SHORT STORIES vol i

Two tales of love. "Moonlight Mile" a cursed love between two young kids and "Bows + Arrows" a girl's journey to self love through the eyes of her past lovers.The travel membrane named “The Empress,” was setup as a huge traveling warehouse, designed to provide merchandise and supplies to the entities of the Universe. The owner and skipper, named Ronnie Yutaka, thought of his vessel as a traveling General store. If Ronnie did not have it aboard The Empress, you probably did not need the fucking thing in the first place. Ronnie had a large clientele from all over the cosmos, and some of the Universes he visited required hours of travel, even using the latest technology in time travel computers. The planet Quantum was where Ronnie had been born and raised, but he no longer lived there, as he now had no permanent residence other than The Empress. Ronnie knew the planet Quantum and its people very well. Ronnie’s younger sister Janet was still living on the planet so Ronnie would often visit her and spend a day or so spoiling her two young daughters rotten. As two Intergalactic Federation Law Enforcement Officers materialized inside The Empress’s secure room, Ronnie realized they might not be there to make purchases as they had stated. They had a file folder with them and they began talking, without any pleasantries or introductions. Finally, the cops got to the point and explained they were planning to arrest Ronnie for raping a woman on his last visit to Earth’s surface. Ronnie explained they had the wrong man, but the cops were not going to listen. True, Ronnie had seduced the woman, but she was the one on top doing the actual seducing part. Apparently, her boyfriend found out and was screaming rape. Ronnie decided he was not going anywhere with these two, and told them they should leave now before they got into trouble. One on the cops drew his pistol and as it cleared his holster, he found himself shooting bullets into the vacuum of open space. Ronnie laughed aloud as the computer slid the floor panels back into place and began the cleansing process to remove the mess in his secure room. As The Empress slowly began moving, Ronnie could see the cop’s vehicle floating in space where they had boarded his vessel. Ronnie pressed the retractor button and the vehicle moved up behind The Empress, and then slowly moved inside the cargo bay door. As the retractor beam sat the vehicle down on the steel floor of the cargo bay, Ronnie decided he would check and see if there was anything usable inside before he jettisoned the hull into deep space. When the cargo bay was fully pressurized, Ronnie walked to the vehicle, looked inside, and then realized that the woman whom he had supposedly raped was inside the vehicle’s rear seating area. As Jill (now twenty-one years old yesterday) and the computer waited for Ronnie and Angela, (Connie changed her name to Angela at her wedding) to teleport back to the Empress from a three-day holiday at a luxurious Spa, Jill heard the computer speak her father’s name. It was just one loudly spoken word, “RONNIE.” Thinking Ronnie and Angela had contacted the computer before they teleported back to The Empress, Jill stepped to the travel console and then suddenly realized that a serious problem existed. Just as Ronnie, (holding Angela’s hand) had pressed the green button on his travel watch, the display flickered and the destination changed from The Empress to Timms’s address on the planet Keemus. When Jill had heard the computer speak Ronnie’s name, the computer had already realized the failure of Ronnie’s travel watch, but the computer was unable to prevent the teleportation from taking place. Ronnie and Angela had been teleported onto the antimatter planet of Keemus.Ronnie Coleinger