Doc Sherwood
Bio
Stories (497/0)
The Special Program
At Flash Club Headquarters was an unfrequented wing where the dormitory and refectory doors had lately been magnetically sealed. From the practice-room, which was the only area still lit on a daily basis, one exit not barricaded likewise led to individual stasis-pods for out-of-hours use. Arching overhead, emergency blast-shields had been promoted to a permanent post. The Special Program was in lockdown.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Masterclass
The land lay level, gold gradually mellowing to amber, and here and there the foamy jets of irrigation-hoses seemed as still as scattered brush-strokes on an oil-painting rendered in sun. Against a sky whose blue bore the first deepening tints of afternoon was suggested Nottingham’s distant outline, each slender rectangle blocked-in with the same hue of haze. Through the flat fields the road ran, and parked haphazardly along its grass verges were a black space-racer and a red, the occupants of each sitting atop their hoods.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Pursuit
Auntie Green shrugged off the hunk of roof that had fallen on her. There were times she was almost willing to swear that one of these days she was going to get too old for this. Not today though. Nor had Auntie Green reached the age she was now by being unprepared. She hastened through the ruination to the discreet private exit she’d insisted on having installed immediately after the first Special Program incident, and flinging aside with her bare hands the rubble in front of it finished her swing by caving in the closed hatchway with the sole of one boot. Possibly the manual release still worked, but why waste precious seconds finding out?
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Four
Picking up speed the Silver Cat Lord seemed to tense its suspension-springs. Powerful pneumatic hind-legs slammed tarmac and in one phenomenal pounce the mobile mass careened clear over beachside apartment complexes, its spinning tank-treads passing penthouse gardens while a purposeful prow and flying forepaws pointed to the path of inevitable descent. Landing in an explosion of sand the Silver Cat Lord growled about to face across open shore the stalking Grindostater unit, for the etherium actualizor had replicated geography as faithfully as it had architecture, and an inland sea shimmered as far as this new Nottingham’s crest. Above the waves Heaven’s arch was all but taken up by the orb of Nereynis, like a moon far nearer than Earth’s own, and whose celestial ring made the Mini-Flashes think of Xandreth while Joe’s reflections, as they had done earlier that day, ran on Saturn. A relatively recent astronomical feature, it was made of rubble which had been a sister-world called Drenthis before Dylan cracked that planet.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Three
Joe strode down the Stronghold’s cold corridor, thankful Mini-Flash Splitsville had given him something to smile about. Her regular warnings that theirs was to be a strictly casual affiliation had commenced the very day they met, as if she herself had yet to notice she’d become a key member of Joe’s most trusted inner circle from effectively that moment on. Indeed, our hero wondered whether the moody loner of her own self-perception would recognise the Mini-Flash Splitsville he knew, that small silver-blue-haired permanent presence asking him endless questions about Rebel Without a Cause. Joe wished there were more like her. No Mini-Flash besides Flashtease gave him greater reason to suppose his theories on this galaxy were valid.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Two
Petunia’s performance of the three odd-numbered songs from her repertoire had gone down well on the Rings of Xandreth. True, it was only a small nightclub some distance from the VIP ascension of that galaxy’s ten thousand mega-mile orbital pleasure-strip, but if Petunia had touched even this handful of lives with that which she represented, she was satisfied. From their hoots and howls and waving pseudopods it sounded as if she had, so with a last half-circle twirl she treated them to one more look at the symbol they were doubtless cheering for.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter One
Beyond the ornate railings a rock-lined lane wound its way through parkland densely roofed by trees in the thick of their late-summer leafage. Breaks in the black boughs disclosed a sky gilded with sun, and to exit the deep green tunnel was to move through heat. A light patina of sand that crunched in whispers underfoot hinted at seaside nearby. Along this track of cooling shadow slanted and dappled through with gold, Joe and Flashtease were strolling.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Neetra and Joe, Chapter One
“I wanted to save her, Joe,” said Neetra. “I tried.” These remaining two members of The Four Heroes were alone atop the hill from which Nottingham Castle once towered, their backs to the wreckage that was all the war had left, and Joe’s eyes fixed on a point far beyond the rubble-strewn grass and the cliff’s edge directly ahead. He was staring somewhere above the outspread rooftops, somewhere into the heart of the endless sky. The news had not been good. Neetra and Joe were at more or less the very same spot on the castle grounds where they had sat together the day the Next Four completed their moving-in, and then they had laughed and made fond jokes to each other about how well their relationship seemed to be going. That memory now felt like something from another century that happened to a pair of strangers who lived then.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Neetra and Joe, Chapter Two
Light-years away, peaceful peoples of an entire galaxy were gathered as they were on Earth to celebrate an end to the Solidity’s war. Down in Planet Eshcaton’s subterranean sanctuary thankfully meditated the four wise sages who had led this passive resistance, but the populations which rallied round them were high above the barren surface, jubilating on the roofs of star-cruisers in synchronous Eshcaton-orbit. Another troupe of musicians, all residents of that far-off quadrant and personally known to Neetra, had been belting out pop song after pop song to a vast open-air audience and countless others via live holographic feed. But none of those millions knew why it should be that the lead singer Cherry, having just rounded off the latest in a line of upbeat party-numbers, suddenly slowed and paused.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
I'll Find Your Planet
The diminutive globular manager wasn’t putting Cherry’s psychic powers under any strain in his bids to commune with her from the other end of the auditorium. In fact his despairing gyrations and palpitations were most expressive on a purely visual level, especially in the wake of one earth-tremor and the annihilation of an outdoor passage. Keep calming them down! was the general gist. We’re sure to lose them otherwise!
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Centre of my Cosmos
There had been one or two hitches, but here at last was the fallback point, another Xandreth district still under construction. Phoenix Prime, the holdall containing Scientooth on her shoulder and Petunia under her other arm, touched down on a rooftop overlooking the darkened half-finished neighbourhood and folded her flame-wings. She had intended this to be the landing-site, and to have done without that regrettable race through a dozen blocks of densely-peopled nightspots. Now however, after all that, her objective was finally within reach.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction