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Something awful this way comes OR One hell of an adventure/experience Sponser this page This page last updated on or about 5-19-06 a - j r m o o n e y h a m . c o m - o r i g i n a l

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Many of us often-times crave to experience something new, something different, something exciting. Something wholly unlike anything which has ever happened to us before.

But if and when we get our wish, we may well find the challenges involved overwhelming-- and so switch to hoping for a speedy exit, escape, or rescue from the new circumstances. Uh oh!

But real adventures are like that. That is, such an experience all too often develops into one hell of an adventure, the likes of which you'll love relating to others afterwards-- if only you can survive it in the first place(!) Yikes!

On this page is offered only the most dire and harrowing of tales to be found on this site. Far, far too many of the stories reference actual events in the life of the author (ouch!). But some fiction is to be found here as well.

Only the scariest and/or most arduous or awful from the site are linked here. To get more complete lists of the accounts from which these are selected, please refer to The Shadowfast supercar driver logs, Signposts timeline perspectives on the future, and The Chance of a Realtime online epic.

Please choose your personal path to hellacious adventure or torment from the list below.

In those accounts below incorporating real-life events, details like names, dates, and more have been changed for reasons which should become apparent to readers.

Tales involving my real-life, one-of-a-kind, custom-built car of the 1970s

• When push came to shove; A Tennessee college student working in Texas for the summer succeeds in raising the ire of one dangerous cop to the boiling point, with his custom-built 1969 Mustang. But the student's not the only one with an unusual car. The cop decides to show the student who has the faster car. The hard way.

• Shadowfast versus the tornados; That college student and his Mustang in Texas for the summer get a biblically-proportioned sampling of stormy weather as one memento of their stay.
  The true source of this page is

• Over the edge; Piloting a street car off-road through mountainous wilderness-- even the finest of its era, sporting extras to be found on virtually no other vehicle of the time-- while also being pursued by armed thugs equipped with four wheel drives and motorcycles-- may be one of the biggest challenges anyone could face.

• What goes around...; Accidentally becoming the target of a murderous drug dealer-- who possesses his own gang and the connections to assemble lots of other folks with their own grudges to settle against him too-- puts a college drop out and his custom car into a dead end kill zone from which they must escape or die. No stranger to armed high speed conflict, this drop out (and his car) definitely won't be pushovers.

Selected chapters from the online epic The Chance of a Realtime.

Chapter sixteen: The terror and Chapter eighteen: The siege of the seventh palace both take place within an illegal and murderous virtual reality game secretly created in the 24th century for the pleasure of a single obscenely wealthy (and disturbed) young man. Not satisfied to possess an entire artificial world meant to fulfill every dream and fantasy he could possibly have, the owner has also had thousands of real people abducted, mind-wiped, and connected to the game with the perspective that it is their only true reality.

Jerry Staute and companions happen upon a gateway into the game during their efforts to navigate their way through time back to their own origins. Staute is onboard a massive spacecraft from the future designed to explore parallel universes. An accident of some sort tipped the ship into an anomalous randomized trip across time instead: a condition the crew desperately wishes to escape. They link to the virtual reality in search of a particular data set crucial to continuing their journey. Getting to that data set however, requires them to participate in the world's plot.

This computer generated reality first began as a chaotic mix including most of the fantasy entities from humanity's own early myths and legends: beings like the Greek/Roman and Norse Gods, as well as their monsters, too. Centuries of war between and among such super-powered entities-- with thousands of hapless human beings trapped in the middle-- have already passed before Staute and friends arrive.

Chapter sixteen: The terror offers Staute's own close call with a couple of the many monsters of the realm, while Chapter eighteen: The siege of the seventh palace describes a crucial battle fought amongst the VR's natives themselves.

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Tales of folks yet to be

• The Pearsall saga; A husband and wife team in the early 24th century decide to seek fortune and glory as one of the earliest teams of private deep space explorers. They end up outdoing their mostly better-financed competitors, and even becoming folk heroes to the civilization they left behind, as unknown to the Pearsalls the biggest war in human history breaks out in Sol system during their absence. The war is between humanity and their artificial intelligences. Humanity actually loses possession of their home star system, but are inspired mightily to press to regain the territory, by periodic incoming reports from the Pearsalls about their own travails. The AIs decide to remove the Pearsall thorn by sending a compressed AI assassin in a message to the now faraway couple. What happens next goes into the history books as one of the most brilliant and heroic battles of all time, as the Pearsalls with their increasingly decrepit obsolete technologies face off with a 27th century tech AI, specially designed to either enslave or destroy them. The outcome will have a huge effect on the future of all civilization.