Aphelion

I always look forward to reading David Allen Jones, and this story didn’t disappoint me from beginning to end.

The intro got me interested especially the reference to a forty-two Chevy. And the teenage parking area above a river on a Saturday night, together with Blueberry Hill on the radio, set a good stage for a fifties-style story full of nostalgia and Rock. Blueberry Hill was a popular song at that time, some say it isn’t Rock and Roll, other argue that it is. Who knows, but it was played on radio during the fifties and can still be heard today.

This really brings back memories to me of parking with a girl and trying to get into her pants. I only got lucky once I think, but I always approached my buddies the next day with a smile on my face no matter what happened! The teenage male ego is always in overdrive!

Lloyd Acres the insane criminal is on the loose. Just imagine Wolf Man Jack in American Graffiti announcing something like that during the move. I’m sure Lloyd would probably have been a one time Pharoah.

As the story builds along a nostalgic night during the fifties, Larc Pall, Space alien, is also listening to soft music as he/she mans a UC machine aboard a UFO orbiting Whirl.

We bounce between the aliens and Carl and Tina, as Tina begs Carl to get outa here because a psycho-kill is on the loose. Other cars leave, and Tina is becoming more and more frightened.

Now the ending is really interesting. The psycho-killer must have been sneaking up on Tina and Carl when Larc tried to get a human with the UC machine. The machine latched onto Carl’s car as Lloyd Acres was just about to break into it with his sickle and beginning killing. But the UC machine latched onto metal and not a biological entity as I think it was intended to.

Very nice ending. Tina and Carl got away with part of a sickle sticking out of a door, and Lloyd Acres got dematerialized or vaporized by the alien UC machine that’s going crazy. Too bad for I would have liked to have seen Lloyd Acres materialize on the alien ship facing Larc, smiling and holding his sickle as larc and Tix point with one of their many fingers at each other.

This story brings back memories of old 1950s Sci/Fi for in many of those movies, teenager were involved fighting off aliens.

I only found one spelling err towards the end of the story.

All the characters were believable and had some depth to them.

Nice entertaining story, the way a story should be.

Jaimie wrote:I like David's writing style, but I confess I was confused as to the climax. Reading his response, it seems like he kept it a bit ambiguous on purpose to allow the reader to draw his own conclusion. At first, I thought it was the wafer that scraped against the car. And I'm a bit confused on why the car couldn't move. Was it the machine or something the psychopath was doing?

I like ambiguity, but the gap might have been too much for me. Did I misinterpret the story?

I think the metal caught on the door was indeed the wafer. The car couldn't move because it was hung up on an object whose other end was many light years away. Conversely, the transportation device was overloaded because the force applied by the car's motion fed back over the link.

Now, if them sex-crazed kids took that metal up to the University, some Professor might tell them, "That's no hook! It's made of some material I've never seen before! Mabel! Call Jake Hardcastle up at Fort Whosiwhatsis!"... But that's another story.

RM