Presented for your disapproval is one super-villain: Lord Gairon. Who finds virtual immortality excruciatingly boring. Pray that he never owes you a favor.
Because he always pays his debts!
*
We present, for your consideration, a ... different ... kind of love story.
**
Suggested soundtrack:
"Everybody Gets A Second Chance," Mike & The Mechanics
"Long Time Gone," Dixie Chicks
"Save The Last Dance For Me," The Drifters
"Dancing With Our Hands Tied," Taylor Swift
"Don't Pay the Ferryman," Chris de Burgh
**
##
Lord Gairon was adept at conducting fearsome experiments at sea. Although his armor-clad galleon rocked gently, a storm was brewing inside and out. To call the fearsome, former man-of-war an inverted sea turtle with terminal distemper...
Well, that'd make every soul aboard belly laugh, save ONE. And 2 halves??
Half #1: "Smiley" Jamison was in no mood to laugh. He was destined to discover 3 terrible truths:
• When you first grow a conscious, it is a terrible taskmaster!
•• When a man's heart and mind give birth, the imaginary labor pains are excruciating!!
••• O, but what a beautiful offspring comes forth — if he will but dare to travail!!!
Half #2: There is a demarcation between resuscitating a person and reanimating preserved flesh. Especially if grafts are needed to replace the overly necrotic bits and pieces.
Some research has been done on chemically transferring memories. But what about chemically transferring a dead corpse's memories back into herself ... when that corpse is reanimated?
What about memory transfers — both to and from — the brain grafts that patch the -reanimated- brain's overly necrotic bits and pieces?
Given the limitations of chemical memory transfers during reanimation, who then is the final chimera? Is she the woman she was, or is she the child she has become?
In being both, is she then neither?
**
Lord Gairon's crew was fiercely loyal to him. None of them loved the seemingly immortal monster. But... Yet...
And however:
1) Lord Gairon paid them triple the going rates.
2) Lord Gairon had the hush-hushest of reputations.
3) Not even the boogeyman wanted to know what REALLY happened below decks.
"Smiley" Jamison was privy to that horrid information — and, as a whole, Smiley's conscience troubled him not.
• Until it did!
The galleon's Spartan, yet Gothic, "surgical bay" was frigid. A disquiet chill permeated mind, body, and spirit. The corruption was equally palpable and insidious. Perversely, Lord Gairon was creating a thankyou gift to an old friend: Smiley himself.
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Bright Shadows 2: A Hinterlands Anthology
Science FictionI want my second anthology to be more user-friendly on Wattpad (TM). Hence, I'm reorganizing material from my first anthology and exploring some creative gaps. The front material is almost a writers and directors guide. While I'm launching a quality...
