Cycle 99

Hannah Semmelhack
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  • Science Fiction
  • Weekly Series

Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Cycle 99 is single-narrator — for now 👀 — and follows the crew of the airship Bannockburn on their fateful voyage to find the mythical island of Quiteaways. Little do they know, their voyage is being observed by beings larger-than-life... you. What blessing, curses, nightmares, and daydreams will you bestow up on them?

  1. Episode 1

    C99.001 — The Story Before The Story

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | Theme Song | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon  Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  [String of characters included so I can claim this podcast on podchaser, will be removed later: y5n220JJd79gfNWQSuzk ] “Thatch Argall’s adventure began when their bedroom exploded. Or, at least, that’s what the local newspapers reported, when the fire had been doused and neither hide nor hair of Thatch was recovered in the smoking remains.” This is not my story to tell — it’s Benoit’s. I was chosen to recount the ninety-ninth of our tales, and Thatch was a Hero of the ninety-eighth — the story before the story. But we have time. You’re still calibrating our four lenses. Wait, do you not even know about your own lenses? Sheesh. Benoit did warn me, but I didn’t believe him. You chose me to be your lighthouse-keeper, this time around. The beam of the lighthouse is focused by four lenses, which — so I’m told — are used to select the heroes for your stories and zap them over to us. ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ and all that. There’s the golden Lens of Fortitude, the rose Lens of Clarity, the emerald Lens of Attachment, and the purple Lens of Nightmares. I don’t much like looking through that last one. You calibrate all four, and once they’re set, I can use them to bring each hero to your island. The lenses are still calibrating to identify our first hero. So I figured I’d peruse the lighthouse library in the meantime. While we wait, how about a peek into our previous tale? Maybe it’ll jog your memory. I’m sure I won’t read it as well as Benoit, but I’ll do my best.  … Thatch Argall’s adventure began when their bedroom exploded. Or, at least, that’s what the local newspapers reported, when the fire had been doused and neither hide nor hair of Thatch was recovered in the smoking remains. The upstairs bedroom of the shared university housing was toast, one might say, absolutely sizzled. Following the event, one or two unsavory conspiracy theory bloggers posted conflicting accounts, the university held a memorial service that was decently well-attended (if only for the mediocre hors d’oeuvres), and the local news got several weeks’ mileage out of it. But nobody truly mourned Thatch — who could have? Everybody that might’ve shed a tear for the young inventor had absconded from this mortal coil long before it was Thatch’s unexpected time. Still, there were those in the world who understood what had actually happened. Some simply felt it in their bones, attuned to this sort of disturbance. At the moment of the explosion, a psychic — employed by the matriarch of the Worthsomes, a family of wannabe American aristocrats — gasped, far away from Thatch’s Manchester student flat. In the sterile, pristine living room of a Silicon Valley penthouse, Mystic Talulah’s jeweled bangles twittered around her wrists like a flock of clockwork birds as her hands fluttered to her turbaned head. A new cycle has begun, she hissed, leaning into the act to ensure that her most generous client stayed that way. Mrs. Worthsome was so shocked, she dropped her glass of organic Napa Valley wine — what a loss. In the children’s room next door, Horace Jr. began to cry, waking Lottie from her nap. Still further afield, in a sweaty Atlantic City boat repair shop, a grease-coated ex-pilot felt the disturbance, too, as a clenching desire in their heart. They swiped graying hair from their forehead and crawled out of the engine compartment of a red-and-yellow tugboat. Marielda Vovk needed to see the sky. Others were attuned to events of this nature in less instinctual ways. The day the first local news story about the explosion broke, an email notification arrived in the inbox of Berthold Spitz. That night, he sat on the edge of his young daughter’s bed and presented her with her first throwing knife. Eight days later, Lena Spitz found her uncle standing solemnly at the window of their Hamburg apartment. “Wo ist Papa?” she asked — Where is Dad? But her uncle just shook his head, clasped hands clenching in anger, and Lena knew, in that moment, that her bedtime stories were true. Earth is a strange and wondrous place, yet most humans are blinded by false prophets and pragmatic oligarchs. Thatch knew, though, that there were questions to be answered. As they awakened in a pungent, unfamiliar field, still smoking from the explosion that put them there, Thatch groaned in pain and lifted shaking fingers towards their face, gingerly pulling their infernal, accursed pocketwatch from where the glass casing had shattered against their right eye. Even still, one eye was certainly enough to wonder at what they saw around them. A new world. … The pain was the first problem. Inventors have a fencer’s constitution, and as such Thatch was no stranger to pain — their hands and forearms were littered with errant cuts, bruises, and burns from years of tinkering, sawing, soldering, wiring, experimenting. But their mind screamed at them to get it out, get it out, get it out. Thatch’s hands jumped of their own accord towards their eye, every instinct telling them to blink and rub at it — but another, logical part of them knew not to do that. Instead, Thatch ran their fingers over the face of the pocketwatch, feeling how it had shattered. The surface seemed relatively complete, albeit cracked, with only one large shard of glass jutting outwards — likely the culprit that had done in their cornea. They couldn’t tell whether smaller shards remained embedded in their eye. Remembering the eye wash stations from their first-year chemistry classes, Thatch got on their hands and knees and listened. With whatever luck was left to them, a stream burbled nearby. Thatch crawled towards it until the vegetation beneath their fingers gave way to mud, and then smooth river stones with cool water flowing across them. Thatch rallied their good eye and examined the water. Crystal clear, running smoothly. Calculations, intermingling with the pain, smudged across the quintessential dark under-eyes of an overworked university student. If this was what they thought it was — what we know it is — then there could be all manner of unknown microbes, chemicals, new elements or even new forms of energy, perhaps magic…?  Thatch shook themself, and plunged their hands into the water. They needed to flush any remaining glass from their eye. But the cold, clear water hit their damaged pupil like a lightning strike, and Thatch fell instantly unconscious.  … When Thatch awoke once more, their eye no longer sizzled like omelette. But as they blinked rapidly, they realized something else: though there was no more pain, there was no more sight out of that eye, either. They lay in the mud beside the creek, gazing up at the sunny sky through their left eye, and tried to process what had happened to them. Some flecks of light danced across the murky darkness of their right eye. Clouds scudded across the blue sky through their left. Without the pain to distract them, they could examine where they’d ended up. Thatch pulled themself up and looked around. They’d landed — if that is indeed what had happened — in the middle of a green, grassy field. It could almost be the English countryside, if not for the foreboding and distinctly non-English jungle looming beyond the stream. Dark trees with thick brown bark clustered together, vines criss-crossing between them and strange flowers turning the jungle floor into a riot of color. The biology A-level in Thatch urged them to examine the novel plant life, perhaps to do a quick sketch in a notebook — their notebook! Thatch scrambled to their feet, a little wobbly but otherwise intact. They patted themself down, running their hands along their blue corduroy vest and tattered jeans, counting each of their fingers and wriggling their toes inside their ragged white sneakers. Their clothes were a little singed, pitted here and there with smoking holes, as though Thatch had been sitting a bit too close to a campfire rather than plummeting across space to what they suspected was a fabled, lost island. If that is, indeed, what happened. “Gives them character,” Thatch murmured to themself, shrugging off the damage to their clothing. It’s nothing a little darning couldn’t fix, and Thatch had been meaning to get into mending. Thatch’s other possessions lay scattered through the grass. As they tore their gaze from the jungle (which, now that no lion, tiger, or bear — oh my! — had emerged from its depths, felt more enticing than threatening) and scanned the rest of the horizon. Far in the distance, red mountains jutted into the hazy sky. In the opposite direction (Thatch was still a mite too groggy to properly ascertain cardinal directions), the plains continued on for what looked to be miles. The island smelled of dust and heat, like the crunchy dryness of a wheat field, mixed with something different, something greener — somewhere between mint and cilantro. Forehead creasing, Thatch dropped to one knee and plucked a few blades of grass. They were thicker than the ground cover Thatch was familiar with, and more oily, like fresh rosemary. And their fingers grew sticky as they crushed the little leaves and lifted them up to sniff. Their eyes widened as a pleasant surprise took hold — this was definitely the source of the sweet, herbaceous smell. “Wonder if it’s edible,” Thatch murmured to themself. “Feels like it would make an exce

    C99.001 — The Story Before The Story

  2. Episode 2

    C99.002 — The Trouble with Higgs

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | Theme Song | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon  Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  Your lenses come into calibration, bronze fixtures circling the great, incandescent bulb of the lighthouse and then settling, with a series of four heavy thunks, into alignment. The polished crystals scatter scant filaments of light in their swinging motions, sending patterns of rose, emerald, purple, and gold criss-crossing the ornate wooden flooring. Then, the life of Horace Worthsome, Jr., comes into focus. … “Higgs!” Lottie shouted down the hallway. “Higgs! What on earth are you doing?” Horace Worthsome, Jr., did not reply, except for a muted little whine that barely made it past the goose-down duvet covering his head. There was no reply for Higgs to give, both because he did not know the answer to his older sister’s question, and because replying was a significant portion of what his family called, ‘the Trouble with Higgs.’ When he was a child, Higgs’ first, barely-intelligible word was lightning, because that is what he felt in his brain and his bones every day of his life. The word had taken great effort to form, and Higgs had decided then and there that speaking was basically not worth it. The Trouble had started in Higgs’ infancy, and had taken several physical forms over the years; but in every stage of life, the central problem was that Horace Worthsome, Jr., was not Horace Worthsome, Sr. This was currently very apparent, because Horace Worthsome, Sr., wouldn’t have spent the better part of the last week in bed. Higgs, on the other hand, had only left his cushy warren to do the necessary actions that kept him alive: to go to the toilet, to eat, to allow his team of medical specialists to see him, and to be berated by his father.  Why had Higgs retreated to the safety and comfort of his bed? It wasn’t because of the lightning; Higgs could handle the lightning. It was because Higgs had just turned twenty-one, and on his twenty-first birthday, his father had invited (ordered) Higgs to complete the Worthsome rite of passage, the first step towards inheriting the family’s vast business empire.  Only, Higgs couldn’t do it. More than that, he hadn’t been able to do much else since. At a loss, Horace Worthsome, Sr., had evidently called in sister-shaped reinforcements. Horace Jr.’s door slammed open, adding new detail to the permanent door-handle dent in the wall, a souvenir of Lottie’s customary bombastic entrances and lack of consideration for the Worthsomes’ expensive penthouse. “Get up, Higgs, you’re meant to be at the docks today.” Lottie flounced in, and her prim seersucker sundress and golden-brown curls flounced, too. Higgs gave another indistinct grumble of displeasure, and one pale foot emerged from the lower corner of the duvet. Scanning the off-kilter posters Higgs had never bothered to straighten, the out-of-battery laptop, the sagging shelf of Marvel comic books, and the laundry all over the floor; Lottie finally spotted Higg’s AAC tablet lying forlornly beneath a set of dirty underwear. You see, Horace Worthsome, Sr., had taken great pains to acquire a son. Lottie’s conception and birth had had complications enough, resulting in a brief stint in the NICU. But Horace Worthsome, Sr., had not been satisfied with Lottie. He loved her, of course, and sought to make every decision he could to ensure that her life would be successful and comfortable. But she was a girl. So, despite the advice of their medical team (and the advice of their second-opinion medical team), Mr. and Mrs. Worthsome had conceived another child. And that child should have died several times over. Higgs scraped by through a much longer stint in the NICU, but grew sickly and weak the moment he was brought home. Still, Horace Worthsome, Sr., wanted a male heir to take over the family business, and wasn’t about to let this one go to waste. So with all the force of the Worthsome name (and bank account), Horace Sr. set about keeping Horace Jr. alive at any cost. He cared not whether Higgs spoke via sign language, AAC tablet, or his own tongue; only that he would someday be able to order his employees around with confidence. He cared not whether his son required surgeries or mobility aids, so long as he would someday wear a crisp, expensive suit and command a business meeting. Horace Worthsome, Sr. cared not who Horace Worthsome, Jr. was at all, in fact, so long as he was precisely his father’s son in every way.  Using the tip of her baby-blue ballet flats, Lottie made a sound of disgust as she freed the tablet from the clutches of the dirty briefs. She scooped it up, wiped the fingerprint smudges away with the edge of her dress, and then pushed it towards Higgs, shoving it beneath the duvet as though his thoughts would automatically be translated via its software without the cooperation of his fingers. That was the other Trouble. Whatever neurological mishap had gobbled up Higgs’ speech also raced through the rest of his body from time to time, sending spasms through his nerves that were anywhere from frustrating to painful. On his worst days, even written words escaped his lightning-addled brain. This was no problem for Horace Worthsome, Sr., who immediately supplied a large-text tablet with both a full keyboard (allowing Higgs’ words to be translated via text-to-speech), for when his fingers cooperated; and a simpler, photo-based system of message buttons, for when words became unrecognizable and his fingers flinched and trembled. Higgs was certain that if his father could have arranged for his thoughts to be directly communicated to — or, better yet, controlled by — Horace Worthsome, Sr., no tech startup would’ve been left unfunded until it was achieved. Though, the last time Higgs had voiced this thought to Lottie, she’d easily replied, “Well, if he ever tried, I’d stab his foot with a fork at our next dinner party.” In reality, Horace Worthsome Sr. and Jr. were both satisfied with a combination of the sleek, navy-blue, bulletproof AAC tablet and American Sign Language.  Higgs shoved the tablet aside and rolled over. He lazily signed, “go away!” to Lottie. “Come along,” Lottie cajoled. “Higgs. Higgs. You’re literally living my dream. Do you know what I’d give to be boarding that airship instead of attending Wimbledon with some European prince?” Higgs couldn’t help it: from where his face was smushed into his pillow, he smiled in amusement. He rolled back over, prodded his tablet to life, and tapped out a response. “Belgium or Spain?”  “Oh, I don’t even know.” Lottie sighed and flopped down on the bed. “Take a shower, you louse, you stink.” … Lottie was still there when Higgs dragged himself out of the shower. Bathing was, in general, an ordeal. The painful lightning would shoot down his legs, sending his knees buckling. So despite the supposed urgency of his departure (and to signal his deep protest of the situation), Higgs took his time, sitting placidly on the plastic stool beneath the scaldingly hot water. Now freshly washed and limping, Higgs settled back down onto the bed next to his sister. She was examining her nails (manicured, in a blue that matched her seersucker as well as her shoes). “I don’t want to go,” Higgs signed. “I’ll miss you.” “Worthsomes don’t miss each other,” Lottie scolded. She’d taken to the cold Worthsome pragmatism much more readily than her little brother. But she let her hand fall to the bed, and her fingers, unacknowledged by either sibling, crept along until they had wrapped lightly around Higgs’. “Get your exoskeleton on, I’ll drive you to the dock.” “That car will kill us,” Higgs quipped. Lottie’s ability to pilot an aircraft was famously better than her land-side driving.  “Well, then you’ll be saved from your thrilling adventure,” Lottie replied, unconcerned. “And I’ll be saved from another hot day making small talk and watching two men hit a ball back and forth.” Higgs let out a laugh and set about getting himself fit to operate in public. The real Trouble with Higgs was that nobody could quite figure out what was wrong with him. Through no known chronic illness, physical nor emotional trauma, there was the lightning. So while Lottie watched and idly tapped at her smartphone, Higgs assembled all of the accoutrements he would require for his upcoming voyage. He gathered his tablet (his Talkie, as Lottie called it), including its charger, external battery pack, and small portable solar cell. Then he set about fitting the braces over his knees and lower back. The right elbow brace (a newer addition) went around his forearm and bicep; and a spare walking stick (his ‘Walkie,’ as Lottie called it) was tucked into a special pocket in his satchel alongside a bottle of painkillers. His glasses (for what the doctors could only diagnose as an astigmatism) were placed gently on the bridge of his nose with trembling fingers.  These, of course, were all discounting the various metal plates, screws, bolts, braces, and other assorted implants peppered throughout Higgs’ body, to allow him to remain more or less upright at any given time. And that, in fact, was the real, real Trouble with Higgs; and it was not about Higgs at all. The Trouble with Higgs was that his father had spent the better part of two decades replacing every part of him that Horace Worthsome, Sr., had deemed a potential liability, the same way he fired

    C99.002 — The Trouble with Higgs

  3. Episode 3

    C99.003 — Pink Balloon Pirate Ship

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | Theme Song | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon  Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  The Bannockburn rocked gently from side-to-side as Higgs rested his back on the rickety wooden bed. He had a cabin to himself — courtesy of his family’s investments into the venture — and was grateful for the privacy. Lottie and Monte had deposited him and his luggage here, and then absconded to explore the airship. This would be Lottie’s last chance to see it before the ship set sail and she was relegated back to the normal obligations of being Charlotte Elizabeth Worthsome. The interior of the cabin was constructed from patchwork planks of wood, some pale and new, recently revarnished; others dark and wavy, brine-worn. The bed came equipped with scratchy linens and a lumpy pillow (which would do Higgs no favors), but he was enjoying being horizontal. He rolled to the side, drawing his knees up to his chest the way he used to do when he snuck into Lottie’s bed as a young child and tried not to wake her. Set into the wall on his right, sunlight shot wavering beams through the porthole, illuminating the cabin’s dust motes in their eternal dance. Higgs felt his land-side life already slipping away, and his mind began to tug at his father’s leash like the Bannockburn pulling against her mooring in the gentle winds. He drifted, and his thoughts caught on the mysterious waltz of the dust particles. For the first time in a long time, he imagined them like the particles of the Large Hadron Collider all the way in Switzerland, a place where Higgs had never been, though he longed for the chance to someday see it. A hint, but more than you’ve ever had before, at the caliber of Higgs’ dreams.  Beyond the porthole, the rest of the airship docks stood at attention, set against the Pacific Northwest’s cliffs. Airships were anchored, hovering just above the docks, parked next to docking towers: small platforms with gangway ladders and, if they were particularly fancy and accessible, elevators to carry people and luggage up to the decks of the ships. Regular old naval vessels were docked below them, for economy of space, moored in the shadows of the behemoth dirigibles. Two bays down, Higgs squinted to make out an airship about to take off. A sky-sailor, their features indistinct at this distance, cast off the mooring lines and kicked their foot against the docking platform, then scrabbled up the side of the balloon via the rigging, perhaps to check something. The airship lurched, the engines kicked in, and off she went. That would be Higgs, soon. Not the young fellow monkeying across the rigging; Higgs would leave that to his more agile compatriots. But, against his better judgement, Higgs would be setting off on his own journey very soon. He could feel the belly of the beast above him; the airship’s great, helium-filled interior. The Bannockburn and her sister ships were unlike the early German zeppelins, with the crew compartment stuck to the balloon’s underbelly like a suckerfish to a whale shark. Modern constructions kept the conical dirigible balloons, but the ship itself dangled beneath them like the basket of a hot air balloon, attached with several cables and a net of rigging. The reason for this design was, again, one of whimsy. Instead of the sleek, subtle compartment tucked flush against the outer edge of the blimp, airships designed for this new age of exploration sought to cobble together great vessels of old — literally — winding up with an aesthetic closer to that of a pirate ship dangling from a balloon. ‘A pirate ship dangling from a balloon’ is how Higgs always imagined the airships, and this was because of Lottie. Though this new design predated her by several generations, it was the reason she had been allowed to take flying lessons in the first place. When Lottie had been little, she’d glued one of her birthday balloons to the hull of Higgs’ toy pirate ship, snapping the three main masts off the toy in the process. This had so delighted their father — claiming that Lottie was showing the spirit and passion of his father, Harold Worthsome III — that he’d agreed for her to start her flying lessons that very summer. Higgs, who was more enamored with his sister’s genius than the original toy, had only ooh’d and ahh’d at the new pink balloon pirate ship. Unbeknownst to Lottie at the time — though she would later become an expert on the subject — her little party trick did, in fact, reflect the prevailing theory about venturing forth to find the fabled lost island, and it goes like this: The past is littered with the vessels of the greatest sailing nations: Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s failed expeditions to find what the Chinese call Mount Penglai, the immortal realm of the gods; fleets of wa’a kaulua, the Polynesians’ double-hulled voyaging canoes; Ancient Greek triremes and quinquiremes, Viking longships, Swahili dhows. So, too, is it littered with sailors, some long lost, some painstakingly returned: Odysseus, Amelia Earhart, Jaume Ferrer. When the Wright brothers broke new ground (pun intended) with air travel; when Russia put Sputnik into the sky paving the way for space travel and satellites; everybody thought that finally, finally humans would be able to locate Atlantis. Yet still, it eluded those who sought to map it. And, more to the point, the arrival of modern technology finally legitimized the skeptics who believed that everything to be discovered about our world had already been discovered, and there, quite simply, was no fabled, lost land, and never had been. There were two families, two wealthy and powerful families, who still believed. The Worthsomes and Spitzes were joined, first, by financing and piloting the Graf Zeppelin’s famed around-the-world voyage in the 1920s (though they could not agree on whether said journey should begin and end in America, as the Worthsomes insisted; or in Germany, the homeland and construction site of the Graf). Though the war put a damper on whimsical, exploratory air travel (as well as the finances of the Spitzes, who relocated to America during those tumultuous decades) the postwar generation, coming of age in the 1950s and ’60s, were not about to give up their inherited dreams of a lost land. Much like Lottie’s pink balloon pirate ship, Harold Worthsome III — Lottie’s grandfather — had set about to do much the same on a life-size scale. He asked himself, what had all those historic sailors had in common? A certain joie-de-vivre, eyes turned toward the horizon, sparkling as they peered at a map, at a globe, at an astrolabe, through a telescope, at the stars. In the 1960s, Bernard, head of the new generation of Spitzes, rejoined forces with Harold, already a benefactor to the Museum of World Naval and Aviation History (located in Washington, DC, of course). From this particular form of familial alchemy, the Bannockburn had been born: a traditional Galleon (but without its three masts), built using historic ship-building techniques drawn from the greatest sailing nations of the world, and attached with steel cables to the largest and most aerodynamic zeppelin balloon post-war Hamburg could construct. The Bannockburn was the prototype, spawning a new family of airships, where the priority was to pack as much story, whimsy, and fame — what Ancient Greeks called kleos — into its construction as possible. Then, and only then, Bernard and Harold believed, would they finally chart a course for the lost island. And it worked. Once. Higgs swung his legs off the bunk and planted his feet on the ground, then reached for the straps on his leg braces. He deftly tightened them, stretched, and then reequipped his back brace. Though the Bannockburn was not a seaworthy vessel, Higgs could smell the ghosts of naval history’s past, the salt-worn timbers that make up her interior and hull. Not only was she built using historic techniques, but the Worthsomes had bade the Museum of World Naval and Aviation History to donate planks of wood from their most famous and storied vessels. Higgs stood and stepped towards the walls of his cramped cabin, then traced his fingers along the smooth, dark wood. He didn’t know which corners of history were joined together in this particular spot, but he could feel the significance oozing out of it, like stepping into a place of worship.  Higgs’ hand jumped back from the wood as the lightning zinged down it, like a static electric shock. He flexed his fingers, wincing, and then glared at the offending section of wall. There were letters etched into it, dug deep into the wood like magical runes. Azalaïs, je viens. Azalaïs, I’m coming. Higgs rubbed the pads of his fingers together and then yelped again. He adjusted his glasses, then examined his fingertip. A small splinter of wood poked out. He carefully flicked it away, then retrieved his satchel and made for the door. … Curiosity was not something Higgs often had the opportunity to indulge in, though he was brimming with it. As Worthsome skills go, curiosity was only considered valuable — in Horace Senior’s eyes — as a means of making charming small talk at high society events, gathering intel with which to woo investors or intimidate competitors. This particular skill is not one at which Higgs excelled; charm, he certainly had, but it took rather more patience to experience Higgs’ charm than most dinner party guests were willing to afford him on a given evening. And while Higgs’

    C99.003 — Pink Balloon Pirate Ship

  4. Episode 4

    C99.004 — Eyes on the Knives

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | Theme Song | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon  Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  Lottie walked with measured steps towards the ship’s railing, the sticky plastic of her flats clicking against the sweaty wooden deck. She reached the starboard edge as a pile of passengers and crew disembarked from the dock tower’s elevator, carrying trunks of supplies. Higgs’ attention was briefly caught by the gray-haired Captain Vovk, who shot him a wink as they effortlessly leapt up onto the starboard-side rigging, disappearing onto the outer edge of the balloon. As departure approached, the deck around Monte and Higgs bustled with activity; ropes flew and were tied here and there, crates and boxes were secured in their proper places, engines were checked and double-checked. Higgs was agog at the sight and sound of it all, and intimidated by the purposefulness and speed with which preparations unfolded. He huddled closer to Monte, relishing in his steadiness, and returned his attention to his sister.  “Lottie!” Horace Senior shouted again. His voice caught the rising wind, and the Bannockburn pressed into the soles of Higgs’ shoes, sending lightning through his knees at the increased pressure.  Monte straightened his uniform, running his hands along the crisp maroon lapels and re-fastening the top gold button, which had come undone at some point during his and Lottie’s explorations aboard the Bannockburn. He swiped a hand along his brow to wipe away the sweat. “Is your dad really what Lottie tells me?” Monte asked, voice thick with weighty fear. Higgs cringed. His fingers moved to his tablet, but he hesitated. What to share? Monte’s eyes travelled to Higgs’ frozen fingers and back up to his face, the irises wide and brown and shining like two river-worn stones. He folded his hands behind his back. “I see,” Monte replied, with soft understanding. Higgs was saved from the indecisive battle he waged against his words. Using sign language, words could slip through Higgs’ fingers the same way they tumbled from the mouths of his peers, exploding out of him in an excited rush. When he and Lottie first began to speak to each other in sign language, after several months’ private lessons, Higgs had marveled at the power of his hands, the speed with which his thoughts could reach Lottie, the way he could scream with big sweeping gestures and whisper with subtle, delicate flicks of his fingers. Normally, he loved his AAC tablet, too, because it allowed him to retreat into a slower pace of thought, a more tacit mode of speech. The visibility of the device forced the world to allow him time before expecting to hear his thoughts. Now, there were too many words he might share with Monte in this moment of departure. Well-wishes for him and Lottie; warnings about his family. All these thoughts tried to escape through his fingers at the same time. But he felt the muscles of his throat relax as Monte smiled at him, relieving him of the great and terrible duty of confiding. Lottie shouted something down to Horace Senior, but it was lost as an abrupt gust of wind rose up. The Bannockburn strained against her moorings, eager for a new adventure. Higgs stumbled into Monte, for whom a rocking deck was a normal state of affairs, and didn’t resist as Monte caught his elbow and helped him get his balance. The moment Higgs stood on his own two feet once more, Monte’s hands returned to their politely clasped position behind his back, his shoulders squared with the respectful stance befitting of his station as a uniformed sky-sailor. With a piston’s exhale and a wave of Lottie’s pale white hand, like a flag of surrender, the elevator began to raise the Worthsome patriarch up towards the docking tower. Two men came into view moments later. The first was Horace Senior, hair combed back and lifted in a fashionable quiff, handlebar mustache oiled and glistening in the sun. He had his suit jacket folded over one arm and the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up, his chest and arms nearly bursting the buttons. On his wrist, a bright gold Rolex Smartwatch glittered. Next to him stood Edgar Spitz, Lena’s Onkel Eddie, hair loose in spun-gold curls and colorless lips pressed together in a calm smile, eyes as sharp as nails as they raked over the deck of the Bannockburn. He had a suit jacket of his own draped over one arm, but wore a skintight, black, long-sleeved shirt tucked into khaki pants underneath, and appeared immune to the heat of the summer day. Like his niece, he had thin, fine-boned wrists, made only slightly more bulky by the knives surely concealed within his sleeves. “Hello Father,” Lottie greeted. “Uncle Eddie,” she added. “Sorry for shouting, Lottie, dear. I expected you to already be on the plane to London. I hope you aren’t dilly-dallying?” Horace Senior frowned, and his mustache convulsed like a dying rodent with his discontent. “You asked me to get Higgs moving,” Lottie replied with a charming smile. “As you can see, delivered and ready for his voyage, Father.” “Let the girl live, Horace,” Mr. Spitz murmured placidly. “If she hasn’t already caught the eyes of European royalty, they’re the fools we always took them for, and she’s better off pursuing other opportunities.” “Well— I—” Horace Senior sputtered, face reddening. “Plus, as I always remind you, I have a Spitz or two who might suffice.” Edgar’s words cleaved calmly through Horace’s blustering like a hot knife through butter. “To whom might you be referring? Hah! Surely not Eike?” “What’s wrong with Eike?” Edgar replied placidly. “That kid wouldn’t be able to tell the back end of a blimp from its front!” Mr. Worthsome chortled. “No! No! And who are you?” Horace Senior’s attention turned, abruptly, to Monte. Monte gave a crisp salute and stood at attention. “Monte Morgan, sir.” “And why are you on my dirigible?” “Mon— Mr. Morgan was just helping me and Higgs get the luggage aboard,” Lottie interjected quickly, clasping her father’s massive arm with her delicate fingers. “I asked him to show me around; he’s been helping to prepare the Bannockburn for her journey. You know I can’t resist such a gorgeous airship.” “Hmph.” Mr. Worthsome huffed. “Good man. Well, thank you Morgan, your services are no longer required.” Mr. Worthsome paused. Monte paused, too, before realizing he was being summarily dismissed. “Lo— Ms. Worthsome, Mr. Worthsome.” Monte nodded formally to Lottie and Higgs. “Mr. Worthsome, Senior.” He jerked his head at Horace. “And Mr. Spitz. It’s been an honor to meet you all.” With that, Monte excused himself. He started for the docking tower, then thought better of it. With a twinkle of his eye — which caused Higgs to properly understand Lottie’s interest in the man — Monte swung around. He seized upon a section of rigging, flicked it to create a makeshift loop in which he placed one foot, and then stepped casually off the side of the airship. Lottie and Higgs both leapt forward in surprise, but Monte just waved his hat in a playful salute as he sailed calmly down the rope and alighted easily on his feet upon the dock below. “How fun,” Mr. Spitz remarked idly. “Hmph. Interesting lad,” Mr. Worthsome replied, scathingly downgrading Monte from good man to interesting lad.  “Yes,” Lottie replied, dreamy-eyed once again. “Oh, Father, please let me go on the voyage! I could learn so much! I’d be able to improve my piloting skills—” “Your mother and I have already discussed it and it will be a no, little bird.” Horace Senior warmly swept his daughter into an embrace and spun her around, despite the severity of his decision. “Now go wait on the docks, I’ll be along in a moment, and then she’ll be nearly ready to depart. How about we stay and watch her go, see your brother off safely? There’s a good girl.” The only sound Lottie allowed to escape her lips was a sigh of bland resignation, as though she was disappointed but understanding. Her brow furrowed, however, in a look of great determination visible only to Mr. Spitz (who made no indication that he had noticed) and to Higgs. Edgar Spitz approached Higgs and pulled him into a one-armed hug. “There we are, now, you remember what I taught you?” Edgar pulled back and slipped a knife from his sleeve, holding it deftly in his hands by the pointed tip. He faced the stairs leading to the forecastle, pinched his eyes in practiced focus, and then flicked the knife. It stuck, tok, right on the crack between two beams of wood. Edgar clapped Higgs on the shoulder and offered him a warm smile. “Eyes on the knives, Higgs, never on the prize. And if you have any problems on board, my niece will handle it.” “Thanks,” Higgs signed, and Edgar returned an ASL “you’re welcome” before rejoining Lottie on the docking tower. That had, in part, been an early form of allegiance between the younger generations of Spitzes and Worthsomes: the brothers, Berthold and Edgar, wanted their children to learn sign language. Horace wanted his son and daughter to be trained in self-defense, including with knives. Lena, Higgs, Lottie, and the other two Spitz children (Eike and Karin) had always treated it like summer camp. This should give you some idea of how little they understood about summer camp.  Higgs’ father approached next. Barrel-chested and large, Horace boomed, in voice and tread, no mat

    C99.004 — Eyes on the Knives

  5. Episode 5

    C99.005 — Light

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon | Lore Compendium Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  It was not one but two individuals who caught Higgs’ eye across the deck of the Bannockburn, and their visages momentarily sent a cold shock down his spine, incongruous with the elation surrounding him. Marielda Vovk hummed in tune with Bannockburn’s engines, swaying at the helm as the ship danced through the wafting air currents in the age-old waltz of captain and vessel. Not even their delight — which Higgs could feel swelling within his own chest — could counter the sour dread that washed across his features, leaving a taste like rotten milk on his tongue.  “Higgs?” Lena signed, his name a jagged zig-zag that travelled from her nose to her shoulder — a name sign inspired by the sign for lightning.  The man and woman, both older than Higgs and Lena, carried themselves like the cool professors whose classes Higgs always enjoyed the most. The man had half of his long, black hair pulled into a top-knot, and the woman sported a bun held up by two jade hair sticks. As Higgs watched, both adults reached up at the same moment to brush errant strands from their faces with identical motions.  “People from the Tú family,” Lena signed. “Kelvin and Arden, I think. I don’t know a lot about them, but Onkel Eddie has worked with another branch of the family before. These two are irrelevant. Aren’t they? Higgs?” Higgs immediately relaxed, shoulders drooping as the recognition faded. It was a passing, perhaps familial resemblance, and nothing more. With the shadows of his past once again carefully imprisoned deep in his psyche, the siblings’ professorial air instead put Higgs in mind of his studies, which he sorely missed.  Lottie had blazed through a dual Bachelor’s degree in history and engineering at Harvard, with a focus on historical aircraft and naval design. She was now in the arduous process of convincing their father that a doctoral degree in the same subject was worth her time, and Higgs reckoned Horace would cave soon. Lena had two degrees in computer science and ostensibly worked for her father’s FinTech company (Higgs didn’t think he’d ever seen her in the company of a computer, tablet, or smart device of any kind). Karin, the youngest, was only just starting her undergraduate studies. Eike was on the cusp of a literature degree, and Edgar seemed liable to allow them to continue their academic career if they wished.  Compared to his sister, Higgs found academic study a hardship that he was determined to conquer, even if it took him twice as long to do it. Between leaves of absence due to health issues (and, now, due to adventure), obligations to his father and his family, and the limiting capacity of his day-to-day energy levels and chronic pain, Higgs had taken his physics degree more slowly than most of his peers and was about halfway through. He should be coming up with a topic for his undergraduate dissertation. Instead, here he was, nearly crashing onto the deck of an airship bound for lost lands that might not even exist.  But the bitterness ebbed, falling away like the glittering surface of the Pacific racing by far below. Higgs didn’t reply to Lena, just turned to the sky to chase that damning sense of deja vu from his head. It was difficult to keep his worries top of mind when the fresh cold wind wrapped around him, his stomach danced with the deck’s dipping and rolling, and the crew’s call-and-response about rigging and sails and engines pinged back and forth, punctuated by the creaking of Bannockburn’s trusty, storied deck. Around him, white tufts of clouds dotted the blue landscape, the sky and the ocean one with each other as the ship carried Higgs off on his first adventure. Then Higgs felt a hand on his shoulder. … Your lenses creak and groan as they attempt to settle on your next chosen hero. Clarity circles the great lighthouse lantern, sliding easily in its place. Smaller versions of the same lens flick out of Clarity’s metal machinery like little monocles and chirp as they zero in on additional characteristics of our next hero. Attachment and Nightmares do the same, travelling along bronze axes that criss-cross the lightbulb like the rings of Saturn. The Lenses begin to coalesce, filtering the light to find our next hero. Fortitude swings around, coming up to kiss Clarity’s ring when— Hang on. Okay. I had to give it a good ol’ kick. The Lens of Fortitude got stuck? Somehow? It was jiggering back and forth between two settings, skipping like a broken record. It sucked. The sound was really awful, and it turned the lantern into a strobe light for a second. A broken mystical lighthouse is not my area of expertise. And, see, this is why I knew it should’ve been Thatch. I bet you don’t even remember why you chose me. I can assure you, it was a dumb reason. Trust me. Anyway, I oiled the mechanism, so it shouldn’t get stuck again. And I think all four Lenses have settled down. We can keep going with our second hero— Oh. Goddammit. Twins? … Tú Hǎiyáng and Tú Hǎixiáng didn’t know who was technically older. Hǎixiáng swore that she remembered being jiějie (older sister) when they were kids, but then their parents had shipped her and her brother off, uprooting them from Taitung City in 1989 and sending them to Vancouver to live with their aunt. At some point during that transfer Hǎixiáng became mèimei (little sister) and Hǎiyáng was called gēge (older brother). In the end, though, that mattered little; growing up in 1990s British Columbia, both siblings sought to assimilate as quickly as possible into Canadian teen life and thus did not concern themselves with Chinese kinship terms. They became saddled with names that were easier for their classmates to pronounce — Kelvin and Arden — and regularly evaded their aunt’s attempts to instill any fluency with Mandarin. That, very likely, would’ve been the most interesting thing to happen to them, had it not been for the pocketwatch and the paper boat. Going off to university was the first time Kelvin and Arden had lived apart. Kelvin found himself in far-away Manchester, looking for an excuse to spend his university years travelling around Europe. Arden, the more studious of the two, wound up closer to home at UBC and made a point of regularly visiting her aunt on the weekends. One such weekend, Arden went home to find her aunt tied to a chair, a knife at her throat, and an origami paper boat sitting placidly in her lap. The paper boat contained instructions. You don’t know that whole story, not yet. But you know that Arden and Kelvin took a leave of absence from school, and when they returned, something very dear to you was no longer in its proper place. Your pocketwatch, now stolen, passed from the twins to Kelvin’s friends at university, Priya and Thatch. Death’s inescapable scythe followed in its wake.  Thankful to be rid of the artifact (and seeking to evade the arrival of any future origami paper boats), the twins decided to change their names, reclaiming their original Chinese given names and anglicizing their surname in an attempt to evade whatever dark corner of their past still had them in its clutches. They transferred schools and returned to finish their degrees together, at UC Davis, as Hǎiyáng and Hǎixiáng Tide. Now, two decades since that inauspicious paper boat, Hǎiyáng was a noted professor of linguistics and archaeology at the Université de Montreal, with a focus on ancient languages and writing systems. Hǎixiáng was a professor of ecology and conservation science at McGill. Both siblings, perhaps out of a sense of duty to right past wrongs, had taken to activism in their spare time, advocating for endangered indigenous languages, plants, and animals across Canada. When their universities agreed to invest in the Bannockburn’s latest voyage, the twins had, seemingly by chance, been independently chosen to represent their institutions.  Both had leapt at the chance to find a new adventure that would define their lives.  … “Excuse me, would you mind taking a photo of the two of us? I want to send one to our aunt before we lose cell service.”  Hǎixiáng eyed the two twenty-somethings as her brother tapped on the young man’s shoulder. The young woman was sharp in every aspect, from sharp elbows and sharp nails to a sharp look she sent the twins’ way as they approached. The young man looked more unsteady, a leather satchel over one shoulder, white button-down a little rumpled where it was tucked into tailored khakis, one hand shakily running through waves of close-cropped golden-brown curls, like a desert at dusk. He reminded her of a younger Hǎiyáng, actually, who dressed in rumpled professor chic. But the look that young man was giving her — as though he’d seen a ghost! Hǎiyáng’s hand darted back from the starchy white material of this youngster’s shirt, and Hǎixiáng’s fingers twitched in sympathy. “Static shock,” Hǎiyáng muttered with a light laugh. “Sorry ‘bout that.” “Hopefully it’s not a storm brewing,” Hǎixiáng replied. She held out a hand. “Sorry to startle you, I’m Hǎixiáng Tide.” The young woman stretched out her hand. “Lena Spitz.” They shook hands. “Hǎiyáng,” her brother said, and reached out to shake. “Lena,” Lena repeated, politely. “And this is Higgs.” Higgs nodded, then tapped on his tablet. “Higgs Worthsome,”

    C99.005 — Light

  6. Episode 6

    C99.006 — A Googie Monstrosity (Cycle 98)

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon | Lore Compendium Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  Oh, Thatch. They don’t know what’s coming, do they? And I can’t even warn them. Okay. I need to see what you saw. The story you were told about what happened. At least, in the case of Cycle 98, we’re on equal footing, you and I. I don’t remember a lot of it either, especially the early days. … The clouds marched across the sky over Thatch’s head, and the air currents shifted just enough to deliver to Thatch a sweet smell on a warm breeze.  “Well, I guess I’d better see what that’s about,” Thatch muttered to themself. They clutched the pocketwatch tightly in their hand and followed the smell with their nose in the air. The creek had broadened into a rushing river, and as Thatch continued to follow it, great stones began to crop up on either side. Thatch scrambled over the boulders clumsily, calloused fingers sliding against the smooth surfaces. They examined the type of stone critically, regretting their mediocre grades in geology. As the sun beat down, Thatch paused, perched atop a proper sitting-rock. The slab was balanced on several others, and the river trickled through beneath them, calling and echoing like the clucking of birds. “No, wait,” Thatch shook their head and peered between the rocks, blinking away the scalding sunlight to better examine what lurked within. Sure enough, there they were. Even the uninformed could have identified a pair of ducks, male and female.  But Thatch was far from uninformed. Their eyes took in eider-like black markings along the plumage, then widened at the collar of black feathers that circled the male’s neck. The ducks’ bills were tipped in black, as though they had been dipped in ink. Thatch leaned down, trying to get a closer look at the female; but she was comfortably hidden in the small nook created by the shoreline rocks. “Well, you can’t be Labrador ducks,” Thatch informed the pair, who burbled back at them. “That makes no sense.” Thatch straightened up and sighed, longing for their trusty birding book. Their thoughts left it unclear whether the nonsensicality of this encounter was due to the fact that Labrador ducks had been native to North America (and Thatch was loathe to imagine that this magical island was part of North America — although they would have accepted Canada in a pinch) or due to the fact that Labrador ducks had been extinct since 1875. But if these ducks were Labrador ducks…  Thatch flipped to the least-singed page of their sketchbook, drew a nub of a pencil from their pocket, and then began to sketch. … By the time Thatch had finished their quick sketch of the Labrador ducks, sweat was running down their back from the bright sun, and the smell of pie had only grown more present — and more inviting. Thatch tucked away their sketchbook and pencil, and took a water break. They were getting tired, and hunger had begun to gnaw at their stomach. They’d rolled their sleeves up to their elbows and had taken off their sneakers to dip their feet in the cool running water. Feeling thus refreshed, Thatch clambered across the rocks toward the grassy meadow, then followed the smell where it curled tantalizingly around the curving edge of the dark jungle. Nestled casually in the crook of the meadow’s elbow, where the jungle continued to grow deeper, darker, and taller on Thatch’s left and the river dipped down on their right, was the very picture of a 1950s American diner with a shiny sign proclaiming its name: AUNT BETTY’S. A Googie monstrosity, Aunt Betty’s was all silver, glass, and bright red neon paint on the outside; and the view through the windows promised similarly crimson vinyl booth seating within. Incongruous, however, with the diner’s classic style was the great wooden waterwheel attached to one side, churning away as the river, deeper here, ran its marathon course over the landscape. Outside was Aunt Betty herself, a woman in her fifties, wearing two knee braces as she weeded a vegetable garden on her hands and knees. Perched on the diner kitchen’s windowsill sat a perfect pie with a single slice cut out of it, wafting its buttery deliciousness into the air like siren song. Similarly perched beside the pie on the same windowsill was a woman. A beautiful woman. Nay, the most beautiful woman — and the cleverest. She never looked more beautiful than now, stuffing her face with Aunt Betty’s pie, a smudge of vanilla ice cream across her nose. The spoonful of berry-red filling traveled gracefully towards the pink lips of Azalaïs d’Altier. Her fingers carried the callouses of two decades’ adventures, and a red flower from Betty’s garden was woven into her hair, a loose cloud of zigzag coils. She was, as always, luminous, her brown skin the color of new light, like where a firefly’s flicker meets a summer evening, or like when night gives way to dawn. She was clad in a long brown duster over a white cotton blouse, tight riding pants, and brown leather boots. Azalaïs let out a great belly-laugh (the most beautiful sound!) at something Aunt Betty said, and then her forehead furrowed (the most beautiful sight!) when she spotted Thatch. The plate of half-eaten pie clattered to the windowsill as Azalaïs slammed it down and leapt from her perch. The noise startled Aunt Betty, whose hand went to her lower back, and Azalaïs quickly helped her to her feet. She pointed excitedly at Thatch, and Aunt Betty squinted to make them out on the sloping hillside. She called some sort of greeting, but it was quickly submerged in the clatter and rush of the waterwheel.  Thrilled at the prospect of pie, Thatch scurried down the hill with nary a suspicion lurking in their mind. Aunt Betty brushed off her boxy floral print dress and pulled her gardening gloves from her hands, her skin freckled and blemished with age, crow’s feet gathered at her eyes, wispy hair pulled into a small bun atop her head. Once Thatch was within earshot, Azalaïs called out another greeting. “Hello!” she trilled. “Do you speak English?” “Hi! Yeah!” Thatch called back. “Erm. Sorry, I—” “You’re not sure how you got here,” Azalaïs filled in quickly. “You’ve just arrived?” “I think so?” Thatch answered. “I’m really not sure, er….” “Azalaïs,” Azalaïs offered. “And this is Aunt Betty.” “I gathered that much,” Thatch said awkwardly, and shook Azalaïs’ hand. “I’m Thatch Argall.” When they turned to Aunt Betty, she swept them into her arms with a motherly hug and planted a wet smack of a kiss to their cheek. With just as much vigor, she released them and checked them over critically. “Poor thing, you must be starved,” Aunt Betty clucked. “C’mere, sweetheart, let’s get you something to eat.” “Pie?” Thatch asked hopefully. Aunt Betty laughed. “I was thinking, something with a little more protein in it, but yes, you can have a slice of pie too. Aza’s already dipped into this one, but I’ve got a few more in the oven. Speaking of — I’d better go check on them!” Aunt Betty disappeared through the swinging doors, which caused the swooping silver and glass panes to throw the sun’s light all across the meadow. Azalaïs looked Thatch up and down, though her once-over felt less like it held motherly care and more like Thatch was an intriguing mechanism she’d like to puzzle out. Thatch felt intimidated; Azalaïs, older than Thatch by a decade or two, lacked the youthful uncertainty that plagued most of Thatch’s decision-making.  “So, you’ve just arrived?” she asked. “Just yesterday, yeah,” Thatch said. “No idea what happened. You’re the first people I’ve met.” “Really?” Azalaïs asked, reclaiming her perch on the windowsill and her plate of pie. Thatch sank down on one of the flat stones that formed a pathway to the door of the diner. They ran one hand along the smooth divot worn into the pathway stones from decades of heroes treading across them.  “Yeah!” Thatch enthused. “One minute, I was working on—,” but Thatch’s instincts returned to them at this exact moment, and they stumbled over the word pocketwatch, changing gears in a heartbeat, “—a uni project, and then there was this huge light, and I was lying in the meadow about a day’s walk from here, my clothes still smoking.” Azalaïs arched an eyebrow at them. “And you have no idea what caused the explosion?” “Er, no,” Thatch lied. “I’m always tinkering with things. Half the time I’ve no idea what I’m even doing!” Aunt Betty returned. She cut a slice of the berry pie and shoveled it onto the plate, then handed it and a fork to Thatch. “Chicken pot pies are in the oven,” Aunt Betty explained. “But I figured if there was ever a time to be a little naughty and have dessert before dinner…!” She smiled, then settled into an outdoor rocking chair carved from the same jungle wood as the water wheel. “Well, I say chicken, but there’s a few different birds in there. It all tastes like chicken, though, not to worry.” Thatch nodded, and didn’t bring up the Labrador ducks, not wanting to offend. They were enjoying the crisp tartness of the berries. In the shade of the jungle, with a belly full of pie, Thatch began to relax. Their eye hadn’t hurt at all since they’d rinsed it with the river water, but it had left them off-kilter, compensating for reduced vision. Yet even this could hardly

    C99.006 — A Googie Monstrosity (Cycle 98)

  7. Episode 7

    C99.007 — "Romance in the Skies" (Cycle 97)

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon | Lore Compendium Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  Okay, okay. I’m going to grab Cycle 97 off the shelf real quick. Because Azalaïs already knew about the Turnsole when Thatch arrived — at least, that’s what I assume she meant by Quiteaways needing Thatch’s help — which means the Turnsole was here before. Wait, have you forgotten the Turnsole, too?  Well. We’ll get to that.  But first: Who was telling Cycle 97’s story? Nefas. No last name. I’ve never met him, but I guess he is my grand-chosen-one? Like, the one you chose before Benoit, who was chosen before me? Does anyone have a word for that? Well, Nefas, let’s hear what you had to say about Aza. … Píngyáng warned me to expect cruel jokes from the universe, and she was correct as always. I was under the impression that you chose me because I possessed the requisite skills and experience to properly recount your next tale. I expected my adventure, my trials and tribulations, would adequately prepare me for it. And perhaps that will become true in time, with Cycle 97’s other great heroes; but it is certainly not true now. Did you intend this? Did you intend to leave me off-kilter, right at the start?  You would choose me, Nefas, to tell the story of Azalaïs d’Altier, who was everything I was not?  Certainly, I was not the prodigal daughter of well-to-do French Canadian butchers. Prodigal, Azalaïs was, because her mother and father gave her everything she ever wanted, and with her parents hard-earned cash, she moved to Hollywood at 16 to become a stuntwoman and action hero. Growing up, she’d peered at the movie posters plastered to the inside of the 116 bus every day on her way to school, and she coveted Hollywood’s glamorous smiles and thrilling adventures. A glamorous smile, Azalaïs was already fortunate enough to possess. The thrilling adventures would come, in time.  Even as a child, Azalaïs was beautiful and confident. She was also clever and perceptive. She had an inventor’s mind and a sharpshooter’s eye, though her career as Hollywood’s new starlet did not give her many opportunities to make use of them. What she lacked in education and training she made up for with curiosity, a lethal combination.  Though it may be difficult to believe, I do not possess the rose-tinged glasses that blinded the world to Miss d’Altier, but even I can appreciate her talent and beauty. More than famous, however, Azalaïs was exalted. Far and wide, she found those who worshipped her, and she felt their adoration like California's sunbeams. Already cradled in the fickle luxuries of stardom within months of her arrival to Hollywood, Azalaïs’ first starring role was a plucky, gun-toting cowgirl in the latest pulp adventure film, featuring an airship bound for the Lost Island.  But her first day on set, the rose-tinted wool was pulled from her eyes. Azalaïs d’Altier looked around to find that her grand adventure was, in fact, fiction; the sword at her hip and the revolver in her hand were merely props, the cranking and clanking engine and the wooden deck below her feet were fabrications of clever set and sound design. Azalaïs d’Altier was not about to embark on a true adventure. Romance in the Skies was the last film she ever made.  … ‘Giving up’ was not in Azalaïs’ prodigious vocabulary, and she resolved to find a new adventure, a real one: she would be the first to reach the fabled lost land, which her mother had always called Atlantis. Inspiration came to her on a steamy summer day in 1981, as she lay in the grass atop Mount Royal, the humid air thick with such heavy things as whims and wishes and daydreams. She wanted her own adventures, and she wanted them to be real. Aza decided to learn traditional swordplay. There was talk of a voyage, a real one, to find Atlantis — and Azalaïs would make herself useful to the crew of the submarine Eurydice at any cost. In the two years since she’d abandoned her acting career, Azalaïs was already well on her way to becoming an adventurer of great merit. She had, thus far, excelled in her training as a mechanic and gunslinger. And so, 20 years old and still running from her former stardom, Azalaïs d’Altier (Québecoise, modern, ambitious) selected her new swordplay instructor, Benoit de Maure (Parisian, traditional, and snobbish). But though she had honed her innate talents and become a capable marksman and discerning engineer, she had not (yet) honed the finesse to match Benoit on the dueling mat. Autumn in Paris was beautiful, and the old Aza would have swanned around the city, offering signatures to her admirers and enjoying the special treatment of stardom. The new Azalaïs — the true one, the aspiring adventurer — was, instead, groaning in frustration as she clashed with Benoit again and again. With each practice bout, she failed, and Benoit sneered in her face and spat the word cowgirl at her, as though she was nothing more than her old starring role. He shook his head at her footwork, immune to her fame and her beauty. Though she failed, and failed miserably; her stubbornness did not allow her to admit defeat. Foil, epée, saber, and even kendo’s bamboo shinai scraped and clacked against each other day after day. Every time Azalaïs’ parry cleared but her riposte missed, or her footwork stumbled, Benoit thwacked her over the head. Encore, he commanded, delighting in her frustration. Finally, Azalaïs had had enough. She threw her helmet to the ground and charged forward with a powerful strike. At first, Benoit wasn’t phased, and made a swipe for her with languid confidence. She ducked, hair swinging around her face like the rippling waters of Montreal’s St. Lawrence. She dodged into Benoit’s guard, lunging not to reach him with her blade but instead to trip up his footwork. Thrown off-kilter, he stumbled back. She pressed her advantage, crossing her feet, a move illegal in fencing — but she didn’t want to be a fencer, dammit, she wanted to be an adventurer. With her leading shoulder and her elbow, she knocked Benoit to the ground. Panting heavily, curls cascading down her white fencing gear, Azalaïs swung her blade around and flicked the blunted point, letting it come to a rest just shy of Benoit’s heaving throat. She smiled, eyes dancing like sunlight on the Seine.  That is when he began to love her. Not like her worshippers: the critics who had praised her performances, the paramours who had been enamored with her beauty. Benoit loved Azalaïs enough to let her go aboard the Eurydice on its maiden voyage, newly skilled at swordplay and with a scimitar at her hip. Submersibles, like airships, could be packed full of whimsy and sent off to explore parts unknown. Perhaps — went one theory — the lost land was not to be found by sky but below the waves.  When word reached Benoit that the Eurydice was lost at sea, he loved Azalaïs enough to sell his Paris fencing studio and buy his way aboard the airship Bannockburn on its maiden voyage. He loved her enough to follow her to the ends of the earth — and beyond. … Azalaïs hacked up two globs of wet, salty sand and pulled several tendrils of seaweed from her hair. Her throat ached, scratchy and rough. The beach was cool at her back, and she closed her eyes to the moonless night, a sky filled with more stars than she’d ever seen. Her mind turned over the sands that cradled her, wondering at their origin. Africa, perhaps? Or some island in the Atlantic? Had the Eurydice made it as far as the Caribbean before imploding? A wave crashed below her feet and then crawled gently over her, lifting her up perhaps like the arms of a parent, lending her a feeling of soft lightness. Azalaïs tried to conjure up the stressors of her previous life: the producers and agents looking to offer her new roles, roles written just for her; the newspapers clamoring for a photoshoot or interview…  But that was fake, all fake, and this was real. Behind her, she could hear humming, buzzing insects from within dark trees and the odd cry of some nocturnal bird. Adventure, the island whispered to her with its thousand voices. The ocean curled over her, and Azalaïs felt her old life washing away. Her thoughts turned to her missing crewmates, and tears broke through. Were they dead?  Then Benoit’s expression of staunch belief, belief in her, swam before her eyes, and she steeled herself. “They’re not dead,” she said to the island. “If I survived, then they survived too.” A larger wave gathered, crested, and then plunged, coming all the way up to play with Azalaïs’ hair. As the cool, dark water receded, something solid went clunk against her foot. Azalaïs shot up, then cried out in delight at the sight of her leather belt, which held both her scimitar (a parting gift from Benoit) and her antique flintlock revolver, which she carried mainly for its intricate gold and ivory design (but could shoot with frightening accuracy in a pinch). Despite its weight and density, somehow the belt and weapons had managed to make their way from Azalaïs’ private quarters aboard the Eurydice to this very beach. “C’mon  Aza,” she chided herself, and could hear Benoit’s fondly derisive, what, cowgirl? Giving up already? The posters said you were ‘plucky.’  She gazed out at the sea in front of her, then turned to the foreboding jungle at her back. Uncertainty clouded her thoughts: stick to the coast or venture f

    C99.007 — "Romance in the Skies" (Cycle 97)

  8. Episode 8

    C99.008 — Backwards and Forwards

    Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Chapters release every Tuesday. Visit patreon.com/pitchpineproductions — for free — to vote on chapter and character polls.  This story is family-friendly, but may contain occasional strong language and mild violence.  Welcome aboard the airship Bannockburn.  Pinterest | PDFs & Docs | Discord | Full Searchable Text | Patreon | Lore Compendium Also available on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Substack.  Hǎiyáng’s head made itself painfully, spitefully known as he swam through the drifting seas of unconsciousness and surfaced, with a gasp, back into awareness. He winced at a small spear of sunlight that pierced the gloom above him and landed across his face. All at once he realized two things. One: barring the pain to his right temple, he was remarkably comfortable. Two: Even more remarkably, he was no longer aboard the Bannockburn. … Before that inauspicious paper boat had found him and his sister, Hǎiyáng had already felt folded up and set adrift, much like an origami vessel himself. He remembered the firm fingers of his mother prodding him in the back, telling him to stand up straight as he navigated through the airport in Taipei, tugging his sister along by the hand. Hǎiyáng did not look back as his parents (his whole life, really) were swallowed up by the airport crowds, but his sister did. Only eight years old, Hǎiyáng felt the tension in Hǎixiáng’s fingers, the slight irregularity in her steps as she turned around for one last look. But Hǎiyáng knew if he turned around he would cry, and his mother’s prodding fingers had intimated to him that he must be strong. So he leaned forward, his sneakers squealing against airport linoleum, and his sister became a counterweight leaning back, equal and opposite. Tilted forward on his tip-toes, Hǎiyáng felt lighter than air, suspended between his old life and his new one.  Later, his limbs folded into the unfamiliar shape of the airplane seat, Hǎiyáng would long for that last look. He would conjure his mother’s creased eyes and his father’s patchy beard, and he’d imagine that they’d waved to him. He’d imagine that whatever Hǎixiáng’s final glimpse had been, he had seen it too; as though the image had transferred from her mind to his, and it was both of theirs, the way everything was. Shared.  His stomach swooped as the plane took off. Over a decade later, his stomach sank like a stone when he got the call from Hǎixiáng — a rare international phone call that plunged across an eight-hour time difference to wake him in the wee hours of the night. In the room above him, Hǎiyáng could hear his housemate, Thatch Argall, hard at work on their latest gadget. “A-yí’s been attacked. There’s this paper boat, and—” “What?” Hǎiyáng answered.  “You need to come home right now, there’s something we must do.” … Hǎiyáng’s head swam as he sat up, trying to blink away the jungle’s midday gloom. The bump on his temple protested, and some mixture of blood and sweat trickled down ticklishly, circling around his brow bone and onto his cheek. As his vision cleared and the dizziness subsided, Hǎiyáng braced himself on what felt like a massive slab of stone. He twisted around to examine his landing-place, then narrowed his eyes towards the canopy, scanning for signs of an entry point.  Below him, a vibrant, mint-green moss blanketed the ground in a patch just large enough to accommodate his sprawl. That explained Hǎiyáng’s comfort as he awoke. His head injury was further explained by the rusty-red stone that jutted out of the ground, obscuring the clearing and jungle to his left. It was covered in vines and bearded with moss. Thick, dark trees — some wider than the width of a car — surrounded him on all sides. With the warm humid air, the susurrus of leaves and the croaking of frogs, Hǎiyáng felt safe, almost cozy. Smaller stones, grey and rounded, rested placidly amid the moss. Sunlight dappled across the ground cover and gnarled roots, providing just enough light for Hǎiyáng’s eyes. He was put in mind of the twins’ fifteenth birthday trip to see the California redwoods; a rare occasion on which their auntie deigned to leave British Columbia.  There was no doubt in Hǎiyáng’s mind that something terrible had happened aboard the Bannockburn, but the notion reached his increasingly conscious mind with a kind of calm detachment. He remembered little; only Captain Vovk’s call for the passengers to get below decks and that brilliant, blinding light. But Hǎiyáng had always floated atop changing circumstances or folded himself into them — he was nothing if not adaptable. So he refocused on the scene before him and scooted closer to the big red rock. The red slab came to a point several feet above the ground. It appeared to be the color of brick but was smooth like sandstone. Hǎiyáng examined the edge — perhaps the very edge that had tried, unsuccessfully, to put a dent in his skull. He surmised that he had fallen (for how else had he ended up here?) from the sky, hit the rock, and rolled across the moss.  It was almost a smidge too lucky, Hǎiyáng thought, for an archaeologist to be dropped (more or less unharmed!) directly onto this particular rock. For a suspicion had taken root in the professor’s mind as he peered closely at its contours. He’d been on enough digs across the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East to recognize signs of manmade ruins. Hǎiyáng pulled his phone from his pocket, intending to take photographs; but found that, though it appeared undamaged, it refused to turn on. “Infernal device,” Hǎiyáng cursed, and shoved it back into his pocket. Instead, grumbling just like his students when he made them take dig site notes by hand, Hǎiyáng drew a small notebook and his elegant maroon pen from his other pocket and took a moment to lay down a basic sketch of the untouched site, noting landmarks and general dimensions of the rock itself.  Then, Hǎiyáng crept closer, squatting in front of the stone’s face, and brushed the moss and vines aside. Heart lurching with the thrill of discovery, his fingers traced the telltale divots of a carving etched into the rock. Artwork, perhaps, or even — Hǎiyáng hardly dared consider — an inscription? A writing system?  The linguist leapt into a flurry of activity. He cleared the rock face further, then traced each section of the carving into his notebook. Then, satisfied with his initial work, Hǎiyáng rose to his feet and stepped back to examine the inscription in its entirety.  His heart sank as his new vantage point revealed, lying just beyond the stone, the crumpled figure of Higgs Worthsome. … Hǎiyáng fought off the last little lingering dizziness, then made his way around the big red rock. As he approached his travelling companion, he could see (to his immediate relief) that Higgs was breathing, and that his spine and all of his limbs appeared to be in their correct positions and orientations. With only a minor head wound between them, their survival was becoming increasingly miraculous.  Hǎiyáng knelt beside Higgs. The young man was similarly cradled in a bed of green moss, though unlike Hǎiyáng, Higgs’ head was also haloed in a small circle of brown mushrooms. Higgs had changed clothes since that evening on the deck of the Bannockburn, and he wore a simple white cotton t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and garish socks printed with comic-book speech bubbles shoved into the most expensive white sneakers Hǎiyáng had ever seen. Both of their clothes had become somewhat muddied by the general moisture of the jungle floor. Hǎiyáng rolled Higgs over so he was laying more comfortably on his back. The young man was wearing several braces on various joints and was carrying that same satchel. Either Higgs slept with them on or he had managed to put them on prior to whatever had happened to their airship. Hǎiyáng, who had supervised many summers of remote field work for his students, could feel his professorial instincts rising. He didn’t know the nature of Higgs’ disability beyond his communication needs. Were there medications Higgs was missing, given that their luggage was nowhere to be seen? Did he have invisible mobility challenges, beyond the braces? How was Hǎiyáng supposed to help the young man make it out of whatever jungle this was and back to his physics degree? Hǎiyáng forced himself to calm down. Higgs had come on this voyage knowing the risks, and was, in all likelihood, competent. He wouldn’t have been allowed aboard without sufficient preparation. Right? Higgs stirred with a groan, his knees drawing up towards his stomach and his arms curling in. He blinked, and then gasped and shot upright. His breaths turned from sleepy, slow inhales to harsh, fearful gasps. “Woah! Hey, bud.” Hǎiyáng immediately leaned back to give Higgs space. Higgs panted, scanning the jungle around him. He locked eyes with Hǎiyáng, gave a small wheezing sound, then pointed up at Hǎiyáng’s temple.  “Oh, this? It’s nothing. I’m fine, promise,” Hǎiyáng reassured him. “Are you alright?”  Higgs’ brow furrowed. He dug around in his satchel, pulled a small first aid kit from a pocket on the side, and then removed a few supplies. He gestured at Hǎiyáng’s head wound. “Oh, you have something for this?”  Higgs nodded, then shifted closer. He unwrapped a small antiseptic wipe, and winced in sympathy as he brought it up to dab at Hǎiyáng’s cut. Hǎiyáng hissed at the chemical bite, but he held still as Higgs finished cleaning the area and then taped a cotton pad to his forehead with small white strips. Then he offered Hǎiyáng a bottle of over-the-counter pain killers.  “Nah, I’m good,” Hǎiyáng lied. “Really, it doesn’t even hurt.”

    C99.008 — Backwards and Forwards
See All Season 1 (8)

About

Cycle 99 is a swashbuckling adventure story about extinction, magic, and hope — where you design the characters. Cycle 99 is single-narrator — for now 👀 — and follows the crew of the airship Bannockburn on their fateful voyage to find the mythical island of Quiteaways. Little do they know, their voyage is being observed by beings larger-than-life... you. What blessing, curses, nightmares, and daydreams will you bestow up on them?

Information

  • Creator
    Hannah Semmelhack
  • Episodes
    10
  • Seasons
    1
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Hannah Semmelhack (2026–present)
  • Show Website
    Cycle 99