Thunderfunk the Superchicken - Chapter 3

Tadpole Lad was Unavailable

Gecko flexed his legs and came to a graceful landing in front of a rather blank looking cliff wall, completely uninteresting and unremarkable. "According to our information, this is it," he said confidently.

Alighting beside him, The Chameleon swivelled his eyes, watching his leader and a distant plane at the same time. "That is what you said at the last three cliff walls. Could it be that our fearless leader is just guessing?"

"Chameleon, old chum, this is no time for dissent in our ranks. Thunderfunk the Superchicken is a scourge upon this planet, a pox that must be eradicated for the good of all the world. But be not deceived by his innocuous moniker, he is likely to be the deadliest foe against whom we have striven. The slightest miscue may very well be our downfall, and he will use every advantage over us that he can. So I pray that each of you keep your wits about himself, and Chameleon, whatever problem exists between us, please put it aside for now. You are the most cunning among us and we will need your skills if we are to emerge victorious."

Chameleon stared hard at Gecko, but only with one eye. The other eye was still on the plane far overhead. "You are right, old friend. Together we can defeat him; he stands no chance."

Newt scurried around excitedly, climbing partway up the cliff wall and jumping down to land on Lizard’s back. "Yeah, he’s going down!" He hopped to the ground and sat at Gecko’s feet, his eyes shining with hero worship.

Lizard laughed. "Excitable little guy, isn’t he? Now Gecko, how do we get in?"

"That’s easy," came a voice from behind them all. They whipped around to see Frog standing there, hands on hips. "I’ll just kick it in, smash the wall until it comes down." Before anyone could object he had hopped over them and was winding up to do just that. But Gecko quickly leapt to stand against the wall.

"If you do that," he warned, "then anyone within a twenty mile radius of here will know that we have arrived, and the element of surprise will be gone. This is one time when stealth is necessary. Trust me, once we are inside there will be enough use for your legs. Let’s try to keep them fresh until then."

Grumbling good-naturedly, Frog lowered his leg and stepped back. "Well then, how do we get in?"

"An interesting conundrum indeed. Newt, I believe it is your moment to shine."

"All right," exclaimed an excited Newt. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a small computer. His hand dipped into the bag a few more times, pulling out an assortment of electronic gadgets until he had an entire workstation set out in front of him. Soon he was typing away, whistling tunelessly. He stopped suddenly, and looked around suspiciously before returning to his work. With a triumphant flourish he clicked a final key a watched as a section of the wall before them suddenly developed a seam. Slowly a door appeared and swung open.

"Good work, Newt," said Gecko, clapping him heartily on the shoulder. "Everyone keep together and watch each other’s backs. We must be on our toes." With that the R-5 entered the dark tunnel.


High above them Straw Daq radioed down. "They’ve taken the bait, Thunder," he said. "I’ll be down in a minute."

"Rofer," came the reply.

Straw rolled his eyes. They must be good cookies.

Fools of us All - Chapter 3

I ducked behind a row of garbage cans, holding my breath as the cop car drove slowly by. I don't think they were looking for me specifically, more that they were doing a random search, hoping to round up some 'undesirables'. I definitely would have qualified in that category. All of this trouble over one hijacked broadcast signal. I'm curious to know what will happen after our next strike.

The past month had been pretty hard to get through. I had realised that the country was in bad shape, but that meeting I had attended really opened my eyes.

Just then a loud crash came from behind my head. Immediately the cop car stopped, its spotlight coming to a rest on my hiding spot, casting weird shadows around me. The garbage cans still hid me from their view, but if either one of them got out to check out the noise, I was in serious trouble. I reached down to my ankle holster, silently cursing the decision to leave my large knife at home. A door on the car started to open, but just then a large black tabby jumped out of the can it had been hiding in, rushing off with a startled yowl. The cop car slammed shut and it drove off, leaving me alone in the dark once again.

Not wanting to take anymore chances I hurried down the alley, turning into a doorway, knocking gently on the boarded up door. A small knothole opened and shut, quicker than most people would have noticed if they weren't looking for it. A small click came from one side and the door slid open. I walked in, feeling the air in the enclosed entrance settle around me in that peculiarly stifling manner that it had. A bright light shone along the length of one wall, floor to ceiling. It started to move, spinning around the room, circling me a few times. When it was satisfied that I wasn't carrying any tracking devices or anything else that I shouldn't be, a door on the inner wall slid open. I stepped through into a dark room full of computers and largely devoid of people. At one of the computers sat Dar, his shaved head glowing in light of the monitors. He glanced up and offered me a strained smile before going back to his work.

From behind a hand grabbed me on the shoulder, spinning me around. Instinctively I leapt back and landed in a fighting pose, my heart thumping heard in my chest. The deep chuckle coming from the man before me helped me to relax. Dun was a large man, roughly six and a half feet tall, built like an angry muscle. He had been teaching me to fight and seemed pleased at my reaction, as well as amused. "You need to relax a little, girl. This is a safe place."

Taking a deep breath I calmed myself down. "Sorry, I just about had a run in with the cops. I'm just a little worked up, that's all."

Continuing to chuckle, he patted me on the shoulder in a fatherly manner before continuing on to his office. He did much of his work there, but that did not mean he was an office drone. He possessed one of the quickest technical minds I had ever known and could assess a tactical situation accurately with merely a glance. Before joining the organisation he had been in the military and had never forgotten his training. He was still on their most wanted list for going AWOL a few years back. Fresh on that less than amicable parting he had started the organisation, an underground group that was trying to fight against the corruption and greed that had overtaken the leaders of the world. It was an uphill battle.

My role in the organisation (one month and I had never heard it called anything else) had been a combination of technical expertise and front-line guerrilla warfare. I found that I was a quick study in combat, and that my past training in fibre optics and computer programming was very handy. Over the past weeks they had trained me on what they wanted to do, and how they wanted to do it. Dun had said that I was one of the quickest studies he had ever seen. He said that if I put my mind to it, I could probably have any role I wanted in the organisation, echoing something I had heard from my father many years ago.

I nodded at Dar as I sat at my station, connecting to the network. As I did I wondered about that connection to my father. My memories of him were mostly happy. He had been a large bear of a man, a construction foreman in the last years of the human control of the industry. When he had lost his job it had nearly crushed him. In his mind, it made him a failure as a husband and father. He fell into a depression that lasted until he had found work in space, mining the valuable metals and resources found on distant moons. It was a tough job that would take him away from his family for long periods of time, but he felt that it was the only way an uneducated man like himself could provide for his family, so he went away to space.

When the company contacted my mother and me to let us know that he had died, they had also told us that the body was unrecoverable. It had destroyed my mom. The last time I had seen her, she had been sitting motionless in a wheelchair, dead to the world. It had become to painful to see, so I stopped visiting. By then I had graduated from college and was well on my way to a career.

But even that dream was gone now. Briefly I looked around at the room, at each row of computers and the technicians working on them. I then looked back at Dun’s office and smiled. Maybe the reason I felt that this was such an important place was because it was the family I had lost. Maybe I was home again.

Thunderfunk the Superchicken - Chapter 2

Designing Large Empty Spaces for Megalomaniacal Geniuses

Thunderfunk ran down the hall to the secret stairway. Given that the staircase was simply behind a door that was marked "Not A Secret Stairway", it wasn’t really much of a secret, but he had only been living there for a couple months, and other things had taken priority. But rest assured, he would get to it.

A quick journey down a few flights of stairs later he burst into the war room. Originally it had been a series of underground passages, storage rooms and hidden rooms that he had dug out and renovated into a thoroughly state of the art centre for his schemes. At the far end there was a lab set up for scientific experiments, and light baking. A passageway about halfway down led to a private jet hangar at the far ends of his estate grounds. It was wide enough a hall to accommodate a pair of modified golf carts side by side. The hangar itself housed four different types of aircraft: a helicopter, a completely restored Curtis JN-4 biplane, a heavily modified Stearman biplane, and a Harrier Jet. Both he and Straw Daq were proficient pilots, though Straw was the better of the two, and had made a living doing barnstorming at air shows before he met Thunder. At the near end of the war room was a series of exercise stations, giving him a place to train in hand to hand combat, as well as somewhere he could wind down by beating on some lackeys, or, if the mood so struck him, henchmen. In the dead centre of the room was a large raised platform which housed his computers on one side, a table and chairs set up for meetings and the such, and a coffee station, because he seemed to find it hard to come up with dastardly schemes without a cup or two of java inside of him. Sometimes he wondered if he was addicted to the stuff. Curse the Columbians for their fine roast.

Already seated at one of the computer terminals, Straw was regarding a screen that was scrolling through some technical information. He turned his head slightly in acknowledgement of Thunderfunk’s entrance before going back to his readouts.

Thunder climbed the stairs and leaned over Straw’s shoulder, looking at the information. "Is this what I think it is?" he clucked softly.

"Looks like it."

Rubbing the crown of his beak wearily, Thunder sighed. It would appear that a group of self-proclaimed super heroes was headed for his base, this bastion of solitude and rest that he had built for himself. "All right, what do we know about these miscreants?"

With a few taps of the keyboard a group of dossiers popped up on the screen, showing them everything they knew about this particular group. They were known as R5, which stood for Reptile-5. Each one had a reptile themed power, hence the rather unimaginative name. Their leader was Gecko, a man who could cling to walls and ceilings and looked rather reptile like. The Frog had super strong legs that allowed him to leap very high. The Chameleon could swivel his eyes in different directions. Lizard was hard to pin down because he could detach his limb and grow a new one, almost instantaneously. And Newt was really small. They had formed a few years previous and spent much of their time stopping small time hoods and crooks, until they had crossed paths with KingFisher and his minions. The heroes had prevailed, vaulting them into the top tier of super hero-dom. Now it would seem they had turned their attention towards Thunderfunk, a mistake he would make them pay for dearly.

"How long do we have?"

Straw shoved off and rolled his chair across the floor to another screen. "Well, according to this, they will probably be here in about an hour. They don’t seem to be trying to keep their plans a secret."

"Their victory over that insufferable fool Captain Fish-"

"KingFisher," corrected Straw quickly.

"-KingFisher, right, has made them arrogant. They think they now have the ability to challenge my natural superiority." He stood behind Straw, leaning on the chair and tapping his chin thoughtfully.

"What should we do?" asked Straw.

Smiling broadly, Thunder straightened up. "I have the perfect folution. Prepare fe sthe mmfff."

"Excuse me...?" Straw looked up at the giant chicken.

Wiping cookie crumbs off of his face, Thunder swallowed. "Prepare...the device."

"The device? Are you sure?" Straw looked a little concerned.

"Oh, of course, not The device, no. That is a bit excessive. No, just prepare the device."

Straw furrowed his brow slightly, and then brightened. "Right, that device. Can do!" With that he hurried away, to prepare the device.

Thunder turned back to the cookies, stuffing a few more into his craw. They really were delicious cookies. Evilly delicious.

Fools of us All - Chapter 2

Driving in the rain is always hard, especially at night. The worst, though, is when there is a group in the car and the windows start to fog up because it is too humid. I hate that. That is why I was so unhappy on this day.

There were three of us in the car - myself, my cousin Gerry and his girlfriend Cindy. Who am I you wonder? Well, my name is Spin. Obviously that is not my real name, but that is the only thing I have been called since the second grade. Heck, even my parents started using it. No one is quite sure where it came from, but it stuck. I blame my uncle, really. It seems like the sort of thing that he would start.

Anyway, the night in question, we were driving on the highway, heading back home to Calgary after visiting some friends out in Manitoba. We had just left Regina when I noticed the rain clouds moving in. I figured it would be a mild rain, given how it had been rather dry the entire summer, but I was in for a surprise. Living in Calgary, I thought I had seen some impressive rainstorms, but mother nature was about to outdo herself.

I don't know what it is about the prairies, but they can have some of the most impressive thunderstorms you have ever seen. The clouds built up very quickly, appearing without warning over a broad horizon. Within minutes we had gone from a clear moonlit sky to absolute darkness. A few drops of rain landed on the windshield, just a smattering of rain. Gerry and Cindy didn't even notice at this point because they had both fallen asleep while we were filling up with gas in Regina. Suddenly a peal of thunder rolled across the field. It was so loud that my rear-view mirror shook making it difficult to use. Not that it mattered because that sound signalled the start of the deluge. The rain hit so hard that I couldn't see through the windshield within seconds. I flipped on my wipers, but they weren't much help. I was starting to get nervous.

Cindy and Gerry woke up with the sound. Cindy actually screamed a little, causing me to swerve out of surprise. I managed to get the car under control, but my heart was beating rather hard for a bit. I glanced over at Cindy and I could see that she was feeling rather nervous. "Shouldn't you pull over or something?" she asked, showing more wisdom than I realised at that moment.

Gerry smiled and teased his girlfriend. "What's the matter, Cin, scared of a little rain?"

I had known Gerry all of his life (he was two years younger than me), so I could tell that his heart wasn't into it. He was obviously a little nervous as well.

It was right then that the windows fogged up. It was like watching a curtain rise over the glass, completely blocking my vision. I turned up the fan to blow on the windshield, reaching forward to wipe off the glass so that I could at least see a little bit. Lightning and thunder started going off regularly, the sound combining with the flashes to set a rather eerie mood.

"C'mon Spin, just pull over at the next road and we'll wait it out."

I shook my head. "I don't want to be stopped on the side of the road during this downpour. What happens if a semi comes by and doesn't notice us until it is too late?" I was determined not to stop. I figured that the rain couldn't last much longer.

But Cindy was just as determined. "And what happens if you don't see a car until it is too late? Then we are just as dead."

"Look, the rain will let up soon. This is just a small cloudburst. It can't last."

Now Gerry entered into the mix. "Spin, I hate to argue with you, you know that, but this time I think Cindy is right. We have to stop."

"It's not dangerous," pleaded Cindy. "You can turn off the road onto a smaller road and wait there. Leave your lights on so that people can see you if they are coming, and since you're near an intersection no one will be driving with much speed anyway."

I don't know why I argued with them like I did. Maybe I was just too tired. We had been driving for six or seven hours by that point and still had another seven to go, and we had left much later than originally planned. "Don't be such pansies," I said, running a hand through my short blond hair. "We'll be fine."

"Spin, please!" I could see that a couple of tears had worked their way down Cindy's cheeks. A glance back at Gerry showed that he was extremely uncomfortable as well.

I sighed, but I could see their point. The windows were still fogged up, giving me only a small circle out of the windshield to see while I was driving. And the storm really didn't seem to be abating at all. So I made a concession. "Look, Moose Jaw is not too far from here. We should be there in ten minutes, tops. We'll pull in there, maybe find a place to eat or get some rest. Okay? I'm not stopping before that."

Grudgingly the other two agreed. They knew how stubborn I could get, so they accepted my concession. In my mind, the rain was going to have let up by the time we reached Moose Jaw anyway, so I was feeling pretty good.

We rode on in silence for a few minutes as the windshield slowly cleared. The lightning continued to flash between peals of rolling thunder. Cindy fidgeted with her long brown hair like she did every time she was nervous. At least she wasn't chewing on it. I hate when people do that. Gerry drummed his fingers against the window, humming tunelessly to himself. His long braided goatee vibrated with every beat of thunder.

I finally decided that I needed something more to distract me from the unhappy vibes I was getting from my friends. I glanced down at the radio as I turned it on. I don't know if I could have changed anything had I not looked away from the road. But I do know that when I looked up a bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating a small figure standing in the road, a small orb in her hand, glowing softly. That image was burned into my eyes as the bumper of my car slammed into the person.

It all plays in slow motion when I think about it. The person had leapt at the very last second, as though trying to jump over the car. I could see that it was a girl, and as she jumped my car hit her legs, cutting them out from under her, causing her head to slam into the back edge of my hood before she bounced into the windshield on Cindy's side. Because of the rain the car started to fishtail wildly on the slick road. The body of the girl bounced over the car and I lost sight of it. Cindy and Gerry both screamed. Cindy was pressed back against her seat, her feet pushing against the dashboard. Gerry, who hadn't been belted in, was tossed around the back seat, screaming and swearing the whole time.

Amazingly I managed to keep the car from flipping over or doing anything more severe than spinning in a few circles. I was glad that the ditch at that point was very shallow because that's where we ended up, sitting far from the side of the road, steam coming up from the hot engine. We all sat for some time, breathing hard, unable to speak. I could feel my hands wanting to shake, so I kept them firmly gripped onto the steering wheel. I noticed water starting to drip in where the windshield had been hit. It had held together somehow, but it was in bad shape. Part of me was momentarily mad that someone had wrecked my car, but that was mostly a product of shock. It hit me then that I had just killed someone, and that's when I had to open the door so I could throw up. At the same moment Cindy had the same reaction. Gerry was passed out in the back seat.

I wonder what that would have looked like to an outside observer. A car sitting in the ditch, lights shining in the rain, when suddenly two doors fly open and one person leans out from each door, retching up the remnants of every meal eaten since high school. In the right circumstances, it may have been comical.

As far as I knew, the dead body was laying back quite some distance. I figured that I should probably call the police or an ambulance. I started to pull my head back into the car when I felt something brush my hair, moving the opposite direction of the rain. Just then Cindy let out the most bloodcurdling scream I have ever heard. I jerked my head to see what her problem was and two things happened right then.

First, I heard a weak voice say "It's not too late."

Second, the body of the woman slowly slid its way down from the roof of the car onto the hood. I realised what I had felt then - it had been the woman's hand dangling over the door. Cindy had noticed it and screamed just as gravity had finally done its work, causing the body to slide down. It was only much later that I decided the voice had been the woman's. I had no idea how she had managed to hold on as long as she did.

As quickly as I could get my seatbelt off I was out of the car, not caring that I was getting soaked. I reached the woman and checked her pulse, a futile move, or so I thought. To my surprise I could feel the blood still coursing through her vein, though it was rather weak. Blood ran down her face, mixing with the mud on the ground and the rain from the sky. Her breathing was very shallow and sounded laboured. In her hand was the glowing orb I had noticed earlier. Taking it from her hand, I placed it in my pocket.

I was trying to decide what to do when the woman's eyes flew open. I couldn't believe how much pain I could see in them. She reached up with one hand and grabbed the collar of my shirt, pulling herself up until her face was almost touching mine. "Help me," she whispered before she collapsed. Her heart was still beating, but I wasn't sure how long that would last.

Making a decision, I put my arms underneath her and lifted her, shocked at how little she weighed. She was smaller than she looked. Her clothes were rather baggy and somehow seemed to be odd, but I didn't take the time to think about it. Carefully I placed her in the back seat, moving Gerry as best I could to give them both room.

Cindy looked over at me as I got back into the driver's seat. "What are you doing?"

I threw the car into gear, thankful again for the shallow ditch as I pulled onto the highway. "She's still alive. We're heading to Moose Jaw to get her to a hospital." I fingered the orb, feeling some warmth coming from it. "Call ahead and let the hospital know we are coming."

As Cindy tried to figure out how to contact the hospital in Moose Jaw, I clenched my jaw in concentration, trying to get there as fast as I could. Everything about the night had been awful, and for some reason all I could think about was the colour of the mystery woman's eyes.

Thunderfunk the Superchicken - Chapter 1

Plot Points and Feathers

The soft voice of the computer came from the hidden speakers: "Target acquired. Attempting to lock." Thunderfunk waited, eagerly anticipating the destruction of his mortal foe. Finally he would be free. One feathered finger hovered over a lone red button, simply labelled: Destrooy. Once he was done here, he would really need to re-label this particular button. And maybe he could test the one that said Armneod. He hadn’t quite been able to figure out what that button was for. Hopefully it involved massive amounts of explosives, but it was hard to say.


He looked up at the massive screen hanging above him. A set of crosshairs was following a figure that was dashing in a crazy zig-zagging pattern across an expanse of grass. A beeping tone was sounding faster and faster, coming close to the steady tone of a missile lock. Anticipation almost made him shake with glee. It also made him jump out of his seat, feathers flying everywhere, when a finger tapped him on the shoulder.


"Thunder," said Straw Daq, a bemused expression on his face. "You have a guest." He backed up a step and walked down the stairs of the raised platform on which the computer station was resting. "I’’m working on my plane over in the hangar if you need me," he called over his shoulder.


"Target lost," announced the computer softly. Thunderfunk sighed. He would get the vile villain one of these days. For now, however, it was time to entertain. As he walked through his war room (as he liked to call it), he wondered who was visiting him. Hopefully it was his accountant with news about possible tax breaks, or money laundering schemes. Either one would be all right. He passed through a hallway into his living room and stopped dead. "How did you get in here?" he demanded gruffly. Somehow his security had been lax yet again, allowing this fiend into his house.


"That dear boy of yours let me in," replied Mrs. Henderson. In her hand was a plate covered in cookies and wrapped with saran wrap. "I baked these for you." She smiled up at him as he stepped forward and reluctantly accepted the cookies from her hand.


"Thank you," he replied, his words short and clipped. "Now if you’ll excuse-" He watched as she started going around the room, straightening up cushions and fluffing pillows.


"Tsk tsk. You need to tidy up around here." She sat herself down on the edge of his sofa and looked up at him primly. "I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your son. That ridiculous costume he always wears, like an old time pilot. And always so filthy, covered in head to toe with grease. Why the other day…"


Thunderfunk stopped listening as Mrs. Henderson droned on. For some reason this woman had decided to make his life miserable day after day, always finding excuses to come and harass him. And somehow she had come to the conclusion that Straw Daq was his son, not his pilot. He had tried everything to get her to stay away, but she continued to return. Recently he had hired a security guard, an ex-Marine who had been tortured without breaking in two separate countries, to watch the front gate of his mansion; his sole purpose was to stop her from entering the premises. She had come over on his first day on the job, and after being lectured for two hours on the importance of being respectful to his elders and the importance of treating a guest properly he had finally sent her inside along with a hastily scrawled resignation letter. Despite himself, Thunderfunk had been slightly impressed with the old lady’s persistence.


A few moments of silence passed before Thunder realised that she had stopped talking and was awaiting a response. "Mrs. Henderson," he replied with a sigh, "let me start by saying, once again, that Straw Daq is still not, nor has he ever been, my son. And furthermore…" he continued, pointing a feathered finger in her direction, placing the plate of cookies on the coffee table. Before he could complete his thought he was interrupted by a loud alarm. "If you’ll excuse me, I have other matters to attend to. Please see yourself out." With that he turned to leave, only to stop short when he remembered the cookies. Quickly he scooped up the plate and ran to the hall. He ground to a halt and stuck his head back into the living room. "You’re infernal cat found its way onto my grounds again, Mrs. Henderson. Next time I will destroy him with my laser." With that he was gone.


Mrs. Henderson shook her head. "That man," she muttered to herself. "So handsome, but so scatterbrained." With that she collected her hat and coat and walked out of the door, calling for her cat.

Fools of us All - Chapter 1

Oh great. It's raining again. That makes it, what, fifteen days in a row that it's rained? Frankly, I'm getting tired of it. I can't believe how things have been going lately. My best friend died in a freak elevator accident a few months ago. It still hurts but I've been able to get on with my life. I'm sure not going to forget her, though.

And then I get fired from my job. There was a time where that wouldn't have been a problem, but things have really taken a tumble lately. Suddenly there are no jobs to be had. Everything's automated anymore, and the economy seems to have taken a hit. Now there are more unemployed mooks like myself than there are jobs. I couldn't pay rent, so I've had to move out. Fortunately, I suppose, I had already sold all of my stuff to buy enough food to survive until the end of the month, so by now all I have left is a coat that's getting ratty thrown on over my faded shirt and sweater, and my old camo pants. My shoes are still good, a birthday present from Corana before she died. Every time I re-lace them I start to tear up.

I figured that my one grace was that summer was starting just as this all happened so I would have a comfortable season to try and get things together. But it's been so wet this year. The river that runs through the centre of town is swelling up, overflowing its banks. With all of the technology that was advertised as making life better, it sure hasn't done much for the river. The water is so nasty in general, and now it has been deluged with grass and dirt and other types of foliage from the parks and streets that line the river. People have died in that river recently. A few were accidental, a couple of kids playing nearby getting careless and falling in, unable to swim to safety, their bodies pulled out miles downriver. One made it all the way down to the next town before getting extricated. Other deaths only came about because it seemed like the only way to get out of problems. Mikey, a guy I met who had gone through much the same problems that I have, just couldn't handle it anymore. He wasn't educated enough or respected enough to get any of the available jobs, so he found a bridge over a deep part of the river and decided to jump in, even though he couldn't swim. I tried to save him, but I am not a strong swimmer either, so all I could do was run down the edge of the river, trying to think of a way to pull him out. I watched him slip under for the last time about a mile from where he had leapt. A cop drove by just then, but when I stopped him and told him what had happened he just shook his head. "I'm sorry miss," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "We don't have the manpower to deal with that right now."

Of course, what he really meant was that they weren't going to bother with a dead homeless guy. I got the point and quickly left before he got any ideas about a live homeless girl. Now I'm alone, just trying to find something to eat everyday. I can't even get labour jobs right now because I'm simply too small. It's not even that I'm all that tiny either. There just aren't any jobs, and what few ones there are all go to the largest people they can find. A few Amazonian type women have managed to find some jobs here and there, mostly mining and construction, but by and large it's the muscle-bound guys who get the work.

It's the damn corporations that have done it. That and rampant consumerism. Everyone wanted the latest and the greatest toys, and demand for everything hit so high a mark that the only way anyone could keep up would be to fully automate all of their processes. So they did, finding ways to make everything without using people, and do it cheaply. In the space of about fifteen years, most jobs were turned over to the machines. All office type jobs were taken over by machines that could calculate faster and make better deals than people. Menial tasks were automated. Landscaping, once an relatively steady source of employment, became run by machines that could be programmed for any type of landscape that a person could want. Trash was picked up automatically. Cars were driven by computer, as were planes, trains, and other automobiles. Even movies became mostly automated as computers were programmed to write scripts, cameras operated themselves, and completely CGI actors and actresses were introduced. Humans still do some things, varied from city to city, but it's become tough.

Space exploration, oddly enough, is still an area of human expertise. The news is constantly telling stories of space heroics as we push out further and further. Heck, a colony on Mars is in the works, a deal between a major Chinese corporation and a major US corporation. The government comes on TV frequently, talking about how much they support the efforts, but no one really cares. The past few governments in both countries have been completely run by big business and everyone knows it. I figure it's only a matter of time before we lose all sense of national identity whatsoever and just become land run by companies. It's already happened to Britain and Canada, now both owned by Hong Kong. Russia is still holding out, but that can't last. The severe famine there last year killed a reported two million people, but knowing how their news works, that number has to be at least twice as high. I heard an old university prof who's living on the street saying that his best estimates were that upwards of one hundred million people were sick and dying in that country because they were trying to hold out against the corporations and failing completely.

It is small wonder people are so anxious to get into space. They feel like maybe it's the last chance they have of getting some sort of good life. Everyone is so happy and eager to be allowed a chance for space exploration that no one bothers to stop and ask why more machines aren’t being sent into space to prepare the way. Personally, I think it's because machines are worth more than human life now. People are cheap, let them die. And they have. Space travel is no easy thing. Three quarters of the people who go to space never come back.

This rainstorm doesn't seem to be letting up at all. I pull my coat tighter around myself and hurry along the grungy street. This section of town isn't a good area, and just a few months ago I would have avoided it at all costs. Now it's just around the corner from where I spend my days foraging for food. But eating isn't on my mind right now. I heard that there was a meeting going on around here. A meeting that the authorities would do anything to stop. I'm on my way to try and find it, because I want in. The people living in their nice clean suburbs need to be woken up to what real life is. I don't think they're going to like it. I don't think anyone is going to like it much. I can hardly wait.

Thunderfunk the Superchicken - Prologue

Of Beginnings and Flight

The bird stood on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the majestic view of the canyon stretching out far below him. A river wound its way through the bottom, half in shadow from the rising sun. A slight breeze ruffled his white plumage. For a long moment, he stood, unmoving, head tilted to one side to better capture the sights before him. The wind picked up ever so slightly, almost as though it were signalling to the bird: It’s time to take flight.

Slowly he stretched his wings, waiting for his moment. With a quick step and strong flap he leapt off of the cliff, almost immediately catching an updraft. He soared into the air, circling higher. A glint of metal caught his eye in the distance, a foreign object in the sky. The sound of propellers floated across the air, enticing the bird. He drifted towards the biplane, an ancient looking relic, garishly painted in a mix of bright yellow and eye-popping green. It was flying relatively slow, and the two of them drifted side by side for a time.

The pilot glanced over and grinned at his new flying partner before pulling back on the stick and performing a wide loop. His goggles nearly fell off of his head at the apex, but the bird didn’t notice. He was copying the plane, following its path. An aerial ballet began to play out as bird and plane danced around each other in the sky, performing barrel rolls, dive bombs, and other high flying manoeuvres. Finally the pilot pulled his plane level, impressed that the bird kept up. He activated his radio link. "Hey Thunder, how’s everything running?"

The bird performed a quick barrel roll, looking over his shoulder at the jet pack on his back. "This is working out rather well," he replied. "And it is much lighter than the last pack you built for me." He swooped around in a tight circle, and then a second, adding twists near the apex both times. "This will help me crush my enemies." An odd mixture of evil laughter and evil clucking transmitted itself over the radio.

Straw Daq shook his head and sighed. "Whatever you say Thunder. Let’s take it back to headquarters." It wasn’t easy controlling an evil genius, especially when that evil genius was a seven foot tall chicken, but that seemed to have become his role in life. At least the pay was better than it had been dusting crops and doing the occasional air show for small town fairs. With any luck he’d be able to show the bird the error of his ways, or at least keep him from killing anyone. Flipping a switch, her readied his biplane for mach speed. "C’mon, Thunderfunk, I’ll race you."

"You’re on." A burst of fire shot out from the back of the rocket pack, accelerating him to sonic speeds in seconds. Straw hit his boosters and set a course straight for home. Straight as the Superchicken flies…