Listy

Lister had never been up to the Drive Room before.

It was enormous.

Hundreds of people scurried along the network of gantries stretching above him.

Banks of programmers in white officers' uniforms clacked away at computer keyboards, in front of multi-coloured flashing screens arranged in a series of horseshoe shapes around the massive chamber. Skutters, the small service droids with three-fingered clawed heads, joined to their motorised bases by triple-jointed necks, whizzed between the various computer terminals, transporting sheets of data.

Occasionally a voice could be heard above the unrelenting jabber of hundreds of people talking at once.

'Stop-start oA3! Stop-start oA3! Thank you! At last! Stop-start oA4! Is anybody listening to me?!'

Lister followed Petrovitch as he zigzagged through a maze of towering columns of identical hard disc drives and people pushed past them, desperate to get back to wherever they had to get back to.

Up above them, Holly's bald-headed digitalized face dominated the whole of the ceiling, patiently answering questions and solving quandaries, while dispensing relevant data updates from other areas of the ship.

Through the computer hardware Lister caught sight of Kochanski, expertly clicking away at a computer keyboard, happily going about her business, just as if nothing had happened. Lister didn't exactly expect her to be sobbing guiltily onto her keyboard. But smiling? Actively smiling? It was obscene. Lister remembered reading in one of Rimmer's Strange Science mags that an Earth biochemist claimed he'd isolated the virus which caused Love. According to him, it was an infectious germ which was particularly virulent for the first few weeks, but then, gradually, The Body recovered.

Looking at Kochanski merrily tippy-tapping away, Lister was inclined to believe the biochemist had a point. She'd shrugged him off like a bout of dysentery.

She'd recovered from him like he was a dose of 'flu. She was fine and dandy.

Back to normal.

They climbed the gantry steps to the Admin level, where glass-fronted offices wound round the entire chamber, like the private boxes which skirted the London Jets Zero-Gee football stadium.

Five minutes later they arrived outside the Captain's office. Petrovitch knocked, and they went in.

'Lister, sir,' said Petrovitch, and left.

The office looked like it had been newly-burgled and freshly-bombed. The Captain was mumbling into a phone buried beneath gigantic reams of computer print-out, surrounded by open ledgers and piles of memoranda.

Lister shifted uncomfortably and waited for her to finish her call.

'Well, you see he does exactly that,' finished the Captain, and before the phone had even hit its holder, and without looking up, she said: 'Where's the cat?'

'What?' said Lister.

'Where's the cat?' repeated the Captain.

'What cat?'

'I'm going to ask you one last time,' she said, finally looking up: 'Where is the cat?'

'Let me get this straight,' said Lister. 'You think I know something about a cat, right?'

'Don't be smart.' The Captain was actually smiling with anger. 'Where is it?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Lister, not only are you so stupid you bring an unquarantined animal aboard.

Not only that,' she paused, 'you have your photograph taken with the cat, and send it to be processed in the developing lab. So, let's make this the last chorus. Where's the cat?'

'What cat?'

'This one,' she shouted, pushing a photograph into Lister's face. 'This goddam cat!'

Lister looked at the photograph of himself sitting in what were unmistakably his sleeping quarters, holding what was unmistakably a small black cat 'Oh, that cat.'

'Where'd you get it? Mimas?'

'Miranda. When we stopped for supplies.'

'Don't you realise it could be carrying anything? Anything. What were you thinking of?'

'I just felt sorry for her. She was wandering the streets. Her fur was all hanging off...'

'Her fur was hanging off? Oh, this gets better and better.' Two of the Captain's phones were ringing, but she didn't answer them.

'And she had this limp, and she'd walk a few steps, then let out this scream, then walk a few more steps and scream again.'

'Well, now I'm screaming, Lister. I want that cat, and I want it now! D'you think we have quarantine regulations just for the hell of it? Just to make life a bit more unbearable? Well, we don't. We have them to safeguard the crew. A spaceship is a closed system. A contagious disease has nowhere else to go.

Everybody gets it.'

'She's better now. Fur's grown back, I've fixed her leg. She's fine.'

'It's impossible to tell. You got the cat from a space colony. There are diseases out there, new diseases. The locals develop an immunity. Now, get that cat down to the lab. Double-time.'

'Sir...'

'You're still here, Lister.

'What are you going to do with the cat?'

'I'm going to have it cut up, and run tests on it.'

'Are you going to put it back together when you've finished?'

'The Captain closed her eyes.

'You're not, are you?' persisted Lister. 'You're going to kill it.'

'Yes, Lister, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill it.

'Well, with respect, sir.' said Lister, taking a cigarette from his hat band, 'what's in it for the cat?'

Lister smiled. The Captain didn't.

'Lister, give me the cat.'

Lister shook his head.

'We'll find it, anyway.'

'No, you won't.'

'Let me put it like this' - the Captain reclined back in her chair -'give me the frigging cat.'

'Look, she's fine, there's nothing wrong with her.'

'Give me the cat.'

'Apart from anything else, she's pregnant.'

'She's what? I want that cat.'

Lister shook his head again.

'Do you want to go into stasis for the rest of the jag and lose three years' wages?'

'No.'

'Do you want to hand over the cat?'

'No.'

'Choose.'

Petrovitch led the way and Lister followed, flanked by two unnecessary security guards. They stopped at the door to the stasis booth.

'Last chance, Lister. Where's the cat?'

Lister just shook his head.

'Three years in stasis for some stupid flea-bitten moggy? Are you crazy?'

Lister wasn't crazy. Far from it.

He'd first heard about the stasis punishment from Petersen. Now that the booths were no longer used for interstellar travel, their only official function was penal. Lister had spent six long, boring evenings, shortly after Kochanski had finished with him, poring over the three-thousand-page ship regulation tome, and had finally tracked down the obscure clause.

The least serious crime for which stasis was a statutory punishment was breaking quarantine regulations. When Red Dwarf had stopped for supplies at Miranda, he'd spent the last afternoon of his three-day ship leave and all his wages buying the smallest, healthiest animal with the best pedigree he could find. For three thousand dollarpounds he'd purchased a black long haired cat with the show name ‘Frankenstein’. He'd had her inoculated for every known disease, to ensure that she didn't actually endanger the crew, and smuggled her aboard under his hat.

A week later he started to panic. The ship's security system still hadn't detected Frankenstein's presence.

It was tricky.

On the one hand he wanted to get caught with the cat, but he didn't want the cat to get caught and dissected. Eventually he hit on the idea of having his photograph taken with the cat, and sending off the film to be developed in the ship's lab.

Finally, and much to his relief, they'd caught him Three years in stasis was everything he'd hoped for. OK, his wages would be suspended, but it was a small price to pay for walking into a stasis booth, and walking out a subjective instant later in orbit around the Earth.

He'd hidden Frankenstein in the ventilation system. The system was so vast she would be impossible to catch, and also provided her with access for foraging raids to the ship's food stores.

So, all in all, as Lister stepped into the stasis booth, he was feeling pretty pleased with himself, or, at least, as pleased as anyone could expect to feel who was actually as miserable as hell.

Petrovitch gave him one last, last chance to surrender the cat, which Lister naturally refused.

As the cold metal door slammed behind him, he sat on the cold smoothness of the booth's bench and exhaled. Suddenly a warm, green light flooded the chamber, and Lister became a non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero. 

He ceased, temporarily, to exist.

Lister spun the cap off the bottle of Glen Fujiyama, Japan's finest malt whisky, and poured a generous measure into a pint mug. Rimmer lay on his bunk, whistling pleasantly, his hologramatic eyes a-twinkle. Every opportunity he got, he tried to catch Lister's eye and wink at him cheerily.

Lister took a gulp of whisky. 'You're loving this, aren't you?'

'Oh, you're not still going on about your impending death, are you? For heaven's sake,' Fake Scouse accent: 'change der record. Flip der channel. Death isn't der handicap it once was. For smeg's sake, cheer up.'

'You are, aren't you? You're loving it.'

'Holly - I'd like to send an internal memo. Black border. Begins: "To Dave Lister. Condolences on your imminent death."' Rimmer half closed his eyes.

'What's that poem? Ah, yes ...

Now, weary traveller,Rest your head,For just like me,You'll soon be dead.'
'You're really sick, you know that?'

'Come o-o-o-on, -' Rimmer made the 'on' last three full seconds - 'it's all you ever talk about. Frankly' Lister' it's very booooring.'

'You are, you're loving it.'

'You're obsessed.'

'You realise when I die' you're going to be on your own.'

'Can't wait.'

'I thought you didn't want that. I thought that's what you were bleating on about before.'

'No, what got me down before wasn't being on my own. It was the idea that you were doing so much better than me. Staying young, and being alive; it was all too much to take. Now, me old buckeroo, the calliper's on the other foot.'

Lister gave up trying to argue. It was just adding to Rimmer's pleasure.

'I remember my grandmother used to say: "There's always some good in every situation."'

'Absolutely, absolutely' agreed Rimmer; 'and looking on the bright side in this particular situation, you are about to do the largest splits you've ever done in your life.'

'So, I get blown up' right?'

'Bits of you do. What's that thing - I think it's part of your digestive system - the long purply thing with knobbly bits? You only ever see them hanging in Turkish butcher shops. Well, whatever it is, that fair flies across the Navicomp Chamber. It was like a sort of wobbly boomerang.'

'Smeg off!'

'Temper.'

'I don't want to die.'

'Neither did I.'

'But it's not fair. There's so much I haven't done.'

Lister started to think about all the things he hadn't done. For some reason one of the first things that came to his mind was the fact that he'd never had a king prawn biriani. Whenever he'd seen it on the menu, he'd always played safe and ordered chicken or lamb. Now he never would have a king prawn biriani.

And books. There were so many he'd meant to read, but hadn't found the time.

'I've never read ... I've never read ...' Actually, when he thought about it, he realised he'd never read any book. It wasn't that he didn't like literature, it was just that generally he waited for the film to come out.

And A Family. He'd always assumed one day he'd have A Family. A Real Family, not an adopted one. A Real One. And he'd always wanted to spend a lot of time doing the thing you had to do if you wanted to get a family. He hadn't done nearly enough of that. Not nearly enough. A lot, but not nearly enough.

He was dimly aware that Rimmer was speaking, and Lister grunted occasionally to give the impression he was listening. But he wasn't. He was remembering his old job, back on Earth. His old job parking shopping trolleys at Sainsbury's megamarket, built on the site of the old Anglican cathedral.

One time the manager had caught him asleep in the warehouse. He'd constructed a little bed out of bags of salt, hidden from view behind a wall of canned pilchards. The manager had two GCSEs, a company car and a trainee moustache.

He'd lectured Lister for an hour about how, if he applied himself, within five years he could be a manager himself, with a company car - and, presumably, a trainee moustache. On the other hand, the trainee moustache warned him, if he didn't apply himself he'd be parking shopping trolleys for the rest of his natural.

Lister, who knew he was no genius, also knew for absolute certain he was one hundred and forty-seven times smarter than the manager. Nonetheless, he'd found this pep-talk extraordinarily disturbing. He knew he didn't want to spend all his life parking shopping trolleys, and equally he couldn't get excited about becoming stock control manager at Sainsbury's Megastore, Hope Street, Liverpool.

The manager took him by the lapels and shook him. He told Lister he had to make the grade and become an SCM, or his life would 'never amount to shit.'

And now, as he sat there knowing he'd probably only got a few hours to live, it occurred to him for the first time ever that the pompous goit with the trainee moustache would probably turn out to be right. And that hurt. That really hurt.

And that was how he spent most of the evening. Tugging at the whisky bottle, reviewing his crummy life. And it wasn't the mistakes he made that haunted him, it was the mistakes he hadn't got round to making. He flicked through the catalogue of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises. He thought about the magnificently unlikely string of coincidences which had brought him into being.

The Big Bang; the universe; life on Earth; mankind; the zillions-to-one chance of the particular egg and sperm combination which created him; it had all happened. And what had he done with this incredible good fortune? He'd treated Time like it was urine, and pissed it all away into a big empty pot.

But no, it wasn't true: he'd had triumphs, a little voice from the whisky bottle was telling him. He'd been at the Superdome that night in London when the Jets played the Berlin Bandits in the European divisional play-offs, when Jim Bexley Speed, the greatest player ever to wear, the Roof Attack jersey, had the greatest game of his great career. He'd seen that famous second score when Speed had gone round nine men, leaving the commentators totally speechless, for the first time in history for fully nine seconds. That was a triumph. Just being there. He was alive and there that night. How many men could say that?

Then there was that time at the Indiana Takeaway in St John's Precinct when he'd tasted his first shami kebab, and become hopelessly and irrevocably hooked on this Indian hors d'oeuvre. True, he'd dedicated a good deal of the rest of his life searching for another truly perfect shami kebab. And, true, he'd never found one. But at least he'd tasted one. One food-of the-gods, perfect shami kebab. How many men could say that?

And then there was K.K. True, they'd only dated for five weeks. And the last week had been a bit sour. But four weeks of Kristine Kochanski being madly in love with him. Kristine Kochanski, who was so beautiful she could probably have got a job on the perfume counter at Lewis's! And she'd fallen in love with him!

For four weeks! Four whole weeks. How many men could say that? Not that many, probably.

And that night in the Aigburth Arms when he played pool. That night when, for some unknown reason, everything he tried came off. The Goddess of Bar Room Pool looked down from the heavens and blessed his cue. Every shot tnuk! Straight in the back of the pocket. They couldn't get him off the table. He was unbeatable.

Three and a half hours. Seventeen consecutive wins. He became a legend. He never played pool again, because he knew he wasn't that good. But that night in the Aigburth Arms he became a legend. A legend at the Aigburth Arms. How many men could say that?

The whisky bottle clanked emptily against the rim of his glass. He'd drunk half a bottle of whisky in two hours. How many men could say that?

He was drunk. How many men could say that?

He fell asleep in the chair. How many men could say that?

At three in the morning he was woken up by Holly.

'Emergency. There's an emergency going on. It's still going on, and it's an emergency.'

Rimmer sat up in bed, his hologramatic hair pointing stupidly in every compass direction. 'What is it?'

'The navicomp's crashed. It can't cope with the influx of data at light speed.

We've got to hook it up to the Drive computer and make a bypass.'

Lister slung his legs over the bunk. 'The navicomp? The navicomp in the Navicomp Chamber?'

'If we don't fix it, the ship will blow up in about fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.'

Lister jumped down to the floor. 'This is it, then.' 

Rimmer looked at him.

'Don't go.' 

'What d'you mean "Don't go"? You said yourself I can't avoid it.'

'Let's get it over with. What was I wearing?' 

'Your leather deerstalker, and that grey T-shirt.' Lister pulled on his deerstalker with deliberate precision. 

Then he walked across to the washbasin and lifted the metal towel rail off its support. 'Let's go.' 'What's that for?' Lister patted the towel rail against his left palm. 'I'm going out like I came in - screaming and kicking.' 

'You can't whack Death on the head.' 

'If he comes near me, I'll rip his tits off.' Then he was gone.

Romulus

Hope

ELIZABETH: 

I'm so sorry, both of you. 

It's small words for something so big. 

[SNIFFLES] 

I don't care. I brought us here to Albany because this was my home at the end. 

I was here, working as an attaché for the UK Ministry of Defence when everything fell apart. 

And it was then that I realized just how quickly any chance for a future can crumble, even when everyone does their best. 

You've been through so much, but with everything that's happened, Hope, do you still believe A Future's possible? 

HOPE :

I, uh... [SNIFFLES] 

Uh, I did. 

ELIZABETH: 

You should, because despite all of the fallen cities, it still is. 

And getting you to think differently, 

think more positively about The Future, 

yeah, that was why we pushed you to go on this journey. 

And I'm sorry, but now that you see 

how fragile civilisation is, 

I Trust that you're understanding that no... 

No One makes it alone. No one. 

It takes everyone coming together to have a shot at that future. 

HOPE :

No, no, you... you said you were taking me to My Father. 

ELIZABETH: 

I hope I can. 

HOPE :

You hope? 

ELIZABETH: 

We both know you're not ready. 

For A Community with a long-term plan predicated on generational education and... and scientific progress, 

geniuses are an invaluable resource, 

but A Genius who's a rebellious, strong-willed troublemaker, that's a risk. 

Used against us, those qualities can spread like rot. 

And they make any kind of common goal unattainable. 

We can't bring in someone who would jeopardize that. 

Don't misunderstand me. 

We want you to work with us. 

Now, you have a lot to offer, but I cannot bring you in to join your father unless I know that, 

despite your grief and despite your anger, 

you are fully committed to being an asset for The Future, right, to dedicating the rest of your life to learning, furthering his research, and handing that knowledge onto the next generation 'cause only then...

only then will you be an asset to The Future. 

HOPE :

I am. That's why I came with you guys, because I'm ready. 

ELIZABETH: 

And I-I think you need more time. 

HOPE :

For what? 

ELIZABETH: 

To think about what you want, Hope. 

What do you truly want? 

I'll need your answer by dawn. 

After all the shit you just put me through, I can just walk away, and you're gonna let me? 

ELIZABETH: 

[CHUCKLES] 

Um, I'm giving you that option, yeah. 

You'd have every reason to, 

given the extent of our manipulation. 

HOPE :

I'll take my chances. 

Alone. 

ELIZABETH: 

You think you can find your sister and friends? You can't. 

Out there on your own, you won't make it out of The City, never mind to any kind of Future. 

Being alive today, that's A Gift, 

and you can choose to waste it alone, waste all of your gifts,

or you can fight for a future... 

with others, for others... 

so that what happened here and to the , souls in Omaha and your friends back home never happens again. 

You don't have to like us, Hope, 

but you do have to embrace what we're fighting for. 

The choice is yours. Hope. 

The Dunn Memorial Bridge 

is the only way out. 

It's eight blocks east. 

I'm not recommending it. 

COOL HUCK :

You really doing this? 

After everything I did to get her here? 

She could die.

ELIZABETH: 

Yeah, she could, 

or she could choose to join us. 

We need her to choose. 

Mission incomplete

Remus

[Romulan Senate chamber]

SHINZON: 

The Romulans had somehow gained possession of your DNA 

and I had been created, and when I was ready 

they were going to replace you with me. 

Put a Romulan agent 

at the heart of Starfleet. 

It was a bold plan.

PICARD: 

What happened?

SHINZON: 

As happens frequently here on Romulus, 

a new government came to power. 

They decided to abandon the plan. 

They were afraid that I might be discovered and that it would lead to war. 

...Not quite the face you remember.

PICARD: 

Not quite.

SHINZON: 

A lifetime of violence will do that. 

They broke my nose, my jaw. 

...But so much is the same. 

The eyes, surely you recognise the eyes.

PICARD: 

Yes.

SHINZON: 

Our eyes reflect our lives, don't they? 

And yours, so confident!

PICARD: 

…so I'm not as tall as you expected?

SHINZON: 

I had always hoped I would be two metres.

PICARD: 

As had I.

PICARD: 

How did you end up on Remus?

SHINZON: 

They sent me there to die. 

How could a mere human survive the dilithium mines? 

Not that it mattered, as I was no longer part of their plans against the Federation. 

In those terrible depths lived only The Damned. 

Together with the Reman slaves I was condemned to an existence of unceasing labour and starvation under the brutal heel of the Romulan guards. 

Only The Very Strongest had any Hope of Survival. 

I was only a child when they took me.

Then I didn't see the sun or stars again for nearly ten years. 

The only thing the Romulan guards hated more than the Remans... 

...was me. 

But one man took pity on me. 

The Man that became My Viceroy. 

He protected me from the cruelty of the guards. 

He taught me How to Survive.

And in that dark place where there was nothing of myself, 

I found my Reman brothers.

They showed me the only True Kindness I had ever known.

PICARD: 

You're doing this to liberate The Remans.

SHINZON: 

That is the single thought behind everything I have done. 

From building the Scimitar at a secret base to assembling my army. Finally coming to Romulus in force. 

I knew they would never give us Our Freedom — I would have to take it!

PICARD: 

But how many Romulans died for Your Freedom?

SHINZON: 

…Too many. But The Point is, finally 

The Empire is realising there is a better way. 

And that way is Peace. 

...You Don't Trust Me.

PICARD: 

I have no reason to.

SHINZON: 

You have every reason. 

If you had Lived My Life 

and experienced 

The Suffering of My People, 

You'd Be Standing Where I am.

PICARD: 

If you had lived My Life, you would understand 

My Responsibility to The Federation. 

I cannot allow My Personal Feelings to unduly influence My Decisions.

SHINZON: 

All I have are my personal feelings. 

I want to know what it means to be Human. 

The Remans have given me a future. You can tell me about my past.

PICARD: 

I can tell you about my past.

SHINZON: 

Were we Picards always warriors?

PICARD: 

I think of myself as an explorer.

SHINZON: 

Well, were we always explorers?

PICARD: 

I was the first Picard to leave our solar system. 

It caused quite a stir in the family, but I'd spent my youth...

SHINZON: 

...looking up at the stars, dreaming about what was up there, about...

PICARD: 

..new worlds. .

...I'm trying to believe you, Shinzon. 

...If there is one ideal the Federation holds most dear is that all men, all races, can be united. 

...What better example. 

A Starfleet Captain standing in the Romulan Senate. 

...Nothing would make me more proud than to take your hand in friendship. 

In time, when that trust has been earned.

Kirby on Survival

  

“Now, the idea that A Story is a form of Communication — and entertainment — is one of those facts that appears self-evident upon first consideration, but that becomes more mysterious the longer it is pondered. 

If it is True that A Story has A Point, then it is clear that it is pointing TO something.

But What, and How? 

What constitutes Pointing is obvious when it is an action specifying a particular thing, or a person by a particular person, but much less obvious when it is something typifying the cumulative behavior, shall we say, of
A Character in A Story.

“ There is an old saying: "That which doesn't Kill You, makes You Stronger." I don't believe that. 

I think the things that TRY to Kill You, make you Angry and Sad. 

Strength comes from The Good Things : Your Family, Your Friends, The Satisfaction of Hard Work. 

Those are the things that will keep you Whole. Those are the things to hold onto when You are Broken.

— Jax Teller

"What Happens to People when they are acted-upon by Powerful Ideas from Outside Them?"

AND...

"What Then Happens to Those Powerful Ideas, when They get inside Those People's Heads..?

There are Tigers in The Night.

Creatures bearing great scars inflicted by wrenching confrontations -- lethal rushes on dark, unyielding ground where the body pours all it's strength into fitful instinctive thrusts.

This is The Real Thing! The primal struggle. Throughout history it has cried out for dramatisation on A Cave Wall, The Written Page, or The Panel of a Comic Book.

In my attempt to create a serious novel for our medium, I have chosen that most basic of experiences, one we have all shared at one time or another -- SURVIVAL. I have taken this innate response to danger and have portrayed it in mythological terms.

The concept is simple. Friends and Enemies squaring off in various ways, for various reasons, on some Eternal Battleground where all is won or lost and the debris is cleared away for the next conflict. THEY are Evil, WE are Good. THEY are Plotters and Traitors, WE are Loyal and Clever. THEY are eternally responsible for Our Woes, so WE will someday pull up our guts, stop the shadow-boxing, and go in for The Kill.

Thus I am doing what mankind has always done. I've turned these emotions and reactions into gods, and brought into view the awesome images that haunt our dreams. So it has been throughout the centuries. 

When Zeus' and Hercules' time had passed, Mercury and Mars arrived on the scene. France sent Napoleon's Grande Armée on tour; England subsequently hailed the unshakable heroes of Rudyard Kipling. 

Idols rose and fell all over the world with an odd and fantastic nobility that fairly flipped our history books. 

How we loved them all -- our Horatios at the bridge, our Transylvanian Draculas. 

Grandiose figures such as these symbolized The Real Thing. Territories immemorial have been covered with Average Joe types doing what they've always done "in the name of (fill in the name of your choice; all sides have continually offered so many). 

When my turn came at the draft board during World War II, I chose Superman as My Guardian. Tarzan, at that moment, seemed somehow related to my early teens. Superman was the electrifying hero of the day. Who was going to rub out a guy who hid behind such a patriotic and invincible image? There was even talk in the army about General Eisenhower trading pulp magazines for copies of Action Comics. How could I have landed in a better outfit? It eased my trepidations about having my hair parted by a twenty millimeter shell. 

Experiences like these seem to stimulate and guide one's thoughts into avenues where one's humanity must be examined in relation to The Past, Present, and Future. Darkseid, Highfather, and the rest of the cast have always been sincere expressions of my feelings - reactions to all the things I knew were out there in The Night, like the scrabbling of an unseen army of claws, or the beating of wings in nocturnal vigilance over sleepers in repose. 

Today The Real Thing is something we've never known before, a new something not yet devised, shaped, or defined. It is something we must deeply consider, since Darkseid looms ever larger, like a great, monumental cobra moving ceaselessly and vengefully. 

Ever-present, he is thwarted, sometimes outsmarted, but always eager to swallow us en masse and integrate us into his push-button paradise where his every wish is fulfilled. 

For Darkseid is the god of the silo that houses the death-package. He rules the toxic wastelands and merrily increases their rate of expansion. He seeps into our hatreds and prejudices, and nurtures our biases until they become time bombs --primed and ready to activate The Worst in us. 

Darkseid is playing for keeps in a cosmic minefield that's never supposed to blow After all, isn't that where we all are? Isn't that where we live? Aren't we at the apex of the Big Blast? Well, that's the backyard I'm playing in. 

How is it going to turn out? Suffice it to say that like Darkseid, I too play for keeps. You see, I'm walking that same cosmic minefield. What I have in mind for the Hunger Dogs graphic novel will make your blood race. What will they do, these gods whose situations so strangely resemble our own? The bottom line involves choices. 

Neither gods nor humans have ever stood calmly in a minefield forever. 

Good or Evil, they are bound to choose. And when they do, you will see The Truth of all that motivates us. As a thinking being, you have the obligation to choose. If the fate of all mankind were in your hands, what would your decision be? 

As a Writer and An Artist, I've drawn my answer.