way there by a car ramp and protestors with placards swarm the van.  "Stop Imposing Your Reality."

Arthur Lewis McClaren sat down by the plate glass window in the metal frame chair, and began to play his handheld GameX beneath the faux marble tabletop for two while waiting for one of the trim waitresses to venture toward him.

"Hi, I'm Mindy, I'll be your waitress today."  The bright, chirpy act was pleasant to McClaren so he awarded it with a small smile, after he paused his game, and looked up.  His face was wide, a bit unformed and pudgy with keenly intelligent dark eyes, and black hair standing out against pale skin above his unbuttoned button-up shirt, and his navy blue tee with the new leaf green words in curlicue of 'insert clever jibe here' across his somewhat ample front.

"Good. Coffee, three creams, cheese sticks, and a bacon cheeseburger."  The flutters, and uh's amused him as she realized he did not intend to let himself wait ten minutes for another waitress to come by and place his order for food, and she might have to remember something.  He did not do it to be a jerk, although he knew well the value of that, but simply because he was in a rush and had a speech to give two blocks down the street in forty minutes at the Ritz Carlton in Mayfield, Illinois.

Pushing 'Fire Your Feminists from High Investment Projects' from his mind, he went back to the engrossing issue of how far he could successfully push a diplomatic obsurantist/secret research on the sly strategy by the Orcs before the Human Alliance called him on his duplicity.  He sent out his Tribal Chief with promises of peace, meanwhile, he engineered a coup behind his own Chief's back which would cost him in action points in the next turn, but it allowed him to continue the tactic of pretending to seek peace while secretly arming to the teeth which he was engaged in right now.

Two middle aged men, both smooth faced from close shaves, one shiny on his spherical chin and cheeks, came in, and set down not far from him.  Carefully, Arthur reviewed his security procedures.  Everything was properly passguarded.  He had left no window for a thief to sneak in, and make off with valuable data about next month's launch of 'Little Ice Age' which was a simple app game for country running as climate chills and warms came and went.

The tie and suit men did not harrumph to get the waitress' attention, but there was a shadow of the old harrumph about them.  They both ordered steak, which Arthur liked as well, but he had no confidence in the unknown cooking staff's skill.  Hamburgers were hard to mess up, for the unskilled, uncaring, or even worse, the avante garde.

They began to talk loudly and aggressively about how terrible was the rules of the local council, and how they could not find good workers, and had to hire Indians to do the work.  Arthur did his best to ignore them, having had various experiences with Indian and Chinese coders, many not terribly pleasant or fattening to the bottom line.  Americans will usually tell you if they can't do something after all, and Communist Chinese are not that serious about honesty as a 'core corporate value' with the 'ends justify the means' ethics of Communist states indoctrinated into suggestible young skulls.

It was typical chest beating

But then his food arrived, and he put his GameX handheld on the table beside him, and to his annoyance he found that set them off.  Now it was a rant by one about how young people, specifically young men were not 'manning up' and moving into the adult world.  Instead they were playing their games.

He told himself to be mature.  He pointed out the obvious insecurity of the attack to himself.  He tried to count to ten in English, Spanish, Russian and Gaelic.  But deep inside his soul was a tiny bit of hope, that reason might see through the day, and this betrayed his good intentions.

So finishing, he rose, taking out his credit card, and taking up his brand-new GameX handheld with the Scriff Inside! SpeedBooster Chip, he circled around the two to his right.  And then looming over them, he turned to them.

"The games are played because there is justice in them, and a chance.  You guys have rigged the economy so that the new players in the game have little chance of advancement.  And you then hate on those who refuse to play a rigged game and act as a Greek chorus for your ego."  He spoke evenly, but with an intense focus, and yet he was almost bored.  He had had this arguement a dozen times already.  It was as if the human race was filled halfway with the illogical, and the other half with those who could not see beyond their own nose.  Even in gaming there were plenty who wanted to be lauded for unearned advantages, and victories without courage.

"I don't think I was talking to you." The first man, whose back Arthur had seen during most of his meal spoke attempting to instruct Arthur in manners.  Arthur waited, giving the man a fair chance to recover his verse, but the man just kept on along the same line, and so Arthur turned away, muttering 'coward' under his breath.

Arthur did not speak loudly, nor did he project, but yet the man heard him anyways.  Perhaps he was sensitized to the word.  In any case, he rose yelling, his fist doubled, and Arthur scrambled back, looking for a place with firm footing where he could have enough space to put up his fists.  But the man piled into him, slamming a shoulder into his ribs and a hard right into Arthur's wrist, which held the hand which held the handheld.  And that fateful device, spun four times, and as neatly as a swoosh shot in basketball went into a short glass of ice and water.

And then Arthur tumbled backward, still trying to fight, to get a fist in, taking the glass and several plates off the table behind him.  And his handheld came down, and so did the ice cold water, and suddenly there was a flash of white light, and a smell of ozone. And Arthur knew no more.

The man had traversed the stretches, and wrinkles of a dozen different sets of space-time in search of his quarry.  He had gone to hundreds of suns under the aegis of the Galactic Emperor to sniff out thieves and treachers. Invading Hell, he had slapped handcuffs forged of mithril on to a Prince of the Netherrealms seventeen wrists.  He knew who killed the Man in the Peat and the Man in the Ice, and he had learned many things from a certain Mr. Holmes when their paths crossed.

Whatever world, whatever universe Mr. M, the Mystery Man, comes to next, murderers beware.  He is in the shadows behind you, and he never ever stops.

The girl, a blonde buxom beauty, ran scatter-witted, skittering from sidewalk to sidewalk down the nighttime street.  No one heard her cries in the warm night for it was the commercial district with plenty of warehouses and few people.  And all the security guards were inside, eyes fixed to the telly, watching the game.  Then a car came around a corner behind her....IT'S ALL MY FAULT.

Mr. M looked up from his key lime pie, and across the chrome heavy diner to a tan sport coated young fellow, more of a nebbish than anything else.  He was not at first glance a murderer, perhaps an embezzler but blood would be beyond him.  However, Mr. M had long ago learned that all men had Cain's bloody rock hidden somewhere around their persons.  So he got up, tossed down a gold coin from another realm of space-time, and went to confront the murderer.

Sitting down across from the man, he saw a well chewed mustache of brown, an untouched ceramic mug of coffee on the booth formica, and hands that clenched a pained skull, and yet vibrated at a rate a skillsaw might envy.

A quick frightened look from the youngish man.

"I didn't say anything. I'm not saying anything."  The words were blurted out, like rubber bullets on autofire, striking the Mystery Man in the face, hitting his bleak heart with reassurance of the base nature of Humanity.

Mr. M tried to sift through the thoughts of the surface of the man's mind, which was all he could do in this universe, but the fellow was so paralyzed by panic that there was nothing useful to be gained.  That only confirmed what the stench of fear rising from under the jacket and button up shirt told Mr. M.

Not wanting a scene, yet!, the man got up, and left the diner confident that the young fellow's panic would obscure any description or useful thought of himself to the young man, or anyone who later questioned him.  Once outside, Mr. M found a dark alley nearby, dispossessed a pair of street thugs by the simple expedient of slamming one's face into a brick wall, and punching the other in the solar plexus.  The mentally ill bum received stern instructions to go to the diner and get a 'real meal' on Mr. M.  Despite the cravings of liquor, the bum followed the order for the memory of a face and a brick wall and splat came very clearly to him.

Another thirty minutes, and the waitress inside, a hard woman with a hard life, had succeeded in chasing the young fellow out into the dark since he bought no more than coffee.  Looking pathetically up and down the street, Mr. M was relieved that he did not have to disable the fellow's car as he felt sure that he was not safe to drive right now, even if he was stone cold sober, which was unlikely.  His guess was borned out when the fellow, bereft of taxis began to walk.  Two miles later, he walked into an apartment complex of three story freestanding towers.

Mr. M waited outside as the fellow went up the stairs to the top suite, and entered.  Perhaps a half hour would be enough to calm the fellow down so that they could talk reasonably...and then Mr. M was moving.  A strange shadow on a wall inside the room, and he knew as if it had been painted out by an Old Master in clear, brilliant color what was to happen.

Boom. Boom.

Seconds later, the top floor door opened, and two men came out.  Mr. M skidded to a halt behind a row of metal garbage cans.  The men, in suit jackets, had a certain swagger, a drunkeness, and yet a hyperalertness which made them dangerous.  They had just committed murder, and not their first if Mr. M was any judge. And worse, they had liked it.

Mr. M frowned, and began to focus his mind so that every detail of their walk, the faintess of their voices, all might be dissected with crystalline precision later.  They left by a car on the far road, and Mr. M cursed himself for not noticing it before.  And as they drove away, he ceased recording.

Now for the hunt.

Steven Montgomery
P: Southern gentleman
M: Fierce temper
I: Strongly identifies with underdogs

He goes to sublight/jumpgate world based on Central Valley.

His family has lived in the South since well before the War of Northern Agression.  In fact, he went to school in a high school named for his great-grandfather.  His, along with five other families. ran Lucas Point.
He's very much not a SF or Fantasy guy, instead he's a basketball star, a point guard.

The night was warm, and getting late, and Steven James Montgomery, called SJ on the basketball court, was sitting on the front porch of his folk's home.  Cherisse and Billy, shyly hand in hand, stepped out, and the pretty little blonde gave him a quick, grateful smile.  He nodded back from the deep shadows of the wide porch, and the rocking chair that he usually did not frequent.  A warm, approving voice bid them 'night', and the two ran off across the gravel to Billy's tricked out truck parked under one of the many maples on the Montgomery homestead, just on the edge of the wide gravel which held a dozen more cars.

Another minute, and Michael Hall, son of Judge Hall, and Charlie strolled out.
"Nice party, Monty." Michael Hall spoke.  His speech was slow, and very clear.  One element not clearly seen by outsiders was that it was the speech patterns of gunslingers passing each other in the street.  Hall considered Monty a man, and hence dangerous, to be respected, and vice versa.
"Only turn nineteen once, Haulling."  Steven Montgomery said with a soupcon of lightness against the overall solemnity of the late evening.  Fireflies flicked on and off across the west and east lawns, and a bullfrog sounded from down by the pond where the small goat herd went to drink in the hot, still days.
"Well, you did it up right."
"Thanks, Charlies. Preciate that." It was the manner of a gracious lord to a valued friend, even if inferior, for Charlie was only a freshman being the younger brother of Michael.  There was less tension, less studied politeness.
"Oh, by the way, Wayne Briansdale, he said the construction boys will drop off a load of gravel up near your bridge.  Y'know, the hunting cabin..."  Michael said, just remembering something.  The local department of transportation was not averse to occasionally helping out landowners by dropping a ton of gravel somehwhere needed, and since the last curve above the only bridge into the Montgomery's hunting lodge had been wiped out by the late spring rains, well, if some of the high schoolers and local gentry wanted to visit, the road, even if private needed fixing.
"Excellent. Um, what about Mrs. Murphy's..."  Esmerelda Murphy was an older widow, much known for her large, and profuse garden, but lacking in monies.  So when her road got washed out, why the transportation guys were going to fix that right quick too.  No charge.
"They got that too."  Michael nodded affirmatively, and then shrugged, walked over to Steven, and shook his hand.  Steven smiled, appearing genuinely touched.
"Its okay, pal. We'll talk tommorrow. Lunch at Maybee's sound good? We can come up with a couple ideas for the county commissioners.  Bounce them off old Hoover,see what he thinks.   It will be a good summer."
The Hall boys nodded, and left, content that it would be good as the unacknowledged Crown Prince of Meechum County, Missisippi gently exercised his wiles for the good of the town.  Another half dozen came out, and laughingly thanked Steven for 'a nice party' as they wobbled half-drunk down the steps.
Steven began to step in, but then he heard from the edge of the parking lot, under another maple, the older Camwell, Mark Camwell,Commissioner say that he'd been sleeping the car waiting for his kids and their friends so he could drive them home.  Steven tried to get him an iced tea, but was gently refused, however profuse thanks were accepted, and that group left leaving still most of the later leaving guests still at large in his father's house.

It was fine, a good night, and he pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket, and began to dial up some music.  The music was a bit off, and he saw that his headphone cables were frayed.  He'd have to get a new set tommorrow.  But he put it down, and listened, and in the warm, Southern night, a bead of sweat left his forehead, and plunged.  If it had gone a quarter inch to the right, or a half inch to th eleft, or, or...or.....  But it did not.  It hit the frayed spot dead on.  And a circuit was formed.  Ordinarily there was not enough juice to do anything more than a mild tickle, but sweat, and a mysterious substance, mostly the mysterious substance called scriff had set his electrical resistance to less than zero.

And so there was a spark, and an arc, and the office of Crown Prince was vacant.

Remember Asteroid Miners, and Wolfwere Berries...

Remember the idea of sending a PI undercover into the wereseal romance CDC world to rescue a girl fallen into it...which means he has to fall into it as well.

In order to work more on figuring out how to complete stories, let's go for something really simple.

Bob knows something about Joe that could get Joe in trouble.  Joe is a funds administrator for the state of Massachusetts.  Joe is making sure that Kimmie, the sleek and chic daughter of a rich man, gets lots of rewards and prizes, and even goes further to make sure she gets extra cash for her business.  Joe does this so that Kimmie might enter conjugal relations with him, but she has no intention of doing so, regarding him as a dweeb, but a dweeb with useful cash to be sent her way.

Kimmie finds out about Bob's threat to go public at the next town meeting, and kills Bob.  She arranges so that it will be a suicide to discredit Bob, and as back up it will point to Joe as the murderer, in case story no. 1 fails.

The P.I. gets called in because Mom of Bob refuses to believe 'her boy could have done this'.  So, not believing, the P.I. goes to Bob's work, and hears workers complainng of the nasty cupcakes from Kimberly's Bakery.  He gets barred from looking in on Bob's computer (sensitive data don'tcha know....this intros him to the funds flowing through the gov't office), and he starts to be suspicious, so he breaks in at night.  Kim and Joe are there,doing their non-mating dance,a nd they catch the PI, and have him arrested.  But this opens the question for him....why were they there in the first place?

On day two, and scene four, our hero tries to get to look at the body, but he runs into Joe who claims a restrainng order and evinces a willingness to sit all day in front of the morgue door until the cremation is done.  Our hero is angry at Joe and thinks him a villain, and punches him, and gets taken off by security guards, when Joe says something odd....like how Kimmie had told him to be here to make sure the body of his friend was respected.  For, it turns out, the two men were friends, even if Bob was deeply dissapointed in Joe.

Rather than be arrested, our hero escapes and dodging police cars goes to visit Kimmie.  He faces her, and she invites him up to her apartment 'to talk in private' and so she ends up doping him with enhanced tea.  He wakes up, bashed over the head, while unconscious, accused of breaking in and threatening poor innocent Kimmie.  He's in jail again.

He accuses Kimmie, and argues based on some facts????? that it was not a suicide.  The interrogator agrees....it was Joe.  Kimmie's moved to her backup plan.  Joe totally does not understand what's going on.  Our hero has to explain to a delta the pedestalizer the facts of women, especially women like Kimmie.

He sends the data on the case to the mom, and considers ways out.  And then next day, he's released and Kimmie is arrested.  He's perplexed, but then he sees Mom.
"I read up on the internet last night how to inflict pain without bruising.  Little tramp thinks she's going to murder my boy and getaway with it?  No honey, you ain't.  She sure did scream a lot before she recorded her confession.  And I have three mothers in my bridge club prepared to swear I was with them all night."

1.Hero wakes in temperate oak forrest in fall.  He is a verser of several worlds experience.  He advances toward pleasant smoke.
2. Smoke gets thicker, and he wonders if he should advance.  Finds burning cabin, and injured woman and baby.  Comforts dying mother, and as requested takes baby to town.
3. Changes baby by stream.  Feels as if being watched.  Spots pawprint??
4. Pursued from out of sight.  Arrives in appleorchard.  Owner surprises him with pitchfork. Quickly taken inside away from watching, yet hidden pack.
5.  Baby taken care of, with apple butter for supper and goat's milk from attached shed for drink, and a warm spot behind a blocking branch by the fire for sleep.  Then harsh interrogation by the arborist who thinks he might be a clueless kidnapper.  This is cleared up, and they become allies.  He won't mention what he's afraid of for saying 'wolf' has been made taboo.
6. In the morning of the next day, birds are chirping, but later they suddenly stop.  He races madly thru the woods to a high point, which is the ruined temple on a hill....which is a place the wolves won't go.  He'd like to examine the temple, but he has a baby so he pushes on.
7. He finds a cable ride on a car with ricketty floor and more excitement that he hoped for as he swoops into the center of town, attracting much attention from a gathering crowd.  He was not supposed to use the cable car.  He needed pay Mr B to hire workers to send it back up.  No, he does not need to pay the merchant, but the town council.  No, heneeds to pay the editor of the paper to arrange a Grand Push.

He points out he has a baby.

Shock. Dismay.

Various groups decide they want baby. Then guy says 'is that so and so's baby?  they have relatives on the far side of town.'  The other groups try to press their claim but he's got more moral force than them and pushes past.

Guy who mentioned the relatives takes horse and pushes car back uphill....says he can do it the next day with the hero's help.

9. Hero sees religious speaker to crowd.  Hero decides to appeal to crowd.  At first it sounds good, but then the speech turns to how he is hurting them by suggesting they need to do something.  So it goes from tolerance to rock throwing.  He flees.
10.  He runs into another temple (wow how many temples are there?) and the women there are high p  riestesses who want to raise themselves up 'we've killed fetuses, now we need to kill a baby'.  At this point, he flattens a room full of women.  He does this in part by smashing the bldg..
11. Out of town...he meets a wolf.  Epic brawl.
12. Stumbles into homestead of uncle of baby.  Passes out.
13. Wakes up to angelically beautiful face tending to him.  He finds data about his place, about girl, and about the baby.
14.  Gets offer to stay 'I could use someone who can take on a wolf by himself, and toting a baby.  None of my girls, even trained can do that.  And few of the guys in town could.  Fact is, a lot of them are wimps, mud with no straw, paper tigers.  "I'm not much." "You know right and wrong, not just what's popular. And you're willing to fight for it. Makes you ten times the man most of those punks are."
15. He prepares to leave....mass wolf attack.  They're angry that someone succeeded in defying their terror.  The girls and the baby are taken.  The man of the house is badly injured.  He gets separated.
16.  Back to town for moving car, and asking for help.  No more religions, so he goes for biz guy and security guy.  He's a bit leary, but he heads up to the temple.
17. There he learns the truth.
18.  He goes to tell the bizman and the mil guy the truth, and in walks the religious types too....they all know.  And they're here to make sure he doesn't tell anyone.
19.  He forces the bizman to take him hidden in a cart to a wolf camp. The bizman tries to betray him, but our hero jumped out earlier and has set fires around the camp.
20. The fires panic the wolves, and our hero takes back the prisoners.

Don't forget Shikamaru's world.

1. Ten World Verser arrives in bubble dome on a ruined earth.  He's immediately made aware of a Mary Piper by his boarding pass.
2. He sets out to track it down, and sees dirty halls, and other signs embelmatic of socialism.
3. He arrives at the HQ and the guards, not knowing him, try to arrest him on the basis of being in the wrong area without papers.  He uses his Kung Fu on them.
4. Inside, he sees the hatch of the Piper, the local political leadership, and an Emmerald Sorcerer Duke. The Duke is from an alt-reality where Magic is going to a Singularity, and he and his company found the benefits of slowtime worlds to keep up with the magic race.
He desires....the politicals want someone to rescue them from their mess up.  They talked everyone into leaving for this new dimension to turn an outpost into a habitable world, but its sooooooooo hard. And they're corrupt. And they want tokeep their positions of power.

He desires to make them peons in a slow time world like a dozen other fiefs of his which he pops into occasionally, or once a friday.  His advantages include his being an Alpha male, and not married so allthe women of the outpost are secretly inlust with him.
He's gettingimpatient and wants a small group to go....which he hasn't told of the time differential.

There is a cross dimensional Mary Piper path being built. This is one of the stops on the way.

Our hero arrives.

There are two stars in the sky, a gas giant and a varying number of moons.  Gravity is low.

The planet or moon is ocvered with water, and the humans who live here live on giant rafts built by the Gengie of Saint Crispin's Day, a Colonial starship with settlers and high tech.

There are three types of tubes growable.  The Heavy are the deep supports of the Rafts, they are Basic Truths.  There are also lessers.

The elite are being lazy and congratulatory to their circle.  They build with lessors high structures which could tip over the raft.  They make it economically hard for workers to build more heavies so as to have more flat surface.  They don't keep up on the building infrastructure of the Raft, and allow rats and barnacles to eat away.  Worse, many of the elite no longer believe in Floating.  They believe we float because we wish too float.

One trick the elite do is go 'rescue' those of damaged rafts and thus immigrants, but only the poor workers have to pay for that.  Its like Rome and the war tax, the elite get the benes and the poor get stuck with the bill.

And into this mess arrives the too intelligent and questioning verser, which because of his 'tude gets dumped down as a Bottom Level Workman.  Here he finds out about the damage,a nd the shrinking nummbers.

Remember 'Ship of Worlds' as well.

Great Rafts, a novel of Multiverser: The Game
Thomas Hillary, is coldly controlled, and able to hold a grudge.  He's relentless. He's physical.

He's taking a vid of a policeman harrassing someone when he's told to stop.  He tries to give his defense, but the cop is not listening, and his words stick in his mouth. But still there is enough to note that he's probably right.

Instead, the cop nightsticks him, repeatedly....Verse out for the first time.

Scene Two: "Am I dead?"  He's in the lowers, the hallways close to the water in a Great Raft.

Will Vaughn is a verser on his fourth universe.  He started out on Earth, went to X and Y, and then landed up in World Without Humans for the past two years.  He has a cabin, and a garden, and is enjoying life, but he's a bit bored.

He has a Read Surface Thoughts and Bad Feelings Sense Ring, and he has Biblical miracles.

And then his versing presence makes a gate from the Ship of Worlds appear in the valley next to him.

Its written from his point of view.  NOT. And maybe that of a girl on an Explorer Team.

The SOW elites are upside down, they are trained for one world, and not every one.  And they stay stuck on their goals and on maitaining their status.  And they're materialists.  Some of them are genuinely smarter, butmany are not.

Sc. One. Building up dam outside house as barrier against rains and buffalo herd.
Sc. One A.  Avoiding offer of being whore forlow pay, and getting ready for Explorer Team action...go, go, go...
Sc. Two. Look for stuff, and find cabin, and look for guy and food....guy ambushes them.
Sc. Three. Guy goes with them despite bad Feeling about ship.  Team is accosted by supervisor for bringing in another 'useless eater'.

Scene One: In 'Mage' above.
Scene Two:He discusses his need to take the odd child with Lady of Orphans, who is prejudciced against men.  He then visits the Mayor.
Scene Three: He goes to the kids 'house' and finds the kid has been treated poorly, even by the standards allowed to orphans.  Its unneccessary abuse for the pleasure of it.  The kid is not there.
Scene Four: Deeply angered, he goes to the Lady of Orphans and forces her to admit accepting bribes in a mage duel.  He crosses the line by threatening to killher.  But he finds that the kid had been scared by others to hide from him in the woods.
Scene Five: Into the dangerous woods, more dangerous for the kid.
Scene Six: Finding the kid in a cave with a monster trying to get at him.  Fight.
Scene Seven: Kid flees into cave. Falls. Mage has to jump.  Mage has tried to make friends. Kid responds with fireball, Mage to save both their lives deflects it upward which shatters the upward passage.
Scene Eight: