Chapter 6
| The Story | The Authors |
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| The pulses on the screen of Janice's Palm Pilot changed to a jumbled mass of green and black dots. But before she could get to discouraged the jumbled black dots began to take shape. They came together to form the face of Kurt Loder. The Palm Pilot began to beep in morse code. The message was something about a rapper being shot and a Spice Girl or two being pregnant. Janice stared hard at his moving lips and the true message came through. "Janice, you now have 3 and half hours to get here. For each minute after midnight that you are not here, we start chopping off limbs." "Could you start with Demetrius?" Janice beeped but it was too late. Kurt Loder's face dissolved into a mass of dots and then the mass of dots gave way to the pattern of electrical pulses that the Pilot had been detecting from the electromagnets in the street. How was she going to get this taxi to the airport? She didn't even know how to get to an airport from here. She didn't even know where here was. She stared at the pulses again and tried to figure out their meaning. | |
| Was she halucinating, daydreaming, or had she really seen a message from Kurt Loder? Probably daydreaming, she thought. But she wondered if perhaps it was an intentional daydream. Perhaps Kurt was trying to communicate with her subliminally. She toyed with the suggestion, but not being one to dwell on the paranormal she focused her thoughts on the data she was collecting. She loved to collect data, though she usually did it under more enjoyable circumstances. | |
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While staring at the data, her thoughts wandered. She thought back to the moment when she entered the cab. She had thrown her note to the driver without even really looking to acknowledge his presence. She reminded herself to be less arrogant in the future. She detested arrogance in others, and now her own expression of it had put her in this mess.
She had collected a few minutes of data by now and decided to see if she could run another program to make sense of any of it. She hadn't been paying attention to where the car was going or where it had been. The car began to slow down. She looked up from the back seat and found herself approaching a moderately busy intersection. When the car stopped she tried the door and it was unlocked so she quickly jumped out. The car continued on and she tried to blend in to the people walking on the street. Getting to the airport was still on her mind. | |
| It was still on her mind when a uniformed police officer stopped her about two blocks from where she alighted from the cab. "Is this the woman? queried the cop. "Yes that is the one who ran from my cab, she owes me $29.00 I’d know her anywhere" whined the aging cabby. "All right what have you got to say lady, this guy says you jumped from his cab without paying and it looks like you were trying to get away, we’re lucky to stop you." accused the cop. Janice was speechless never mind cashless. "Ok I got no time for silent broads, turn around now." ordered the cop. Janice was cuffed and read her rights and within five minutes was on her way to jail. | |
| "Listen, you've got me all wrong! I was alone in that cab, there was no driver! I'm telling you I had to jump out before it crashed at that intersection. You have to let me out of here, I have to save my friends before Kurt Loder chops off their limbs!" Janice begged. "What the hell is all that noise?" said the cop. "Are you making those beeping noises? You better knock it off!" he ordered as the car came to a halt at a stop light. Janice could she was getting nowhere with this neanderthal so she decided to take matters into her own hands. Her titanium fingered hands that is. Using her shiney metal fingers she broke free from the hand cuffs. When the cop turned to see what she was up to she gave him a Moe Howard style eye jab. The cop screamed in agony and blood poured from his eyesockets. She threw him out of the squad car, jumped into the drivers seat and sped away. |
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