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Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Richard Davidson on 11/13/2002; 11:19 PM He plummeted an incredible distance, and managed to break the water clean, quite the feat with his hands tied behind his back. It was icy cold, and as if that wasnt bad enough, it looked as though he may have to worry about sharks after all. Coming towards him at roughly the speed of a freight train was a shark far bigger than Alexander had ever imagined. It had to be two hundred feet long, with a mouth big enough to easily eat the 19th century farmhouse Alexander had lived in at the beginning of the story. Just as Alexander was about to get his first clear perspective on where he fell within the food chain, a huge net closed around him, and flung him high into the air, its ropes burning into his neck and shoulders, and causing intense pain. The net was on a huge stalk of what appeared to be bamboo. It was some sort of fish trap, or so Alexander imagined, and he also imagined that all this hadnt escaped the attention of some very angry pirates who now understood his value. He was wet, and cold, hanging only fifty feet over a hungry giant shark, and he was surrounded by plenty of live seafood. To his amazement, the pirate ship continued on. It was named the Ludwig Von Beethoven for some reason Alexander couldnt imagine. The words glinted in a lonely stream of moonlight as the stern disappeared into the fog. Alexander couldnt believe his luck. His survival must have been predestined, he thought, for it surely was a miracle he was alive at all. He tried to review what had happened to him in the past few days, or thousands or millions of years, but it was all a blur, centered on that Warrior Woman, what was her name, Kasheeba? She was just as stupid and insane as the rest of that bunch, he reasoned, but damn she had great legs, and smoldering eyes, and soft, long hair... Alexander was getting a bit too lost in that, so he tried to think about what to do about his present predicament. He ran a few facts through his mind. Well, Im some undetermined number of years into the future. There are three continents in the world, and each one is a militant major corporation, that is in a constant state of cold war with the others. The overpowering odor of fish was making Alexander gag a little, but he didnt want to lose any of the wonderful dinner hed eaten. I own stock from before the two giant companies I had shares in become this one supergiant company, and seeing that some untold number of years have passed by, that would make me a very powerful man. Alexander liked that idea, and he wondered why hed never had any kind of shot at being a powerful man before, and then he remembered a conversation hed had with a cute blonde named Tina hed been having dinner with. Tina had been bemoaning the amount of salary and power that was reserved for only such few people, while the rest of the world has to pound out a living the best they can. Shed been fired from her job in Marketing, and Alexander had said, the problem with accumulating power is that doing so always threatens somebody who already has power. Shed thought that very wise, and somehow Alexander had even managed to sleep with her, but only the one time, as she went back to her boyfriend the next day. That was fine, of course. She really wasnt his type, anyway. Alexander had no way of knowing it, but ironically, she ended up leaving that boyfriend for a dumpy Vice President of Design, who made so much money, they couldve bought a country by the time they died, which was only seven years after their marriage, due to the fact that their private plane blew up with them in it. They said it was an accident, of course, though Im sure that anybody whos been following the story so far knows it wasnt. Alexander stared out into the now pitch black fog, and bled. All the other companies in the world have banded together under the skull and crossbones, Alexander thought, trying to concentrate. They formed some kind of pirate brotherhood, and now they sail around on ships shouting yo ho ho, and other such rot, while they plan hostile takeovers that have absolutely no chance whatsoever of success. He thought hed summed that up rather neatly, but then came the hard part. Im out in the middle of an ocean twice the size of anything that existed in my time, and there may not be land for thousands of miles. Since Im in a trap, somebody had to have set it. Im either going to die here, soaked with the smell of rotting fish, or that somebody is going to show up. And for all I know, that somebody is going to be as hostile, or more hostile than those Ive encountered so far. Alexander figured that was a pretty fair guess. He started to hope that there might perhaps be a third possibility. The morning came, and the fog lifted. Alexander mustve slept, because it seemed to come rather suddenly, but now there was beautiful blue ocean as far as the eye could see. It seemed bluer than the ocean Alexander remembered, and he thought, my God, it must be a thousand feet deep here. Alexander had no way of knowing it, but in reality the ocean was over six thousand, two hundred and twenty eight feet in that particular spot, and the creatures that lived in it had been evolving for far longer than he could possibly imagine. He spent most of that day baking in the hot sun, along with hundreds of tons of dead fish, and just as the hallucinations started, hed thought of something. He rubbed the ropes around his wrists across the teeth of a Mackerel, or it least it looked like a Mackerel behind him. He then used its mouth to begin sawing at the thick ropes of the huge net. All the while, a choir of Angels serenaded him, singing You Take my Breath Away by Queen, and occasionally whacking him upside the head. At some point hed passed out, as it was dark, and he was hanging half out of the net. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. That shark, or some other creature is down there, and if I drop into the water, Ill become food. It was true. His prison was also his protection, and hed never thought about what hed do if he escaped. There was a small wooden boat down there, piloted by the Grim Reaper himself, but Alexander was reasonably sure that was a hallucination, or worse, his death. I dont think Im gonna take THAT boat, he thought to himself quietly. He did the most sensible thing, and passed out again, and stayed in a somewhat dreamlike state for the better part of three days. His mother had stopped by to see him, and shed pointed her finger at him and said, shame on you Alexander; shame on you for letting yourself be pushed around by those Corporate Bigwigs. Theyre all just a bunch of criminals, whore too big for their britches. Thats not how Alexanders mother usually talked, so he was a bit taken aback by the change in her attitude regarding big corporations. Then a couple of priests stopped by, and told him a whole bunch of jokes that started out, Two Rabbis, a Minister and a Shaman walk into a bar... and Alexander knew he was losing his mind. They were the funniest jokes Alexander had ever heard, and he laughed and he laughed and he laughed, causing his cracked lips to bleed. He wondered how it was that he had any blood left at all. Then he went into a coma for real.
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Mark Morgan on 11/14/2002; 2:07 PM Richard, I've added navigation to this series so people can scroll through it, in order. It's all about the love, isn't it?
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Richard Davidson on 11/14/2002; 7:04 PM Actually, they don't seem to be linked to each other. From my computer, it appears they are linked to articles. This one links to Post Apocalyptic blues (Part 1) But I appreciate all your efforts, nonetheless.
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Mark Morgan on 11/14/2002; 8:27 PM Rich, I meant in the published version. That points out a good idea for the talkbacks, though.
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Richard Davidson on 11/14/2002; 9:18 PM Oh. Me so stupid. In all the time I've come to this site, I didn't realize there was a published version and a writings and talkbacks version. This just proves the old cliche that "you learn something every day."
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Mark Morgan on 11/14/2002; 9:24 PM It's not a clear distinction, Richard. I have a facelift that I've started to code to make some of these small usability improvements.
RE: Welcome to Percotran -Part VII By: Seth Dillingham on 11/14/2002; 9:42 PM On 11/14/02, Richard Davidson said: >Oh. Me so stupid. In all the time I've come to this site, I didn't >realize there was a published version and a writings and talkbacks >version. They're actually two different views of the same data that lives in a database on the server. In English, that means that if you edit the one you see in the discussion forum, you've also edited the published work. Not that you asked. Seth
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