"The Angel" by Jason Parker

[Rutabaga]

This refurbished Pick from the Past is found here.  

The story was first serialized at AD in the 2005-2006 time frame.  @Alien Son asked me to go through and bring it up to modern web coding standards as a prelude to making it an April Pick from the Past.  It was a somewhat arduous task, because the old-style Microsoft FrontPage coding is awful and difficult to update, but it is now completed.  

This story is different from any I can recall reading here, and has intriguing intertwined story lines.  It is long, and will require some time commitment.  And it is full of surprises.  If you have a chance, take a look at it.  And let me know if you see any glitches that I missed.

R

[JamesSavik]

I've churned through a lot of it. It's a neat little urban fantasy if you're into it.

[Altimexis]

I'm not sure I want to commit so much time when I'm in the midst of writing one of my stories. I'm already behind schedule on that one.

I remember Microsoft FrontPage, but as a Mac user, I never was tempted to try it. As I recall, it generated code that was marginally better than MS Word,. In some ways it was even worse. Microsoft's take on compatibility was to use brute force to make the text appear as the author intended it, and if the browser didn't handle it well, then the user should just switch to Internet Exploiter. Case closed. FrontPage predated smartphones and was never intended for use on a screen that small, nor for today's HD or UHD displays, for that matter. Only Microsoft would think it was a good idea to generate hundreds or even thousands of style definitions, and then to generate dozens of lines of code to format each paragraph. It's a wonder IE functioned at all when it had to deal with all of that code.

Of course if you bother to inspect any commercial website today, you'll find it loaded with trackers and other useless code, all aimed at collecting and utilizing your private data.

[Rutabaga]

Thankfully both FrontPage and Internet Explorer are now history.  Not a moment too soon.

R

[Jason Rimbaud]

I just read through the first ten chapters or so. I lost count how many times he either fell asleep, or was knocked unconscious. The good thing is the chapters are fairly short and move pretty quickly. 

The only reason I am still reading, I am intrigued by the notion there is no god in charge of heaven. And that Angels have been genetically altering humans for some nefarious purpose. I'll probably finish it in some point in the near future. But the story makes a mistake that drives me completely around the twist, two people meet and immediately fall in love. I can see Matt falling in love, he's had years of protecting the boy. But for the boy to fall in love so fast without really any reason, bah. But there be godless angels in heaven. I'll complete this task. 

J