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Description
An illustration for a story I'm writing.

LINK TO FIRST CHAPTER: www.fanfiction.net/s/12486618/…

The premise is: while wandering through the deep, dark woods of the pacific northwest, a couple teens encounter some kind of gigantic robotic cat. Suspecting a deeper mystery, they don football pads and improvised armor, load up on weapons and snacks, and follow the strange beast into the wilderness. As for what they find... Well...

They find the Forest of Daggers.
A long-forgotten, dangerous, alien ecosystem, where the plants, animals, and other lifeforms are composed not of wood, bone, flesh, or carbon materials, but rather of metals, composite, and hard, mechanical parts.

But the mystery doesn't stop there. Where did they come from? Who put them there? Are they machines, or metal animals? Artificial or natural? Alien, or somehow native? And what purpose did they once serve?? The answers to these questions are a little more complicated. Ancient aliens may be involved. Ancient alien spacecraft may be involved. Improbability fields, shapeshifters, madness, time travel, pancakes, and even romance, MAY BE INVOLVED AS WELL!

There's only one small problem: For some reason I'm on such a 'Gravity Falls' kick right now that I wrote the entire thing using the characters from the show! The two humans in the above picture, for instance, are Dipper and Wendy. (Dipper with the book, Wendy with the gun.) Now it's not a novel at all; it's a fanfiction! I could have made money off of this, but NOOO, I had to write it with copyrighted characters. Why did I do this to myself?!? Well, since it's too late to stop now, all you Gravity Falls fans out there can be treated to a sci-fi adventure story, starring all your favorite characters, and a strict conformity to the canon. Rest assured, any original characters are all either aliens, robots, or alien robots. (This is because I'm me.)

And if you're not a Gravity Falls fan, you should be. And if you're still not... A lot of this thing may not make sense. I may re-write it someday with my own characters and sub-plots. But if not... Well, then I suck.

If you're curious, but not curious enough to click on the story link, here's an excerpt:
    Dipper looked at the pictures from the X-ray.

    Beneath the robot kitten's smooth and hard exterior plating, it was phenomenally complex. Gears, cogs, cams and motors of miniscule size, all stacked perfectly and exactly. Pipes and wires going down smaller than the pictures could show. There were no bolts or screws or rivets or welds holding it together. It was all one coherent piece. It didn’t look like a blueprint; it looked like an organic anatomy.

    McGucket finally finished his tests, returned to the workbench, set the kitten down, and put his hands on his hips.

    “I ain’t built this.” He said.

    “Then who did?” Dipper asked. “The government? Did they use some of your patents? Did you ever invent anything that could… Eat? Reproduce? Or is this some kind of alien machine? Are there aliens, Dr. McGucket?”

    “No.” He said. “The government didn’t build this. And no. Aliens didn’t build this. This robit is… Too advanced. Too advanced for me, or for the government, or for aliens. Near as I can figure, this robit is impossible for people. In my whole life, I’ve only ever seen this level of engineering in one other place.”

    “Where?”

    “Right here.” He held up his hands, and wiggled his fingers. He opened his mouth, and pointed inside it. He pulled up his eyelid, and pointed to his eyeball. “This.” He said, pointing back to the kitten. “Is the level of irreducible complexity that doesn’t come from people. This machine is SO good… That, in my professional opinion, it could only have been created by God. Big ‘G’. GOD. I don’t know how, but this robit isn’t a machine. It’s a metal animal. It’s NATURAL.”

And if you're STILL curious, here's another excerpt:
    They were getting deep into the forest now. The last roads, and with them the old logging areas, had been left far behind. No more civilization out here. No trails. This part of the woods was inhabited solely by deer, bears, and Sasquatches. Even Dipper had never been out this far.

    They were getting near the place he’d marked on the map. The place where they’d seen the robot lion headed yesterday. Dipper put the map away, and began to look around. Wendy kept her eyes on the ground, following the lion-bot's tracks through the mud.

    Somewhere far away, a woodpecker tapped on a tree. Dipper frowned, and turned an ear to listen. It tapped again. Something about it sounded off. He’d heard a lot of woodpeckers in his life, and he was quite sure that this one was tapping much too fast. Faster than should be possible. Harder than a soft body could ever tap.

    Dipper looked around. A robot woodpecker?? He didn’t see anything. The forest looked largely the same as the one they were familiar with. The trees were a slightly different type here, with slightly darker green branches, slightly greyer trunks, and leaves that were shaped just a little different. But other than this slight change in species, nothing seemed obviously off…

    “Hey. This part of the forest seems pretty sharp.” Wendy remarked.

    “Yeah, I guess, uh… Wait, what do you mean?” Dipper reached up to brush a branch aside.

    “I mean stop walking. RIGHT. NOW. I mean DIPPER! FREEZE!”

    Dipper froze, startled.

    And then he followed her gaze up toward the branch in his way. The branch he’d been about to touch. Wendy was right. It was sharp. Razor sharp. He reached a finger forward, and poked the end of one leaf. It drew a drop of blood.

    He bent over and peered very closely at the leaf. Good grief, they weren’t leaves! They were solar panels! Incredibly thin solar panels, held together by a metal latticework! The stems of the leaves were tiny steel cables! His eyes traveled up the branch to the tree. Now that he looked at it closely, the entire tree was built similarly! It was all made of metal!

    And all these trees. All these trees were the same type of tree. They were all metal.

    The woodpecker sounded again, the sound of its beak like the drilling of a tool.

    And something moved through the bushes to their right, and as it moved it made a buzzing sound.

    The leaves of the bushes made a scraping sound as the wind rubbed them together.

    And the grass was hard beneath their feet.

    A smile slowly spread across the faces of the two teens.

    “We found it.” Dipper whispered.

Description
An illustration for a story I'm writing.

LINK TO FIRST CHAPTER: www.fanfiction.net/s/12486618/…

The premise is: while wandering through the deep, dark woods of the pacific northwest, a couple teens encounter some kind of gigantic robotic cat. Suspecting a deeper mystery, they don football pads and improvised armor, load up on weapons and snacks, and follow the strange beast into the wilderness. As for what they find... Well...

They find the Forest of Daggers.
A long-forgotten, dangerous, alien ecosystem, where the plants, animals, and other lifeforms are composed not of wood, bone, flesh, or carbon materials, but rather of metals, composite, and hard, mechanical parts.

But the mystery doesn't stop there. Where did they come from? Who put them there? Are they machines, or metal animals? Artificial or natural? Alien, or somehow native? And what purpose did they once serve?? The answers to these questions are a little more complicated. Ancient aliens may be involved. Ancient alien spacecraft may be involved. Improbability fields, shapeshifters, madness, time travel, pancakes, and even romance, MAY BE INVOLVED AS WELL!

There's only one small problem: For some reason I'm on such a 'Gravity Falls' kick right now that I wrote the entire thing using the characters from the show! The two humans in the above picture, for instance, are Dipper and Wendy. (Dipper with the book, Wendy with the gun.) Now it's not a novel at all; it's a fanfiction! I could have made money off of this, but NOOO, I had to write it with copyrighted characters. Why did I do this to myself?!? Well, since it's too late to stop now, all you Gravity Falls fans out there can be treated to a sci-fi adventure story, starring all your favorite characters, and a strict conformity to the canon. Rest assured, any original characters are all either aliens, robots, or alien robots. (This is because I'm me.)

And if you're not a Gravity Falls fan, you should be. And if you're still not... A lot of this thing may not make sense. I may re-write it someday with my own characters and sub-plots. But if not... Well, then I suck.

If you're curious, but not curious enough to click on the story link, here's an excerpt:
    Dipper looked at the pictures from the X-ray.

    Beneath the robot kitten's smooth and hard exterior plating, it was phenomenally complex. Gears, cogs, cams and motors of miniscule size, all stacked perfectly and exactly. Pipes and wires going down smaller than the pictures could show. There were no bolts or screws or rivets or welds holding it together. It was all one coherent piece. It didn’t look like a blueprint; it looked like an organic anatomy.

    McGucket finally finished his tests, returned to the workbench, set the kitten down, and put his hands on his hips.

    “I ain’t built this.” He said.

    “Then who did?” Dipper asked. “The government? Did they use some of your patents? Did you ever invent anything that could… Eat? Reproduce? Or is this some kind of alien machine? Are there aliens, Dr. McGucket?”

    “No.” He said. “The government didn’t build this. And no. Aliens didn’t build this. This robit is… Too advanced. Too advanced for me, or for the government, or for aliens. Near as I can figure, this robit is impossible for people. In my whole life, I’ve only ever seen this level of engineering in one other place.”

    “Where?”

    “Right here.” He held up his hands, and wiggled his fingers. He opened his mouth, and pointed inside it. He pulled up his eyelid, and pointed to his eyeball. “This.” He said, pointing back to the kitten. “Is the level of irreducible complexity that doesn’t come from people. This machine is SO good… That, in my professional opinion, it could only have been created by God. Big ‘G’. GOD. I don’t know how, but this robit isn’t a machine. It’s a metal animal. It’s NATURAL.”

And if you're STILL curious, here's another excerpt:
    They were getting deep into the forest now. The last roads, and with them the old logging areas, had been left far behind. No more civilization out here. No trails. This part of the woods was inhabited solely by deer, bears, and Sasquatches. Even Dipper had never been out this far.

    They were getting near the place he’d marked on the map. The place where they’d seen the robot lion headed yesterday. Dipper put the map away, and began to look around. Wendy kept her eyes on the ground, following the lion-bot's tracks through the mud.

    Somewhere far away, a woodpecker tapped on a tree. Dipper frowned, and turned an ear to listen. It tapped again. Something about it sounded off. He’d heard a lot of woodpeckers in his life, and he was quite sure that this one was tapping much too fast. Faster than should be possible. Harder than a soft body could ever tap.

    Dipper looked around. A robot woodpecker?? He didn’t see anything. The forest looked largely the same as the one they were familiar with. The trees were a slightly different type here, with slightly darker green branches, slightly greyer trunks, and leaves that were shaped just a little different. But other than this slight change in species, nothing seemed obviously off…

    “Hey. This part of the forest seems pretty sharp.” Wendy remarked.

    “Yeah, I guess, uh… Wait, what do you mean?” Dipper reached up to brush a branch aside.

    “I mean stop walking. RIGHT. NOW. I mean DIPPER! FREEZE!”

    Dipper froze, startled.

    And then he followed her gaze up toward the branch in his way. The branch he’d been about to touch. Wendy was right. It was sharp. Razor sharp. He reached a finger forward, and poked the end of one leaf. It drew a drop of blood.

    He bent over and peered very closely at the leaf. Good grief, they weren’t leaves! They were solar panels! Incredibly thin solar panels, held together by a metal latticework! The stems of the leaves were tiny steel cables! His eyes traveled up the branch to the tree. Now that he looked at it closely, the entire tree was built similarly! It was all made of metal!

    And all these trees. All these trees were the same type of tree. They were all metal.

    The woodpecker sounded again, the sound of its beak like the drilling of a tool.

    And something moved through the bushes to their right, and as it moved it made a buzzing sound.

    The leaves of the bushes made a scraping sound as the wind rubbed them together.

    And the grass was hard beneath their feet.

    A smile slowly spread across the faces of the two teens.

    “We found it.” Dipper whispered.