Update and Excerpt from Future Kid Sensation Novel

So a reader recently admonished me for not providing any posts/updates since September. It’s not an unfair criticism, but there are a lot of factors that play a role in my posting these days.  That said, I could probably do more and will make a concerted effort in that department.

In terms of books, I’m still trying to wrap up Warden 4 and hope to do so soon. After that, it’s the Smokescreen book, some of which has already been written. Truth be told, I’ve written something for just about every book that’s in the queue: the Vixen book; the team-up between Alpha Prime and Megaton; the title featuring Feral; etcetera.  In essence, when I occasionally need a break from a work-in-progress, I’ll turn my attention to one of the upcoming titles and work on it. Or sometimes I’ll have a thought about a scene or interaction between characters and feel the need to jot it down while it’s fresh in my brain.

 

Anyway, below an excerpt from an upcoming Kid Sensation book. The usual caveats apply (i.e., hasn’t been proofed, etc.)

 

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I awoke to the sensation that someone was in the room with me. I didn’t get the impression of anything like a threat or menace, but I still bolted upright almost immediately. At that point, I saw that I did indeed have a visitor, so-to-speak: me.

He was several years older than I was – mid-twenties or so – which meant he was from the future. Thankfully, it wasn’t my first time encountering a future version of myself, so I wasn’t completely stunned. I did have a bunch of questions, though, but Future-Jim spoke before I got a chance to ask any of them.

“Hey buddy,” he said in a congenial tone. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m good,” I answered. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” he retorted, chuckling at his own joke. It was the type of wiseacre response I should have expected.

“No,” I responded, shaking my head. “I meant–”

“I know what you meant,” he interjected, then shook his head despondently. “As I’ve said before, I just don’t remember being this humorless at your age.”

My question, of course, had alluded more to what he was doing here in a chronological sense as opposed to our physical location. Needless to say, two versions of the same person are never supposed to meet like this – or under any circumstances – and I had already done it more than once. I wasn’t trying to make it a habit.

“Anyway, I need a favor,” he continued. “I need you to be me for a couple of days.”

“But I am you,” I countered.

Future-Jim raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you do have a sense of humor. But I meant that you need to be me in my timeline.”

“Why?” I asked. “Where are you going to be?”

“Somewhere else, of course.”

“But I still don’t understand why you need me. If you need to be in two places at once, just duplicate yourself.”

My statement was a reference to the fact that I had the ability to make a second version of myself. However, the duplicate Jim and I were still the same person, sharing the same mind, the same thoughts, and so on. To emphasize my point, I created a second Jim, who appeared next to my visitor for a second before vanishing.

“That won’t work,” Future-Jim said. “There are some tell-tale signs as to when I’m doing that – things that take place internally and such – and in my time, people have learned how to distinguish those. And by ‘people,’ I mean enemies.”

“So is that particular ability well-documented in your time?”

The other me frowned for a second. I had asked a question about the future, and presumably he was reluctant to share information in that regard.

“Look,” he finally said, “you’ve managed to fly below the radar for the most part up until now, but that won’t last much longer. You can’t keep doing the things you’ve done – saving the planet and so on – and not expect people to notice.”

“And by ‘people,’ you mean enemies.”

“Not all of them, but yes,” he confirmed. “And when it happens there’s going to be a lot of focus on exactly what you can do.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I noted sarcastically. 

“Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked. As I was saying, I have to be elsewhere, so I need you to be my stand-in.”

He didn’t add anything else, but I already knew the rest: there was no one else who could do it. I sighed in resignation.

“Great,” declared Future-Jim, picking up on my non-verbal acquiescence. “Trust me, this won’t be hard, but there are a few ground rules. First and foremost, don’t tell the wife – and definitely, do not tell the kids.”

Huh? I said to myself, almost doing a double-take. Wife? Kids?!