Chris Morton's Blog, page 5

Double Hit

 

Double Hit

by Chris Morton

It’d been a hard month and by that I mean no clients, no income and far too many bets on the laserball not going my way. Staring at a fall in credit status, my usually miserable state of mind was in danger of hitting rock bottom.

A hard month and it wasn’t about to get any better.

In the afternoon heat a buzzing from my pad disturbed another heavy slumber. A thin sheet covered my cramped body, I was soaked in sweat. The empty bottle I was still tightly clutching, glinted in the sunshine that bathed the room. Crawling across the bed to the window, I lifted the shutter. Outside, the city noise played in tune to the buzzing.

I turned over my wrist.

2 pm meeting. Code Red.

I yawned, staring up at the dormant fan. I switched it on, hitting at a button on the wall. The air quickly became more bearable – the room was twelve feet each way and that was how I liked it. Easy to heat, easy to cool.

Code red, I mused. It was a nice way of putting it. The man in the mirror with his dark parting and pasty face agreed with more enthusiasm than I could quite muster up.

I showered and dressed, choosing a sickly yellow suit to match my mood. A degree in astrophysics but somehow I’d ended up here – a killer taking his late breakfast on the bottom floor of the building; pancakes with extra coffee; just another guy on his way to work.

Stepping outside, I hailed a taxi.

“And where would sir like to be taken?”

Settling back into the fake leather, I gave it directions to my office building.

“A beautiful afternoon.”

“That it is,” I slurred, gazing out at the view of hushing carriers. Up above zeppelins quietly slid across the skyline while in the distance the slipstream sparkled.

“Going somewhere nice?”

“A party,” I lied, getting my fiction from a hanging advertisement.

“Ever tried Asua tonic? On special all week.”

“You don’t say.”

“A beverage that soothes the pallet with the freshness of mountain dew.”

Adjusting the tint of my window, I took off my sunglasses, wiped the sleep from my eyes.

“Recommended by nine out of ten consumers. Top of its kind since 2136. A five star rating in ten of the last –”

“And that’s all there is on offer?”

“Please specify product category,” replied the taxi’s computer as we took a sharp turn to the left.

“Forget it,” I sneered. “A million drones, a billion products.” I watched the swarms, the scrapers and towers, seeing it all in the blink of an eye; the spoilt and the sick; the privileged and those who wouldn’t last the night. “Just drive, and make it snappy,” I said. “Time’s kinda depending on me.”

In the holdall beneath my jacket, the pistol agreed with morbid expectancy.

* * *

The door to my boss’s office shunted upwards and I stepped through. Warm carpet, ferns and cacti; her wide desk and behind it the videoscreens – images of major cities blinked at my tired face. London, Amsterdam, New Delhi …

“Mr Sun, so glad you could join us.”

Despite her petite figure, our boss was not to be messed with. Beside her stood Blondie, another agent like me; except ten years younger and hair bleached to perfection. His immaculate appearance was enough to put me to shame.

“You are late,” my boss continued. “As an agent of time, I’m sure you appreciate the irony.”

“Apologies.” I held my arms wide while she turned back to Blondie: “This information,” she said to him, “is not to be repeated. You understand …”

“Understood,” said Blondie, quivering with importance.

I picked at a thread in the left arm of my suit while our boss moved to the window, to her view of the spiralling slipstream. “That will be all,” she whispered, meaning Blondie and not me. “You have your orders.”

Blondie shot me an ugly smile, leaving the room as quietly as I’d entered it.

It was all of two minutes before the silence lost its appeal. A code red, sure, and that carried some weight, but there was more going on here, I could tell that already.

“Going to explain the theatrics?” I asked. “You know as well as I do that I’m anything but late.”

She continued to stare at the slipstream, her small body tense. Then in the same tone she’d used with Blondie, she whispered: “Mr Sun, he must not know.”

“Know what?” I answered, moving over to the sofa. I sat down, still watching her.

“Mr Sun,” she huffed, still not looking at me. “What would you say …” She turned. “Mr Sun, have you ever heard of a double hit?”

“A snap snap?” I picked again at the thread in my suit.

“Yes, Mr Sun, as you so candidly put it. A … double hit,” she said, almost falling into my slang. She walked over to me. “And don’t for one second think that this is to be taken lightly.”

“Sure,” I answered, looking up. A snap snap. A client is taken out by one of our agents – a time bandit from the future, an illegal to be snuffed out quietly. But something goes wrong and our assassin gets the wrong guy. Or rather: “Right guy, wrong version. You’re saying Blondie out there’s about to get things very badly wrong?”

My boss stood before me, her face a few inches from mine. Mauve eyeshadow and balmed lips, small black eyes that carried a force to be reckoned with. “The client,” she breathed, “is a Mr Tsutsui who will be targeted at exactly seventeen minutes past nine this evening. However, a message sent back to us from just before midnight … it carries information that both the present and future versions of Mr Tsutsui will have disappeared when the minute hand hits eighteen.”

“You don’t say,” I answered. “Anything else to confirm?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Her face was still close. “Another message from tomorrow has just come back. The body will be confirmed as the current version of Mr Tsutsui.”

I let out a wheeze, impressed by Blondie’s ineptitude. “Messed up and then some.”

“Quite, Mr Sun.”

She seemed to snap her out of her intensity then, back to the business at hand. She strode to the other side of the room.

“And you’ve sent him out on the mission anyway?” I sat up straighter, watching her round the desk: a few memos and a hidden interface; behind her, the videoscreens continued to blink while the ferns and cacti remained stoic in their resilience. “Why not take him off the case?” I asked. “Assign me to kill Tsutsui. I’ll make no –”

“Ifin fact you were more familiar with double hits, then you’d appreciate that the rule of no interference still stands.”

“But why? If Blondie hasn’t yet –”

“Oh, he will,” she emphasised. “It has already been decided. He will kill the wrong Mr Tsutsui. Our future agents have informed us of that.”

“The future, it is written,” I mumbled. Hutori’s third law. “Except for that of Mr Tsutsui.”

“Erased,” confirmed my boss. “Which as an astrophysicist, you understand is a very dangerous business. The sensitivity of time …”

“So it’s up to me to initiate the code red before our friend Blondie –”

“Exactly, Mr Sun. If the future Mr Tsutsui dies by your hand first, then the mathematics of the two deaths will be much less complex.”

“You mean he won’t just blip into non-existence,” I mused. “But hang on,” I thought. “So what? His body … it’s just the same.”

“Mr Sun, there are plenty in the company who have gone into panic regarding this case. We will repair what we can, but your job –”

“The double hit. Yeah, I get it.”

“There’s a lot riding on this, Mr Sun.” Her arched eyebrows gave their best shot at a frown. “Even the tiniest rip in the fabric of time …”

“Sure, sure.” I tapped at my laser pistol. “As simple a job as any,” I said, putting on the best smile my miserable face could manage. “Rest assured. I won’t let you down.”

* * *

When I left the office, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

A new message came through.

9pm code red to be confirmed. Hydym District. Central.

I pictured my boss sitting at her desk. If Blondie turned out to get the right guy after all, then none of this would be happening. Our very timelines as they stood would be altered and we’d be none the wiser – it had been proved, however, that such changes could have psychological affects ranging from minor paranoia to full on psychosis. But how about those from the future? I thought. If the original message had been a flag to tell us of Tsutsui’s imminent arrival, then a future with Tsutsui would have to exist too.

My boss was right. There was much about double hits that I had yet to learn.

* * *

In the street outside my office building, the traffic swarmed. On the sidewalk there was a crowd of protesters – the usual problem, robots taking our jobs.

I pushed my way through. I had time to kill and it was still afternoon. I hailed a taxi but rather than heading to the gym and spa to prepare my body for the later mission, I decided on the nearest library to brush up my knowledge of double hits.

Using my level two clearance, I passed through to the thirteenth floor. The security droids nodded down with their beaming neon smiles and I gave them the salute, asked them how they were holding up. Twenty-four hour days, but someone had to do it.

I found a monitor and brought up what I could. “Double hit,” I muttered. First recorded incident: 2111. A year after our company was set up. Three years after the invention of time travel …

Travelling forwards was still impossible, but since it was worked out how to travel back, we began to have a few unexpected arrivals. Illegals, most of them after a rise in credit status: when one could predict the rise and fall of commerce, when one could place bets … but messages would follow them back from future employees of our company; instructions to apprehend these bandits, most often with orders for a code red take out.

The first recorded incident of a double hit was in 2111. The information was vague and that was putting it kindly. The client had been a Mr Maya. He’d come here from two years in the future. Reason: unknown. Future job status: unknown. In 2111, he’d been unmarried and working in a factory as a supervisor. The factory designed parts for automotives. Our agents had killed him inside a love hotel on Junjd Street. They’d both been in there – the future and present Mr Maya and they’d each died at the hands of our company.

The story was always the same as I continued to slide through the records. I found six incidences in total where a double hit had been successfully pulled off. But each time it was simply the name of the client, a status description and the place and time of death. Each time the ramifications of the original mistake were unknown – to erase a future person from existence, my head hurt just thinking about it.

I stood up and stretched, realising I was getting nothing from this. Just kill the guy and get the credits, I thought. What the hell am I even worried about?

I was about to leave when another idea struck me.

I typed in Mr Tsutsui and three of them came up. A company lawyer, a kindergarten manager and another whose job description remained as classified, however many attempts I made to pull it from the coding. Damn my level two clearance, I thought. I was beginning to get curious.

The company lawyer worked for Pepsi and had three residences in the city. They were grade seven apartments, nice places: his job was to investigate corruption in franchise. The kindergarten manager was a mid-status family man. I considered the reasons why these two Mr Tsutsuis may find themselves in future trouble. The family guy loses his job, comes back to put things right. The lawyer travels back to build a stash of credits he doesn’t need. I stared at the third name in frustration. It was gut feeling and nothing else. When it’s blue sky and fluffy clouds but you know a storm is coming. If my suspicions were right, this was far bigger than a simple double hit. Just as with the lawyer, the third Mr Tsutsui had a number of city apartments, one of them caught my notice as being worryingly close to Hydym’s central.

I stood up and stretched again. The thirteenth floor was almost deserted. An older woman giving off the vibe of a professor, pile of journals and scribbling notes from her monitor. Four young student types – one engrossed in his work, the other three gaming in silence. There was a man like me but twice as dirty; four empty coffee cups and the tired eyes of a journalist.

I had to find someone with a higher clearance than level two. But for that, the only one I knew well enough to ask was my boss herself. I hoped I could trust her not to take me off the case. Too many questions, Mr Sun. That’s not what I employ you for.

I was a killer, there to do a job. “Double hit,” I muttered. I’d shoot him in the gut, watch the life squirm out of him. A future Mr Tsutsui already existed somewhere. He’d travel back, and here we were in the past, ready and waiting with a warm welcome.

* * *

A future Mr Tsutsui.

What will he do? I thought. Why must he die?

But no, it would all be a mistake. Blondie’s mistake because he’d kill the present Mr Tsutsui, not the future one.

The body by my feet would fade into a black hole of nothing.

A future Mr Tsutsui.

He’d be erased and that meant something.

I had to go back to my boss, to tell her my suspicions. Leaving the building, I saluted the robots once more.

“Have a nice day,” one of them boomed, its burly joints glinting in the artificial light.

* * *

It was just gone four twenty. I hailed a taxi. Got in.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Ashram district. Make it snappy.” I gave it directions to my office building.

“Ever tried Asua tonic? On special all week.”

“No more talking,” I replied. “Give me some music. Piano. Anything light.”

“Please specify.”

“Something local. Something modern.”

A simple concerto started up and I sat back in the fake leather, trying to think. Wondering where the paranoia had come from, I cursed my miserable existence. The astrophysicist who’d become a killer. Who was I, trying to be a hero? Just take the credits and move on to the next whisky. But a classified status meant a man with power and influence – I had to know what I was getting into because paranoid or not, the risk of making a huge mistake was far too great for all of us.

* * *

“Mr Sun.”

My boss turned from the window, gesturing for me to sit. “Yes, yes, tell them I said so.” She was currently wearing a headset, deep in conference and I rested there silently, the loose thread in my left sleeve once again taking my notice. “No, no, no. My God, man. Can’t you do that yourself?”

She flashed me a smile.

I waited some more.

“Well get Hailsham to do it!”

She ripped the headset away, showed me the smile again: this time a little less genuine. “So, Mr Sun,” she snapped. “I’m assuming this is important?”

“Could say so. Though that of course depends.”

She rounded her desk, tapped at her monitor with irritation.

“This case,” I said. “I’m getting a bad feeling it’s more complicated than we realise.”

“Not paying you to feel,” she muttered, still staring at her screen.

I said nothing. Maybe I coughed. The fern by the door needed watering. The air was dry and crisp.

“This Mr Tsutsui. What exactly does he do?”

“I have no knowledge of that.”

“No, not in the future. I mean now. His job. His status.”

She glanced across at me. “Mr Tsutsui is a government official. I’ll tell you that and nothing more. Information has come in that you will apprehend him at his apartment in Hydym. Be in the area by eight pm. The address and further instructions will be sent to you then.”

“Sure,” I answered. I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them. “Information from where?”

“Mr Sun, you know how this works. Future agents –”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with procedure.” I’d raised my voice slightly. “All I’m asking is if you can trust these messages.”

She seemed rather taken aback. “Trust, Mr Sun?” She almost laughed. “How long have you been working for me?”

“Three years, two months.”

“And has trust ever been an issue?”

I sat up straighter, not even sure of the stability of my own judgement. But I couldn’t shake that hunch. “Our job,” I said, “is to apprehend those who have illegally travelled back to our time. Bandits, people; but what if, say, it wasn’t a person this time. What if it were a message?”

“Mr Sun, the communications for this case have come from within our department. They have come from the future, from the same channels we always work through.”

“But what if someone infiltrated those channels?”

“Impossible,” she clicked. “And besides, this is not one message we’re talking about. There have been a number of them, from various personnel.”

“Easy enough to hack.”

“Dammit, man.” She was angry now. “You think hacking is something we don’t check? Just what kind of setup do you think this is?” She flipped her screen around. On it was a picture of a grey-haired man, high cheekbones, thick eyebrows, wearing a blue tie and mainland suit. “Mr Tsutsui,” she stated. “Our second sub-secretary of finance. He is currently being investigated for corruption related to credit laundering. All predictions show that he will lose his job within the week. It is no surprise why he wants to come back.”

I stared at the picture. He had a long nose, a trusting smile. The sort of smile that’d get a homeless man to part with his last remaining credit.

“Money laundering,” I repeated.

“An open and shut case; disregarding the mistake about to be made by our Mr Aureate.”

“Blondie.”

“As you so insistently call him.”

“And you’re sure …”

“Sure of what, Mr Sun?”

I leaned forward.

“Sure that he will in fact lose this title he has. Sure that he isn’t about to be promoted and not fired. Sure that he isn’t a man that in a few years will not hold enough power for other parties to see him as a threat. That there may well be those who wish to get rid of such a man. Parties,” I said, “who may in fact have influence within this very company.”

“Mr Sun, you think too much.”

“Not what you pay me to do.” I looked down at my hands. I was a cleaner, not here to ask questions.

“Listen,” she told me. “I appreciate you coming to me with this. With your … theory … but I can assure you –”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

She huffed. “If it makes you happy, I’ll go through the case one more time. Not as if I have enough to do already.”

She turned her monitor back around, began tapping away while I sat there stupidly.

She looked up.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You have your orders.”

“So I’m still on the case?”

She stopped.

“Mr Sun, if I have to replace you, I will. But I’m trusting that doesn’t need to happen?”

“Right.” I stood up. “Get myself to Hydym central and wait for further orders.”

She hit at a buzzer on her desk and in walked an elegant silver android. “More coffee,” she ordered and the android bowed, picking up her empty beaker. “And Mr Sun …”

“Yep.”

“I want you a hundred percent on this.”

“Off for a greening now.”

* * *

By greening I meant a spa and workout. A few legal drugs and a fresh change of clothes. The yellow suit was getting to me. The loose thread that I couldn’t quite leave alone.

I took a taxi to the nearest facility. Spent an hour in there and came out a new man. I bought one of their suits, cheap but thick and tough; dark red and professional. It was how I was feeling.

A new message came through.

Location: building 35. Apartment 2. 21:00.

I checked the time as being just gone seven. I had the idea of checking out this Mr Tsutsui, finding him now, following him. I could ascertain the current version so I’d know which one he was. I could contact Blondie, find out the location of his code red. We could work together on this, we could stay in conference with our boss. The three of us could disobey orders and take full responsibility for controlling the timeline … repairing the timeline.

“Dammit,” I swore. Because none of it would work. Blondie’s mission couldn’t be interfered with and neither could Mr Tsutsui. My boss had her orders and I’d promised her no more questions, no more acting on hunches.

I took a sub-train to Hydym Central, then rode it some more, all the way around the city. I’d bought a manga and I read that. Xenophobic aliens resolute in destroying our planet; aliens who’d never succeed because luck would always be on the side of our heroes.

The second time at Hydym Central and I got off with the shuffling minions; up the case and into the shopping district – it was a cool autumn evening; street vendors and brighter department outlets with open doors and swarming shoppers. Snatching up a stick of pork fat, I chewed on it hungrily, striding through the crowd, the laser pistol at my breast.

Building thirty-five was located just on the edge of the said district. Modern and plush with a hanging roof garden and silver tiles, it stood in a line of buildings, all of similar design. Behind it was a lake and park. Beyond that, the rising slipstream.

Between myself and the building was a thin road with buzzing pod-bikes. Here on this side was a 7-eleven and a clutter of cheap restaurants – the kind where the oil’s recycled and the chefs never wash their hands but the taste is always addictive enough to keep you coming back. It was as good a place to wait as any and I opted for a noodles eatery, ordered some ramen and sat outside.

The entrance to the buildings across from me were each guarded by a security robot of burly stature – though a code sent through to my pad from the company would get me access with no questions asked.

I slurped at my noodles, going over what I’d do. Enter. Assassinate. Disappear. The same as always.

I finished the ramen and waited, studying my bowl of green tea. At the table next to mine a group of young women were laughing merrily.

Almost nine o’clock now and I was beginning to get nervous.

Then another message came through.

Complications in code red. Tap tap. Unavoidable.

“Oh, crap,” I swore. Tap tap meant the two hits would be in the same location. Blondie and I, both in apartment two, and that was risky.

I was just processing the implications of this when a further message came through.

Enter the building at 21:10.

And then another.

You will have exactly 6 minutes. Don’t let me down.

A personal message from my boss. I wondered what was worrying her. Looking up from where I sat to the window of apartment two, I noticed a light had now come on. “Control yourself,” I muttered. This mission, it was getting to each of us. As I watched, the light went off again. Then by the gates I spotted a dark-suited agent. A DEV, responsible for feeding our company the client’s movements. DEVs came from the future too – they’d track the client, then travel back an extra day to make their reports.

Coming out of the entrance now was Mr Tsutsui looking exactly like the picture I had seen. Maybe a little taller. He crossed the road to the nearby 7-eleven. I kept my head down.

“Window of opportunity,” I muttered.

It was approaching nine ten.

I got up and walked to the crossing, waiting for the green man to appear. “Come on,” I breathed angrily as the pod-bikes rushed along, blocking my path. Red changed to green and I all but ran across to the entrance. I flashed my badge at the robot guard, swiped my pad across the terminal. “Good evening, sir,” it boomed.

“Yeah. Sure.”

The foyer was marble flooring. Three elevators ahead and I took the nearest one.

“Level two and make it snappy.”

“Good evening, sir,” the elevator robot replied.

“You droids say anything else?” I quipped, beads of sweat now forming on my back.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. A plush apartment, carpeted floor and wooden panelling. Large videoscreen and high windows, but I’m no interior-designer and had no time to take it in.

A closed door to the right and I slammed my hand against the button. It shunted upwards to reveal a bedroom, darkly lit with long curtains and more carpeted floor. It was now nine fifteen. I took out the laser pistol.

The noise of someone else coming in and I rounded to the plush open space behind me.

Mr Tsutsui. He dropped his bag of groceries.

“My God.”

Grabbing the man, I pulled him to the bedroom. My watch hit nine sixteen and I had the weapon to his head. I’d kill him, kill him now. But I hesitated, just for a moment, and a moment was long enough.

Tsutsui smacked my pistol away, then pulling out a small knife, stabbed me in the gut. “Who the hell are you?” I heard as I fell back onto the soft floor. The man in front of me was blurred and spinning. Thick eyebrows and high cheekbones. It was Mr Tsutsui, here from the future. He’d come prepared … “What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” The words were fuzzy and the knife was still in me.

Tsutsui kicked me in the side and the pain was excruciating. He was a big man, bigger than I’d expected. A big man but I am too and I know how to fight. I managed to gain a crouching position before he hit me again. I took that one and the next. Then I rose steadily and slapped him across the face. His eyes were bright blue, startled. I hit him again, harder this time. With my left fist, I connected with his temple.

He fell to the floor. Mr Tsutsui from the future. Why here? I thought. Why return to his apartment at all?

From outside the room, I heard someone else coming in. Voices, one of them Blondie’s. I picked up my pistol, then hesitated again.

“Thought you could come back here and change things?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about …”

Through the doorway, I took in each of the figures. Blondie and the other Mr Tsutsui. A look of anger from Blondie at the appearance of another agent.

“This is my kill, dammit.”

That one came from Blondie. He was about to get things very badly wrong.

Tsutsui just stood there weakly – with much less protest than the Tsutsui I’d just encountered. Blondie’s pistol was pushed into the small of his back and for a moment it seemed as if Tsutsui was smiling.

“Any minute now …”

Returning my pistol to its holster, I nodded to Blondie.

“Go ahead.”

“What?”

“Or would you rather wait?” I asked, this time directing my eyes at the client. “But if you’re expecting to blink into non-existence, I must tell you, your plan hasn’t worked.”

Tsutsui looked across at me in horror.

“You see I’m afraid to be the bearer of bad news. The present version of yourself is not in fact dead. Simply knocked out …”

Mr Tsutsui’s smile had turned into a look of panic.

“But …?”

“Because I’ve got this thing about orders. And I never can ignore a hunch.”

“But, no. Wait …”

“What the hell is going on here?” screamed Blondie, his finger edging closer to the trigger.

“But the other … he must die. The things I have … the things he will do … you don’t understand. Oh, my God!”

I turned. Even the best of us can’t knock them out for long. It was Tsutsui. The other one. The present one. The one I’d been set up to kill.

“What exactly will I …?”

When each Tsutsui saw the other, they fell to the floor in agony. A rupture in time and space, a rip in the dimensions.

Quickly striding to who I now knew to be the current version of Tsutsui, I kicked him in the head, knocking him out again. I dragged the body back to the bedroom, threw it inside and used my laser pistol to melt the lock.

“We should bring them both in,” I breathed heavily, swivelling back to Blondie. The future Mr Tsutsui was crouched on the floor, moaning. “Blondie, no …”

“It’s my kill, dammit!”

“No, Blondie. Don’t …”

A flash as the pistol went off and Mr Tsutsui stopped shaking.

“Goddammit, Blondie. He needed questioning!”

A burned out torso and Mr Tsutsui was no more – one of them, at least.

There was nothing more to say.

“Your kill,” I relented, still breathing heavily. “Like it was only ever meant to be …” The double hit – it had all been a sham. Blondie had fulfilled his mission, completed the code red.

With difficulty, I tapped at my wrist, requesting an immediate clean and cover up. Problem solved, I then wrote.

Stumbling to the lift, my stomach was bleeding and I felt like death. I craved an ambulance and maybe a whisky or six. The love of a good nurse. The generosity of a trusted barman.

They didn’t need me there. Eventually, they’d work it out.

* * *

The next morning I was called in. Nine am meeting and this time I really was late. When I got to the office, my boss was dismissing Blondie. He sneered at me as he walked out.

“Mr Sun, then,” my boss said. “Nice of you to turn up.”

The air was as thick as cryogenic formaldehyde. She stood with her back to me; staring at the far wall, at the laws of time that were etched in silky neon. No interference. To alter the past …

“So how did you know?” she asked, her voice low and brooding.

“Just a hunch,” I answered. I’d been using that word far too much. But what was it that’d stopped me? I couldn’t put it down to anything else. It was my turn for a question. “Any ideas on how he did it?”

“If you’re talking about Mr Tsutsui, then you’re right of course. It was him all along. And no, Mr Sun. Information from the future –”

I coughed just enough to let her know what I thought of that. The wound in my stomach was already healing wonderfully. No sharp pain at all.

“Our channels can now be trusted, I can assure you. We’ve received an apology …”

I sat down heavily, thought about coughing again, then thought better of it.

“Because they were … infiltrated, yes. In the future, Mr Tsutsui will have influence. Connections.”

“And the present one? Will he remember?”

“We have our best people working on that. A mild lobotomy should do it.”

“Lucky for him.”

“Quite,” she tutted. “Although, Mr Sun, I must say that your humour is lost on me sometimes.” Losing interest in the slithers of neon, she came over to help me up. She could see I was in pain. “Mr Sun.”

“Yep?”

“No word of this must get out. I shouldn’t have to tell you …”

“Fill up my credits and I’ll be satisfied.”

She pulled me up with difficulty. She looked tired. “Mr Sun, officially this never happened,” she sighed. “I’m afraid your request –”

“So that’s it?” I considered getting angry, but there it was again, the sharp pain and I said no further.

“There’ll be another case for you soon, I promise.”

“Right,” I groaned.

“But you need to look after yourself. Stay out of trouble.” Her small hand squeezed mine and I knew she was grateful. It was best to leave it at that.

In the doorway, I glanced back to catch her once again staring at the laws of time. No interference. To alter the past …

Another case, I thought. Just one more and then I’d retire. I’d win big on the laserball and buy myself an island condo. Fresh air and clean living.

Outside, I hailed a taxi.

“And where would sir like to be taken?”

“Just drive,” I said. Morning rays of sunshine reflected off the passing scrapers. A beautiful day in the city and I tinted the windows, blocking it out.

“Ever tried Asua tonic?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “But you never know … you never know …”

Chris Morton is the creator of this blog.He has released two sci-fi novels,one collection of short storiesand a few other scribblings.You can find his amazon page  here. 

Bookspot - Mixed Realities by Naomi Augustine

 

Bookspot - Mixed Realities by Naomi Augustine

Seven stories that will make you question the universe.

Get ready for a mind-bending thriller that will make you question reality as you know it. "Mixed Realities" is a collection of stories that poke at the squishy parts of our universe, human understanding, and our relationship with technology. Illustrated QR codes are embedded throughout the book to let you listen to the soundtrack on the fly. Don't trust your senses. Don't even trust your measuring equipment. Reality is not what it seems. Physicists were right. It turns out we live in a giant computer simulation and our world isn't the only one. There are many others. In one world, climate change threatens humanity. A 10-year old refugee befriends an artificial intelligence in a city full of holograms and works together to solve the crisis. In another, an anti-social college student becomes suspicious of the existence of parallel worlds and figures out how to cross over. With the help of his new online friends, they set out to unravel the mystery behind the simulation and its mischievous architect. The perfect book for readers of science-fiction, "Mixed Realities" will challenge and entertain readers with each page.

Traumerei by Charles Beaumont

 

Traumerei

by Charles Beaumont

At the sound, Henry Ritchie's hand jerked. Most of the martini sloshed out over his robe. He jumped up, swabbing furiously at the spots. "Goddam it!"

"Hank!" His wife slammed her book together.

"Well, what do you expect? That confounded buzzer –"

"–is a perfectly natural normal buzzer. You're just terribly upset, dear."

"No," Mr. Ritchie said, "I am not'just terribly upset, dear' – for seven years I've been listening to that banshee's wail every time somebody wants in. Well, I'm through. Either it goes –"

"All right, all right," Mrs. Ritchie said. "You don't have to make a production out of it."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

Mr. Ritchie sighed ponderously, glared at his wife, set what was left of the martini down on a table and went to the door. He slipped the chain.

"Be this the marster of 'arfway 'ouse?"

Mr. Ritchie opened the door. "Max – what the devil are you doing up at this hour?"

A large man, well built, in his forties, walked in, smiling. "I could ask you the same question," he said, flinging his hat and scarf in the direction of a chair, "but I'm far too thoughtful."

They went back into the living room. Mrs. Ritchie looked up, frowned. "Oh, swell," she said. "Dandy. All we need now is a bridge four."

"Ruth's just terribly upset," Mr. Ritchie said.

"Well," the large man said, "it's nice to see unanimity in this house for once anyway. Hi, Ruth." He walked over to the bar and found the martini mix and drained the jar's contents into a glass. Then he drained the glass.

"Hey, take it easy!"

Max Kaplan turned to face his hosts. He looked quite a bit older than usual: the grin wasn't boyish now. "Dear folkses," he said, "when I die, I don't want to see any full bottles around."

"Oh, ha-ha, that's just so very deliriously funny," Mrs. Ritchie said. She was massaging her temples.

"I am glad to see her ladyship amused." Kaplan followed Mr. Ritchie's gaze. "Hickory dickory dock, the mice looked at the clock. …"

"Oh, shut up."

"Oop, sorry." The big man mixed up a new batch silently, then refilled the three glasses. He sat down. The clock's tick, a deep sharp bass sound, got louder and louder in the room. Kaplan rested his head on the couch arm. "Less than an hour," he said. "Not even an hour –"

"I knew it." Mrs. Ritchie stood up. "I knew it the minute you walked in. We're not nervous enough, oh, no, now we've got to listen to the great city editor and his news behind the news."

"Very well!" Kaplan rose shakily. He was drunk; it showed now. "If I'm not welcome here, then I shall go elsewhere to breathe my last."

"Never mind," Mrs. Ritchie said. "Sit down. I've had a stomach full of this wake. If you two insist on sitting up until X-hour like a couple of ghouls, well, that's your business. I'm going to bed. And to sleep."

"What a woman," Kaplan muttered, polishing off the martini. "Nerves of chilled steel."

Mrs. Ritchie looked at her husband for a moment. Then she said, "Good night, dear," and started for the door.

"See you in the morning," Mr. Ritchie said. "Get a good sleep."

Then Max Kaplan giggled. "Yeah, a real good sleep."

Mrs. Ritchie left the room.

* * * * *

The big man fumbled for a cigarette. He glanced at the clock. "Hank, for Chrissake –"

Henry Ritchie sighed and slumped in the chair. "I tried, Max."

"Did you? Did you try – I mean with everything?"

"With everything. Might as well face it: the boy's going to burn, right on schedule."

Kaplan opened his mouth.

"Forget it. The governor isn't about to issue a commutation. With the public's blood up the way it is, he knows what it would mean to his vote. We were stupid even to try."

"Lousy vultures."

Ritchie shrugged. "They're hungry, Max. You forget, there hasn't been an execution in this state for over two years. They're hungry."

"So a poor dumb kid's got to fry alive in order for them to get their kicks. …"

"Wait a second now. Don't get carried away. This same poor dumb kid is the boy who killed George Sanderson in cold blood and then raped his wife, not too very long ago. If I recall, your word for him then was Brutal Murderer."

"That was the paper. This is you and me."

"Well, get that accusatory look off your face. Murder and rape – those are stiff raps to beat, pal."

"You did it with Beatty, you got him off," Kaplan reminded his friend.

"Luck. Public mood – Beatty was an old man, feeble. Look, Max – why don't you stop beating around the bush?"

"Okay," Kaplan said slowly. "They – let me in this afternoon. I talked with him again."

Ritchie nodded. "And?"

"Hank, I'm telling you – it gives me the creeps. I swear it does."

"What did he tell you?"

Kaplan puffed on his cigarette nervously, kept his eyes on the clock. "He was lying down when I went in, curled up tight. Trying to sleep."

"Go on."

"When he heard me, he came to. 'Mr. Kaplan,' he says, 'you've got to make them believe me, you've got to make them understand –' His eyesgot real big then, and – Hank, I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"I don't know. Just him, maybe. I'm not sure."

"He carrying the same line?"

"Yeah. But worse this time, more intense somehow. …"

Ritchie tried to keep the smile. He remembered, all right. Much too well. The whole story was crazy, normally enough to get the kid off with a life sentence in the criminally insane ward. But it was a little toocrazy, so the psychiatrists wouldn't buy.

"Can't get his words out of my mind," Kaplan was saying. His eyes were closed. "'Mister, tell them, tell them. If you kill me, then you'll all die. This whole world of yours will die. …'"

Because, Ritchie remembered, you don't exist, any of you, except in my mind. Don't you see? I'm asleep and dreaming all this. You, your wives, your children, it's all part of my dream – and when you kill me then I'll wake up and that will be the end of you. …

"Well," Ritchie said, "it's original."

Kaplan shook his head.

"Come on, Max, snap out of it. You act like you never listened to a lunatic before. People have been predicting the end of the world ever since Year 1."

"Sure, I know. You don't have to patronize me. It's just that – well, who isthis particular lunatic anyway? We don't know any more about him than the day he was caught. Even the name we had to make up. Who is he, where'd he come from, what's his home?"

My home … a world of eternities, an eternity of worlds. … I must destroy, hurt, kill before I wake always … and then once more I must sleep … always, always. …

"Look, there's a hundred vagrants in every city. Just like our boy: no name, no friends, no relatives."

"Then he doesn't seem in the least odd to you, is that it? Is that what you're telling me?"

"So he's odd! I never met a murderer that wasn't!" Ritchie recalled the lean hairless face, the expressionless eyes, the slender youthful body that moved in strange hesitant jerks, the halting voice.

* * * * *

The clock bonged the quarter hour. Fifteen to twelve. Max Kaplan wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"And besides," Ritchie said, somewhat too loudly, "it's plain ridiculous. He says – what? We're a dream he's having, right? Okay – then what about our parents, and their parents, everybody who never heard of the kid?"

"First thing I thought of. And you know his answer."

Ritchie snorted.

"Well, think it over, for God's sake. He says everydream is a complete unit in itself. You – haven't you ever had nightmares about people you'd never seen before?"

"Yes, I suppose so, but –"

"All right, even though they were projections of your subconscious – or whatever the hell it's called – they were complete, weren't they? Going somewhere, doing something, all on their own?"

Ritchie was silent.

"Where were they going, what were they doing? See? The kid says every dream, even ours, builds its own whole world – complete, with a past and – as long as you stay asleep – a future."

"Nonsense! What about us, when wesleep and dream? Or is the period when we're unconscious the time he'sup and around? And keep in mind that everybody doesn't sleep at the same time –"

"You're missing the point, Hank. I said it was complete, didn't I? And isn't sleeping part of the pattern?"

"Have another drink, Max. You're slipping."

* * * * *

"What will you wake up to?"

"My home. You would not understand."

"Then what?"

"Then I sleep again and dream another world."

"Why did you kill George Sanderson?"

"It is my eternal destiny to kill and suffer punishment."

"Why? Why?"

"In my world I committed a crime; it is the punishment of my world, this destiny. …"

"Then try this on for size," Ritchie said. "That kid's frozen stiff with fear. Since he's going to have to wake up no matter what, then why not sit back and enjoy it?"

Kaplan's eyes widened. "Hank, how soundly do you sleep?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"I mean, do you ever dream?"

"Of course."

"Ever get hold of any particularly vivid ones? Falling down stairs like, being tortured, anything like that?"

Ritchie pulled at his drink.

"Sure you have." Kaplan gazed steadily at the clock. Almost midnight. "Then try to remember. In that kind of dream, isn't it true that the pleasure – or pain – you feel is almost as real as if you were actually experiencing it? I remember once I had a nightmare about my old man. He caught me in the basement with a cigarette – I was eight or nine, I guess. He took down my pants and started after me with his belt. Hank – that hurt, bad. It really hurt."

"So what's the point?"

"In my dream I tried to get away from my old man. He chased me all over that basement. Well, it's the same with the kid – except his dream is a hundred times more vivid, that's all. He knows he'll feel that electric chair, feel the jolts frying into him, feel the death boiling up in his throat just as much as if he were honest-to-God sitting there. …"

Kaplan stopped talking. The two men sat quietly watching the clock's invisible progress. Then Ritchie leaped up and stalked over to the bar again. "Doggone you, Max," he called. "You're getting mefidgety now."

"Don't kid me," Kaplan said. "You've been fidgety on your own for quite a while. I don't know how you ever made the grade as a criminal lawyer – you don't know the first thing about lying."

Ritchie didn't answer. He poured the drink slowly.

"Look at you and Ruth, screaming at each other. And then there was the other tip-off. The way you defended the kid – brilliantly, masterfully. You'd never have done that for a common open-and-shut little killer."

"Max," Ritchie said, "you're nuts. Tell you what: at exactly 12:01 I'll take you out for the biggest, juiciest, rarest steak you ever saw. On me. Then we'll get loaded and fall all over ourselves laughing –"

Ritchie fought away the sudden picture of steak, rare steak, with the blood sputtering out, sizzling on an electric stove.

The clock began to strike. Henry Ritchie and Max Kaplan stood very still.

* * * * *

He uncoiled. The dry pop of hardened joints jabbed wakefulness into him until finally the twenty-foot long shell lay straight upon the steaming rocks. He opened his eyes, all of them, one by one.

Across the bubbling pools, far away, past the white stone geysers, he could see them coming. Many of them, swiftly, giant slithering things with many arms and many legs.

He tried to move, but rock grew over him and he could not move. By looking around he could see the cliff's edge, and he remembered the thousand bottomless pits below. Gradually the rest formed, and he remembered all.

He turned to the largest creature. "Did you tell them?" He knew this would be a horrible punishment, worse than the last, the burning, far worse. Fingers began to unhinge the thick shell, peel it from him, leaving the viscous white tenderness bare to the heat and pain. "Tell them, make them understand, this is only a dream I'm having –"

They took the prisoner to the precipice, lingered a moment to give him a view of the dizziness and the sucking things far below. Then nervous hands pressed him forward into space.

He did not wake for a long time.

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

This story is taken from Project Gutenberg . For legal reasons the following statement must be included: ( This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org).

Contacts

 

Contacts

by Chris Morton

When Kyle put on his lenses that morning, the walls of his bedroom, usually a tinged vermilion, were now staring back at him in shiny aquamarine.

At first he put this down to a glitch in his contact lens feed, something the system would soon self-correct. Everything else, after all, was where and how it should have been. The mauve carpet, the desk and mirror – his appearance held no minor surprises and as the bedroom door opened smoothly to his kitchenette with not so much as a rumble of complaint, Kyle decided that he rather liked aquamarine.

But three times he missed the coffee pot, his feed directing him just few inches to the right. Three times he almost burnt his hand trying to compensate. And while his info was telling him the cooker was fully functional he knew damned well that it had been playing up for weeks.

The temperature of the coffee too – the information was wrong; he liked it tepid, not hot. He’d tentatively taken a sip.

“But it’s perfect,” he said out loud.

He wondered for a moment if in fact it was. Then went back to preparing breakfast, shaking his head and whistling nonchalantly. He took some ham from the refrigerator. He selected a familiar tune from his morning mix, took up a chopping board, an apple from the fruit bowl, some tomatoes and butter.

But when the toast popped up ten seconds before his feed predicted, Kyle stopped again and decided to investigate.

“Get me support,” he said, placing the knife down and staring ahead.

There was a crackle as the connection was made.

“How may I help you?” came a synthetic female voice.

Kyle turned around putting his hands on the draining board, leaning against it and looking up. “No, no, no. I don’t want to talk to a robot,” he said. Kyle touched at his quiff. He was a young man; good-looking and fashionable. He had a steady job, a steady life. But he held the impatience of youth.

“Please select the category of your inquiry.”

“My feed’s playing up. Information incorrect.”

“Please specify.”

Kyle sighed. “Probably nothing,” he replied. He turned back around, picked up the knife and began slicing a tomato. His feed was telling him that the said fruit was perfectly ripe. “Couple of things, that’s all. Says the hob’s been repaired but that’s not scheduled ’til Thursday. And the bedroom walls have changed colour.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “The coffee pot …” he paused as the music playing in synch changed to a song he didn’t recognise.

“Your coffee pot is also in need of repair?”

“No,” said Kyle. “Look, no offence, but I’d rather talk to a human.”

“Putting you through.”

The song increased in volume. It was a classical piece, soothing and not altogether unpleasant. Kyle took up another tomato.

“Mr Kyle Winters?”

“That’s me,” Kyle said slicing through the red pulp.

“A problem with your system?” This time it was the voice of a young man. The tone was friendly, yet professional. “I see here you’ve mentioned a change in the colour of your bedroom wall.”

“Aquamarine,” confirmed Kyle.

“I see, I see. Just … fixing that. If you go in there now, Mr Winters, you should find we’ve changed it back to your preprogrammed setting.”

Kyle stopped slicing. “As easy as that, eh?”

“Quite. As easy as that. And were there any other problems today, Mr Winters?”

Kyle shook his head as the unfamiliar music continued to play. He made another grab for the coffee pot and again reached too far to the right. He glanced at the hob. “It says here in my readings that the surface cooker’s working fine, but it wasn’t due to be repaired until Thursday. I’d say –”

“Have you tried turning it on, Mr Winters?”

“Tried … yes, of course.” Kyle reached across the hob. It began to light up. “Well, hold on, I didn’t expect that to happen.”

“No problems with the heat?”

“No, I mean, hell I could’ve sworn … I mean the reading says –”

“Is the setting to your liking?”

Kyle’s feed showed the temperature of the hob warming up. Twenty-eight degrees, twenty-nine …

“It’s fine,” said Kyle as he stared at the brightening hob.

“And can I do anything else for you today, Mr Winters?”

The music changed to a piano concerto. Thanking the man, Kyle decided to leave it at that, to say no more. He hung up the connection, went back to his breakfast.

But when he returned to the bedroom later, the walls were still aquamarine.

* * *

On his way to work, Kyle was having trouble boarding the sub-train.

“Says here,” the conductor spoke, “that you’re not assigned to be heading south.”

“Heading south, heading south. What do you mean not assigned? I take this route every day,” said Kyle, pacing around frantically.

“To where exactly, may I ask?”

“To the Seers Bank, to my job. I’m an executive there.”

The conductor nodded his head. “Executive, eh?” He looked over at his colleague. “Got ourselves an executive here, Frank.” He looked back at Kyle, eyeing him up and down. “How you go land yourself a job like that, son?”

“Look, bud,” said Kyle, running fingers through his quiff. “I’m an administrator in the hard currency section. My job holds responsibility. Clients for pickups, you understand? If I’m not there –”

“Says here you’re scheduled to be heading to the east side.”

“And to do what, exactly?” said Kyle, now looking exasperated. Around them commuters were busily boarding the train. From further up the platform a whistle began to blow.

“Got you down here as a super at Gardener’s Paradise. Due in for punching at ten on the dot.” The conductor looked up, frowning. “I’d say you’d better be getting a move on, Mr Winters.”

* * *

Kyle decided to walk. It would take him, according to his readings, fifty minutes to get to the bank if he followed the underground travelator.

Amongst the crowd Kyle swept through the city’s pedestrian tunnels. He selected aquarium visuals and chose a sports programme to listen to; last night’s baseball match was being torn apart by the experts. Did he even like baseball? For a moment Kyle couldn’t quite remember ever having more than just a passing interest in the sport.

Kyle continued to listen, avoided bringing up his day’s schedule and instead focussed on the three sharks swimming above him. So real, he thought, marvelling at their swift animation. When was the last time he’d selected an aquarium APP?

Kyle accessed his history data and there it was. Three years ago to the day, he’d been living in Waikato in his last year of university. At that time he’d had a girlfriend, Jessie her name was. Delving further into the data he discovered they’d been on a trip to the Samara provinces. It had been evening in a forest enclosure, angel fish, sea jellies and dolphins swimming in the air just above them.

“I love you,” she’d told him, squeezing his hand in the night. It had seemed as if the moment would never end, but now three years later he had almost forgotten.

Whatever happened to Jessie?

Her name appeared and the info read that she was living in the east side now. She was from the same city, never so far away, but they’d drifted apart when her profession took her to new heights. She was an executive for the Dobson's Conglomerate. His father had got him the job at the bank and like this travelator, life had dragged him along in a new direction.

* * *

In the open air, amongst the scrapers and traffic, Kyle joined a new travelator following the signs that would take him to the bank. In his feed a flashing red warning had come up, telling him that he was going in the wrong direction.

But it had to be incorrect, for he could even see the bank’s building from where he stood; a tall square block in the distance and Kyle began to walk faster, ignoring the message that had now turned to audio.

“You are going the wrong way.”

A holo-map appeared in front of him: arrows guiding to the next sub-train exit.

“What the hell’s wrong with my data?” Kyle said out loud. “What is it with today? Goddamn …”

But his fellow commuters hardly noticed this outburst as they stared ahead silently, engulfed in the entertainment their feeds were processing.

When Kyle made it to the bank, he all but ran to the front entrance. The man at the door he recognised.

“Hi,” Kyle said, out of breath and panting. “I just … you wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had.”

“May I help you, sir?” The man was a burly security officer, on duty most days he was the regular guy Kyle would pass on the way in. He had a daughter in community college, his wife was in advertising. He and Kyle were on first name terms but now this man was staring at Kyle as though he didn’t know him at all.

“Goddammit, Jim. It’s me. You know who I am.”

“I’m sorry, sir but I don’t recognise your identification.”

The expression on the security guard’s face, he knew full well who Kyle was, but he was also registering something they could both see on their feeds: A flashing red signal.

“What are you doing, man?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The security guard looked away unable to meet Kyle’s eye. “All appointments for personal conferences must be booked ahead.”

An icon now appeared in Kyle’s visual data with the Seers Bank’s logo and a link to the help desk.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” said Kyle, standing back and opening his arms. “I get it. Because my info’s not right, yeah? But the least you can do here Jim is … At least register it’s me.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The security guard was stony-faced.

“Listen,” said Kyle. “Ignore your data.” He pulled on the zip of his jacket, then thumped at his chest. “It’s me, Jim, standing right in front of you.”

There was a hand on Kyle’s shoulder and he turned to see a community officer standing by his side.

“This man giving you trouble?”

“It’s all right,” the security officer replied.

“Have you ever seen this man before?”

“Never in my life.” Jim’s stony expression was still unchanged.

The officer turned to Kyle. “What is your designation? Why aren’t you in sector six east?”

Kyle stepped back. “Let me guess,” he slurred, “Gardener’s Paradise, right? I mean, do I even look like a gardener to you? What do you have me down as. That what you have me down as?” He swivelled back to the security guard. “Oh come on, Jim, how many times have we greeted each other? Your daughter, how’s the classes going?”

“Follow me, sir,” said the officer, grabbing Kyle under the arm.

“Tell him, Jim. I mean who’s gonna do the job if good old Kyle Winters ain’t in the building?” Kyle pulled away, resisting. “Check your info, both of you. If I don’t go in, then who’s gonna do my job?”

The community officer looked to the security guard who nodded back saying, “All employees are accounted for.”

“Who did you let in, Jim? Who did you let in if it wasn’t me?”

But the community officer was pulling Kyle down the stone steps. “How about we go somewhere nice and quiet where we can talk about this good and proper.”

“I tell you, there’s been a mistake. There’s a bug in my data, see. It’s a setup. Check support and they’ll confirm …”

The community officer, however, was only pulling him harder. A white community pod car was at the street level in front of them.

Kyle broke free and began to run.

* * *

Just past the pod car was a row of green and yellow taxis. Kyle dived into the first.

“Get me out of here!”

“Please specify destination,” replied the taxi’s computer.

“Anywhere, just go.”

Three community officers were now approaching.

“Mr Kyle Winters,” said the taxi, scanning his eyeballs. “You are designated to be in the east district.”

“Yeah, yeah, take me there. Go!”

The taxi pulled away just as the officers were upon them. It pulled into the slipstream of traffic.

Kyle’s shirt was damp and his quiff had now fuzzed into a bird’s nest of panic.

“Get me … get me support,” he said, staring ahead.

Classical music began to play.

“How may I help you?”

But the synthetic female voice was crackling, distant.

“The connection … can you hear me?”

“Mr … Winters …”

The connection broke. In his visual feed Kyle saw a blue icon – a warning from the community officers, but it was blue, not red. He was heading in the correct direction and they were no longer in pursuit.

“So let me guess,” said Kyle, leaning back uncomfortably. “You’re taking me to Gardener’s World, right?”

“Gardener’s Paradise,” corrected the taxi. “That is where you work.”

“Oh, yeah? And for how long have I held that job down?”

“Two years,” came the taxi’s reply.

“You don’t say,” said Kyle gazing out of the window. Pod cars, buses, heavy transporters, and here he was, just another insect in the hive. “So what exactly do I do there?”

“You’re a sales assistant in the indoor planting division. You specialise in gardens for miniature spaces.”

Kyle settled back into the seating. “Real gardens for the privileged, eh?”

“Correct,” answered the taxi.

“No holos for them. Smell that fresh vegetation – stick a banana plant in your living space. Can’t beat the real thing.”

“Sounds like you are a natural.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s me. Kyle Winters the seller of banana plants, Chamaedorea palm …” Kyle trailed off. “So how did I get into that line of work?”

“A logical progression from your university course. You studied botany.”

“I … I did, didn’t I?” Kyle smiled, remembering. “But my father, he wanted me –”

“And your wife works in the next building.”

“My wife?”

“Mrs Jessica Winters. You were married on Salm Island. Your father paid for the wedding.”

Kyle stared at the taxi’s dashboard. “Where are you getting this garbage?”

“Apologies, sir,” the taxi spluttered. “But it is all in your file. Sometimes my passengers do not quite know what they are saying, but it is in my programming to answer any question that appears to be directed at me.”

“Sure, sure.” Kyle was leaning forward. “And you got a picture of this Jessica Winters?”

“This cab is not fitted with holo-imagery.”

Kyle leaned back. “No, no, that figures.”

“Your contact feed does not have access?”

Kyle tried. But now there was more than just a crackling of loose connection. The feed info seemed to be suffering some sort of overload. All he was getting was an access denied message.

“Can you tell me where I live?” he asked the taxi’s computer.

“You have an apartment on Kyweir street, south.”

“Well at least you’ve got that right.” Kyle ruffled at his hair.

“And a house on Smith’s canal.”

“A what?”

“You share it with your wife. She works for the Dobson’s conglomerate.”

“Dobson’s conglomerate, eh?” Kyle was looking thoughtful. “How about we take a little detour to this house of mine. I’d like to see it.”

“Right you are, sir.”

* * *

Through the windows of the taxi Kyle watched them exit the slipstream. He had never been to this area of the city, only seen it through holos. The buildings here were all residential, square blocks of brilliant white that gleamed in the sun. Gardens and front gates. The taxi pulled up next to one of the houses and stopped. The door of the cab swung open.

“This is where I live?”

“Number 2-27 Lemon Street. Owned by Mr and Mrs Kyle Winters.”

“Okay,” said Kyle smartening down his jacket and with fingers running through his quiff. “This I gotta check out.”

He stepped out of the taxi and slowly, almost drunkenly approached the house, unsure of himself and quite unable to walk in a perfectly straight line. At the front gate his eyes were scanned.

“Welcome home, Mr Winters,” came an automated message.

The doors swung open to a path of gravel leading through shallow vegetation and flower beds. There were fountains and ridiculously tiny palm trees. The house was five storeys, block-shaped like the others with white walls and mirrored windows reflecting the late morning sunlight.

When he reached the front door, again Kyle’s eyes were scanned and again the message was voiced.

“Welcome home, Mr Winters.”

His feed was going haywire. Information and coding was filing through at breakneck speed. Up above the puffy white clouds were shifting with a slight unnaturalness of movement as again he heard the message.

“Welcome home, Mr Winters.”

Kyle blinked.

Standing in the doorway was Jessie, his Jessie.

“Darling, are you okay?”

The woman took Kyle’s hand. She was wearing a fashionable black dress, her hair was tied back and she looked a little older, more mature.

Kyle squeezed her hand back.

“Jessie. Is that really you?”

“Of course it is, darling,” said the woman, throwing her head back and laughing. “My goodness, you look terrible.”

The woman dragged him towards her and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Lucky you caught me,” she said. “I was just about to leave for the office.”

“Yes, sure,” said Kyle. He needed to sit down. His whole world was spinning. “And I live here, with you?”

“When you’re not out gallivanting,” the woman laughed. “Whose birthday was it this time? Stay in your old apartment again?” Her expression seemed bright, though the smile itself was something to be wary of; an expression Kyle recognised. She squeezed him playfully. “Hope you didn’t get into any trouble down there, Mister.”

“No, none at all,” said Kyle almost automatically. He put a hand up to his head. “Honestly, I don’t seem to remember.”

“Well I’ve reminded you enough times to not come home to me in that state.” The woman tutted. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him along to the next inner door. Their eyes were scanned and then they were entering a vast open space – there was wood-panelled flooring and a wide spiral staircase leading to the second and third levels. The walls were of a rainforest simulation; bird chatter and the distant sound of a roaring jaguar as she pulled him along to another door ahead.

In this new space there was a kitchen area with marble worktops. The woman twisted theatrically then backed up against the polished stone sink, pulling him closer into a passionate kiss.

“And I suppose now you want to apologise to me?” she breathed, kissing him still, chewing at his lip.

“Now look here, Jessie,” Kyle said half pushing her away. “I gotta ask you a few things, I gotta know what the hell’s going on here. Because you wouldn’t believe –”

“Don’t talk,” the woman moaned, pulling him back at her. “Just take me. Right here.” She had a hold of him with her legs.

“But you don’t understand. Because my job … I work on the other side of the city. For a bank. Seers bank. I have clients. I authorise the pickups. That’s why I was –”

“Oh, Kyle …”

“Jessie. Jessie, stop.” Kyle grabbed at her wrists. “You tell me what on Jupiter’s going on here.”

His feed was telling him that her heart rate was one hundred and twenty bpm. It was telling him she was the Jessie he knew but that her surname was now Winters. Two years and three months ago they’d been married on Salm Island.

“Oh, poor baby,” she said to him. “Nothing’s going on at all. You’re here with me and that’s all there is to it. You don’t work for any silly old bank. That’s just your dream, you’ve been having it again, haven’t you?” Twisting out of his grip, the woman put a hand up to his face and hair. “My poor husband,” she was saying, holding him close and kissing him. “How about we both take the day off. It says on the contact feed there’s a virus going around.”

“Jessie, look here, I’m serious. Why don’t I remember? Or rather, why do I –”

“Don’t worry, darling. Everything is as it should be. Your life is perfect, everything is perfect,” she whispered. “My poor baby.”

She was smothering him.

“Goddammit!”

Kyle pushed her away.

Stumbling to the sink, he washed his face in cold water then turned back at her, bleary-eyed.

“The Jessie I knew wasn’t like this. Wasn’t like this at all.”

“I’m your wife.”

“Who are you?!” he screamed. His feed was piling up with added coding. “Dammit. Who are you? What kind of setup is this?”

A message was coming through his visual feed.

Mr Kyle Winters …

“Yes, that’s me.”

Please remove your lenses,it said.

“Why? What on the hell’s going on here?”

Kyle shifted around desperately. The woman had grabbed him and was again trying to kiss him.

But now the message had turned to audio: “Your position … bank … compromised … identity theft … must … immediately …”

“I don’t understand,” shouted Kyle into the air between he and the woman.

“Just ignore it,” she was saying, her lips soft. “Stay here, with me. I need you.”

“I have to get back to the bank.”

“No, darling. Stay.”

“We … fixing … problem … in … current …”

Suddenly there was a burning sensation in Kyle’s eyes and he ripped at his lenses, peeling them off.

The room became darker, murkier.

“Where the hell … What the hell?”

The woman before Kyle. Her hair was the same colour, the black dress remained and she was certainly pretty – young and pretty. She looked similar to Jessie, similar enough, but this girl was not her.

“Who are you? What is this?”

Frowning, the girl moved quickly. She gave him a sharp jab to the temple, professional and effective.

The last thing Kyle remembered thinking was of how a thing of such beauty could install such an intense feeling of horror. So strange, he thought as he fell to his knees and over.

* * *

When Kyle woke he was alone. He had no idea what time it was, or where he was. Feeling around for the lenses he had discarded, his hands came upon rough concrete floor. He was in a building in the – but of course he had no idea. Without his contacts, without the feed.

Kyle put a hand to his temple. There was bruising. No blood. He stood up unsteadily, scratching his fingers against the wall. Across from him was a tap protruding from a series of bare pipings. This was where he had washed his face. He’d turned to the girl who hadn’t been Jessie at all.

“I am your wife.”

Kyle shook his head and again out of habit he looked tohis visual feed for help. Was this a new building in construction or an old building due to be renovated?It seemed abandoned, empty. Dusty surfaces and an open doorway ahead. Outside it must be daytime for there were partial rays of sunlight.

“Baby steps,” mumbled Kyle to himself, his hand scraping along the wall. “I need to report a crime,” he said softly, and then louder: “I NEED TO REPORT A CRIME! Somebody help me …”

* * *

Outside there was a taxi. Burning sun and starch white streets. Kyle banged on the taxi’s windows.

“I need to report a crime!” he shouted.

“Identification not recognised,” came the automated reply.

The taxi moved away slowly.

“Goddammit!”

Under the bright sunlight Kyle lay down on the pavement.

“Damn it all!” he yelled at the sky.

But then he was laughing for a thought had just occurred.

How far away was he from Dobson’s Conglomerate?

In the open air Kyle stumbled. Without the feed, without his contacts he had no idea where he was, but for the first time in years he knew where he wanted to be.

“Oh, Jessie,” he muttered drunkenly, staggering along the sidewalk. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. You wouldn’t believe it in a million years.” He began laughing noisily, sniffling. “I thought I’d lost you, Jessie …”

A community officer was running up to him.

“Mr Kyle Winters?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Kyle replied, bleary-eyed and smiling. “Kyle Winters at your service.” He bowed. “Kyle Winters the one and only, and I’d like to report a crime.”

“Come with me, sir.”

Kyle patted the officer on the shoulder. “Okay, bud,” he answered. “I’ll come with you. But first things first I need a favour. Take me to Dobson’s Conglomerate. There’s someone I have to see.”

Chris Morton is the creator of this blog.He has released two sci-fi novels,one collection of short storiesand a few other scribblings.You can find his amazon page  here. 

Art - Lok Du

 

Art - Lok Du

Expedition Forces

Jungle Harbor

NASA Repairman

Star / Frozen Land

Waste Punk

For more information on Lok Du you can check out the links here and here.

Bookspot - The Way of the Laser

 

Bookspot - The Way of the Laser

A fantastic collection of high quality sci-fi. Worth checking out.

Disruptive technology creates new opportunities for crime. On distant worlds and those not unlike our own, struggling humans commit terrible acts to survive, artificial intelligence breaks all boundaries for love, steals human identities, and solves impossible mysteries. Investigators enforce laws written by corporations, humans murder clones with impunity, and the underclasses of the future are pushed to the edge again, and again, and again as the line between what is legal and ethical blurs. 

Join Jennifer Brozek, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Paul Jessup, Mur Lafferty, Jaime Mason, and more for a wide range of stories that begin with the question of future crime and end with unexpected revelations. These eighteen original stories of science fiction explore the many ways in which crime will evolve with technology. In the future, humans and machines will never stop inventing rules. We will never stop breaking them. 

The laser's way is both a scalpel and a gun.

All Cats Are Gray by Andrew North

All Cats Are Gray

by Andrew North

Steena of the spaceways –that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar plant –even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space-all.

Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hours –in the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar-port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her you could spot her –just sitting there listening to the talk –listening and remembering. She didn't open her own mouth often. But when she did spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words –these will never forget Steena.

She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master-minded machines she tended –smooth, gray, without much personality of her own.

But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon-rites –and her warning saved Bub's life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slitite. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And, last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars.

All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales. But she wouldn't take so much as a cup of Canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.

About a year after the Jovan affair he walked into the Free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together –the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to drop him.

This is really the story of Steena, Bat, Cliff Moran and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the spaceways. And it's a damn good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself.

For I was there, right in the Rigel Royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman's belly and twice as nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug-snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venaport. Lose his ship and he'd slip back there –to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles.

However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Steena came out of her corner, Bat curled around her shoulders stole-wise, his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff's side. That shook him out of his sulks. Because Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man-stones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldn't have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes.

She stretched out one long-fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing, "It's about time for the Empress of Marsto appear again."

Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jet lining –you have to be granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Marswas just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through space many men had tried to bring her in –and none had succeeded.

A pleasure-ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seen –wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in –or even strip her clean in space –that man would win the jackpot.

"All right!" Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. "I'll try even that!"

Steena looked at him, much as she must have looked at Bat the day Bub Nelson brought him to her, and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces, months later and in another port half the System away.

Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting –with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him. And it wasn't until he was in space that he discovered his passengers –Steena and Bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting that Steena made no explanation at all. She wouldn't.

It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip and she was there –that was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff, maybe he just didn't care. Anyway the three were together when they sighted the Empressriding, her dead-lights gleaming, a ghost ship in night space.

She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too, in addition to the red warnings at her nose. She seemed alive, a Flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors. Air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set Bat to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.

Cliff headed straight for the control cabin but Steena and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Steena opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation.

I don't know who had been housed there when the Empressleft port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo-reg cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female which drew Steena in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror--glanced into it and froze.

Over her right shoulder she could see the spider-silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer, gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will, watching those gems, watching them and--something else!

Steena put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played. … Bat spat almost noiselessly. But he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided his course.

She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And, although she approached the bed she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue.

He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Steena followed him and opened the door wider.

Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Steena strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her but Bat was never baffled by it.

They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen –if the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt –for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Steena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers' station-seats to where Cliff Moran worked. On the heavy carpet her boots made no sound and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons which had not been pushed in years.

To human eyes they were alone in the cabin. But Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze. And it was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spat –his loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Steena saw a flicker –a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them.

But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats or against the panels, the walls of the corridor or the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its loot? What could Bat see?

The storehouse memory that had served Steena so well through the years clicked open a half-forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose her space-all and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat.

Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back, back toward Steena's feet, shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling spaceall. … He had to –it was their only chance.

"What the. …" Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them.

What he saw must have been weird enough. Steena, bare-armed and shouldered, her usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her back, Steena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon.

"Toss me your blaster." Steena gave the order calmly –as if they still sat at their table in the Rigel Royal.

And as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand –caught and leveled it.

"Stay just where you are!" she warned. "Back, Bat, bring it back!"

With a last throat-splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed with thumb and forefinger, firing at the spacealls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash –except for certain bits which still flapped from the scorched seat –as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.

"What…?" began Cliff again.

Steena made a warning motion with her left hand. "Wait!"

She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white-ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately.

Steena and Cliff could smell it too now, a thick oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster-shell.

Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Steena and then he went confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the spaceall. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Steena sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat.

"Maybe now you'll tell me what in the hell's happened?" Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand.

"Gray," she said dazedly, "it must have been gray –or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray –my whole world is gray. Like Bat's –his world is gray too –all gray. But he's been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations and –apparently – so can I!"

Her voice quavered and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before –a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again.

"That is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us. Against your spaceall it was another shade of gray –an outline. So I put out mine and waited for it to show against that –it was our only chance, Cliff.

"It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn't see it –which is why it waited to attack. But when Bat's actions gave it away it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the spaceall and then I let him have it. It's really very simple. …"

Cliff laughed a bit shakily. "But what wasthis gray thing? I don't get it."

"I think it was what made the Empressa derelict. Something out of space, maybe, or from another world somewhere." She waved her hands. "It's invisible because it's a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years. And it kills – it must –when its curiosity is satisfied." Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile which had betrayed the creature to her.

Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. "Any more of them on board, d'you think?" He didn't look pleased at the prospect.

Steena turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes in the process of a complete bath. "I don't think so. But Bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe."

But there weren't any more and two weeks later Cliff, Steena and Bat brought the Empressinto the Lunar quarantine station. And that is the end of Steena's story because, as we have been told, happy marriages need no chronicles. And Steena had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her –someone besides Bat. It turned out to be a real love match.

The last time I saw her she was wrapped in a flame-red cloak from the looms of Rigel and wore a fortune in Jovan rubies blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three-figure credit bill to a waiter. And Bat had a row of Vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town.

This story was first published in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction August-September 1953

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the  U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

This story is taken from Project Gutenberg . For legal reasons the following statement must be included: ( This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org).

Glow Worms

 

Glow Worms

by Chris Morton

 The woman was wearing a green summer dress and under the moonlight she was swaying in the sea breeze – in her hand was a plastic cup filled with red wine and there was music.

“Your name?” said one of the young men. Like the others his skin was richly tanned, his eyes dark – the woman looked back and smiled and said something about it being very forward to ask a lady such things. “Where I come from …” she shouted over the sound of waves and music, and the man feigned apology, all the time moving closer. He took her hand and complimented her over the softness of her flesh. His friends laughed, like him they were fishermen. They were stocky and rugged. Worn, but full of energy.

“Your eyes,” the young man said. He smelt of dry sweat and sea water. “What colour is that?” He was squinting.

A splashing of the waves and a seagull flew down. There was a barbecue going, scraps of fish and bread.

The man too was swaying to the music. His body was broad, crouching. He was a little dwarf and the woman squeezed his hand.

“You’re very sweet.”

“What?” he was shouting. “You say what?”

“You’re very sweet,” the woman mouthed over the sound of what she took to be some sort of techno beat. People often found it strange, how little she knew about music. “Why not?” they’d say. “You should,” they’d say.

Dancing, the woman drank what was left of her plastic cup. She continued holding the man’s hand and he began to follow her rhythm while his friends, the stocky fishermen, cheered them on.

“I’ll get you another. You want another?”

“Sure.”

The man pulled her fairly hard and through the small crowd they stumbled. There were bottles of red wine – the man grabbed one and held it high over her cup, pouring it out like an expert barman, grinning. A number of his teeth were gold and they sparkled in the light from a fire further along. Around this fire there were dancers and clouds of smoke.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Oh, no. Very much no,” said the woman, hand on her hip, in her other hand the plastic cup now full of red wine and she raised it to her lips.

The man’s eyes were searching her.

“There’s something about you.”

“Oh, yes?”

The pink of her lipstick, the blush of her skin. The eyes, so green.

“Are they real?”

“You mean my eyes?”

“Yes, they seem …”

“Ahh,” the woman answered, uncomfortable for a moment. “Though how would you know?”

“A sister,” said the man. He grinned. “The village, they had a pool.”

“A pool?”

The man laughed. With his right foot he was drawing curves in the sand. “Oh, yes,” he said. “A pool is when they gather together money for someone. My sister lost an eye because a firework hit her in the face. Like this,” he said, and the woman squinted, looking away. “Her ear too. Though for that, she’s still waiting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s nothing. The things they can do now.” The man’s eyes brightened. “The doctors – the ear they will grow on the back of a mouse.” He laughed, saying, “They will cut it and attach it here.” Pointing to behind his ear, he then told the woman of a cousin who had lost a finger. “A shark bit it clean off,” he said. “But now he has all five again. A miracle!” the man grinned, then seemed to sober in spirit. He looked at the woman, at her eyes and said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. There are many strangers who come to this town, they all have stories. Your eyes, yes I guess finally. Because of my sister. I have seen them before. The colouring and the slow movement of the iris. You lost both of them …” the man trailed off.

The thud of music continued to beat around them.

Then there was sudden laughter and they turned to see a group of men, the short men, the fishermen were putting on some sort of balancing act. There were whoops of applause.

“Come on,” said the woman. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Somewhere quieter?” asked the man. He seemed excited.

“It says in the records that there are caves along this coast. How far along are they?”

The man laughed. “Caves,” he said. “They are dirty, nothing. I take you to my home, it’s near. You see the sunrise from where I live and it’s beautiful. A sight to behold,” he said.

But she was staring far away, over his shoulder to the distance. “It says there are glow worms, in the caves,” she said. “And I’ve always wanted to see one. What are they like?”

“What are they like, she says.” The man was laughing. “So take out your pad and watch a vid-feed,” he scoffed. “I show you at my home. I have a very big screen. My brother, he install –”

“Oh, come on,” pleaded the woman, swaying towards him. She threw down her cup and grabbed both his hands. “Since I was a little girl,” she began, slowly moving against him. “I’ve been fascinated by glow worms. You’ve no idea how I imagined them. All fat and tiny and full of bursting luminosity.”

The woman leaned in close to the man and gave him a kiss on the nose.

“Okay, okay,” he said pulling away from her. “Okay, I take you to your glow worms. If that’s what you want …” He finished his drink then did a little bow. “I am your guide,” he said.

He took her hand and they walked through the dancing bodies, past the crackling fire.

“Hey, Steffen!”

“Hey, Steffen, where you going?”

They continued on.

“Is that your name?”

“It is,” the man replied as they walked on through the thinning crowd. “But I think you still haven’t told me yours, or where you are from.”

“Clara,” the woman answered simply. “And I’m from the domes, as you most likely call them. Though for us they are just cities.”

“Ah, Clara. Now you reveal. Now it is no problem.”

The woman laughed.

“And tell me more.” The man flapped his free hand in gestation. “I want to know everything about these cities,” he said, and then he squeezed her backside. “I hear there is no need for money? All is provided!”

“It’s true,” smiled the woman, elaborating no further.

“And how you come to be here?” The man was excited again. Rambling. “Are you alone? Are you alone here?”

A cheer from behind them and more shouts of, “Steffen, Steffen wait for us! Why you not take us with you?”

“Please excuse my friends.”

“No problem,” said the woman moving his hand away from her behind. Then: “Come on,” she said. “Down there,” she said, pointing to closer to the sea.

She began to run.

And he followed her into the darkness, scampering across the sand. “Hey, wait.” He was losing sight of her. She was a blur of green dress. “The caves, they are that way!”

“Come on,” he heard from distance. “The water is warm.”

She watched him approach tentatively for she was already naked, her dress and undergarments slung on the sand where he was now standing.

“Come in and join me.”

She was unashamed in her nudity. It was something she had never understood. And as he stripped down she remembered the first time she had seen her husband. So raw and tender. So embarrassed.

Finally her husband had asked her: after the first time he had requested that they be together with the lights out. He’d been uncomfortable with the way she looked at him, the way she’d taken in every detail.

The small man in front of her seemed similarly awkward. He was puffing out his chest, making the effort to appear confident in his natural form but now unclothed he was quick to rush at the water.

He dived in with a splash.

Up above the stars were so clear, the moon so bright. In the distance the fire from the party burned, it was a blip of life, the musical beat a dull thudding and the loud voices and laughter had become the soft chatter of distant excitement.

A hand grabbed her foot. The man was pulling her under.

“Stop it,” she wailed. She kicked out, careful not to kick too hard. She felt his shoulder under her foot, then he slipped away and rose to the surface next to her, splashing and satisfied. “You are a surprise,” he shouted.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” he said, breathing heavily. Under the water he made to touch her but she pushed him away. Instead she swam in circles around this man, and he dived under again, playful, surprising her by resurfacing ten metres or so further along. His head bobbed in the moonlight. His golden teeth glistened.

“The caves, they are that way,” he said.

She swam towards him slowly. “And our clothes?”

The man laughed. “You are a surprise,” he said again. “You have the body …” he sputtered under the waves, his sentence trailing off. “Your heart … it has spirit,” he was saying. “Tell me more about this Clara I meet tonight. This girl who swims before me who asks me to take her to the glow worms. With the green synthetic eyes, who watches me, who pushes me away then drags me closer.”

She was upon him now and their lips locked together. Wet mouths and bodies twisting tightly.

“Clara from far away,” he mumbled. He was a fish. An animal. Sweat and sea water. His blood was warm. Blood and skin and bones. She felt his heart beating.

* * *

“You still want to see the caves?” he asked her some time later. They were lying on the beach, still naked and far from where they’d left their clothes. “They are right behind us,” he said. “Not far.”

She gazed over to where he was pointing. And she asked him what it was like, living in paradise.

“Paradise? You are kidding me?” he laughed. “I see the vid-feeds of your cities. You have cars that drive themselves. You have houses that from the inside can change the shape – the holos, I’ve seen them, rooms in which you can go anywhere by only touching a button.”

“Those rooms are just visual,” the woman dismissed. “There’s no smell, no touch.” She ran her fingers through the sand. “Here, it is real,” she said.

But the man was hardly listening. I hear you can even make it rain, he was saying. Then pointing at the moon, he said, “You know they’re building cities up there now.”

The woman followed his finger upwards. Then leaning forward she picked up a clump of sand and allowed it to run through her fingers. She watched the fine grain settle on her legs while the man began talking at length: “One day, I will go there,” he was saying. “If I have the chance. They’ll ask for volunteers and that’s what I’ll do. They’ll need people of all kinds. That’s the way it works. A few like you, a few like me, a few like others. And I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking, why me, right? Why me when there will be so many others? But I tell you, I have ambition,” he said, showing her his golden teeth. “And because when it comes down to it,” he laughed, “at the end of the day, who in their right mind wants to live on the moon?”

The woman closed her eyes, drawing back to another time. She was thinking again of her husband.

“The moon,” her husband had said after talking to her at length about the proposed colonisation. He’d been informing her, as if she didn’t know; as if she were completely unaware of everything that was going on in the world. It was their first date and he’d asked her, “The moon, how do you picture it?”

“Like a ball of cheese in the sky,” she’d joked.

“And cheese?” he’d asked after a moment’s consideration.

“Yellow milk,” she’d replied.

“And yellow?” he’d asked, growing in boldness, relaxed by the white wine that was settling in his veins.

She’d thought of honey and butter; the smell of daffodils and egg yolk. Lemons, bananas, sweetcorn … even now they all had that strange taste of yellow.

“Before I could see,” she told the fisherman as they sat there naked on the beach, “I’d imagine the sky as a mixture of frosting and water that at night would suddenly change into black tea with sugar.” She laughed. “But of course, you never see the sugar in tea, once it’s stirred … I never knew that before …”

“You were born blind?”

“Yes,” she answered. She was playing with the sand still, letting it run through her fingers. “Until two years ago when I had the operation, I couldn’t see anything.”

“And then it all changed,” the fisherman laughed. “And now you want to see the world,” he grinned, unmoved by her revelation.

“You know when I was a little girl my mother told me there were glow worms above my bed,” the woman said. “In my room, on the ceiling and I’d imagine them when I was lying there in that moment before you fall asleep. Glow worms mothers and fathers and families and cousins. A whole village. A whole community. To me, what they represented. Light,” she said. “Glow. For one who cannot see, those words can seem magical.”

“So come, then,” said the fisherman, rising to his feet. “Let us see these magical glow worms of yours.”

He took her hand and before she knew it he was leading her into the underground. Sharp rocks under their bare feet and, “Shhh …” he was saying, as if a single sound could disturb the tranquillity. “Further,” he was mouthing. “This way, further, follow me …” Each and every hair on his body had pricked up in the cool air.

Behind him a whole new world was emerging in the darkness.

Chris Morton is the creator of this blog.He has released two sci-fi novels,one collection of short storiesand a few other scribblings.You can find his amazon page  here. 

Art - Ying Yi

Art - Ying Yi 

Bilibili

Ruler of Stellar Domain

Grotto of Star

Invasion

Ancient Nuclear War

Cage

You can check out more from Ying Yi by clicking here and here.

Review - Book of The Bloodless by Christopher Fielden

Review - Book of The Bloodless by Christopher Fielden 

Book of the Bloodless: Alternative Afterlives is a short volume of high quality short fiction. Each story reads for around five to ten minutes. They’re bite-size, addictive, they make you smile and stay with you – in fact this is the perfect book for any coffee table; digestible and fun reading.

The theme is death, the afterlife, though the stories are far from bleak. They’re imaginative, often funny, and there’s a certain amount of hope that each story leaves you with; that there’s something more to what we are, who we are; that there’s more to come once this life ends.

It’s the age-old idea that this world is a preparation for the next, a test, something to enjoy, though moral values are not to be taken lightly because the spirit world is never too far away. You never know when Death may just come a knocking, be it in the form of a starry-eyed witch, a terrifying Rhino called ‘Keith,’ or a hairless, golden, hornless incubus. Each and every monster that turns up is in fact very much injected with such character that it makes them almost … well, human.

But for me, reading this book wasn’t so much about the themes explored and it wasn’t about the characters. It was the quality of the writing that won me over. Absolutely top stuff.

Christopher Fielden is an award winning author and every story in Book of the Bloodless is worthy of a first prize. Whether you’re joining the zombie vampire knitting group, watching a troll inspire a revolution, or sat face to face with a man called Slash Hack Maim Kill, the imagination and damn right realism pulls you inside a room of fantasy that compares to the very best of the Neil Gaiman.

A demon in your living room, Batman at Heaven’s gate, a couple of drinks with a phantom feeder on the edge of El Paso …

Familiar characters, familiar monsters, yet with Fielden’s masterful understanding of the fantasy world, rules are never broken but instead are brought to life with a fresh modernity. The added twists bring an extra-original sparkle, while the illustrations by David Whitlam are the icing on the cake.

This is definitely one to pick up. And once you do, you’ll definitely have a lot of trouble putting the thing down.

Book of the Bloodless Volume 1: Alternative Afterlives is a collection of Chris’s short stories, many of which have won awards. Chris’s work is known for being imaginative, filled with vivid characters and twists of fantasy. Death is the common theme, explored in a dry, humorous style.

Christopher Fielden is an award winning and Amazon bestselling author. His work has featured in books published by independent press, established magazines and renowned competition anthologies. For more information you can check out his amason page here and his website here.