JUMPING ON - The 33rd 2000AD Forum Story Comp

[Lobo Baggins]

PART TWO

Joyce grabbed hold of a protruding part of the hover taxi, swung his legs up and used his momentum to smash through the already shattered windscreen, twisted around in the air and slammed down into the front passenger seat.  His head seemed to thunder as adrenalin surged through his system.  That had gone really well, he was not only alive but exactly where he'd planned to be.  He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled in a whoop.  Both his arms and his backside really hurt, but he'd worry about that later.

'Emergency!  Control lost!' bleated a plaintive voice from beside him.  He turned, remembering the driver.  The control cab was well and truly on fire, his uniform was doing a hell of a job keeping the heat out but he hadn't had time to consider the other occupant.  What was left of a face turned in his direction, it was blackened and bubbling already and the movement seemed to tear the skin apart.  The face fell to pieces and slid wetly away, dropping to the floor.

'Feckin' 'ell!' Joyce heard himself yelp.  He bit his tongue, annoyed with himself.  It was only a robot, the metal frame underneath the molten skin didn't even look remotely human, but the incident had set another jolt of adrenalin through his already buzzing system and now his ears were ringing.  He was pretty sure he was allowed to swear, wasn't he?  So many regulations here.  He could swear as long as it was moderate and appropriate, he recalled.  'Justice Department override!  Transfer manual control!' he ordered.  The steering wheel began to slowly swing across towards him.

He glanced back at the woman in the back seat, only to find a familiar face staring wildly back.  It was that girl pop singer with the squeaky voice again, it seemed she was everywhere at the moment.  This incarnation of the doll-like face at least possessed the ability to move but it seemed far too small for the head it was attached to and certainly didn't fit with the impressive but decidedly middle-aged cleavage.  She was behind a transparent screen and the rear of the vehicle wasn't yet on fire, but it was probably getting pretty hot back there.

'Hold on tight, love, I'll have this thing on the ground in a moment!' he said, grinning.  She pouted at him, confused.  Sound proofed screen, right.  He'd explain later.  He turned his attention to driving before they fell out of the sky.

He grasped the wheel, glad that the hover taxi was actually responding to the controls.  He peered down, seeking the nearest appropriate landing place.  There, a reasonably flat bit next to that bridge.  He carefully steered towards it, ignoring the angry crackling of the flames and the muttering of the boiling robot beside him.  His unprotected chin was getting really hot, but it didn't seem to be physically burning yet.  He'd be out of here before it got too hot to breathe, anyway.

The hover taxi came to rest next to the bridge and Joyce carefully spent a few moments making sure everything was turned off before he reached forward and punched the 'Emergency Release' switch.  He knew the vehicle was unlikely to actually explode – it was quite difficult to get them to do that deliberately – but it was better to be safe than sorry.  The doors simultaneously sprang open and the woman with the ill-fitting face vaulted free, tottering away on fifteen centimetre heels.  He heaved himself free of the vehicle and looked at her, worried that he was going to have to chase after her now.  No, she'd come to a gasping halt next to a support pillar.  That was a relief; his legs were feeling alarmingly shaky.  There were burns on her hands, he noticed.  It had got pretty hot back there; she just wanted to get some distance between herself and the vehicle.

He started to stride after her, heaving in yet another deep breath.  An all-pervading stench hit him like a hammer blow, a sweet, sickly but grimly familiar smell.  The scent of death.  The whole city had stunk of it since he'd arrived here and he was amazed at how quickly he'd got used to it, but it seemed to be worse than ever here.  He looked around – where the hell was he?

There was a mass of large boxes huddled under the shelter of the bridge.  A cardboard city, quite a densely populated one.  Or it had been, there was nothing moving there now.  Obviously, they hadn't got around to cleaning up down here yet.  Blackening limbs and hollow faces lay wherever he looked and he felt bile rising at the back of his throat.  Even if they cleared all these Chaos Bug victims away, they'd never be able to get the smell out.  Just for a second, old nightmares brought on by the stories his old dad told between too much Guinness and not enough Scotch lurched back and he had visions of the corpses rising up and reaching towards him, hungry for his flesh.

He blinked, and then scowled to himself.  These bodies weren't showing any signs of getting up.  He turned to the woman, who had her hand to her mouth, retching dryly.  'Breathe through your mouth, it helps,' he said.  She looked up, rolling her eyes at him.  She knew that, of course she knew that  - she lived in Mega-City One; this wasn't the first terrible smell she'd encountered.

'Okay, so,' he went on, more to himself than anything, 'I'm down and safe by, er, a bridge somewhere below you,' he added, speaking into his helmet radio, raising a hand upwards and waving at the two distant figures just about visible on the platform above him, 'send that H-wagon down to pick us up when he's done with the chase!'

'Wilco.  You have a perp falling in your direction, you might want to take cover,' Dredd replied.  Joyce looked up, quickly spotting the plummeting form.  It was the first kid he's seen, he realised.  Shame, he'd been good.  What a waste of talent...

As he watched, the figure somehow regained his footing and was attempting to kick the board back to life.  Joyce could see that someone had shot a hole right through the anti-grav drive, so it wasn't going to float anymore, but just maybe, if he could get that jet going, he might be able to manoeuvre a little.  He took a step back anyway, just in case.  The jet roared to life and the kid screamed a yell of triumph; the board abruptly started to shoot forward.  He didn't have enough space left to get away, though; he'd just arrested his fall.  The board slammed into the ground and skidded along in a wake of sparks, the boy finally loosing his balance and falling only when it came to a halt.  He'd come to a rest among the haphazard collection of corpse haunted cardboard boxes.  The kid staggered drunkenly to his feet, staring around himself in horror.  He crouched down, tugging a long knife from his belt and began to quickly and urgently saw at the billycord around his ankle.

Joyce took a step forward, realising his hand was hovering over where his Murphyville issued Baton Gun – the old ballistic shillelagh – would be holstered but exactly where his Mega-City One issued Lawgiver wasn't.  He still thought a boot was a daft place to keep it; he was fairly sure he'd never be able to fast draw it from there.  There must be a knack to it, he decided.  Never mind.  The kid only seemed to have a knife; maybe he could talk him down.

'Come on now, kid,' he began.  The boy turned his flabby face towards him and he gave up on the idea of negotiating.  The eyes were completely mad, glaring with fury.  He was off his head, whatever drugs he and the rest of the gang had taken seemed to have completely obliterated whatever sense of danger he might have had.  The senseless kid snarled, raising the knife and charging towards him.

Joyce sighed.  He ducked away from the first clumsy swing, feigned at his attacker's face with a swift right jab, then followed it up with a left hook when he was unbalanced.  The boy grunted in pain, reeling away, but Joyce was ready, grabbing the right wrist and twisting hard.  The knife dropped from his suddenly dead fingers.  Joyce twisted the arm and shoved the kid forward, slamming his face into the support pillar.  There was a wet crunch and some teeth went flying.  The boy was completely limp, out cold.

This was just like Saturday night back home, there was always someone off their head coming at you with a knife.  The kid would wake up with the old McGowan smile and spend then next few years in a Cube, but at least he was alive.  Joyce slid a pair of cuffs onto the unconscious boy's wrists.  Right, that was that.

'Okay, so... about that H-wagon,' he said, looking up at the distant figures of the other two again.  He got the feeling that today was going to be a long day.

[Lobo Baggins]

No more than 500 words;

Oops, it appears I've already disqualified myself by misreading this small but quite important detail...

I kept it under 5,000 words though!

[hippynumber1]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to now edit it down to the required 500 word limit! 

[Skullmo]

 

It's like an exam, just draw a line after 500 words and deduct marks for the fact that it has no conclusion!

[Lobo Baggins]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to now edit it down to the required 500 word limit! 

Er, okay - although editing out about 3,500 words is probably going to take a LOT longer than writing it in the first place...

Hmm, I've formulated a Cunning Plan!  I'll take all the spaces and punctuation out, leaving just one word!  Albeit with about 19,000 letters in it...

[Alski]

Hope this is acceptable.

"Forn Devil"

The bar was called Joyce's, so Joyce couldn't in good conscience walk past without sampling a little of what Mega City had to offer. Back in the Emerald Isle, Judges were encouraged to stimulate the local economy, at least the brewery part of it, so he didn't see what harm it would do. After all, it was his night off to get acclimatised before Dredd turned him into a Mega City judge.

Mindful of his new status, he contented himself with a sythi-beer, (as non alcoholic as a leprechaun's fart), mainly because he had a feeling that Dredd was watching his every move. He supposed all Mega City judges felt that way, and it tasted pretty good so what the feck.

"What the sneck's THAT?", snarled a voice, accompanied by a rough tap on the shoulder.

"Huh?" replied Joyce. "What the what's what?"

"Your tatt. Looks a bit foreign, buddy," said the large, drunk cit, forcing the words through teeth filed into points.

Joyce realized he meant the green tattoo on the back of his neck.

"Oh, that's me lucky shamrock, so it is," he replied genially. "Keeps me safe and sound as a Brit Cit pound it does."

The cit digested the information, the process quite slow.

"So I was right!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "You're not from round here, are ya boy?"

"You've got me there, sir," admitted Joyce. "I'm over from the old Emerald isle, Grud's own country."

"We don't take kindly to foreigners in mega City," said the cit, pronouncing it 'Forners'. "If ya ain't noticed, boy, we done had a little plague problem caused by foreigners."

"Oh yes," agreed Joyce. "Terrible business, so it was. I can't blame you for not liking foreigners. Good luck to you, Sir."

With that, he turned back to the bar and sipped his synthi-beer. Nice fella, he thought. Next thing he knew, instead of a tap on the shoulder he got a proper shove in the back, hard enough to make him spill his pint. The knowledgable amongst you should be aware that this is a VERY serious crime in the Emerald Isle, often punishable by a good kick in the knackers.

Joyce turned round again to find the pointy toothed cit, joined by six of his friends, all of similar appearance and disposition. He noticed one had a patch on the front of his jacket, proudly stating his membership of the "Mike Tyson Block Biters Association".

"Good evening, fellas," he said with a smile. "I'm guessing you don't like foreigners either?"

"Damn straight," growled one.

"Then why the feck are you in an Irish bar?" Joyce asked, genuinely curious.

As confusion spread over their faces, Joyce got his retaliation in first, and as his elbows, knees and head flew left right and centre, the Mike Tyson Block Biters Association went down for the count.

"Jeez, mister," the barman said afterwards. "You'd better split, else the judges will cube you for sure."

"No worries," said Joyce. "I'm a judge meself, off duty as it were." He finished his pint. "When they wake up tell 'em to be a little more tolerant in the future." With that he left the bar, a smile on his face.

Watching on the spy in the sky, Dredd was both impressed and doubtful about his new recruit. Those cits should be in the cubes by now, not let off with a beating. "Joyce's knowledge of Mega-City One Law is poor but he displays considerable courage" he thought. "I can work with that... "

[Eamonn Clarke]

Nice, and a drop of the black stuff

[Lobo Baggins]

Okay then, I've decided to abandon my original entry and do another one, which admittedly isn't a story either but is at least within the word count.  So, with apologies to William Blake and after William McGonagall, this is...

THE FREEFALL TYGER

Fintan, Fintan, falling free,
Past the windows of the Mega-City;
Can your mortal hand co-ordinate with your eye,
To grab that frame as that car flies by?

As you tumble through the skies,
Watched by cold bionic eyes,
Without wings you must aspire,
Because if you miss, you'll have to seize that tire.

Twist your shoulder, it's like an art,
Ignore the hammer of your heart,
The H-wagon has dropped a rope,
But it's by Dredd's hand, it's near Dredd's feet.

Like a hammer, like a train,
Adrenalin pulses through your brain.
If you miss, you'll be just a stain,
No hope of rescue, beyond Dredd's grasp.

Like a spear, you must fly straight,
Everything must co-ordinate.
If this works, Pax might crack a smile,
It's just you who must choke back bile.

Fintan, Fintan, falling free,
Past the windows of the Mega-City;
Can your mortal hand co-ordinate with your eye,
To grab that frame as that car flies by?

[Eamonn Clarke]

Poetry in motion

[Recrewt]

OK, here goes with my first piece of creative writing for a good few years:

Burger Queen

The window shattered as Joyce leapt through, emerging from the searing heat and thick black smoke.  Actually, the window shattered due to the exceptionally well placed shot from Judge Pax shortly before Joyce leapt through, but that's not important.

The Jude Law Orphans Home was now a towering inferno and Joyce felt grateful for the degree of protection that his Judge's uniform had given him.  He looked down at the two juves under his arms and allowed himself a moment of pride. 

It all started as a harmless incident.  Initial reports indicate that a malfunction with the computer system had led to a 5 minute service outage at the Burger Queen restaurant.  Not a problem for your normal citizen but a lifetime for a fattie and things had quickly gotten out of hand.  Combine this with vats of boiling hot fat and it soon went up in flames.

According to the medics, the high calorie diet of your average fattie combined with their tendency to sweat meant that their clothing had basically become wicks which once set alight, would continue to burn for some time, feeding off the immense fuel source.  Joyce recalled when he first arrived that it would have been funny if it weren't so tragic, watching the fatties charging around whilst alight. 

There was nothing that could be done for them but there was still a chance for the juves of the orphans home housed above.  Dredd and Pax opened the locked fire escape and most of the juves got out into safety.  Joyce's heart sank when he saw two little faces at the window with flames dancing around behind them.

Without pausing, Joyce rushed past the others up the fire escape and into the thick black smoke.  The respirator on his helmet provided a small amount of oxygen but he knew time was most definitely limited.  He worked through to where he saw the faces but the window was now empty.

Scanning around the room his eyes fell to below the bed where those familiar faces were now peering from.  "Thank feck for that" he thought to himself as he quickly scooped the juves up and turned around just in time to see the doorway collapse.

The only escape route left was the window so Joyce bounded forward and leapt at it, trying his best to shield the juves that were under his arms.  The window shattered, fire crackled and smoke bellowed out as the room caved in behind them. 

Despite feeling pretty good, Joyce knew he missed an opportunity when reviewing the situation.  The Burger Queen incident was an accident but Pax pointed out that the locked fire exit and lack of suitable fire protection in the orphans home was grossly negligent.  The owner was now spending the next three years in a cube and Joyce had been assigned to extra building regulations classes. 

Still, when he thought of the two juves hugging him after their great escape, he didn't mind so much.   

[Skullmo]

Based on the discussions around the topic and the use of Joyce I enter my homage to the great man himself. . .



Almost Joyces Wake



but he displays considerable courage


Dredd steadfastly, stoic and assured as the fiery shuttle fell forlornly past the crash and burn of the flaming screaming city. Allabrokenandanbeatingheartspumping boom boom boom in his chest Joyce was back to the landing pad. Boom. Boom. Boom. So good to get his feet on dry rockcrete. Crockreat.


Boom. Boom. Booooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.


Did I ever tell ye I was cadet jumping champion of 2129?


Smoke rising and an element of truth in his words examined by 2 sets of bionic eyes though through words all lain out alien tidy neat anawl so typedoncomputerina bubble to sea. All lame and spidery. Seen Cyrillic, Brave and lyric their Giodelic charm.

Champion.



They were all nations united by disaster into one flowing stream of consciousness. Caught in a labyrinth on the hunt for the baneful bairn. With intentions fair and smiling eyes awl their journey had so far found no result. Sometimes the ending come to you though. Sometimes in stories and songs and sickness the end comes hurtling into your arms.



Then the Goblin King came down all ZowieBowie makeup shut and lovelorn darts. Dark. From skyward shuttling, strutting and wayward and hurtling at them. Hurting them. Then Joyce jumped up. Boom. Alla fire yan flaming shuttle come though zooming pasts too fast, Boom, and Joyce a heartbeating jumped on. Boom. Missed.  Landed. Safe.


I can't believe ye let fellers drive like so in the Big Meg!



Joyce's knowledge of Mega-City One law is poor,

[Eamonn Clarke]

Stately and plump Joycean writing.
Very well done indeed.
Does he carry a potato in one of his belt pouches I wonder?

[Skullmo]

A packet of Smash instant mashed potato. It's the future after all!

[Lobo Baggins]

Based on the discussions around the topic and the use of Joyce I enter my homage to the great man himself. . .



Almost Joyces Wake



but he displays considerable courage


Dredd steadfastly, stoic and assured as the fiery shuttle fell forlornly past the crash and burn of the flaming screaming city. Allabrokenandanbeatingheartspumping boom boom boom in his chest Joyce was back to the landing pad. Boom. Boom. Boom. So good to get his feet on dry rockcrete. Crockreat.


Boom. Boom. Booooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.


Did I ever tell ye I was cadet jumping champion of 2129?


Smoke rising and an element of truth in his words examined by 2 sets of bionic eyes though through words all lain out alien tidy neat anawl so typedoncomputerina bubble to sea. All lame and spidery. Seen Cyrillic, Brave and lyric their Giodelic charm.

Champion.



They were all nations united by disaster into one flowing stream of consciousness. Caught in a labyrinth on the hunt for the baneful bairn. With intentions fair and smiling eyes awl their journey had so far found no result. Sometimes the ending come to you though. Sometimes in stories and songs and sickness the end comes hurtling into your arms.



Then the Goblin King came down all ZowieBowie makeup shut and lovelorn darts. Dark. From skyward shuttling, strutting and wayward and hurtling at them. Hurting them. Then Joyce jumped up. Boom. Alla fire yan flaming shuttle come though zooming pasts too fast, Boom, and Joyce a heartbeating jumped on. Boom. Missed.  Landed. Safe.


I can't believe ye let fellers drive like so in the Big Meg!



Joyce's knowledge of Mega-City One law is poor,

I bloody loved that!

Careful, though, 500 words of Joyceian prose cause breaches into the word/space dimension, and will unleash an infinite number of Footnotes* at the rate of 500 pages a minute...

I'd have called it 'Fintan's Wake', though.  Or worked a headbutt into it and called it 'Fintan's Brain Blow'.  Because everybody loves terrible puns! **

* Look, there's one now!

** This is a lie

[Skullmo]

 

Luckily it was only 250 words! Thankfully I have saved the world, and literature, by being thrifty!