Chance Jones
Bio
I'm a writer who strives to explore the possibilities of civilization and individual potential influenced by my passion for fringe archaeology/anthropology and paranormal research which challenge established academic dogmas.
Stories (5)
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The Sandseller
The shock wave jolted me awake. Even though it must have been a car much farther down the train that exploded, meteors of molten technology rained down only a moment after my eyes opened. I knew I was in a huddle car on one of the super transports, but I had no clue how I got onto the train or even who I was. Compulsively I looked at my wrist and found a watchcom with a message flashing on its screen: UNPAID - EGO REVOKED. I must have fallen behind on payments while I was sleeping; now I had to find some way to get caught up.
By Chance Jones3 years ago in Fiction
Hero of the Dragon's Heart
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. The Children of Tainu spent most of their time high up in the mountains immersed in the innervating winds which surged down from the sacred pinnacle and flowed to all corners of the world. In the myths of the clans who called the Scaled Steppes home, those winds were the very breath of Tainu, goddess of the Eternal Sky and mother of not only the dragons but all that lived on the earth. The Stonefather, Otri, was worshiped in the form of the tallest mountain of the range, called “Pillar of Earth” in the most archaic form of their language because it was said to stand at the center of the world and reach beyond the Blue Sky into the Eternal Sky.
By Chance Jones4 years ago in Fiction
The Alchemist in my Neighborhood
One day, I was tromping around in the woods near home; the suburb we lived in wasn’t so overdeveloped that all the forested areas around the fringes were cut down yet, when this strange man pops out of the underbrush. He always wore this kind of cut up lab coat like a cloak draped around his shoulders. I guess he must have had a couple of them because the stains and grease marks kept changing places every time you saw him.
By Chance Jones4 years ago in Fiction
The Last Hive
I was listening to NPR during my lunch break when the news came through from the UN Environment Programme: the last known species of honey bee had gone extinct. Though the International Union for Conservation of Nature disputed the declaration saying that it was too soon to make a determination, their outlook wasn’t optimistic either. Speculation had already been rampant in the media for months with the usual mixture of recycled stories about the failure of scientists to maintain hives in protected captivity and the ongoing, seemingly futile efforts to search for bees in the wild. Finally, according to the radio host, the UNEP was throwing in the towel as the last known hive had collapsed the previous year and no new sightings had occurred this year despite another exhaustive search.
By Chance Jones5 years ago in Fiction
To Taste an Extinct Cuisine
A chilly wind shook the makeshift rope harness holding him over the slowly collapsing cliff of the riverbank and made the sweat streaking down his forehead feel as cold as the frozen soil he was digging away at. Two other men were hanging next to him leaning into the mire of mud and ice and attacking the permafrost with sorely abused picks. The work was exhausting and filthy, but they had to move quickly to come away with their prize before their labor came to the attention of the authorities or other prospectors. Excavating for mammoths in Yakutia in the northeast of Russia is illegal without a permit, but rivers like the Kolyma cut deep into the permafrost and regularly expose paleontological treasures frozen for tens of thousands of years when the relative warmth of summer melts away their tombs. Global warming has helped to free ever more specimens, but the shifting of the melting permafrost has wrought havoc on those who live atop it by demolishing buildings and thawing underground larders. These sorts of difficulties have only made it all the more tempting for residents to engage in unauthorized excavations in search of valuable mammoth tusk ivory.
By Chance Jones5 years ago in Futurism
