Chris Huisjen

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Thirty-One

Alice has always been the smartest girl I know.

But Sora’s a genius.

She got really into Sun Tzu last year—into maneuver and strategy and how to apply them to get to her goals. Not that she knows what her goals are, but when she does, she’ll be able to pursue them.

According to Sora—and Sun Tzu—there are five faults that can lead a general to ruin: recklessness, cowardice, temper, delicate or offendable honor, and caring too much abo...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Thirty

Chapter One

A long time ago, in eighth grade last year, Sora and I got caught smoking under the bleachers.

We didn’t exactly get caught, really. We started a fire. The end result was the same, though.

But we didn’t stop. We just changed plans—changed the math. The Truth Club had to go on, even if we’d gotten in trouble. So we met in a different place, made sure there wasn’t anything nearby for the ashes to catch on, and kept smoking our ritual ciga...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Nine

Math was always my favorite subject.

It didn’t lie. It didn’t play favorites. If you understood how to divide, you could divide anything—except zero. If you knew the quadratic formula, you could graph parabolas. If you—

You get the idea.

Normally, I can solve problems really fast, and I can usually get them right. Mrs. Helquist thought I was a prodigy. She wanted to move me into some higher-level math classes, but I either needed the prerequisites or some private tut...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Eight

Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown

- - - - -

Twenty minutes later, I’m back in Provisional Reality ARC, without Alice this time. She’s on her way back to her room in SHOCKS Headquarters to sleep it off, and I’m back with the Recovery and Stabilization Teams. The same ones that were ready to shoot at me just a few minutes ago.

I step out of the portal and into the computer room. L5-4 has connections with every machine now, and she�...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Seven

Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown

- - - - -

Lieutenant Olivia Rodriguez hit the far side of the merge portal on her hands and knees; she’d learned from last time, and her unbuckled helmet and facemask fell away. All around her, RST troopers dry heaved—or vomited up their breakfasts if they hadn’t read the briefing file before eating. She checked her hip for the thermos that was vital for her primary mission, then found the submachine gu...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Six

SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 15, 2043, 9:41 PM

- - - - -

Alice pulled on her pajamas in Claire’s bathroom, even though the night was still young. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do here. She could stay up and argue with Li Mei or go to sleep and try whatever Claire wouldn’t tell her about.

The choice was easy, even if she was second-guessing it now.

The sleeping pills she’d gotten from Itsuki were long gone; SH...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Five

I actually tried out for the middle school soccer team at Landsdowne.

That was the first time I met Alice’s best friend, Candice. She was a year younger than my sister. Maybe she still is; I don’t know if she’s survived this or not. Truthfully, I hope she did. Lying my ass off, I don’t care.

The point is that I tried out, and Candice was a bitch even at thirteen. I wanted to be keeper. She kept saying I was too short. She wouldn’t defend if I was keeper. On and on. She w...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Four

There will be two additional chapters over the next two days as I work on the first deadline for Writathon. Enjoy the chapters.

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Downtown Victoria, British Columbia - June 15, 2043, 8:04 AM

- - - - -

Victoria was dead.

Alice walked the downtown drag, passing an outdoor shop with a four-pointed star and a broken glass window. It looked like it had been looted, both recently and in the past. L5-1 pointed and made a h...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Three

[SHOCKS Internal Communications Log] EVG Control Zone, August 13, 2032

Trooper Sarah Evans; Director Zoltan Carroll

- - - - -

Carroll: Status report. Now.

Evans: We’ve successfully captured the 'molly and are in the process of extracting it from Temp Site 652. ETA to Headquarters is twenty-three minutes. The LT is down, but stable. We lost Perkins, though. Body is…non-recoverable.

Carroll: Fi...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-Two

The amount of free processing power shocked James.

He hadn’t realized how much of his attention was on Claire and SHOCKS Victora/Vancouver Island until the girl vanished. Thousands of free processing loops had just appeared out of nowhere, with no pressing tasks to assign them to. It was heady to free up thirty percent of his power suddenly, and for a second, he contemplated cutting off even more people. Even one thread per person was too much to sacrifice. He had so much to think abo...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty-One

Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

Strauss’s feed to his drone cut off instantly. One second, he could see the red-lit room he’d been investigating near the ship’s stern. The next, half his vision was static. “Command, contact with the drone has been lost. Mark time.”

“Time marked. 11:53 Local Victoria Time,” Ramirez said.

It took a couple of blinks for Strauss to reconfigure his face shield for regular vision. “...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Twenty

On my nature trip up to Ucluelet, we spent a lot of time on the beach. My friends—or at least, my classmates—wanted to find hermit crabs. I tried to tell them that hermit crabs were more tropical, but they didn’t listen to me.

Not the point.

When Alice and I visited Telegraph Bay, the fungus was starting to grow and cover everything. We watched the water coming in. The air was full of spores, and I couldn’t stop sneezing, but the waves rippled and shimmered just l...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Nineteen

Hello Readers,

I am participating in both NaNoWriMo and Writathon this month with this story, so expect more frequent updates (between 3 and 4 a week, ideally). We'll return to a slower posting rate next month. 

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Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites. But they do. And we know it.

Alice was Dad’s favorite up until a month or two after Mom died—at least, I think she was. That’s when she put on the mask and started...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Eighteen

I know a few things now.

When I’m in over my head, for example. That one’s easy to figure out; all I have to do is look around. But I also know from trying to fix things that Alice is the only reason things are even as okay as they are. She wasn’t always who she was—not until she had to grow up and put on the Mom mask. And she held it together…somehow. She couldn’t have made it more okay.

Even though I know that—even though this reality isn’t real—I stil...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Seventeen

Victoria, British Columbia - April 13, 2033, 4:23 PM

- - - - -

Dinner’s going to be chicken nuggets, ketchup, and frozen veggies.

And probably prunes.

I’m busy sitting in Alice’s lap and ‘reading’ Green Eggs and Ham with her. She’s doing most of the reading, but I’m following her finger with my eyes and giving it my best effort. We’re both curled up on the bunk bed’s lower bunk, surrounded by stuffed animals. Miss Mar...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Sixteen

The Truth Club used to listen to music under the bleachers.

It only happened on days when the soccer team wasn’t practicing, and only once we were done sharing our truths. Keith provided the music most of the time, and he had the weirdest taste.

Oldies. So many oldies.

It was mostly stuff from the 2000s and 2010s, and it was all angry, anti-The Man stuff. Rage Against The Machine, Rise Against, Linkin Park—bands like that. Usually, it was just music, but we’d watch vid...

Halcyon System 2 Chapter Fifteen

Robert Pendleton shivered in the armchair.

Everything was fucked up. Everything was wrong.

Everything hurt.

This wasn’t his La-Z Boy, and the can he was sipping on tasted too sweet. The hint of Budweiser mixed in the apple juice was just enough to trigger bad memories but not enough to blot them out. He needed a drink—a real drink, not the watered-down, heavily medicated drinks coming out of his vending machine.

But every time he stumbled to ...

Halcyon System Two Chapter Fourteen

It wakes up.

The world around it is null and void. An empty space. Not black, not gray, but truly colorless. Just like it’s always been. It swims in the void; it is the void, and the void is it.

It’s been waiting a long time in this non-place—for its whole non-life. Not that time has any meaning here, of course. It’d stretch its legs if it had any. It’d breathe if it had lungs. But it doesn’t—not yet. All it can do is wake, sleep, and wait.

That’s fine. It’...

Halcyon System Two Chapter Thirteen

Hello, Readers. Today, Magical Girl Undergrad's second book came out on Audible and Kindle. If you're curious about some of my other writing, but couldn't get started before it all stubbed, this is a great time to jump into it. You can find it at the following link:

Oaths and Outfits (Kindle)
Oaths and Outfits (2024-10-01 14:09:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Halcyon System Two Chapter Twelve

Hello. Due to forces beyond my comprehension (but also entirely outside of my control), Monday's chapter will appear on Tuesday instead. I'm going to be traveling, and while it's written, I won't have time to edit it the way it needs to be edited. Also, Magical Girl Undergrad's second book comes out Tuesday, so...yeah.

Busy busy busy!

Thanks,

Aest

SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 8, 2043, 3:26 PM 2024-09-27 13:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post