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Chronicles of the Shade – Episode 1 – Beneath the Ice

by Editors

ANOTHER FREE BOOK!

A DI EXCLUSIVE ! ! !

For DI Readers and friends –

Introducing – IN 10 WEEKS OF

SERIAL RELEASES, STARTING … NOW:

Chronicles of the Shade©*

An Impolite, Politically Incorrect—and

Completely Unauthorized

Political Satire on the

Chicanery and Diabolically Evil

Inside Operations of our White House

And Commander In Chief

What follows—beginning with this initial posting–in serialized form–is an allegorical tale that is part science fiction, part love story, part detective mystery, and largely political satire. It has been compressed into ten Episodes, one of which will be published each week on the DW Website…for your exclusive entertainment and enlightening pleasure. An Epilogue will round out the story.

Here is a brief synopsis:

Our protagonist, Lancelot Stanley Carter, II, goes mountain climbing in Katmandu and is trapped in an icy crevasse. In order to survive while hopefully awaiting rescue, “Lance” becomes somehow imbued with “dark energy” type powers, possibly akin to those bestowed by the “dust” in Philip Pulman’s “His Dark Materials” , the trilogy whose wonderful first installment, “The Golden Compass” is presently playing at the box office. Upon being rescued, Lance discovers he can spy upon others unobserved and read their thoughts. His strange power causes him to distance himself from Lara, his true love. Despondent, he gives away his vast fortune and opens The Shade Detective Agency where he utilized his ability to procure information.

Coincidentally, the idealistic Wilberforce B. (Wilby) Goode wants to know what’s going on between President “Barnaby A. Liar” and his Secretary of State, “Condominium Spice”, behind the walls of The “Grey House”and hires The Shade to find out. The Shade takes the job and spies on them and others, recording their shocking conversations—and revelations–on tape.

Will the tapes see the light of day? What is the significance of a mysterious “golden locket” bequeathed to Lance by his madcap Aunt Viva, and what is the connection between the contents of the locket and the bond between Wilby and Lance? Will our heroes succeed or will President Liar begin yet another war? Will Lance be reconciled with Lara? What do the words in the locket mean? All this will be revealed in the serially-unfolding mystery, “Chronicles of the Shade”.

Although this is a work of fiction, it should be obvious that political players in the real world (principally the Neo-cons who took command of the White House and Pentagon following 9/11/01) inspired the caricatures of the political figures described. Accordingly, it might be useful to think of the events and characters depicted in our tale as inhabiting a possible world that is a close relative of our actual world…sort of like one of those millions of parallel universes in Pullman’s Dark Materials. Such a world, according to modern physicists, is consonant with the laws of quantum mechanics, which twenty-first century science accommodates by postulating many parallel universes along with our own. Thus, the characters and events described might be said actually to exist in some parallel universe, dimension or time. How closely they mirror what exists presently in our own world is for the reader to determine.

The authors of these Chronicles, one of whom is a regular DI contributor (have fun guessing who!) have chosen to withhold their true identities by writing as “Margot Cranston” and “Sam Miller”, believing that it is the tale that matters and not who tells it. As Shakespeare had Hamlet put it– “The play’s the thing.” Now, onward with the unfolding of our tale.

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS BY: CHARLES CROTTS

Special thanks—and Kudos– go out to our illustrating artist, Charlie Crotts. Charlie (a Viet Nam Veteran) is a renown freelance North Carolina artist who serves, in conjunction with wife, Jan, as President and C.E.O. of Knightsbridge Printing Company of High Point (Knightsbridge, Inc., 2008 Nuggett Road, High Point, 27263; Ph (336) 889 7156)—for the information and benefit of any of you out there in need of anything along the printing gamut from classically-expert fancy silk screen to 4-color solid or processed offset. Knightsbridge’s foremost commissioning client today is our U.S. Government.

*Printed by DeclaringIndependents.com with express and exclusive permission of the authors, who, in conjunction with DI reserve all claims and rights under existing state and US Federal Copyright law to prohibit the unauthorized copying, duplicating and/or dissemination in any fashion of any part of the present or future publishings by DI on this website of any of the 10 chapters or episodes which here appear and/or follow without the written permission and formal authorization of DI and the authors of “The Chronicles of the Shade”.

Chronicles of The Shade

By Margot Cranston and Sam Miller

	Episode 1 – Beneath the Ice

Time – May 2001

It had all started after his Aunt Viva’s funeral in Paris. Her good friend, former lover, and fellow hot-air balloonist, François Francon, had approached him at the graveside and asked whether he planned to go on the mountain-climbing expedition that Viva had arranged for them. François was still going. “It was what she would have wanted us to do,” he said. “I want to plant the French flag on the summit and do it in Viva’s name. Viva la Viva!”

Grief-stricken, Lance was determined to do what Viva had planned for him to do–one last exciting adventure before returning to the United States and to Lara. He had telephoned Lara at her London flat. The climbing trip was to take only two weeks. He would then meet her in Philadelphia as they had planned. Viva’s death had happened all too suddenly. He needed to find a way to assuage his grief and to say goodbye.

Things did not work out as planned. On the third day of the climb, Lance had been too weary to retrieve the pitons he had placed on the eastern face of the mountain. He would have to go back for them before dark. With the sun rapidly setting, the east face was already in semi-darkness when Lance returned. He would have to hurry. With uncharacteristic carelessness, Lance did not check to see that his uppermost piton was firmly embedded in the ice before he attached his rope to it. As he slid down his rope, the piton came loose, and Lance found himself swirling down the slope, his rope trailing uselessly behind him. Digging in his heels, he slid for more than 100 feet before his body plunged into the crevasse. Then there was another breathtaking plunge of 200 feet before his fall was stopped because the split in the ice had become too narrow to allow his body to descend any farther. So there he found himself, in pitch darkness, wedged in the ice 200 feet below the surface.

His first thought was that he was a dead man. He would not be missed until morning, and even if his party found the pitons, where would they know to look for him? Even if they found him, how could they retrieve him from the crevasse before he froze to death? Then he took stock of himself. He was not a quitter. Viva would not have wanted him just to curl up and die. Lara had not fallen in love with a quitter. No, if death came, it would have to take him, because he would not go quietly.

He then turned his thoughts to Lara. He remembered their meetings on weekends in her Kensington flat. He remembered the rain that invariably kept them inside, the tea and toast they shared before stretching out on her narrow bed, lying on their sides, face to face. He captured in his mind’s eye the way her lips turned downward slightly just as she was about to smile. He remembered looking into her eyes, her deep and dark sapphire eyes, deeper than the Mindanao depths. He could have gazed into her eyes forever, swimming in them, drowning in them; and he remembered the feel of her mouth on his, and the way she pressed her supple body to his, and the way they seemed to melt into one form and one being. Oh, Lara, he thought, within the confines of the dark ice, would that thoughts of you could set me free.

Hours passed beneath the ice. It seemed as if the air had turned lighter. The sun must be rising, he thought. Soon it would pass over the crevasse. As the sun rose higher, the ice took on color. Above him the ice had turned to an electric blue, caused by the alluvial particles suspended in it. Even in his predicament, Lance could appreciate its beauty. Then the sun passed beyond the crevasse, and it began to get dark again. There was no sound above him, no sign of any rescue attempt. Lance remembered the time long ago when Viva had taken him up in her hot-air balloon and turned off the burners. The silence was like that. Thoughts of Viva prompted Lance to reach for her golden locket in the inside pocket of his parka. He slipped off his thermal glove and had just enough room to grasp the locket in his fist. He put his glove back on, clutching the locket, and concentrated on words inscribed on the little paper inside.

“Preserve the Union,” Lance said. He said it over and over again, as if the locket and its contents were some powerful talisman. Viva had wanted him to have the locket. She had wanted him to use it to some purpose, even though neither of them knew what the words signified. Lance thought that if he could concentrate on fulfilling that purpose he could overcome this obstacle that had been set in his path. He could hold on until rescue came. He would not go quietly. He would be lifted from beneath the dark ice out into the bright world again.

More time passed. Lance’s body was becoming numb. He could no longer feel the locket clutched in his fist. The sun was passing over the crevasse again. The blue ice above him shimmered in the light. Unbidden thoughts came to him. First there was the thought in him saying, “Your life has a purpose.” Then the came the opposing thought, “Your life is a joke in a meaningless cosmos.” He did not think these thoughts. They came to him, in succession, warring together in his mind. Finally, just before he lost consciousness, the sun directly over the crevasse blinded him, and one final thought came. It was, “Renounce the world!” Then a blissful peace washed over him, and he slept. While he slept his heart rate slowed almost to a stop. Twelve hours later, when the Sherpa guide slipped the rope around his body to haul him from the crevasse, he was still sleeping peacefully in a state of suspended animation.

****

July 2007

Now, six years later, The Shade stood behind the drapes in a corner of the Elliptical Office of the Grey House in Reagan, D.C. The library next to the Office had been empty, so it was no trouble for him to retrieve the tape recorder he had placed there two weeks earlier. It fatigued him to slow his heartbeat for longer than five minutes, yet that was the only way he could remain unnoticed among those who lived in the real world. His condition was the result of the mountain-climbing accident six years earlier on the east face of Guarisanker in the Himalayas. He had been trapped for forty-eight hours in an icy crevasse, his body temperature dropping until his heart was beating only twice a minute. When he was finally rescued, he discovered that he had the power to lower his heartbeat at will, almost to the point of stopping it, and thus he was able to create his own time-frame and to slide through the time frames of others without being noticed. After five minutes his natural bodily rhythms asserted themselves, and he could no longer count on being unobserved. Now his heartbeat was normal, and he wanted to rest while concealed by the drapes before retrieving the second tape recorder that he had secreted in the Elliptical Office.

Suddenly the doors to the Elliptical Office opened, and President B. A. Liar shuffled into the room. He first glanced at the empty dish on his desk, and then he began frantically to open and shut the drawers to the desk, all the while perspiring profusely, his mouth working in minute spasms. Finally, he punched a button on his intercom and shouted, “Cal, you come in here! You come in here right now, and you fill up this durn dish!”

Only half a minute passed before a portly, white-faced man with rimless eyeglasses entered the room. In his hand he held a cellophane bag filled with Hershey’s candy kisses. It was Cal Stove, the President’s political strategist and top assistant. Slowly, Stove filled the candy dish on the desk, being careful not to let any candy spill over. It was too slow for the President, who snatched up a handful of candies, ripped off their surrounding tinfoil, and popped them into his mouth, two at a time.

The Shade knew that many former cocaine addicts had a craving for sweets, and it had been rumored that President Liar had a sweet tooth. He hadn’t realized, however, that the President was a chocoholic. For years his wife Ada had rationed out his chocolates, instructing Cal Stove to empty the candy dish in the Elliptical Office each evening before leaving. The President had tried to hide chocolate bars in his desk, but Stove had always confiscated those, as well.

Now the President was feeling relaxed and jovial. He smiled at Stove and said, “Hey, Cal, how about a kiss?” and he guffawed as Stove involuntarily took a backward step. “I meant a candy kiss, you idjut!” he said, proffering the dish to Stove.

Stove raised his hand, saying, “No thank you, Mr. President, I’m on this diet.”

“Yeah, well it don’t show,” smirked the President. “So whatcha got for me today, worm-toad? And don’t call me ‘Mr. President’. You know I like you to call me ‘Chief’.

“Right, Chief,” said Stove, “I’ve got good news. Your poll numbers bumped up two points over the weekend. Pretty soon you’ll be back to 30 percent.”

“Ha!” said the President, clapping his hands together, “I knew it. My trip to Kansas to talk to my base musta’ really done it. I had those folks eatin’ out of my hand.”

“I guess that’s what you’d call your sub-base, Chief,” said Stove. “You know your real base is in the board rooms of corporate America.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said the President. “You shoulda’ heard the cheers when I pointed up to the sky and said, “Somebody sure loves stem-cells! Then this band starts playin’, and Cobby Teefe starts singin’ ‘Jay-zus Loves the Little Stem Cells’ with all these snowball babies behind him. That really brought the house down.”

“Um,” said Stove, “I think that’s snowflake babies, Chief.”

“Whatever,” said the President, waving his hand in annoyance. “You got anything else for me? Because I got to make this decision about bombing Iroon, and I want to know what you think.”

“In my experience, Chief,” said Stove, “it’s not a good thing to bomb when you’re under 30 percent. Maybe you should give it a week. Go to Mississippi this time and talk about teaching intelligent design in the science courses. That should bump

you up enough to get the bombs dropping.”

“Good idea, wart-toad,” said the President brightly. “But I better not take my veep with me, ‘cause they take one look at him and they won’t believe a word I say!”

Both Stove and Liar had a good laugh at the Vice President’s expense, and then the President began to regale Stove with all the Kansas jokes he had heard on his recent trip.

The Shade tried not to hear the snickers, giggles, and other inanities spilling out of the mouths of the President and his aide. He tried to blot them out by reflecting on how he, Lancelot Stanley Carter, II, had been easily able to enter the office of the most powerful man on earth, how his experience in the icy crevasse had turned him into The Shade, someone who could lower his heartbeat will and thereby remain unobserved by others while he observed them. Lance Carter was well aware that this singular power required judicious use, for the fruits it bore could be used for either good or evil.

The Shade snapped out of his reverie. The President and his aide had left the room. The candy dish was almost empty. The Shade stepped out from behind the drapes and put his hand under the picture frame behind the President’s desk. The tape recorder was still there. He placed it with the one he had taken from the library in the flat, metallic box that his friend had made for him. It was a titanium alloy, designed to block any radiation from coming through to erase the tapes. He was confident that the tapes could now be taken safely from the Grey House. Before slowing his heartbeat so that he could slip away undetected, The Shade took a candy kiss from the dish. The President would never miss it.

…TO BE CONTINUED…..

Next Week’s Exclusive DI Installment to be entitled…