Part 8: Third Eye

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“Woof!”...said Chris to himself “that was a hell of a ride.”

Some how he’d managed to keep the BloodyMary upright as it tobogganed down the wall of the crevasse. He was at the bottom of a large crack in the glacier. The glacier was calving. It was a long long crevasse. It ran for miles. Chris drove the BloodyMary along the bottom to evade the attackers. They couldn’t detect him. Even if they could it was highly unlikely that a missile could reach him down there. Miles later the trench become a tunnel. Inside the tunnel he would be safe. For some, very marginal, values of safe. If he went inside it was a permanent thing, no turning back. The tunnel might dead end or get too narrow for the snow-tank. If it did then he was dead.

Chris had no option, really. It was certain death behind him. Probable death if he did nothing. Possible death if he drove on.

FIDO
( Frick it, Drive On)

An eternity later,miles down the pitch black tunnel, he had to rest. He stopped the BloodyMary. He didn’t even bother to climb into the bunk. He reclined his seat and went to sleep.

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Some time later…while asleep. He felt a call, a compulsion. It woke him up. Something was beckoning to him from the cargo bay. The cargo bay had warmed to zero. It shouldn’t be too bad to enter wearing winter gear. He ventured into it. Against all good judgement he had to examine his prize up close and personal.

Later he would blame lack of coffee.

The escape capsule looked rather melty. It looked to be in even worse shape than it had while on the mountain. The Poor thing had been rode hard and put up wet. He edged around it in the tight quarters of the cargo bay. He must have activated a mechanism. A canopy on the alien craft popped open. He looked into the cockpit.

He looked upon the face of an angel.

A DarkAngel.

On closer inspection he saw that the DarkAngel had the face of a PussyCat. She wasn’t the least bit human. It must have been lack of coffee or a trick of the light that had made him thinks so when he’d first seen her.

Still...she was a pretty kitty.

Pretty dead kitty. Really, really dead. She had no body to speak of. It was vestigial. It had pretty much withered away. Nothing much but a skeleton. The head, was the only thing that was really recognizable. She, somehow Chris knew that it was a female, was wired and plumbed into the machinery. The machinery was smashed, scattered and broken. Even if she had been alive when her ship crashed she would have died.

Upon closer examination it appeared that she hadn’t died in the crash. She’d been dead for a long, long time.

He edged around the craft to get a better look at her face. Odd that. She had a third eye.

Then the head, and what was left of the poor withered body, started to smoke. Yup, she’d been dead for a long long time. She had been exposed to the vacuum of space for a great many years. The absolute zero cold of deep space for such a long period of time had desiccated her. The moister air and the warmer temperature of the cargo bay and Chris’s entry, the blast of warm air from the pilots cabin, even his body heat, had an adverse effect.

The body, and the head, crumbled to dust as he watched. Soon all that was left was a pile of powdery flakes and fragments among the smashed machinery…and the Third eye. The Third eye was a crystal….a gem. It had called to him. It hadn’t been merely his curiosity. Against all good judgement, against the dictates of common sense and reason he removed the glittering stone from the heap of flakey soot.

No one should be forced to go so long without coffee. Lack of coffee caused people to act stupid.

Later, inside the cab, while warming up, he examined the stone more closely. It was unlike any gem that he had ever seen. He was no expert on jewelry but this stone was fascinating.

He held the cold stone in his hands. It warmed from his body heat and emitted an alluring glow. He gazed into it. It was beautiful. It seemed to be calling to him. He didn’t want to let it go. He didn’t want to put it away, so he didn’t. He told his ASS to morph his ThumBrain’s DiamondSmoke casing to accommodate a passenger. The Artificial Stupid Sapient in his ThumBrain, did that. Soon his ThumBrain’s case was slightly thicker than before. The stone rode nicely, completely hidden, inside that thickness.

He examined the finished product, it was perfect. His ThumBrain was shaped like the Hammer of Thor, an affectation of his …he was a known eccentric. He wasn’t crazy. Poor people that act that way are crazy. He was rich…so he was eccentric.

He wore his ThumBrain hanging from a neurological loop antenna around his neck. A neuro-loop is a form of direct neural interface between his brain and the electronic ThumBrain. It’s non invasive and requires no surgery. Since he was eccentric he’d had one custom built to resemble an ancient Bronze Age ‘Torque”.

To the untutored it looked like he wore a Hammer of Thor Amulet attached to a Torque around his neck. People who thought he was crazy tended to underestimate him.

That gave him a tactical advantage. It worked for the Aesir..it worked for him too.

To Be Continued
The Next Episode is
Part 9: Die
The Last episode was
Part 7: Attack
the first episode was
Part 1 : Winter Storm

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