'What were they?'

'No idea! How do you steer a hippo?'

'You don't a steer a hippo! You don't like where the hippo's going, you should have used that dragon instead!'

They nearly fell off as the first of the hippo's legs sunk in the mud, and it tilted forward; then the other legs followed, and it regained its balance and stopped in the middle of the swamp.

See Annie K. chessforum. :)

-----

... piece of 'work!' bellowed Gudga, to no particular effect.

Before the tab could take effect, Gudga had the wit to mumble “you don’t…’.

Years of working together effectively conjoining them at their respective mental hips allowed Ilya to rescuscitate and extrapolate his brother’s dotted line with the realisation that they needed to abandon hippo and make their way once more into the breach with a daring gambit.

Abandoning the rank swamp, the darted diagonally across the rapidly diminishing firm sections of the deck that were as yet untouched by the mini-bots.

Grabbing several directed EMP charges from the ammunition belt of his battle shorts (bought for a song and a sonnet at SolMart’s recent sale), Ilya activated the modules with direction seeking frequencies that instantly shorted out the bots, and derailed the Caissa Logarithm into reproducing Reti’s pawn problem to the exclusion of all else.

The deck was instantly clear of bots, hippos and dragons. The ship's circuits were again online and the twins were back in business.

'Don't shoot! Can't you see who I am?!'

'Prove that you're me,' Ilya said, not taking his finger off the trigger as he changed the laser's power level from 'fry' to 'overkill'. For someone unexpectedly face to face with himself, he was remarkably calm; it helped that he had years of training for all situations, and also that he was holding a great big laser gun.

'When I was tiny I had a plush alligator named Fatlips and pretended to like those ugly girls from next door so they'd share their chocolate with me.'

'Checks out,' Ilya said and obliterated himself.

His nerves then finally got to him - shooting themselves has that effect on some people - and he stared blankly at the warm puddle on the floor where the clone had been. Gudga shook him, prodded him, and finally slapped him across the face with a stray hedgehog that had somehow avoided vanishing.

'Come back to your senses! If there are stray copies of you around, you'll need to change all your passwords and bank chip and security numbers <right now>!'

'Yaah... yeah. You're right, I'll just -'

'Nooo...' he whispered, blanching. 'Mom and Dad's clones... you know they override us, and the experimental set, there's no telling... we have to find out right now!'

When their parents died in an unexpected meteorite shower accident three years ago (leaving in hold 24, besides the regular set of senior replacement clones, also an "experimental" clone set of themselves that they had been working on, with the nature of the "experiment" not being quite known to the boys), the twins had decided to forget to immediately activate their clones. They liked having the run of the ship for a while.... a while that had kept getting longer.

Now, they may have to deal not only with the wrath of their legal parents (the senior clones being as good as the originals in the eyes of contemporary law), but the unknown - although, knowing their parents, probably not mostly harmless - experimental clones as well...

- that lot disappearing into the U-Tube! If they get near the ship’s AI we’ll be caught in the fluid faecal flow in an aquatic vessel composed of barbed metallic extrusions without a manual steering device. I’ll see what these humps in section 27 are up to. Let’s meet back at section 24 with some good alibis and some flowers.”

Ilya paused and rolled his eyes at his sibling, adding under his breath “and a few disruptors”.

Gudga stumbled, mentally gnawing on and then quailing at the novel concept of possibly committing multiple Experimental-Parental-Clonicide for a moment or two. He nodded when he realised that maybe Ilya meant they needed extra munitions in case their parent clones were in trouble, although the blob of jelly on the floor may have disputed that conclusion in its pre-jelly state.

Think, he thought. So far, the intruders had created quite a bit of mayhem but nothing that had actually hurt them - at least not much, and not directly; the only minor incident had been Gudga falling on top of him, and they likely hadn't caused that on purpose. They had been distracted and slowed down, though...

Suppose they somehow knew about the experimental clones... but how could they? Had Mom and Dad told somebody? Did they have friends who wanted them to return? Silly question, Ilya supposed; any friend would want them back. But then, why wait three years before acting?

And if they were after the clones, where did the stray Ilya they'd run into come in?

Try another line of inquiry. If the intruder <wasn't> a friend of their parents, who could it have been? Neiras were the obvious explanation, but they didn't normally do subtlety; they just shot at you, life over, insert coin. It couldn't have been the police, and it probably wasn't the military... Spispopyd agents, maybe? Or ninja pirates? But that was silly - he wasn't even sure if ninja pirates were real.

His eyes fell on the remaining hedgehog. It was just a hedgehog, wasn't it? Admittedly it had shown no indication it would vanish, but that was hedgehogs for you - they just couldn't be...

But then that reminded him of his own lamentably late clone, and the question of where he had figured into things. Ah yes - given that he himself was, as far as he could tell, quite alive, so his clone had no business being up and about - that was what had led him to assume that for some reason, all the clones in hold 24 had been brought out of hibernation. Which meant that...

Well, among a lot of other things, it meant that this had been the worst time possible to decide to split up from Gudga. He had a clone in that hold too, of course, now presumably also at large...

Next time they meet, he might want to make sure that was the same brother he was kinda used to that he was facing.

They had to meet before Gudga got to section 24, although on reflection he thought it might be possible to work out which Gudga was which in case the two met, given his real brother was wearing an atrociously virulent yellow and poisonous green outfit that made Ilya’s eyes bleed.

Casting a last glance at the steadily spreading pool of hedgehog jelly, Ilya dived headfirst into the Newton slip taken by Gudga and popped out at the corridor to the AI centre like a champagne cork, but without bouncing off the ceiling or too many walls.

'What's up?' Ilya asked. 'Did you catch them?'

'Sort of,' Gudga replied, 'I chased a couple down the corridor to sector 22 and shot right through one, really through; no effect.'

'A projection?'

'If it wasn't, I don't want to know. I did down a few more of those odd ball-bots, though.'

'Something, at least. What's the story there?' He pointed at the writing on the walls.

'Dunno... it says "All analysis and no play makes chess a dull game" over there, and there's a bit near the "Do Not Pull This Lever" lever that looks like jumbled song lyrics, but most of it I can't see any sense in.'

'The 'work wrote that?'

'Suppose so.'

Ilya groaned. 'Nothing else? No clones? No ninja pirates? No new ideas for who the intruders might be?'

"Why, yes. It is I out there..."

----

... did look a bit like those aliens Mom and Dad met before we were born, that we've seen those holos of when we were kids.'

'Hmmm.' Although Gudga still seemed to be the same old walking ode to bad fashion sense, there was something about the way he was avoiding meeting his eyes - or referring to more recent past - that alarmed Ilya.

'What did we have for dinner yesterday?' he asked suddenly.

Gudga attempted a nervous laugh. 'Why, you think we're hallucinating, or something?'

'No, do tell.' Ilya said flatly.

'Oh, come on, who remembers what he ate yesterday?' Gudga looked away. When he looked back, Ilya was pointing his gun straight at him.

'Gudga made dinner yesterday, and that doesn't happen very often.' he said quietly. Then his voice rose. 'You are wearing my brother's clothes, clone! What have you done to him?'

'I saw what you did to your own clone!' The other flared up in return. 'I figured it was him or me, and guess what? It wasn't my fault we were thawed out prematurely, and it's not my fault you can't just politely ask a guy to go back to his fridge until needed, either!'

'You dirty rat... you killed my brother!'

'Bet you always wanted to say that' retorted "Gudga 2" sarcastically, 'but it's a misquote. Besides, if I may point out, you killed mine.'

'Oh.'

'So how about we call it quits, bro? You know...' he looked Ilya squarely in the eye now, 'you have always worked with your brother, and right now I'm the only brother you've got. And from what I overheard, "right now" also happens to be just the time when you need all the help you can get. What say?'

Heh. Nicely done with the sartorial exchange. Let's see what the updated version of our merry little band of psychopaths get up to next.

****

A noise behind them! Whirling as one, the twins beheld two shapes at the same moment that saw the start of a rapid succession of events: a charge of pure adrenalin caused Ilya’s trigger finger to spasm and fire the laser at the left of the two figures, noticing with bemusement that the laser splashed from a point several centimetres above where that figure’s heart would have been if it was human.

At the same time a reticulation field settled over both the twins. It contracted quickly, Ilya disengaging his finger from the trigger guard a moment before it would have been broken from the laser being forced at an angle that was not salubrious to the finger’s continued well being. The holding field had them firmly enmeshed and they stopped struggling long enough to gain a preview of their grisly fate.

The figures were human after all…perhaps Ilya’s latent fears about what he would find – or not find - in the clone zone warped his initial panicked impression. In fact not only were they human…

“Hello boys. I see you kids have been having fun.” said the one on the left with a smile that would have scared a velociraptor into vegetarianism and monastic virtue.

I did not know that there are blogs where one can read sci-fi.

Problem with my locality is that there isn't a decent bookstore here. I can only buy sci-fi books only on the occasional times that I go to one of the bigger cities.

I was kept busy this past week reading Baxter's Titan and Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness. Titan starts of realistically about the US space program, quite informative and an eye-opener to me. Then it kind of 'explodes' in the end, with what I regard as an unrealistic society in the US, a hard-to-believe attitude among China's leaders that leads them to crash an asteroid into the Earth, and a peculiar story of the protagonists being resurrected billions of years in the future in a Titan that has become warm and Earth-like with the Sun's expansion into a red giant. IMO Creatures of Light And Darkness isn't good at all compared to the similarly themed Lord of Light, my favorite sci-fi novel of all time.

Was it worth trying to bluff his way free? He might manage to lie to his parents for a while, but that would only result in even <more> trouble when he was inevitably caught...

No, it wouldn't be worth it. He looked at the wall behind his mother for inspiration, not that he had any choice in the circumstances.

'Aren't you glad to see us again?' asked the figure on the right.

'Shut your trap, you,' said his loving wife, continuing to the boys, 'you've had quite the busy time, haven't you?'

RAT ENTER STONEWALL HEDGEHOG DRAGON PENETRATE OPENING NEVER STUDY AT ALL HELPMATE HELPMATE IN THE KITCHENS...

Had the network been writing down a confused record of all that had gone through its mind?

'It's been so miserable without you here,' said Gudga weakly, 'we felt like killing ourselves.'

...FUDGE CHOCOLATE BABY HIPPOS EXTENDED FEN - - 27...

Fudge? Chocolate? Was there fudge and chocolate somewhere? Ilya liked fudge and chocolate, and in the circumstances it was unlikely his parents would let him get any. Unless, of course, he helped himself...

Would it be worth risking extra punishment if there was not only a moment of freedom in it, but also fudge and chocolate?

Silly question, really...

Mom said something; he barely registered it.

'Sorry, Mom, but now is really not the best time. We were fighting Spispopyd agents, so let us go and help!'

'Really?' It was clear Mom thought he was lying, he was <obviously> lying, she <had to know>... but she never had wanted to accept her sons would lie to her face. 'We've checked all the sensors and the network, and there's <no indication at all> that there are or have been Spispopydians on board or attacking this ship. No detectors are picking them up.'

<VBD> good to see you around here again!

I have read both Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness, but I have to say I don't remember either by now, although I do remember that I also thought Lord was much better than Creatures.

Anyhoo, as for finding SF online: almost anything can be found these days, especially if you already know it - and I will tell you the secret of how to find it. :)

First, whatever you do, do not attempt to search by the "title and author" method. That search will bring you results such as Amazon, dozens of other online bookstores, literary essays, blogs with authors mentioning their favorites, anything - but very rarely the text itself, at least anywhere on the first 10-50 pages of search results. :s

What you should try - if you already know the content of the book you are looking for - is pick a little quote, just long enough to be something unique to that book. It doesn't have to be an important part, in fact the less important the better, since there will be less likelihood of results being cluttered by fellow fans quoting it on their blogs.

These are the trails that will lead you to the online books you seek, straight as an arrow. ;)

For example, one of the easiest ways to find Flowers for Algernon online, is by Googling just the two unique "words": "progris riport" - although that's become a bit of a meme by now, so not really ideally obscure enough for our purposes, but demonstrative of the principle anyway.

For a more typical obscurity, you can try "gray or pastel - not vivid" (a phrase from Dara's joke description of how Corwin may remember her in Guns of Avalon) to find http://85.17.122.144/bookreader.php....

Another gift search string, especially for you, doc (use the quotes for exact search):

"Murugan went to hell"

---

'And that,' Ilya asked, 'is supposed to be a good thing?'

Meanwhile, he was barely managing to hide his astonishment at the discovery that Mom reacted as if Spispopydians showing up here was actually likely enough to be considered at all. Suddenly, he wished he knew more about them. Well, might as well play it up, then, and tie it in with... uh, whatever their actual problems actually were.

Looking pityingly at their sons, Dad released the reticulation field, and murmured as the boys rubbed and restored circulation back into all their parts “you mean the one with all the microdrones and a defunct Caissa Logarithm, on one side of the barrier, and a pock marked deck with a pureed hedgehog on the other? Ye-e-ss, we’ve seen it.”

“And you haven’t asked yet why we’re still alive or whether we’re the clones.”, and glancing at each other again, this time Mom posed the inexorable question; “or why you didn’t activate the contingency plan that was supposed to happen in case something happened to us, or,” and she paused meaningfully, “whether for that matter one or both of you is a clone.”

Ilya and Gudga looked at each other recognising in each’s eyes the growing panic their formidable parent things all too easily provoked.

Carrying on cheerfully, Dad commented to the terror stricken duo "and how you managed to get the ship infested with every mini-bot this side of the Horse Head Nebula is one that we'll be greatly interested to hear. In the meantime," he continued casually, "let's wind those little suckers up with a few well directed ship board emp bursts.", and removing his ultrasonic screwdriver from his utility belt, he gave a sharp clockwise twist to the blue band adjacent to the handle, and tapped in some code. A purple light lit up on the tip of the driver and a momentary ship brownout followed to protect ship circuits from the pulse Dad had asked the AI to active.

- that lot disappearing into the U-Tube! If they get near the ship’s AI....>

Leave me out of this, will you?