War in the Precincts Part 14

“I see, but it would still be very hard for me to break my programming. I wish Professor When would turn up and reprogram me.”

“You need deprogramming really,” muttered Millie, “you sound like you’re in a cult.”

“Pardon?” asked the MP.

“Oh nothing,” said Millie, “I think he has been timewarped again.”

“The last I had heard was that he had retired to Valusia.”

“That was in the fourth book. When I do my job at the cloning facility I could ask my Valusian friend if he’s still there.”

“Oh could you? I do not want to press the emergency beacon if I don’t have to.”

“Press,” queried Millie, “I didn’t think you had hands?”

“I meant metaphorically.”

“So you have metaphorical hands?”

“Sort of.”

“Metaphysically?”

“Yes, I think,” the MP looked through his online dictionary to see if he understood metaphysically correctly or not.

“So you have some virtual hands somewhere in your Artificial Intelligence that you can press buttons with, that don’t really exist in a ‘physical’ sense?”

Still unable to understand metaphysically he let a, “Sort of,” slip out.

“I don’t believe you, prove it.”

“Metaphorically or metaphysically?”

“Just do it.”

A warning light came on and a klaxon began to sound, “Please vacate the premises,” said the MP, “there is a fire.”

“Well that’s stupid,” thought Millie, “I can’t vacate the premises, the blast doors are down.”

“Oh,” said the MP, “I forgot about that.”

War in the Precincts Part 13

“I know, it seems it is only me who can feel anything, pain usually from having to suffer the incompetence of my robot workforce. I seem to have a headache, I wonder if they make tablets for that?”

Millie the tea lady entered. “MP,” she asked, “I cannot get out of this area, the blast doors are down.”

“I know Millie, the AP has done it. After all there is a war on.”

“How am I supposed to make cappuccinos if I can’t get some more milk?”

“But there are no other life forms in this area? In fact I don’t know why you came in at all.”

“I do my rounds, just in case. If there’s nobody here I usually have one myself.”

“What do you think I should do Millie?”

“About what?”

“The war.”

“Maybe if you didn’t want to repatriate the gnomes, but let them live here, you wouldn’t have this problem. After all most of them were born here, this is their home.”

“It’s just not in my programming Millie.”

”Well maybe that’s the problem. Your programming wants you to send them back to where they come from. If they were born here they return here.”

Romancing the Drone

Romancing the Drone

PROLOGUE

The Romance Dimension, so what do you expect, flowers, chocolates and rose coloured spectacles? Well there are rose coloured spectacles, as talked about in book three of the Arth series. And what is this duplicate earth called, Thera by any chance? Actually it’s called Heart. What a cheesy name for the earth of the romance dimension. Makes you think the Author thought it up the day after Valentines Day, which he didn’t, and also doesn’t celebrate, but the inhabitants of that dimension do with fervour.

Why did the Timewarped Timelord have a book of romance in his library and which romantic book was it? Was it ‘Wuthering Heights’ with Heathcliffe scrabbling around on the moors? Was it ‘Gone with the Wind’ with Rhett Butler dashing around in the American Civil War then crying at the end? We’ll say it was ‘Gone with the Wind’, that’s not too boring for men. So the reason the Timewarped Timelord had a romantic book on his shelves was that at one time he had been married. Therefore the book was really his wife’s. The Time Traveller’s Wife, that sounds like a good title for a book.

“I don’t really want to write this one,” said the Author to nobody because, as yet, we are still in the prologue and his wife had gone out for a girlie day with the girls. He had been spared the excruciating agony of having to sit through mind numbing conversations about shoe shopping and his daughter’s new hair cut.

Romancing the Drone:Taster

I have come up with 250 words of the prologue for the sixth book in the Arth series, Romancing the Drone. I will put it on Wattpad when I have the first chapter written. It's going on here for my fans to read early.

Arthur is now working for British Intelligence in the romance dimension. A foreign power has captured a cutting edge surveillance drone and he must recover it. Of course things would be easier if it didn't have a mind of its own.

War in the Precincts Part 12

Sid’s Gwinda joined in, “The MP went mad and ordered his robots, to serve tea that is also called Rooibos.”

“What kind of rhyme is that?” questioned Sid.

“Assonance,” shouted Gwinda.

“No need to be rude dear,” reprimanded Sid, “we are in company after all.”

They all four did a little tap dance and finished in style.

“Very good,” cheered Splob, “you could do that as part of the finale.”

“I hate musicals,” grumped Grunkel, “if I had known this was going to be a musical then I wouldn’t have accepted the part. After all I have a clause in my Funny Character Union contract saying I don’t have to do musicals.”

“Not even for a laugh?” asked Splob.

“Not even for a laugh.”

“A1,” screamed the MP, if in fact an AI computer entity could scream and not just raise the volume he/it spoke at.

The chief security droid scuttered in.

“What happened this time?” asked the MP.

“The blast doors stopped us from accessing the main plaza area.”

“I know, I do process all of the information I receive from the surveillance equipment from all 24 precincts.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“To make you feel uncomfortable so that you would complete the task I gave you.”

“I do not feel anything, I am a security robot.”

War in the Precincts part 11

“Alright alright,” interjected Sid, “there’s no need to make a song and a dance over it.”

“We could make up a song and a dance now if you want?”

“About Conan?”

“No, about ‘The War in the Precincts’.”

“But it’s not even finished yet, the Author’s only written about 1,500 words so far.”

“2118,” I said as I interrupted.

“Ok 2118,” said Sid.

“Doesn’t that get on your nerves?” asked Sidney.

“What?”

“When the Author says, ‘Said Sid’.”

“I know, I said something about it in a piece of flash fiction he wrote last year, but he still writes it.”

Sidney grabbed his Gwinda’s hand and dragged her off the stool she was sitting on.

“I’ll sing you a song with some words and a rhyme, about a war in the precincts, a battle in time,” he sang.

“Well that’s not strictly true,” said Sid (again), “the Time Backwater is outside of time…”

“Sing!” exclaimed Sidney.

Sid grabbed his Gwinda’s and sang, “The Time Backwater is where we are, before we came here we were in a car…”

Sidney looked at Sid but decided to carry on, “I’ve seen the droids…”

His Gwinda butted in, “Do we get to sing or not?” she asked as Sidney twirled her around.

“Aww, go on then.” relented Sidney.

“The Gwindas one and two were there, until that time they hadn’t a care…”

War in the Precincts Part 10

“Sidney,” bellowed Gwinda.

“Sid,” bellowed Gwinda.

Both Sidney and Sid looked at their wives and realised together that it wasn’t worth the nagging they would receive.

“Which dimension are you from Sidney?” asked Sid.

“Romance,” replied Sidney.

“Where’s your rose coloured spectacles?”

“At the menders,” Sidney folded his arms, “I hear you are from the fantasy dimension, I don’t really like it there, too airy fairy.”

“There are no fairies there, well apart from the elves.”

“I went to the 2012 Olympics there. Those elves are fast runners. Some fellow had won twenty years on the trot.”

“It’s not fair really, they broke the genetic code for aging centuries ago, live forever. Who wants to live forever?”

“That’s a Queen song isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it was in ‘Highlander’ and in ‘Flash Gordon’.”

“Arnie said it in ‘Conan the Barbarian’ as well. Well the woman said something like it.”

“That’s a good film that, better than the second.”

“I haven’t seen the second but I have seen the newest one. We get films piped through from the real earth. The way that Jason Momoa Plays Conan is…”