The Camden Wars

Fiction Sample (Youth/Children)

The one thing you must know is that Blake Williams was a reader. He started when he was four years old. “I know how to read,” Blake told his mother one morning during the Camden Forinth, a time like both spring and fall on the planet you still call Earth.

“How’s that?” she asked her baby.

“Well, these letters all make a sound. This one sounds like “ca-uh” and this one sounds like “fraah”, Blake explained.

“So?” his mother encouraged.

“Well,” Blake announce dramatically. “Once you know the letters you just add them up.”

“Excellent!” she clapped; and since then Blake was officially a reader.

Mostly Blake read adventures, which only makes sense; not because he was a boy, but because he lived on Camden. Camden is a notorious planet of peace-guarders. The double suns of Camden give a striking kind of dual seasons which allow the different plants and creatures to make offspring in continuous cycles.

The Moverbucks all hibernate just as the carpetvines begin to cover the hills near Port Au Sales, Blake’s home and backyard. Carpetvines grow almost two feet a day and become the perfect place to hide and pretend you’re a soldier of fame, like GrayDon the Winner, who set Camden free from all wars over two millennia ago.

In the kind counsels of Port Au Sales, Blake would hide in the carpetvines until covered, only to frighten a lumbering Moverbuck on its way to the caves above the Salt Cliffs by the Port Au Sales ocean. After claiming victory, Blake would sit on the cliffs overlooking the glassy sea when the two suns set and rose on the horizon, creating the windless beauty of purple and pink against his own perfectly albino skin.

These memories kept Blake focused as he heard the metal lock shut and echo in the munitions bay of the rusty transport that hurled along through the galaxy. Blake wanted to cry, but crying wouldn’t help. He just stayed motionless, like he played among the carpetvines. Blake knew these men were dangerous and that they knew nothing of peace. They wore the scar of circles, which meant they had killed and would kill again. Moreover, they mentioned the most hated name in the galaxy, Raunderil.

Blake Williams wondered if Raunderil was on the ship, and he wondered if he would be able to escape once the transport was docked. Mostly, he wondered if his parents knew he never made it to summer camp, that he was lost in the cosmos, and that he missed them very much. Blake didn’t wonder about one thing, though; Blake knew he was going home. He knew it because he had to know it…he had to get home and see the suns set again before supper, to see Mom and Dad go on their walk, to feel the peaceful settling into his bed, his very own bed. But for now, every adventure he ever read was a textbook; he only hoped things turned out for him like it always did in the stories.

***

The story of the Camden Wars began six weeks earlier in Blake’s bedroom.

“Why do I need this many clothes?” he asked his mother with a high pitched frustration.

“Well, there are lot’s of fun things to do at camp and they require different outfits,” she answered matter-of-factly.

“Can’t I just get what I need out of the dispenser?” he asked.

“Blake,” his Mom explained, “We aren’t made of kasprillium. You’ll have credits to get candy once a day; but stay away from the outfits, the computers, and the pets. Honestly, I don’t know why everything has to be purchased in a dispensing machine.”

With that Blake just packed and decided to hope for the best.

Soon he was on his way, Mom and Dad waving as the Shuttle began its assent to the second orbit of Camden before using the gravitational bounce to launch it out to Presidio’s 7^th moon where camp awaited; the very camp his parents met at as camp counselors.

Blake just sat in his seat, not talking to any of the other kids around him; hoping they would leave him alone, or insist he belong, or both. Blake wasn’t one to be around others, his parents had definite ideas about schooling. He learned alone, or with his mom, at home; everyday was a day of education. He spent a lot of time in thought and study, but when he got around others he felt like an alien. Blake wasn’t even sure if being an alien was a bad thing. Sometimes he felt alone, but other times he felt “too bad for them”; soon followed by the guilt that comes with pretending you’re better than others. Blake was really like most 14 year old Camdeniens, he wanted to be courageous and offer his best gifts to make his world better; but he also felt like he didn’t have much to offer. This confusion kept him in a tight cling with childhood, but childhood wasn’t clinging to him.

Blake’s dad also helped with school. He had read a biography of a famous scientist on Earth by the name of Feynman, who helped with the original splitting of the atom back in th 20^th century, by Earth years. Blake’s dad would take him on walks like Feynman’s day, hoping something would spring to the front.

“What’s that?” Blake asked his dad one day on a walk when a creature Blake had never seen before sprang up through a grove of garnache shrubs. The creature could best be described as cross between a turtle and a parrot, but without a shell in tow. It was colored like a rainbow, moving from bright blue on its crown to deep red in its feet. It made a hissing sound like a cat and had a curious collection of almost see-through white months flying about it in circles and waves as the creature lumbered along, taking a few strokes with its wings every few feet. The moths stayed in formation and followed, or maybe led, as the creature moved in front of Blake and his dad.

“Well son, that’s a bill-backed herpephiporus; but who cares what it’s named, let’s watch what it does.” Even then Blake new his dad just made up the name, but like Feynman’s father, he wanted Blake to observe.

“Remember, Blake,” his dad often said, “the more you look, the more you see.”

Maybe it was that memory of his Dad, or maybe it was all the time he had spent watching things; but suddenly, Blake notice something was wrong. He carefully surveyed the kids. They all looked normal, but a little quirky as you might expect for a whole camp shuttle dedicated to home learners. The counselors were just hanging around and looked normal, except the one who stood by the pilot’s chamber. This man had one thing out of place; a three day beard. Counselors were clean, or at least looked clean. None of this really caught Blake like the sight outside his window. Blake had marked the direction from the moment they left Camden’s atmosphere as the light of the suns lost their bright reflection of the planet’s surface and moons. The Pleiades were high and just ahead, Alpha-Centaur was low and behind, and Pegasus-Rilor straight out from his window.

Blake had only casually watched these stars during his trip, but now he realized that Alpha-Centuar was straight ahead, Pegasus-Rilor clearly behind, and the Pleiades were out of sight! All this meant the direction of the shuttle had changed by 90 degrees…they were not headed to camp. Instead, they were headed in to the demilitarized quadrant…a place that was like a swamp in space. Rumors of hoodlums and bandits from the Swamp echoed around campfires on Camden. Sometimes the stories took on the shape of Robinhood; a good man, misunderstood, making evil leaders pay for their crimes. The others stories were of evil men preying on the innocent, but never discovering how to break the electron barriers which kept Camden safe and at peace. Blake’s guts told him that The Swamp was the wrong place to be; so, in an instant, he hatched a plan for his own safety, and maybe for the safety of all the kids on the shuttle. He just needed to see if his dialatron was still fully charged.

***

Blake’s dialatron reminded him of his grandfather, who Blake called The Wise One. Of course his granddad was wise, but Blake called him the Wise One because his granddad called Blake the Emperor. Blake was the king and his grandfather was his counselor. His granddad gave him the dialatron on his twelfth birthday and explained it in terms Blake could appreciate.

“Yep, when I was a kid, one of our favorite things to do was to create a haunted house and sell tickets to the other kids in the neighborhood,” the Wise One began as Blake looked at the curious blue dial and the strange hieroglyphics which were passing by on the crystal screen of the dialatron.

“Why, oh Wise One?” Blake asked.

“Well Sire, it was when I first learned you could trick the mind. We created different booths in the lower level of our house. Each booth contained something to create fear, horror, or simply grossness in the visitor to our house of horrors.”

“Like what?” Blake said as he punched the hieroglyphic pictures in a random sequence.

“No Blake!” his grandfather shouted. But it was too late; Blake’s arm turned into a tree limb, hanging stiff and straight with soaking wet brown moss dripping to the floor in great clumps.

Blake started to laugh, but his grandfather grabbed the dialatron too fast. “What about the House of Horrors O’ Wise One?

“Well, as I was saying,” he continued as he reversed the sequence on the dialatron and Blake’s arm returned to its normal clear white color. “We had different booths and the visitors were blindfolded along with the excessive dim lighting we kept in place just in case a big nose fellow could see out from under the blindfold. Each booth had something in it we asked them to smell, or taste, or touch. Spaghetti drenched in cooking oil served as our collection of intestinal worms from the Gnutchie Tree bats; ‘large enough to carry two children away, but not strong enough to be eaten alive from the inside out by this’, we added to spice up the story. Grapes were said to be eyeballs from the prison colony morgue, and a hanging rope they touch suddenly had dripping blood, which was really lukewarm red-sauce from momma’s pantry.”

“And they fell for it?” Blake asked. “Like saber-tooths for saber-nip” granddad grinned.”

“So why, O’ Wise One, do you tell me of these things before handing me my dialtatron.

“Your majesty,” his granddad said, “your dialatron tricks the mind as we tricked our friend’s minds.” It casts an image in front of you, but you must make a suggestion for it to work.”

“So why did my arm look like a tree?”

“You were reading about the Deep Forest when I came into your room, were you not?” his grandfather asked.

“I was…wow!”

With that, the Wise One repeated the sequence Blake had picked, and after a moment, Blakes arm began to change into the tree limb again. But, before it had finished, granddad asked, “Have you seen the new whisper-black trifillian android’s arm?”

Before Blake could answer, the limb was suddenly a powerful metallic black with a miniature control pad just below the elbow blinking cobalt blue lights and circular patters.

“Woe!” Blake shouted.

“What?” the girl sitting behind Blake whispered.

“Oh, nothing…sorry,” Blake said as his grandfather faded away and the danger he was facing came back into focus.

“Do you have a spare compact charger?” Blake asked the girl.

“My name’s Brita, what’s your’s,” she asked before adding, “…I don’t loan things to strangers.”

“Oh, I’m Blake,” he said a little embarrassed…and a little excited.