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left but the blackness that will surround him for evermore. He finds himself shivering on grey rock, sprawled out beneath an unforgiving black sky.
    Clarence crouches as he has always done, gazing through golden eyes at the beautiful white swirls that cover the earth's verdant lands and sapphire oceans. He remembers how, when he had first found himself alone on the moon, there had been a voice - some malevolent force that had laughed at his tireless pleas to be returned to Katherine. The voice had never shown itself to be a physical presence, but it had been real - for a time. It hadn't stayed long. Its foul deed done through the sickness of the fox head cane, it had mocked his wild wishes and granted them with equal glee.
    As he gazes up at the blue globe of the earth, he realises that it has always been too far away to see the beasts of Africa, or to watch the people walking in the parks. His golden eyes had never been strong enough to see the woman who had loved him. He could never have seen more than a few swirls of cloud covering the continents and oceans beneath. All his visions had been glimpses of his own lost memories. They had been locked away by mental walls that he had built up over centuries of madness and solitude. Those same walls now came tumbling down upon him like boulders from the sky.
    When he had first been abandoned, he had beaten his huge grey fists into the ground with mindless frustration. His anger had formed crater after crater of crumbling soft dust. After centuries of torment, he had forgotten where the craters had come from. He had visited a new crater each day, believing it to be somewhere new, where he had never been before. Travelling in an endless journey to nowhere, he had followed an endless path across the surface of the rock-strewn Moon. The voice had been absent for many years, but in his solitude, Clarence had held onto it, making it anew within himself so that he wouldn't have to feel so utterly alone. He knew now that he had always been alone. How long had it been since he had last stood on the earth? The time must be measured in centuries, not days or years. Everyone he had ever known would be long since dead. Even Katherine - dear Katherine would no longer exist. He had asked her to wait a year, but in the end, she had waited a lifetime.
    What use was his own ageless existence? What good was his power now? It all meant nothing to him now that his memory had returned. His powerful muscles hung useless as he crouched in alone in the crater. His sharp black talons could do nothing but leave pointless tracks in the dust. Clarence Kletchly stretched the thick muscles in his neck as he pounded grey rocks to dust with hopeless swollen fists. He gazed up at the blue globe of the earth as it sank behind the crater's edge, and watched the sun following in its path until there was nothing left but an orange glow across the darkening horizon. When the blackness returned, he didn't close his eyes to protect them against the savage cold. Neither did he flex his muscles to keep his blood from freezing. He sat in the crater and thought of Katherine as his mind became numb.
    After many hours, when the sun returned for the next lunar day, Clarence Kletchly crouched dead in his crater, his moist golden eyes staring out from a featureless grey face. In the distance, came the sounds of laughter.
    'Wish granted.'

Information Cloud
    Tales of Cinnamon City - #1
          
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    Information Cloud began as a draft novella in 2004 and after many rewrites, it became the first novel in the science fiction series, 'Tales of Cinnamon City'.
    The citizens of Cinnamon City grow restless under the Dome Shield. The Security Forces are stretched to breaking point. Major Rachel Henson feels like something is changing inside her, but she doesn't want to face the truth even though her strange new abilities grow stronger day by day.
    In the South, the Kamari are raising an army to