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Stories from the Verse
Versers Versus Versers
Chapter 69: Beam 54
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Chapter 68: Slade 165
The white-haired man was getting focused on launching his attack, but the introduction bothered him. Finally he spoke.
“Wait a minute. Slade? Bob Slade?”
“Do I know you?” the lanky blonde asked.
“No, probably not.”
“No, I think I do. Jim? Jim Beam? Used to play games at Mister Jones’ house?”
“What happened to you?” Beam asked. “You fell off the face of the earth about twenty years ago, and no one has a clue where you went.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been longer than that for me, and I’ve been a lot of places. But twenty years? No wonder I didn’t recognize you. Hey, everyone,” he shouted, “this is Jim Beam, friend of mine from earth.” Then returning his focus to the man in front of him, he said, “Well, this should make resolving our problem a lot easier.”
“What problem is that?”
“It seems that you, or one of your friends, shot one of our friends out of the sky a while back, and everyone’s worried that there’s going to be a war or something. But if it’s you, then we can probably resolve this without more trouble.”
“I can see that,” Beam said. “But you’ve made two mistakes.”
“Oh?”
“The first is, just because we played games together does not mean we were friends. We were never friends--and for what it’s worth, you were a terrible gamer.”
Bob Slade nodded thoughtfully. “And the other?”
“Just because I know you doesn’t mean I’m not going to complete my assigned part of the mission. Dawn?”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with ten other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #343: Worlds Explode. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
