#4: Dreaming

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Shelby was out cold. He hadn’t felt it when the roof gave way. He hadn’t feel it when he’d fell into one room, then another, then another as they each collapsed below him, until he finally came to rest in the sub basement of the building. He hadn’t felt it when he had bounced like a rag doll from girder to wall to support beam, losing skin as he went. He had finally oozed down a wall and smacked, butt first into the stone floor, sitting up right, back against that same wall. His feet were stretched out in front of him. He hadn’t feel it when the building fell in on top of him, smashing his legs into paste.

Shelby really, really, should have died then... but he hadn’t.

Shelby was dreaming that he was a flying.
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At one time he had loved those tiny little flitters. They were so small that he had felt he was wearing the tiny aircraft rather than riding inside of it. They were fun to fly for a short while.

Short While. That was the key word.

Short.

Shipboard instrumentation had indicated some type of problem back at the Portal. He’d been told to go there, fix that. Flitters were the only aircraft onboard the ship that had the range. It had been a long flight. The novelty of silent, lonely flight, had worn off rather soon.

When he finally reached the Portal it had turned out to be nothing. A big waste of time in his opinion. The long, lonely, dreary, flight back to his ship awaited. He was wondering what he’d ever seen good about these cramped little things. Now he was searching for his survey ship. His instruments indicated it should be in this quadrant. Perhaps if he gained some altitude it would be easier to see? It had been a long, long flight and he was beyond ready to get back. He missed shipboard cooking the most. Meals ready to eat...weren’t. Not really.

God’s own strobe light illuminated the sky.

The gamma ray burster scrambled his nervous system as well as the cybernetics of the flitter. He tumbled like a leaf in a gale, spiraling downward toward the sea far below. He was going to hit. He was going to die. The only question was would he die from radiation poisoning while still in the air or would he live long enough to die from smashing into the sea at high speed. He was tough. He managed to stay alive until he hit the water..then he died.

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The Next Episode will be
#5: Dragon
The Last Episode was
# 14: Bad Dream…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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I'm

@everittdmickey
I surf the net, find the GOOD stuff.
and write posts about it
So you don't have to.
I also write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
and comment on the news

Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.