The sun scattered glimmering rays of life throughout the leaves and branches of the forest. As the trees swayed in the cool breeze, the light danced on the forest floor in a brilliant show.
Aenid, unfortunately, didn’t have time to appreciate the light.
Oh, humbug, humbug, humbug!
Down the street Scrooge sprinted, leaving a trail of paw prints across the thin blanket of snow. Windows aglow blurred by as he passed apartments and houses.
Bah, Fred! Why do you reside so far!?
He veered onto Fern Street.
The XO-76 Mindwarp “Bookmobile” touched down on page 89 of Charles Dickens’s Best Stories (Hanover House, 1959) with its usual finesse, which is to say that all the bit characters who watched it crash into an unluckily placed fruit stand
Read it now
Belle’s steps slowed as she neared the grand house. Had her heart not already been racing from hurrying to make it in time, it surely would be now. Her stomach tightened. Too many years had passed. What if he had forgotten her?
She pulled her shawl closer, shielding herself from the frigid snowfall,
Felix counted down the seconds as he adjusted his glasses and glanced at his clipboard.
Sloppy notations filled the margins: Displays bitterness and regret. Reluctant to engage. Replies with Humbug when upset. Bright red letters reading Unchangeable branded the top of the file.
A
The icy air wrapped around Ebenezer in a death grip.
He shivered, watching his warm breath leave his thin lips. The land before him was desolate, with only abandoned buildings to tell of the once lively city.
That’s what scared him.
An idiot! That’s what you are!
Ebenezer Scrooge hated many things, including Christmas, carolers, cheer, children, and the words “limited-time offer.”
Oh, and one more thing—chaos. As in what happened when his router suddenly gifted him a high-pitched whine and then died. An overheating his cold existence was not familiar with. His orderly life was abruptly unplugged.
Accountant Barnaby Rudge plunks a thick file folder onto my desk. “I’m finished with Pickwick’s papers, Mr. Scrooge.”
“About time.” I pull a leather-bound ledger from the drawer. “Now process Dombey & Son.”
“Certainly—there’s just one thing.”
I scowl. “Do you still have great expectations of going home early for Christmas? Humbug!
I leapt up, the smell of ash coating my nostrils and clogging my throat.
I knew this job would be way too risky!
A memory from the emergency lessons flashed in my mind:
“If you do not know what is happening, always start by remembering things about yourself,” my time traveler mentor’s
Therrus never meant to fall into Drovenveil.
HQ had calibrated the portal for Earth—Rio de Janeiro, to be exact. Instead, his body tore through an alien sky, a streak of green cloaked in the illusion of human flesh.
The impact cratered the hillside. Bones snapped, then reset with the efficiency of his
For Therrus, another day began with total irritation.
He was already like a volcano, ready to explode even from the smallest microscopic provocation. Such permanent irritation had long become habitual for him, because the Earth Initiative demanded he send weekly reports.
He hated preparing these reports, so he did not do so.
“Agent Therrus, are you insinuating your cover has been compromised?”
I opened my mouth but swiftly shut it again. Is that what I’m trying to say?
The hologram of my Earthan Initiative contact lifted an impatient brow. Intergalactic calls were tricky as well as costly. When initiated, it was better to keep them “short and sweet” as humans said.
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