- Working at KSC
- NASA Old Headquarters building on KSC destroyed.
- Flintknapping points
- On going writing projects
- Vampires of Kennedy Space Center and the O&C
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy
- Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center, End of Spiders
- Dreams of Kennedy Space Center, lovers and pyramids.
- Witches of Kennedy Space Center
- Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center
- Aliens of Kennedy Space Center, uninvited guests
- Remembering Kennedy Space Center
Chimeras of Kennedy Space Center
On the wind
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.
On the Wind
It was as if a hood had been removed from her head.
Voices that had been muffled were now clear and crisp. The ground had stopped vibrating from movement.
She blinked at the exquisite blue sky flecked with puffy clouds.
Suddenly, there was a waft of oak and pine, fresh-cut hay.
The bindings were removed from her legs.
She tensed, only briefly considering escape; however, she had been conditioned that escape was impossible. She had suffered days of painful leg bruises from her early escape attempts.
She felt an arm tense, and she crouched at his command.
Suddenly, she was rising, floating above her trainers. The warmth of the sun, she was being called home.
Below her, two humans looking concerned babbled like jays, but she was free again. Any connections to the people below were temporarily severed as she lifted into white mists with glaring sunlight, then down and towards the distant forests that sprouted rusting launch towers.
Faraway to the east, a glint of the ocean, the dream stories claimed the launch towers had once stood along a wave-churned beach until the Atlantic retreated towards the continental shelf.
The creatures of the forests and ruins affected her; their fear was exhilarating! They ran, sprinted, flew, crawled, swam, or hopped for shadows, dens, nests, or hedge roses.
And as it should be and was always, her eyes were drawn to movement, to the hunt and kill.
A shimmer, the color of translucent coral, caught her attention, and she swooped to investigate, then adjusted her wings for the dive-kill as the rat stepped from the shimmering. The joy and anticipation of the kill filled her with euphoria; her talons tingled in the acceleration, and she almost tasted the iron salt of fresh blood and the brief savage struggle called life.
The rat, an unknown type, stepped cautiously from the shimmer and looked in all directions, except into the bright sun where flying death dropped arrow-fast.
The rat shrieked in alarm and tail pain from the sudden yank backward. The flying hunter raged in frustration as her razor-sharp talons raked fur, laying open ten striped wounds.
"Fuck! My tail!" yelled the rat. The pain reached into his spine as far as his neck. A bare green arm held him off the ground in a painful swing.
"Ahh, Fuck! Let me go!" yelled the rat.
But Osiris scanned the skies for the killer.
"Back!" yelled Osiris, dropping the cursing rat and unslung his lever-action rifle with smooth, practiced, god-like precision.
The wind pulled back her red hair, and Ophelia quickly returned, passing over; her shadow often caused the prey to flee into the open for easy catching.
"I remember why I was so enamored," she said through wind-blown cheeks, her fangs causing a lisp.
The green-skinned god of her seizure-programmed dreams followed her flight, pointing his death stick at her.
The rats, ugly rats if such a thing existed, whimpered as she landed and folded her wings.
Osiris blinked in surprise, "Ophelia?"
The Ophelia-hybrid blushed with unknown pleasure; he knows my name!
The rats whimpered again; they recognized the mean astronaut witch who sometimes fed them marrow, but this winged creature was not the astronaut witch; it was a bird-bat-something Ophelia.
Ophelia lifted her claws and licked rat fur with a long tongue.
"Osiris-McGreen-Lime-Ivy-Verde-Limey-Director Lyme-Germanicus-Greenlee, I know you of my dreams," purred Ophelia. "I am ovulating for you, the same as in my dreams of you," she said with her ivory fangs showing when speaking.
The rats almost formed a single line behind Osiris, Barry, Perri, Sperry, Kerry, Yerry, Merry, Scarry, Darry, Larry, Sharri, Pharri, Harry, Narri, Jerry, and Zarri. Only Pharri stepped forward to snap a photo and check it against his berri-pad database.
"Unknown chimera species," said Pharri, scrolling through pages. "Very weak wi-fi. This will not do at all, no, no."
Osiris studied the woman, "Double Helix has been broken," said the green-skinned god. Ovulating, she said, reminding him of his children in the old desert lands.
Ophelia's eyes flashed carmine and shivered violently. A sad look came over her face.
"My owners come for me," she said with anger and bitterness. "To bind and cage me again. I am to go to the colony settlement in the Valles Marineris Canyon. The new settlement at the geothermal vents of Tithonium Chasmata."
Osiris noticed that, like the VAB witches, this woman was tattooed with the familiar bar code and tag "NASA."
"Would you prefer to be free?" asked Osiris.
"My implant. I can never be free," said Ophelia, attempting not to weep in front of the god. The dreams of the green man...
"If you would be free, then follow us into the shimmer. You will be a god in the Riverland of old Egypt or fly to the Peloponnese and harass the Mycenaean Greeks with riddles," said the Green God. The joke was lost to the woman in her sorrow.
Ophelia's eyes flashed carmine again, and she became visibly weaker, the slow program affecting her flight muscles so she would land to be cuffed and hooded.
"Freedom or not?" demanded Osiris. The people of this timeline were approaching.
The woman nodded and folded her wings, "Help me flee this world," said Ophelia. "Farewell, fly well, my sisters," offering a prayer of love to the other Ophelias, caged so prettily in the aviaries and hatching nests, dreaming the story dreams.
Ophelia fell to the ground, her eyes rolled up, and she muttered dream-speak of the river lands, "The golden Horus, mighty of the sword, crusher of the Nine-Bows, shinning in diadems beloved of Amon."
"Never fails," said Osiris, "My son gets all the attention."
"Temporal lobe epilepsy or the AI implant shorting out?" asked Pharri.
"Appears to be phased in prison programming," said Osiris.
Angry voices called from the forest, "You will get a beating for making us walk all this way!"
The Green god gestured, the rats whimpered, and he pulled the shaking Ophelia bird-bat woman and his rifle into the shimmer to a new timeline.
"They will make a statue of her by the pyramids," said the green-skinned god.
The rats began to protest about connections for their berri pads. One rat muttered, "My Gary."
"A brief stop in the Riverlands, and then I will find you wi-fi," said the god.
Ovulating, she had said.
My spermatozoa breaks the double helix, and with this mutant? More children like Horus, works of art!
Osiris beamed with pride.
The shimmer shimmered into nothing, followed by the words from the treeline, "Double beating for making us walk!"
The words distant faded away.
Jake, the Director of State Security and Eugenics, stumbled through the nettles to see the Ophelia mix was gone—another one.
"AI, this is Director Jake. Another one of the bats has escaped. Implant failure?"
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
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
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 Chimeras 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!"
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