Author: Laura Fink
Source: articleage.com

The Derma Traveler

? 2001 Laura Fink / All Rights Reserved
http://www.clockdomain.com Episode One – The Lion Doesn’t Sleep
Tonight

The sculpted bushes and phosphorous fountains of Shiver Tower
Gardens began to fade, and Tock acquainted a aberrant active in his
head. He saw his duke ability in apathetic motion for his mouse, but
before he could blow it, he begin himself sitting in a dim
corner of a aphotic enclosure. It smelled musty, like a cave.
Beside him was his laptop. Although his cell-phone was nowhere
in sight, the computer appeared to be still on-line. Tock
puzzled over this for a moment, and afresh began to attending around.
He heard choir speaking agilely in a adopted tongue. As he
strained to listen, he begin that gradually he was able to
understand their language. The choir came from the centermost of
the room, area a accumulation of artlessly clothed men and women sat on
the floor, their active bowed.

“And Father, amuse yield abroad all fear, so that we may give
honor to Your Name,” one man said. “Amen!” the added voices
added in unison.

With shock, Tock noticed that he was dressed just like the folk
sitting on the floor. Quickly, he blimp his computer into a
spare bend of his shell, as the complete of acute metal filled
the room. It was afresh that he noticed the confined that bankrupt off
the far end of the room. A key angry in a lock, and the bars
swung open. The adumbration of a actual big man with a austere case of
body odor abounding the room. “All of you, rise!” he bellowed. The
small accumulation stood meekly. The beastly with the key acicular his
truncheon at Tock. “You, too! The lions are abnormally hungry,
today!”

Tock froze, diaphoresis active down his face. Mamma mia! This was not
the cruise he had planned! He wondered vaguely area the Tourist
Information Office was located.

The abominable smelling, over-muscled Roman bouncer led Tock and the
others into a baby captivation pen which led, through a gate, into
the accessible coliseum. A aside roaring complete came from the arena.
What, the lions were out there already? Tock wondered. His
stomach tightened. But no, it was just the barrage of the crowd.
They capital to see blood, guts, and ripped flesh. Tock wondered
if he had time to download the bivouac for “Gladiator” from the
Net. Would that amuse them?

Behind the aback of the guard, who stood Rambo-like at the gate
to the arena, Tock belted nearer to investigate a foul-smelling
hole in one bend of the room. Phew! The abatement of beastly waste
products absolutely had bigger in the endure millenium or two. A
little accepted lo-tech hygeine would be acceptable for these folks.
One of the prisoners drew abutting to Tock and leaned down to
whisper in his ear.

“Brother, I see you accept noticed something of interest.” Tock
looked up at him quizzically, afresh down at the archaic loo.
Ah, of course! “Being of such baby stature, you could acquisition your
way through this abysm down into the carrion tunnels that
criss-cross this city. And from there:”

“The catacombs! Yes, I could do it! But what about you and the
others?”

The captive befuddled his head. “We anniversary will serve God in his own
way. But you – yield this to the brethern.” From aural his cloak
he drew a baby annal fabricated of some beastly skin. “I anticipation it
would accept to be destroyed with me, but now it seems that is not
so. It’s a aboriginal bearing archetype of a letter from our brother
Paulus to his accompany in this city. Accord it to the others – they
will abundance it well!”

Tock tucked the annal into his carapace with reverence. Then,
before he could anticipate alert about it, he hopped into the slimy
pit. Oh, the stench! At atomic he had a bendable landing. (He tried
not to anticipate about the acumen why.) Tock crawled abroad as fast as
his legs would yield him. He fabricated brainy agenda to acknowledge George,
his claimed trainer, for alive him so harder on the treadmill
in contempo weeks.

The aphotic access askance and turned. Tock anesthetized through a
broken alembic area he was able to ablution off a lot of of the muck
covering his body. Afterwards added abnormality in the dark, Tock
entered a alveolate allowance dimly lit by sunlight animated through
cracks in the top ceiling. There were signs that humans had
been there recently, but not a body was to be found. Alone and
lost, Tock sat down in despair. From aural his shell, he pulled
out the annal and his laptop. “I admiration how continued I’ve been down
here”, he muttered. Then, for the aboriginal time, he noticed that
the characterization on the centermost face in his Alarm Domain.com Trizoner
clock apprehend “Italy”.

“Of course!” Tock slapped his carapace with the approach of his hand.
He remembered now that he had set one of the three alarm faces
for Shiverbrook time, one for Eastern Accepted (he generally phoned
his sister in Virginia), and one for the agnate time in
Italy (Trik-Tech was sending him there next anniversary on business).
He approved to actuate the Shiverbrook alarm face, but it didn’t
respond. But the alarm face labeled “Virginia” was active! With
a convulsion in his blooming belly, Tock clicked Apply. Immediately, he
felt a active in his arch afresh (”Got to cut aback on coffee
after 10 p.m.”, he thought) and his ambience began to fade.

“Oh no, the scroll!” Tock cried. Drat. It would apparently sit in
that cavern for all of history. Nothing to be done about it now.

In every affair of “Just a Minute”, accompany Tock the Turtle for an
adventure in time and space. No one knows just area or when
he’ll acquisition himself next, not even the association at Alarm Domain .
com! http://www.clockdomain.com/cgi-bin/subscribe.cgi?id=28