Rood Der: 06: Barbarians and Bumblebees

By Douglas Christian Larsen

Rood Der: 06: Barbarians and Bumblebees. Joss Chen notices something insane in the sky while an oddly tattooed barbarian battles his lust in a gentle society of bumblebees and Wee Folk, and a distant threat endangers the life of a Sky Valley Group member as confusion clashes. Life is beautiful through the Red Door, but it is possibly more dangerous than in any other world.

How deep are we, immersed in this world we call reality? How many turtles down do we go, in this discombobulated, mixed-metaphor, rabbit-hole world?

Their world might be based on Ayn Rand, her writings, philosophies, and her U.S. Presidency, but how dense are their numbers compressed, and for how long will their simulation even run? This little group has been provided an exit, but would anyone be rude enough to dare and leave their very own reality?

Take the Rude Dare, and Cross over, where data is data, through the Red Door. From the author of Vestigial Surreality comes the new serial novel, Rood Der.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365752964

Book preview

Rood Der: 06: Barbarians and Bumblebees

Rood Der: 06

Barbarians and Bumblebees

The Sunday SciFi-Fantasy Serial

by Douglas Christian Larsen

978-1-365-75296-4

© Douglas Christian Larsen 2017

Joss stood in the observation room of Crash House, peering through his Rand digital binoculars. From the outside of the house, the big windows were reflectorized and screened, but looked just like normal, everyday windows. Joss was up here on the third floor of Crash House scanning the skies because all the security sensors were going crazy. But Joss had not seen anything, not yet. For an instant, he thought he might have spotted something, but when he checked with his binoculars, scanning the location high in the sky, there was nothing there. He stood very still, calmly breathing, watching through the binoculars—sensors in his high-tech viewing device would highlight and isolate any movement, or aberrant shape. After thirty seconds of vigilant observation, there was nothing, but still, Joss did not move. He clicked the timer on the side of the binoculars, again setting off a thirty-second countdown. He would do this two more times, and if he saw nothing, he would employ his phone to dismiss the alarms silently whining in all the systems and head back downstairs. He had things to do, and wouldn’t waste much more time scanning the heavens for imagined threats.

He relaxed his muscles, ignoring the tremblors of stress that wanted to kick off in his forearms. He maintained regular breathing, keeping his eyelids at half mast, hardly blinking. When the thirty-second timer finished he was about to activate it once more, when he saw the thing. It coalesced right there, in the center of his field of vision. He checked to ensure the camera in the binoculars was running, and it was. He could disseminate everything more powerfully, later—right now, he needed to accumulate as much good data as possible.

The thing came together, or gradually decloaked, or something. One moment there was nothing there, and then suddenly it was building, growing, piece by piece. He zoomed in and enhanced the focus. What was he looking at?

This certainly was not what he was expecting to see. It looked like someone playing Minecraft in the sky, building something pixel by pixel. Or no, it more looked like a swarm of insects—bees—gathering in a ball, for there were spaces between the pieces—the thing he was looking at, he could see through it, the thing really seemed insubstantial, if he were looking at it with naked eyes there would probably not be a whole lot to see. In fact, you wouldn’t see it—Joss was surprised that he