#8:Give me some emotional support here

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"Then give me some emotional support here. I’m doing the best I can. I think I’m doing pretty damn good for a newborn.” the voice said."Hold out your hands, best you can, off to either side, palms up, make a cup. Like you’re scooping water”

Shelby did that. A haze slowly formed in each of his cupped hands. The haze thickened into a fog. The fog thickened into a soup. There were things moving in the soup. It was alive. He had handfuls of tiny, tiny mites.... gnat-like. There were many thousands of them. He stared in mute wonder for a minute then they flew away, like a puff of dust on the wind.

There was no wind. It was deathly calm in his crypt-like enclosure.

"What the hell?” he asked.

"Zombie mites” the voice said."Your blood nanites made them. They’re looking for brains. When they find brains they’ll take control of whatever critter that has the brains and it’ll come back here”.

"Wouldn’t that kill the critter?” Shelby asked.

"Nope” the voice said."The kind of brains they’re looking for it won’t. Insects mostly. This trick works best on bugs. For some reason it won’t work on anything with a real brain. If we’re lucky we might get a snake but I wouldn’t count on it. Food should be arriving soon. Bugs mostly, like I said.”

It wasn’t long before that turned out to be true. Various bugs began to appear. They’d fly, walk, hop, or slither up close to Shelby then drop dead. Shelby ate them... shell, and all. They tasted wonderful. Shelby suspected that he had the voice to thank for that. The voice was probably fritzing with his tastebuds to make anything taste good.

"Guilty as charged” the voice said."would you rather I stop?”

"Certainly NOT” Shelby replied"I guess I’m not going anywhere for a while then?” Shelby replied sarcastically.

"Not until I get done with the body and fender work” the voice replied."otherwise you’d just die. I can’t have that.”

”Nope...can’t have that. Take as long as you want.” Shelby hastily said swallowing a frog. A rare treat. And a snail. Yummy. Crunchy too."While you’re doing that though, how ’bout you tell me a story?”

"What kind of story?” the voice asked.

"The story of your people” Sarcasm was fairly dripping from Shelby’s voice."Like who the hell are you? I asked that once already, and what’s a blood nanite?”

"You don’t have the technological referents.” The voice patiently replied.”You wouldn’t understand.”

"So teach me.” Shelby said"Have you got anything better to do?”

"Well no. Since you put it that way.” The voice agreed."There is so MUCH you need to know before you can understand. Where do I start?”

"Say!” Shelby said"I got an idea. Start at the beginning. Fill in the middle parts...and proceed to the end? What do you think?”

"Hmmm. Yeah. That would work.” The voice agreed. "OK. About fifty million years ago.....”

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The next episode is
# 9:The Voice talked for hours and hours…
The Last Episode was
#8:Give me some emotional support here…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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@everittdmickey
I surf the net, find the GOOD stuff.
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