Free Podcast Novel

 

 Standard Podcast [16:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Google doc of the text so far.

Mick Aloha had been a messiah for only a week, but already he felt he was an expert at it.  All you had to do was say things, and everyone interpreted them and thought they were really important.  Already his followers, the former kappa followers, were writing a Gospel of Mick Aloha.  Some of the zingers found in it so far were Do as you do and I can’t promise that it will get better, but it will get better.  They were writing it both in the original English and in Japanese.  Aloha hoped his brilliance would come through in the translation.

All hell had broken loose since Aloha had become a messiah; that was when messiahs were most useful.  It had started with robots that looked like ghosts.  Those were easy enough to deal with:  just kick their heads off.  It had taken less than a day to clear the country of those robots, at least that was what his followers had told him the news had reported.  The same thing had happened all over the world.

The next wave, though, was tougher.  They were cyborgs.  Aloha, maybe more than any other human, was privy to cyborgs.  He’d seen that Jean-Claude Van Damme movie at least eight times, maybe more, and in the seventh grade, instead of doing his boring school work, he’d drawn cyborgs.  He had no art skills—maybe the only area in which he was lacking—but the drawings had been accurate.  He’d spent hours going over the logistics of having human and mechanical parts mixed together.  Messiahs came along at the right time with the right knowledge, and Aloha knew this was his time.

The cyborgs looked like someone Aloha had once met, but he was still trying to remember who that was.  They all looked exactly the same.  They all fought exactly the same, too; like maniacs.

 

 Standard Podcast [14:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Google doc of the text so far.

The Kid was totally stoked.  He and James had taken out at least a dozen robots, if not more.  The situation was more serious than the Kid had guessed, though; on the streets, as James had pushed the Camaro through the early morning traffic, they’d spotted several corpses.  The Kid had never seen a corpse before, so it kind of freaked him out, but when the Kid did something for the first time, he liked to pretty much master it, so now he considered himself a master of seeing corpses.  Nothing could gross him out now.

Dowell and the other guy were approaching.  The Kid thought he probably looked pretty tough, leaning against the Camaro with his tattoos exposed.  The Kid was more of a Volkswagen man than a Camaro man, but he had to admit that the Camaro had handled well, and they’d taken out more robots than they could have in a VW.  The Kid was stoked.

 

 Standard Podcast [15:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Google doc of the text so far.

For a group with such a high-tech headquarters, Dowell had trouble understanding why they were low-tech when it came to transportation.  He’d expected a rocket to shoot them out of the river and into northern Osaka, where the Kuchi Sakeh Onna was on the move.  Instead, they had just come back up through the river and run back to the taxi.  The same woman was driving them.  Their clothes were soaked with river water.  Dowell thought they might want to focus less on computers and monitors and more on a way to get into and out of the facility without swimming.

Dowell turned to the taxi driver, whose face alternated between dark shadows and the bright colors of the neon signs they were passing on the street outside.  “What’s the plan?”

“Catch her.”

“But, doesn’t she kill people?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“So, isn’t it dangerous?”

The taxi driver smiled.  “Anything worth doing is dangerous.”

 

 Standard Podcast [19:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Google doc of the text so far.

For years, Mick Aloha had been talking about writing a messiah story.  Aloha was better at talking about ideas than he was at actually following through on them, so his messiah story, solid as it was, remained in the back of his mind.  As he sat on the bottom of the river, unable to breathe as he had yet to develop the ability to breathe water, he wondered if this was his messiah story.  Was he going to die?  Was he going to come back to life?  Was he going to save the world?

Aloha thought, for a moment, that it was true, that he should just give up, take in a big breath of water, and drown on the river bottom.  Coming back to life and saving the world was better than just swimming out of the river.  There was some logic in him, something he’d never before felt, that told him he had to move, he had to breathe air.  That sounded like Dowell-talk, but there was not time for Aloha to contemplate how much he hated his arch enemy.  There was only time for him to save the life of his favorite person.  Himself.

Aloha tried again to free his hands, but they were tied too tightly.  He kicked with his feet and came to the surface, where he took in a gulp of air.  The air went down smooth.  He sank again to the bottom.

Pain shot from the center of his belly to the right side.  He gritted his teeth against the pain.