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Stories from the Verse
Versers Versus Versers
Chapter 82: Hastings 185
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Chapter 81: Beam 55
It passed through Lauren’s mind that there were a dozen ways she might save the child--child, it was, perhaps four or five years old, obviously having escaped supervision and headed for the playground on its own. She might be able to lift it telekinetically, or put a shield around it, or telekinetically stop the truck. Yet she had just arrived, and taking a moment to learn what did not work would be fatal to the child. She could not count on those abilities in this situation.
Those thoughts were perhaps not so coherent as that. Rather, she saw the situation and immediately decided that she was going to have to run faster than she remembered having run before to reach the child in time, and before she had thought as much as that she was sprinting toward the road. One of the jumbled thoughts in her mind was a high school friend who used to joke about kissing bulldogs whenever there was a close call with a large truck. Another was that once she reached the child she was probably going to be hit by the truck, and she was going to have to use her skills to reduce the impact from the truck, and the impact from hitting the road, and hope that one way or another she managed to be out of the path of the vehicle. Yet she was mostly running on reflex at this point, and that as fast as she could.
As she stepped into the road with seconds left, she saw a young girl standing looking rather helpless on the far curb. Lauren shouted, “Catch,” and plowing into the child half pushed half threw her toward the girl.
She hoped that this would be enough, as at that moment the truck connected. It knocked the air out of her lungs and the sense out of her brain, and for a moment she felt herself sailing through the air rather helplessly, but did not feel the landing she was anticipating, and consciousness failed her.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with ten other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #347: Versers Scrambled. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
