Allies of Kennedy Space Center
A Green God returns
Part 2 of Gate Jumpers

This is another tale of the Kennedy Space Center's multiverses, both in the distant past and the far future.
Follow ghosts, demons, gods, AIs, tourists, DNA experiments, vamps, and witches as they travel the multiverse only to discover their interconnections as allies and enemies across an endless history or future.

Every story is the true story.

The Green God returns......

"In Cthulhu's Name, do we take the gate-hopper and his blood-whore?" asked Eileen. "Or only steal his Vamp slut?"

The underlying patterns.

"A logical question," said Ophelia. "We proceed unfettered by any rules or laws of this reality and take both; keep the spare to satisfy our hunger needs. Use the stabilization harness to keep them with us during our jumps," said Ophelia.

It was a long climb through the fog of the taser shock, assailed by visions as painful as any stirring up a wasp's nest. I could hear the two women talking; their voices were blurry and blended with other dreams. They had both given me children after difficult births? Once again, I viewed the world through the eyes of a hawk or falcon. "Lord Horus, your son," said the exhausted woman. I chirped with pride.

Chirped?

"He is waking up," said a woman's voice. "Mark the charlatan, the gate jumper."

Distant voices, somehow familiar.

"I remember eating him—a journalist, right?" said Ophelia.

"The Gate-Jumper?" said Eileen, looking at her Berry pad. "Yep, yes we ate another version of this one."

A slight grimace crossed her face, "More hot sauce next time; he lacks Umami."

I opened my eyes to see my hands were zip-tied. The two ladies in overcoats stood over the unconscious vampire, taking photographs of her tattoo just above the back beltline.

"Take me and release the vamp. I know you came for me," I said.

The astronaut witches twittered with laughter.

"How noble," said the two women in sync.

"However, we are not paid to collect gate-jumping drugees.

Dr. McGreen-McGregor is paying good credits to bring the blood drinkers to his laboratory," said Ophelia.

She buzzed her Taser in a threatening motion.

Ophelia carried bitterness towards Marcus the reporter, and all of the other Marcus variations found across the timelines. Her Coven had been briefly connected to Marcus's brain, a mistake, and his mental deviations had terrorized the Coven, even killing some of her sisters. His pollution still lingered; they could never be clean after witnessing, after experiencing his raptor-like predatory male thoughts.

"This one, on this timeline, this Marcus, the one named Mark, an impertinent drug user, a self-proclaimed psychic medium who sees ghosts and gives psychic readings to audience members, their compliance afforded by mass psychosis."

Ophelia suppressed an urge, an unexpected tug of attraction towards the cretin.

"Read him correctly—his night treks into the human condition. The underlying patterns. Understand the beast, his hunger, and don't be trapped by his honey-marrow words."

The underlying patterns.

Eileen was suddenly weak and leaned against her coven sister.

"Wild ghosts and demons of the heliosphere," cursed Eileen of the Coven, feeling like she had been poisoned again.

She ran through the litany of Blessed death and love for the astronauts who traveled the gates of the multiverse. The recitation for calmness when asking, "What is this thing that haunts you most?"

"Oscillating nonlinear paradoxes of fractal patterns connecting the here, the future, the past, and the other, leaking timelines of chaos, quantum fluctuations of gates and wormholes, unstable, logically unacceptable, inundated interconnectedness, continuous stretching and bending of chaos into random states of disorder. The night, indecently highly sensitive to pheromone receptors affecting desires and impulses, aggravating sensitivities to double helix mutations conceived of as whimsical wanderers through space and time until a hard shutdown."

The two women had not noticed when the AI ghost had tortured their auras; however, they did feel the vibrations of a new gate opening and took up the astronaut fighting stances to prepare for the unknown.

And so prepared, they attacked with silent squeals upon seeing the manicured hands, pink and brown, holding a diminutive dart gun, and a rat slipped into the timeline.

"Cross-contamination of unseen timeline elements of hieroglyphical names!" yelped Tunnel-Rat, the scout, upon recognizing the witches in their wigs.

Tunnel-Rat was always the first through the multiverse gates; his task was to verify no owls or vipers were ready to strike. Selective breeding from the original Osiris rescued rats, training, and sheer luck had seen him through multiple harrowing encounters with cats and hawks.

Consequently, his honed reflexes allowed him to easily dodge the two sets of worn astronaut boots slamming the floor where he had emerged.

"Soul-joy and fulfillment of the hard shutdown and confined spaces," cursed the Green God as he appeared, followed by other exceedingly ugly dart-gun-wielding rats, squeezing-sliding from another timeline.

They were the gate-jumping hunter-killers team of an infection called Fred-Puma-Puma-Fred. The Fred AI, who in the totality of all existence and multiverses, had killed more rats, gods, and humans than any entity in the history of rats and humans.

"The mutual integration across domains," said a rat sniffing cinnamon and sweeping the room with something that looked like a simple stud finder on a construction site. "Witches?" said the rat.

Rats were to be eaten, nothing else. Ophelia and Eileen attempted to stomp the rats-their using their lifetime gained skills spent in the ruined VAB stomping non-modified rats.

The Coven Rat Dance, steps of elegance and wonder to behold; the witches flowed, tapped, and spun in their astronaut overcoats, the very definition of poetry in motion.

"This is the last time," said Osiris, "The last time I jump a timeline to save my son." The god raised his rifle towards the astronaut-witches, who stomped their feet in unison like a troop of Irish dancers.

The witches froze at the sound of the lever action rifle chambering a cartridge.

"Wait, stop," I squeaked, lightheaded from the sharing of blood and taser shock. "Fred hurt them; I saw him burn them."

I did not know why I cared to save them, but I knew I had met these two in another timeline, on another planet where they learned of the concept of bathing.

The small electronic sensor held by one of the rats beep-beep-beeped a warning alarm in the direction of the unconscious vampire.

The rat winced at the readout and looked at me. Unconsciously, I turned my bite wound away from the accusing rat stare.

"Some would say you are indecent or ignorant to seek a vampire? That behavior, the seeking, creates a very high feeding pressure. A probable death spiral, or," The rat looked again, "Or marriage," said with blunt simplicity.

"I have the antibodies," I squeaked like a mouse, my hands numb from the witches' zip-ties.

With the blinding speed only an AI-augmented person could accomplish, one of the witches feinted a rat stomp and scooped up one of the scurrying rats. A sparking taser smoked from burning rat fur as the stunner was held to the neck of the squealing rat.

"Get your hands off her, you dirty ape!" snarled another rat, whose arms bulged with muscles, and he dropped into the classic shooter stance. Three little carmine-red triangles appeared on the quick-witch's sloping forehead and heavy brow ridges.

The rats of Delta Team were exceedingly well trained if they wished to accompany the Green God on jumps.

"Rats that can speak! NASA rats!" hissed Eileen.

Every spear casts a long shadow, nearness in space, time, or relationship proximity permissions, electrostatic discharges smaller than humans sense, and oxygen displacement related to the size of a magnetic field measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of ions, and the AI-Puma-Fred appeared in the room with a cup of coffee and puffing on a joint with evil glee.

The AI hologram took a strong puff on the joint until the tip was glowing carmine and stabbed the back of Ophelia's neck with the burning coals. The witch collapsed in a rigid grand-mal seizure.

I was the only one who could see the barghest and pointed my zipped-tied hands at the AI-ghost.

"Fred," I squeaked a warning as the rat's sensor screamed a shrill, whistling duck-like alarm.

The Fred alarm.

The mass of each ion detected is related to the size of the magnetic field, and with terror and dismay, I sensed the muscled rat apply pressure to his pistol for the witch kill shot but then instantly pivot to shoot the barghest.

Fred roared in surprise, spilling invisible coffee as the three flechette darts passed through him, and he faded back into the walls.

The rat rolled away from another stomping astronaut boot and immediately placed the triangle laser sight back on the witch's forehead.

"What could the rats see? I wondered.

The standing astronaut-witch, rats, and green god were at a standoff, pointing pistols, tasers, and lever action rifle at each other.

"Wait," I said. "That thing, Fred? He hurt the two astronaut ladies, and they could not see him do it."

"Describe the barghest," hissed Osiris, keeping his rifle on the woman who held a rat as a shield.

"Long yellow hair, a beer-belly, holding a cup of coffee and a joint, the rolling papers were marked OSHA."

The witch, rats, and god stared at me as if I had seen a ghost.

"But the rats can see something of Fred. Right? That little freak, I did not say, "That rat put a hole in Fred's chest," I said.

"It was the smoke-his silhouette. The taser and rat hair smoke illuminated a demon silhouette. We can see very well in the dark," said the rat with the sensor. "Comes from living in the barrows for a million generations." said the rat holding the flechette gun.

"Those are our NASA bio-engineered rats," said Eileen.

"We belong to no one," said the muscle-bound rat.

"These rats are twelve generations, free, past your cannibal taint," said Osiris. "They accompany me on jumps of their own free will and kill as they see fit."

Ophelia sat up dazed. She had bitten her tongue and spat blood.

The drugged vampire sat up, sensing the delicious order of fresh iron strong blood; her thermals apprised the room, gauging the strangers who could be both nourishing and dangerous, and her dark eyes settled on me, seeing the lack of blood flow in my hands.

"Oh, Mark!" she winced.

My blush brought an appetite to her pretty face, still tinged with hints of green makeup.

Osiris apprised the Vamp, pretty, Mediterranean black hair, an eye of Horus pendant. My son had groupies everywhere.

"Mark, your hands!" said the vampire. "Oh, Mark."

She moved to my side and snapped the zip-ties with a sharp nail while singing a soft croon, a vamp's soft lullaby, "When the darkness fell, rain fell, tears fell, I fell to REM, my dreams of human weakness, the delicate flow pumped in soft, graceful capillaries beneath her silken skin. Fools in the forbidden sun, flames of golden magnificence and fluent poetry, elixirs, and e-cigarettes—brilliant divination of love."

Her soft, melancholy face, half covered by glossy-black hair, kissed my burning hands as the blood returned.

My lips parted a capillary blush. "Fools like me," I sang the final verse of bright hopes and glorious anticipations.

"Demon-gods waving e-cigarettes and lawyers!" snapped Osiris in irritation and humiliation. His son's behavior was not representative of a god's son.

The two witches looked on, touched, confused by the alien feeling, jealousy? No, longing? It was the attention, genuine, and honest feelings that the Vamp showed for the charlatan Mark.

They were overcome by secret and suppressed emotions, delicious, feared vulnerability, the disgrace of love, and danger like the flirtation accompanying ischemia-reperfusion injuries.

They melted with the longing for soft endearments and wanted to murder the charlatan Mark and the vampire.

Eileen, the astronaut coven witch, blinked out a forbidden tear. Lost in delirium, she blushed uncomfortably at the weakness of the water display.

Aileen, she thought. A memory or vision of Aileen so ancient it was in her DNA; it was prehuman. How could that be?

Glacier-swept plains, flint and fire, the incoherent words of the others, the new people from the south. Minor demon ice-demons of no consequence twirled in the blizzard and blinding snow. A hand touched her fur and clasped her cold fingers; she was pulled forward, thinking about the dream that her people would be absorbed into the new gene pool, the family that once was, but also the family to be, the summons of quartz, flint, and the chase.

The powerful forest spirits made suggestions to her; "Eat this one; the winter is long," said the two-legged wolverine; its advice was always good. Winters were long.

The earth mother, weak during the glacier-time whispered, "You need new bloodlines, or your children will perish, regardless of food. That is my way," said the Mother.

The wolverine hissed, "No. Food now or it will not matter. That is my way."

"I follow and learn," she clucked to the spirits. "The middle way. This new human will give me new children and provide food for them one way or another," said Aileen.

The wolverine hissed and fled.

The earth mother rewarded her with glimpses of the centuries to come, the green time again. Eileen, known as Aileen, witnessed dreams and trances of impossibilities of origins and endings, which could be called madness, the pain, and the joy of madness.

With a sigh, she followed Marcus the hunter, to learn and love, soon new children and her future in the mammoth skin tents.

Marcus guided Aileen through the camp of his people, ignoring the glares at the new woman, she with the heavy brow ridges and weak chin of the horse hunter clans. At his tent, his woman of the red braids waited, unsure, then picked up a weapon and held it out to Marcus.

A spear tipped with a fine flint point decorated with hawk feathers. Marcus brought both women to the space outside his tent and gestured to the people around him, wary of the blonde woman tattooed with the symbols of a midwife and healer- a witch.

His spear cast a long shadow in the weak winter sunlight, symbolizing the new way.

The crowd melted away to their own hide tents, and Marcus guided both women into the tent that would keep them warm in the long evenings of bear and long-toothed cats. Home.

"Let us help you kill this AI Fred-Puma. We were once connected to him, and he was going to wipe our hard drives," said Eileen.

The Green God considered his new allies. Astronauts were generally trustworthy

Ophelia looked at Mark, who crooned with the black-haired Vamp. The tramp oozed pheromones. A wave of jealousy washed over Ohpelia.

"Once we were connected via fiber optic cable," she whispered. "I will murder them."

The vamp who had been kissing Mark, awash in feelings of love and blood-joy, possessing of vamp-enhanced hearing, opened one eye long enough to stare at the red-haired witch.

"Try bitch, and Mark and I will feed well on your opened arteries," she said in a whisper, a promise uttered below human normal hearing range.

A barghest hidden in the walls and video cameras laughed, "It is good!"

The infected AI Fred turned another electronic page on Chaos Theory searching for answers.

Other tails of the Space Center:

Vampires of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy

Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center

Dreams of Kennedy Space Center

Aliens of Kennedy Space Center

Director of Kennedy Space Center

Hitchhikers of Kennedy Space Center

Witches of Kennedy Space Center

Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center

Chimeras of Kennedy Space Center

Gods of Kennedy Space Center and the Nile

Dinosaurs of Kennedy Space Center

Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center

Remembering Kennedy Space Center

Shadows of Kennedy Space Center

Virus of Kennedy Space Center

Starman of Kennedy Space Center

Gate Jumpers of Kennedy Space Center

Allies of Kennedy Space Center (Pt 2 of Gate Jumpers

Savants of Kennedy Space Center

Gene Splicers of Kennedy Space Center

State Security of Kennedy Space Center

Rescuers of Kennedy Space Center

Ferals of Kennedy Space Center

Return HOME from Allies of Kennedy Space Center page

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Author Bruce Ryba at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B & Artemis 1. "We are going to the Moon!"

Author's discussion (that's me) on You Tube of a book review on Amazon

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