Choose Your Own Adventure #29: Trouble on Planet Earth

After becoming an undead horror but failing to parley that into factory ownership or whip kink I'm back for another R.A. Montgomery masterwork. This one promises some undefined trouble on our little blue dot. I guess it could have been more vague, like "Some Difficulty or Unpleasantness Somewhere in the Universe" but close enough. We're going to get conflict and we've got this amazing Third Planet backdrop for it. What more could you want? Stir in some gray ponytail "We got bombs but can't FEED people, man!" philosophizing, wussy vehicles and dwarf bashing and the result has a chance to be pleasingly tepid.

UPS shorts and high socks...in danger!!!

I'm maxing and relaxing in front of the moron box, enjoying all the societal collapse dispatches. It turns out all the world's oil has abruptly vanished. Time for the doomsday clock to strike midnight, in other words, but I'm cynically detached from this bizarre disaster. I tell my brother "Ned" that this means the "Earth has given up!" All because we had to have non-sissy means of travel, presumably. Also, our planet is still rotating and going around the sun, dude. It's not over.  

I'm told Ned is well known for his wild ideas. Considering I just assigned human characteristics to a giant ball of dirt and magma I'm hardly one to talk. He's also a problem solver with some of that "ESP" that we used to all believe in until it was ruined by 900 number hucksters. Right now he's going into his psychic aura or whatever and the upshot is he wants us to go to Saudi Arabia, which I guess is on the table is a viable option for some reason. I want to go to the CIA. The Middle East or trying to get help from the government. These are not good choices.

Perhaps realizing this R.A.M. tells me to flip a coin instead. Lucky Maryland quarter comes up Maryland.

Another reason to mourn the death of "ESP" as a meaningful shared myth.

Well, it's off to Saudi Arabia. I'm told I have "plenty of cash" from earlier, unspecified adventures and plane travel into a world terrorism hot spot was still easy when this was written so before the next page can even finish Ned and I are in Riyadh, a city described as "crowded" and "hot." I'll cut Montgomery a break, it wasn't easy to research things before the internet and those extremely general facts are probably true. 

The goodwill is immediately ruined by typically R.A. manlet bashing, this time a "small man" inviting us into one of those unlicensed cabs that you've probably heard a lot of good things about. Even if you weren't aware of the author's short = evil prejudice this whole situation screams trap. We'll just shoe ride it, thanks. 

Maybe one day a real rain will come and wash away all the pirate taxis.

I guess I'm feeling homesick because I decide to go get an English language newspaper. Naturally, while I'm doing this Ned gets taken and my particular set of skills acquired over an extremely short life will have to be deployed. Skills like distrusting the short, wandering off for no adequately explored reason in a foreign land and making darkly humorous remarks when the television news announces the coming global crash into Mad Max chaos. Yeah, those.

I wander around yelling Ned's name and blaming him for his abduction and likely torture porn victimization. I can be a jerk. Out of nowhere an old man taps my shoulder, name-drops Allah and assures me that my brother is actually safe. Nice to see all that paragraph-long drama resolved so neatly.

I ask him how he knows my brother and get a weird, evasive answer that's apparently good enough. It's off to his cool shop, chuck full of mandalas, geometric paintings used by Sufi mystics to induce their trances. I know I rag on Montgomery a lot, but he does seem to have a very sincere appreciation for other cultures. Of  course being a dirty drug-addled hippie "Global Citizen" I suppose that would be expected. Ned's peeping the art and I decide to join him. 

Perfect for the side of your love van or motor glider.

Time for some mind expansion, as all this starts to get very significant. Ned produces a bronze box that he claims was under some prayer rugs and offers some of the salve inside. Come on, you're not afraid to get high, are you? My brother rubs some on his hand and walks right into one of the pictures. Far out. 

I'm not some wimp who follows rules or worries about permanent hallucinogenic compounds in my spine, so I follow after, entering a world of shapes and colors. Yes, this children's book contains LSD imagery. Ned tells me he's solved the problem of the world's oil. Man, tripping fixes everything. He promptly vanishes. Whoa. A moment later we're back in the store.

Ned declares victory, while I innocently compare my acid test to a "trip to Disneyland" and wonder what he could possibly have done to set things right. Then everything completely falls apart, I mean even more so, as we take a taxi (licensed and driven by someone of average height or taller, I would assume) into the desert, set down one of the pictures from the store, perform a chant, and out comes the oil. "It's a time pipeline!" is the non-explanation. What. The. Fudge. 

Solving problems like "sanity" and "not eating your own fingers."

I really don't know what else to say. I get that the author is probably no stranger to "mystical trances" but I don't think that really makes it all right to put this nonsense in a book intended for a pre-teen audience. Even setting that aside, this one was a bizarre mess. Say no to drugs, friends. And unlicensed cabs, of course.

  Oh no, drugs destroyed my artistic ability. Look at this garbage, seriously.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #15: House of Danger

Last time out my running like the dickens skills averted disaster when encountering a horrifying slime monster and its human minions. I'd talk about the long delay since then, but it seems excuse-making is all I do lately and all the obvious nursing home jokes have been made, so let's just suffice it say that better days are ahead. We might even get a "DotTeeVee" episode before there's snow on the ground. Today's subject looks like a good choice to get back up on this. The premise is intriguing (a house...of danger?), the author is gray pony-tailed hippie and dwarf-hater R.A. Montgomery and the reviews I've read suggest that we're in for a wild ride. It's time for the sort-of prequel to The Horror of High Ridge which will hopefully feature the happier days before I was put into a permanent state of fear paralysis by ghosts.

That does kind of put a damper on the proceedings. Whatever I do, that's my written-in-stone future. See, this is why prequels don't work [place lame Star Wars joke here].

Get your paws off me you damn dirty...Union soldier with a whip???

I'm just waiting for something to happen in the "lab" in my parents basement. Man, it's like this book can somehow see directly into my life. "No, I didn't get a job today, Mom. Yes, I'm reviewing a children's book that came out in 1982," etc. Anyway, I'm a "psychic investigator," sort of like in Ghost Hunter. Now "lack of originality" can be added to that book's many, many sins. At least this time I wouldn't be forced to steal things because the rightful owner "makes bombs for terrorists!" Well, probably not.

I get a "weak voice" call that is suggestive of trouble, but cuts off before any valuable information can be obtained. Since it's 1982, there's no way to identify the caller. I look around the "lab," scoping out my sick digs, complete with books like "Murder in Fun." Don't go killing anyone for Slender Man, ok kid? The mysterious caller phones again, but this time I'm ready and somehow trace the number while a desperate voice is all "help" and "they've got me." The caller is identified as a "Henry Marsden" and the whole situation reminds me of the case of the "Spider Ghost." Why does it always have to be spiders?

My calm demeanor here really plays continuity havok on my fearful reaction to the paranormal in "High Ridge," but again, it's only a sort-of sequel. Different authors and everything.

I was reminded of this, not ghost spiders.

It turns out the Spider Ghost case is the source of the funding for my sweet equipment (and an FBI commendation!). Man, this protagonist is a lot better than the "I found a bottle!" hero from Book Nine. Lessons learned from that experience include the need for strength in numbers, and I'm thinking Lisa and Ricardo, who will share a "incurable fear coma" hospital room with me in the near future. I try to call, but no one's home. Deciding time is of the essence I forget about back-up and go right to the address, where I suspect there might be a house, possibly of the dangerous variety. 

I park my car (???) near one of those ultra-modern homes that eventually fell out of favor with the rise of nearly identical brown boxes. Seriously, the character in the illustration does not look old enough to have a license and this would have been a great chance to introduce one of those patented R.A. Montgomery wussy vehicles, maybe a "pedal car" or "sugar three wheeler" or the like. Instead "car." All right, whatever you say.

  I guess "Superbike" wasn't available.

It turns out the house, dangerous or not, is built on the site of a prison that burned down in 1887, killing everyone inside. Very interesting. Meanwhile, the new house is all done up in glass and I'm going to resist making a "Fountainhead" joke that maybe one person in ten thousand would get. I often wonder why that novel didn't become a pop-culture touchstone like "Atlas Shrugged?" It's every bit as long and bad, after all. 

Some guy bolts out of the house, all in a panic, and then goes down as if hit by an "invisible hammer." Grandmaster Montgomery is laying down some sick prose game, right here, aw yeah. It turns out his pursuers are some sort of animals, possibly of the intelligent, half-ape, half-man variety. The entire scene gets a huge, lovingly drawn illustration that belongs in some museum, man.

The re-release art is, predictably, less than inspiring.

I decide that the "chimpanzees" probably aren't all that tough (they're only, like, eight times our strength pound for pound, no big deal) and rush to help the fallen man. Brandishing my "pen knife" I charge at them and incredibly they retreat into a ruin near the house. See kids, carrying concealed blades solves problems. We're learning a lot. I get a small triangular scrap of paper from the man, who has died of fear! Man, 1982 didn't mess around. 

The dirty apes are back, now equipped with some sort of "blow gun" and I feel the wind of a dart flying past without result. Time to use that running like the dickens ability. Back at the car I debate reporting this to the police. "You see officer, there was this invisible hammer that ended some dude, then some Planet of the Apes-type confrontation went down and I'm driving a car even though I just turned 12." The pros and cons are weighed and the negative wins out.

 "I expect you to die, Mr. Chimp."

While waiting to "sneak up" on the house I examine the paper some more, and it turns out it's actually a chunk of "U.S. Currency." Holy fudge, the Federal Reserve is run by Ape Men!!! That crazy guy on short-wave radio has been completely vindicated. Again. 

I contemplate the possibility of a "counterfeiting animal trainer" but am forced to dismiss it as unlikely. Hey, you gotta consider all the angles. 

A limo pulls up and two Hard Men get out and approach the house. The ape-men confront them, but are ignored and then disappear. You guessed it, they're holograms being used by what is presumably the New World Order/Bilderbergers/The IRS/Whoever it is that inflicts shit like Justin Bieber on society to keep people away from whatever nefarious scheme is currently unfolding in the danger house. The men leave, carrying packages. Is it possible that I've somehow stumbled on the facility where our government created crack cocaine? 

I'm sure a pre-teen who is allowed to drive a car for some reason will defeat this.

Then I decide it must be a "gang of counterfeiters" and not my own government run amok. Good old 1982 naivete. Everything else is a neat little package, though. The monkey-illusions and scary prison remains would keep people away, and the dead man must have stumbled on the truth. Why he'd call me and not, say, someone in authority with a better weapon than a pen knife remains obscure, but we're probably almost done so let's stop questioning everything. 

I call the police, the gang is broken up, I'm a hero and hey, can't wait for that fun vacation in High Ridge!

This was a fun one. Discarding the usual R.A. Montgomery tropes really worked wonders for the quality of his writing, but I guess the urge to deliver socialist lectures, misapply nepotism, describe wimpy modes of transit and drown in unnecessary weirdness is a powerful force. Not to say the storyline I got wasn't a total mess, but it was fun and zany and let's shut off your mind dude because thinking is bad, so all is forgiven.

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #22: Space Patrol

The good news is we're done with the wild west, the bad news is we're returning to another highly cliched setting for today's entry. Yes, "space," the new frontier of massive emptiness that's extremely hostile to the human biology. For some reason it was once a "cool" thing, long before anyone could have guessed that NASA would eventually become a pandering organization for religious minorities instead of colonizing Mars or the like. Yes, when this book came out (1983) the dream of journeying to an amazing desolate vacuum was still very much part of the National Vision.

As the twenty-second book in the series there's a few things of note before we dive in. We've got a new author, now that increasing demand for new books is exceeding R.A. Montgomery's ability to crank out hippie drivel and we've got another adult protagonist. Yeah, I was really wrong about that.

"Can't help you kid, I'm needed at a Tolerance Meeting with some Imams."

I'm basically a space cop, cruising around in a ship run by a computer that is "absolutely reliable." Yup, I'm sure it doesn't malfunction and kill you in a significant number of the 26 endings, that's not going to be a thing, no way. Some of my duties include dealing with "pirates" that prey on the Venus-Earth-Mars trade route (this author actually seems to understand the immensity of space and wisely confines things to the solar system, yay.) helping radiation storm victims and getting space cats out of space trees.

If there's two writers it should be twice as good, right?

I'm at the end of one of my six month tours and am looking forward to a well-earned vacation where I won't even think about space. Nice to see a minor variation on the "only two days 'til retirement" doomed officer. I'm thinking of going to Venus, which has a reputation as a "pleasure planet." Dying a horrible death where your body literally melts doesn't seem to square with those expectations, but let me have my dreams. Even as I'm mentally sliding into a Venusian hot tub the computer goes off with warnings of "meteorite debris." I decide to let HAL handle it, because I love tempting the "what could possibly go wrong?" odds.

This is what happens.

Wouldn't you know it, the very first choice ends in explosive, fiery death. There's an unexploded bomb from the "Second Solar System War" and it decides now would be a good time to finally perform its intended purpose. I'm "instantly vaporized." Yeah. In the hands of another author I'd at least get a lecture about the evils of unexploded ordnance and the futility of war and why can't we just turn over control to the United Nations and other various pinko ideas. Here, it's just all over, just like that.

I can't really say much more about this one. It looked like it could have been good, but having a 50% chance of death on the very first choice is not the best design choice, especially when you're dealing with someone who blindly trusts any and all electronic devices. I was promised nothing would blow up, after all.

Seems trustworthy.

Shill Section

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.