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“Twenty Million Down,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

The first thing Reagan Newcastle did after he became Peace Commissioner for the State of Texas was call a meeting of his board of directors. He sat at the head of the table for the first time.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “First, let me congratulate you. Without the influence of each of you, we would not be in this position today.”

“It’s glory to Jesus,” said Matthew. “We all agree on that.”

Well-coiffed heads wagged.

“The question,” Luke said, “is what we’re going to do with our new power. Things are boiling in every direction.”

“Surrounded by the pools of Hell!” shouted Matthew, raising his hands. None of the others joined him.

“Let’s prioritize,” said Peter, who, as Chairman of the Board, usually sat where Newcastle sat now.

“Water,” said James. “Everybody ignores water. Takes it for granted, like the grace of God. But we’re in the fourth year of another drought. Last good rain we got was just before the end of the Second Outage.”

“I remember that one,” said John. “Got three feet of hail in the church parking lot.”

“Point is,” said James, “we’re about to run out. We’ve got thirty-five-million people in the State of Texas, and we can keep maybe ten, fifteen million watered and fed. That’s it.”

“So you’re suggesting a population reduction,” said Peter.

“It would be a blessing in disguise.” James sat and blinked.

“How many registered members we got among us?” asked Peter.

“You mean Texas only?” asked James.

Peter nodded. They discussed it. Threw out numbers. Added them. Peter stood and wrote figures on a white board. It added up to twenty-two million members of the twelve leading churches in the state, the head of each church making up the board of directors of 2G Inc., the parent corporation.

“How many of these tithe or better?” Peter asked.

They argued a while, then finally agreed: about a quarter. Peter worked a calculator, then said, “Let’s be generous and round it up to six.” On the white board, he wrote six million.

“Now,” he said. “How many are your top supporters? Donate a million or more a year?”

“Reagan should have that,” said Mark.

Newcastle nodded and consulted his backhand computer. “Across our entire territory, it’s higher than you’d think. About eight hundred. Let’s see. Looks live five hundred or so in Texas.”

“We can’t kill the cash cows,” said Simon Peter. “Those eight hundred pull that money from a whole lot of people. We can’t cut those out from under them.”

James sighed and sat back. “Lack of water will kill the cash cow unless we better manage the herd.”

“Flock,” corrected Matthew.

James shrugged.

“And weather’s a problem too,” said Luke. “Heat, I mean. How many hundred-plus days did we have last year?”

“A hundred-thirty-seven,” said James. “Here in Fort Worth, anyway. And we haven’t had a freeze in, what, six years?”

“Thank God for that,” said John. “I’ve had the best winter gardens ever.”

“How do you water that?” asked James.

“Toilet water,” said John, locking eyes with James, who frowned.

“Don’t forget solar panels,” said Mark. “Two cargo super-sailers from China went down in storms last year, remember, and they haven’t replaced them. The only two producers left on American soil, if you want to call it that, were destroyed in the Thanksgiving Day earthquake two years ago.”

“Hand of God,” said Matthew. “Sodom and Gomorrah!”

“Earthquake should’ve hit D.C.,” said Luke. “Those guys are useless.”

“Okay, okay,” said Peter. He looked at Newcastle. “It’s your meeting. But it seems to me we know what we must do. Now that we have the power to actually do it.”

Newcastle nodded and leaned forward. “That’s what I want backing for. And I don’t want any majority-rules thing. I want all of us here to share the burden equally.” He scanned the eyes of the men in the room. He could tell they knew what he talked about.

“So how many?” asked Simon Peter.

Newcastle looked at Peter’s numbers on the board. “James says we can carry maybe fifteen. Fifteen from thirty-five is twenty.”

The room went quiet. “Twenty-million people?” asked John quietly.

“If we don’t, God will,” said Matthew.

“That’s seven million registered Christians,” said Simon Peter.

“The false ones,” said Matthew, “hiding among us.”

“Can we figure out who those are? In a week?” asked Matthew.

“It would sure leave a lot more for the rest of us. Anybody been to a grocery store lately?” asked Luke.

“It would set back the rebellion, that’s for sure,” said Mark.

“Let’s vote,” said Newcastle. “All in favor of reducing the population of the State of Texas to a sustainable fifteen million, raise your hands.”

Eight of the twelve raised their hands immediately. Two others rose more slowly.

“Couldn’t we let them be soldiers? Slaves, maybe?” asked John.

“No water,” said James, holding his hand high in the air.

“How many are black or Hispanic?” asked Matthew.

“All of them,” said Peter. “Twenty million is exactly the number of non-whites in this state.”

That seemed to convince the two holdouts. All twelve raised their hands. Peter turned and smiled at Newcastle.

Newcastle leaned back in his chair. “I want to do it in five days, gentlemen. Four million a day. And then we’ll be able to build the New Eden we all want.” But only, he thought, if he managed to find his Eve, his Annie.

 

Author’s note: This is so absurd, I’m not sure I like it. But in flash fiction, I let it play as it falls out of my brain. Something mutated from here will make it into the book.

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.

“New Eden,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

Reagan Newcastle looked at himself in the mirror.

Forty-five years old, square jaw, full head of dark hair with just enough grey in the temples to earn him an air of wisdom.

That face, he told his reflection, is an icon. What Annie was to liquor sales, you will be to…he considered the right word. Until recently, he might have said “the Church,” or even “the Will of God.” Those were fine answers for the public. Even for his twelve board of directors. But for himself, he felt more humble. Not every man felt the hand of Jesus on his shoulder to guide him, even if others claimed they saw it there. “I’m a mere tool,” he muttered.

He had a recurring dream that changed ever so slightly over time. Standing on cliff overlooking a desert valley, a firm hand on his shoulder and a deep voice near his ear. “The Godless shall grow here.” The hand squeezes and then is gone. He doesn’t even turn to look because he knows he is suddenly alone. He simply stands with the absolutely certain knowledge that he must stop the rise of the lowly Godless heathens. He has been chosen.

In the early days of the dream, he awoke with far less certainty. Might God actually want the desert to bloom with Godless humans? Who was he to presume to undo what He wrought? But as he aged and mastered the art and science of church and government finance, even as the world staggered under the wrath of a clearly unhappy Supreme Being, he began to understand the patience of God.

Every Easter for twenty-two years he pierced the palms of his hands and his feet with thumbtacks and forced himself to wear them under gloves and shoes while he attended church and allowed no outward sign of suffering. The waves of pain pulsed through him like an electric execution, but it cleansed his mind, heightened his certainty.

That’s how he came to know. To truly know. One suffered. One did things that seemed incomprehensibly objectionable on the surface while inside one’s soul underwent the tortures of Hell. The lives of the Godless must be sacrificed to ensure God’s flock will flourish.

The central story of the Bible to Newcastle was the persevering and overwhelming force of God over the Godless. You either joined God’s Army or you perished. In the long run, those were the only options. And for whatever reason—far be it for Newcastle to pretend to know the mind of God—he had been chosen as a leader of that Army.

Today, he reached a major goal. The Governor of Texas had appointed him Peace Commissioner to stamp out the revolution before it ignited. For one week, he had authority over the Texas National Guard and all the federal military within the borders of Texas. In addition to the private army he had built as part of 2G Inc., the single largest subcontractor to the government for police and prison security.

He suddenly had not only the support of God, but the physical means to prevent the desert valley of his dream from erupting into Godless growth.

What should he do first? Look for Annie? No. Leave her to Zoop. But let him know he now had limitless backing. For a week, anyway.

A knock at the door sent him back into his usual controlled exterior. No one could read him. No one. Except Annie. And she no longer mattered. He pressed his lips together and said, “Come in.”

Peter swept in, chairman of the board of 2G Inc. He exuded excitement from his eighty-five-year-old pores.

“We got it for you, Reagan! We really did. We had to push the Governor pretty hard, but after a few prods, he saw the light. You know how some people like to suffer before they come around. I’ve got a lot to go over with you. I’m glad you’re sitting down.”

Newcastle watched the older man pace, working his hands as if building his presentation to Newcastle.

Peter pointed at a box an assistant brought in on a dolly. “That’s legislation the Governor’s about to sign. Gives you all the authority he said in his speech today, plus a lot more goodies. My favorite is the mandatory sunset provision, which can be suspended by the sole signature of the Governor. Oh, he’s still waffling on that one, but before the week’s out and the bill expires, I feel certain he’ll sign it. And I know you know what that means.”

“I’m Peace Commissioner until the Governor says I’m not.”

“More than that, much more than that, my boy. It means you have just become the Staff of God, by which He will drive sinners from this land. Imagine, Reagan! A new Eden. We’ll make Texas into the New Eden!”

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is

about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.

“Young and Pretty vs. Old and Ugly,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

Coach Jesse sat at an outdoor table at Tequila’s with binoculars. He stared across the river at the bathing pools of the hot springs. A dozen young girls in bikinis stepped into the sunlight and gathered in knots before they selected their first pool.

“Let me look, Granja,” Theo said.

“You’re too young to appreciate the view.”

“Mamma says you’re too old to do anything but look.”

Jesse scowled at the boy. “Your Mamma ain’t much older than you, which means she doesn’t know anything about it.”

“She had to be old enough to make me born,” said Theo. He swung his legs from the chair and ate crumbs from the chip basket.

“She slid in right under the wire,” Jesse said. He took the binoculars down from his eyes and sighed. “Skinny young crowd today. I like to see a woman in her prime, a little meat on her bones, a few good wrinkles and stretch-marks, you know, right when they’ve sagged into perfection.”

Theo watched him and laughed. “I don’t know, Granja. Explain stretchy marks to me.”

“All righty, I will. What’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Ah, Machu!”

“Machu?” Jesse shook his head. The worthless Pomeranian belonged to Theo’s mother, Kira’s. He often wondered if that little dog could survive a fall down the cliff onto Sixth Street. He decided it had a fair chance unless he punted it hard so it would land smack-hard on the centerline. Or in the river. But he’d been a defensive back, not a punter. He could keep someone from catching Machu if a strong arm tight-spiraled the pathetic beast to a receiver, but he couldn’t guarantee where a punt would land the dog.

“Yeah, when he’s real close to me. He’s my best friend.”

There went the dreams of ditching the dog. Jesse couldn’t and wouldn’t do it to the boy. But back to the point.

“When did you first see, uh, Machu, your best and most beautiful of all friends?”

“Um, I guess when I was borned.”

“And when did you see him last?”

“Before you came and got me.”

“Just a couple hours ago, that’s right. So when did he look best to you? Way back when you were borned? Or this morning?”

“This morning!” Theo shouted. He raised his arms to emphasize his point.

“This morning!” Jesse shouted, raising his arms too. People turned and stared. “Which proves my point. Machu was older this morning when you saw him than he was back when you came out of your Mamma’s stomach like a bullet, which means older is prettier.”

“Does that mean you’re a whole lot prettier than me?”

“Let’s find out.” Jesse scooped the boy into his left arm and marched stiff-kneed to the men’s room and they looked into the mirror. “That’s you,” he said, touching Theo on the nose, “and this is me.” He touched his own nose. “Now look carefully. Which one of us is prettier?”

Theo started giggling and squirming.

“What are you going all goofy about, boy?”

“I’m way prettier,” he said, laughing.

Jesse winked at himself in the mirror. “By golly, I agree with you. You’re way, way prettier than me.” He tickled the boy and he shrieked.

“You know what that does?” asked Jesse after a man came into the men’s room and they walked out.

“It means you’re old and ugly. Old and Ugly. Old and Ugly.” Theo chanted it.

“Yes, it does mean that, and you shouldn’t pick up the foul language of your mother.”

“My Daddy said that.”

“Well, he’s not prettier than either one of us. But what I mean is, it blows my theory of older is prettier. I guess I’ll just have to start looking at those young little cuties with the binoculars again. All this time, wasted. Thanks for showing me the light, little man.”

“Your are welcome. Can we go get ice cream now? And what light?”

“That ice cream will kill you. Make you blind to the light. You’ll fall over blind right there in the shop. It’s happened to me dozens of times. The thing to get is gellato. I don’t know what in creation it is, but it’s better for your pretty-boy tummy than ice cream.”

“No, yukky-yukky, that’s for Old and Ugly. Young and Pretty wants chocolate ice cream.”

Jesse laughed. “By golly, you convinced me again, little man. I’ll join you. We can both keel over blind and dead before we go home for dinner.”

“Yippee!” shouted Theo, and tugged Jesse toward the ice cream shop.

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Theo is the son of Sean O’Brien from the novel Anasazi Runner and a significant character in Ellipsis.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.

“Couple of Hoe-ers,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. To find out when it’s available, sign up for notification by email here.

Annie stepped onto the soft newly turned soil with bare feet, enjoying the crinkle of fluffed-up dirt, the way it embraced her feet, the footprints that looked like perfect molds. At the end of the new long row squatted two men with hoes, tilting their heads to get the most from the shade of their hats.

When she approached, Theo stuck out his tongue as if he passed out. Anie laughed and stood over them. The other man, a stranger, nodded and looked away.

“Hi! I’m Annie,” she said, putting out her hand.

That got the man’s attention and he looked back at her. Cleared his throat, wiped his hand. “Antone,” he said. He struggled to his feet and she almost fell backward. He towered over her.

She shook his hand, rough as sandpaper, nails like flakes of slate. “How tall are you?” she asked.

He looked away, squinting, then back. “Six-ten. Used to be six-eleven, but I guess I’m shrinking.” He laughed. Theo and Annie laughed with him.

“He works stone,” said Theo. “With his hands.”

“I can feel that,” she said. “So why are you digging such a long single row?” she asked Theo. “You’ve always planted in small plots. To conserve water, you said.”

Theo shrugged. “I figured, why not waste a little water? Just dig a row until we get tired. Then fill it full of seeds that won’t come up. Me and Antone decided that’s the best way to waste our morning.”

Annie looked sideways at him. Theo had a habit of pulling her leg. But she wasn’t sure. “Serles told you to do that?”

“He’s the only one I’d be out hoeing for. Except maybe you.” He raised his eyebrows at her.

Annie shook her head and looked at Antone, who blushed. “He’s a flirt,” she said.

“If you can’t flirt with a hoe-er, then you can’t flirt with anybody,” said Theo. “He wanted to come out and here and do this himself, but I said he was too good to be a hoe-er.”

“Antone,” Annie said, ignoring Theo, “what’s up with this long row?”

Antone turned redder and started shaking. “I’m sorry, Miss Annie.”

“What?” she asked, looking from one man to the other, both of them pressure-cooked full of something. Antone shook his head, picked up his hoe, and walked away, careful not to step in the new earth still holding the imprints of Annie’s bare feet.

“What?” she asked Theo.

“Well, we stopped here because—you’re really going to hate this. I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Then you definitely should.”

“Well, it’s your own fault for being so, you know, gorgeous.”

“That’s my fault?” she asked. She had no idea what Theo was getting at. Or why they’d dug a single long row.

“Well, no, of course not. But you know you are and you really are and…. Well. I just told Antone I wished you were out here with us because I’d always daydreamed you were a hoe-er, and we started laughing, and then just when we stopped, there you came, walking up all barefooted like some kind of garden nymph or something.” Theo sniffed and swallowed. “Poor Antone’s not equipped to handle that sort of thing. Giants just aren’t any good at all around women, hoe-ers or not.”

“I should slap you.”

“Yeah, you probably should.”

“But I won’t. Not today.”

“Put it on my tab. What is that? Three? Four?”

“You’ve deserved a dozen. Where did the son of an Eskimo runner get your kind of, uh, manners?”

He laughed. “I credit my grandfather. Not really my blood grandfather. My dad’s running coach. He was a funny guy.”

“Was his humor as tasteless as yours?”

“Oh, no. That’s my spin on it. I remove all the flavor I can.” He grinned.

Annie sighed and looked at him. He held her stare. “I’ll go ask Serles if you’re not going to tell me.”

“Butterfly wings,” Theo said.

“What?”

“With that new solar-water-sheet material. Like butterfly wings to each side of the row. You know, pulls water out of the air at night and drips water, generates electricity and makes shade during the day. Keeps the soil cooler, discourages weeds, ups food yield. Maybe. We think. This is a test.”

“So is it your idea? Or is Serles making you do it?”

“Oh, hell no. It’s all me, baby. Serles just dreams stuff up in the lab. Somebody else figures out how to manufacture it and what it will do. Then I build stuff out of it to keep us alive out here in this dead-and-dying desert. Something as practical as growing food never occurs to the guy. You know that.”

She stood looking out to the dying scrub brush, hands in her pockets. Yes, she did know how Serles worked, though not quite as clearly as Theo just stated it. Finally, she waved at the long single row and gave a sharp nod of her head. “Not a bad idea.”

“Thank you.”

“For a couple of hoe-ers.”

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Serles is the ancestor of the character by the same name in The Pump Jack Potion. Theo is the son of Sean O’Brien from Anasazi Runner. Antone is the son of the main character in The One-Hundredth Goliath.

“Blank Peeper,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

Lydia Roth protected her daughter Annie like a worried mother bear. Lydia’s looks alone, when revealed, were enough to silence most people. The lower-left third, including half her mouth to her left eye, were melted as if by a wind-blown flame. Her good eye, the right one, had no eyelashes, though not from the effects of fire.

The irony in life weighed heavily on Lydia. Her first daughter’s face had been similarly burned by Lydia’s first husband. Then she died alone on a mountaintop named for the Ute word for “hot water.” Shortly thereafter, Lydia’s face burned in a fire set by her former first husband to kill her, and she embraced her disfigurement as if she enjoyed the stunned reaction of others upon seeing her.

Lydia liked to categorize people by how they looked when she revealed the remains of her visage. At home and in the office, she did nothing to conceal it. In public and meetings outside her office, she wore a tasteful and expensive black-and-orange silk scarf folded into a triangle tied across half her face. At first glance, most saw a beautiful but oddly veiled woman. When she spoke for the first time, she would remove the scarf. That’s when she diagnosed the viewers’ categories:

Childlike. Open curiosity and awe followed by empathy and grief…the more of this the younger emotional age of the child. Adults who reacted this way often exhibited almost unbearable grief as if paying penance for their own flaws consumed by less-visible flames.
Blank. Meaning no reaction. Complete self-control. Eyes would lock with her good eye or perhaps her good forehead when the person looked her direction, denying themselves even the flicker of a glance at her hideous side. Strong believers of any faith and high-powered professionals, such as attorneys and physicians, exhibited such polished reactions. About a third of the people she met in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, fell into this category. After she moved to Fort Worth, Texas, eighty percent or more struck her as Blanks. An amazing change due to locale alone.
Peepers. They did not have the unveiled honesty of the Childlike or the shiny steal exterior of the Blanks, and they cheated and stole glances, sometimes open stares, at the bad part of her face. She suspected most of the professional Blanks possessed exceptional peripheral vision that effectively turned them into secret Peepers.

Very rarely there would be a fourth. Once an autistic child crawled from her mother’s lap into Lydia’s and began stroking her face. The only other, an old woman, called to her on the street in Durango, Colorado. She approached, her face like weathered pillow lava, black scarf over her pulled-back pewter hair. She stared into Lydia’s bad eye, touched her arm, and then took a thumb-sized metal crucifix from around her neck and offered it to Lydia, who shook her head and refused, but the old woman put it into her hand and curled her fingers tightly over it. She grinned and nodded, and then turned away without a work. Lydia still carried that crucifix, though not around her neck. She kept it in a small clutch bag that doubled as briefcase and purse. And the memory of the touch of the autistic child never fled far from her mind. The caress meant more to her than that of her husband.

Of these types of people, she least trusted the Blanks who betrayed themselves as religious zealots or fundamentalist capitalists, who she knew in her heart were repressed Peepers. People of such unnatural willpower were unworthy of her largesse or attention.

The only reason she would ever agree to meet Reagan Newcastle a second time was because of the implied threat to Annie. A classic case of born-again businessman who grated on Lydia’s nerves like the combination Blank Peeper she deemed him to be. Yet Lydia paid Reagan Newcastle’s company, 2G Inc., half her monthly profit in the business she inherited from her rich uncle, the recently renamed Annie’s Liquor Emporium, headquartered out of Fort Worth. In return, she bought time. To think and to plan. For her husband, Tucker, and his accomplice, Samuel Langhorne Serles, to be able to figure out how to overcome the vise grip that 2G Inc. gradually placed over most of Texas and the Old South with the full support of the voting majority.

Meanwhile, she protected Annie like a mother bear, baring her face as necessary to back people away, while Tucker and Serles crept around like wolves looking for ways to kill the beast before the beast killed them all, before she lost another daughter on a mountain of man-made scalding water.

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Serles is the ancestor of the character by the same name in The Pump Jack Potion.

“Socrates was Right,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

Posts. As far as Annie could see. Like an unfinished fence that marched as straight as an Anasazi road across the desert, needing only cross-wires to be complete.

“It’s an experiment,” said Serles. “We’ll stretch water sheets between them and plant like the ancient ones where the output drips: corn deeply sowed, beans, squash. We’re thinking with these, even a desert could feed people. Millions of people.”

“What’s the downside?” Annie knew as well as anybody the price humans paid for the unintended consequences of past “experiments” such as these that scaled up beyond what nature could support.

Serles puckered his face. Ever the scientist, he wouldn’t dismiss the notion that his Serles Sheets, which he called “water sheets,” could provoke some kind of unforeseen damage. “Native animals won’t be used to it,” he said.

“It’ll change the soil over the long run,” added Theo.

Serles nodded. “If enough sheets went up, it could change rainfall patterns by creating large masses of dry air.”

“Insects will love munching on the new garden,” said Theo.

“There’s one worse than all of those combined,” said Annie. They looked at her. “Millions of people.”

They nodded. An ages-old dilemma. Grow the population, ruin the planet. The only way to imagine a decent future was to maintain a super-low human population or an exceptionally unobtrusive way for millions to live without fouling their nests. That way hadn’t yet been found. To Annie’s thinking, it would require a strong coercive central government aligned with nature and science instead of religion and politics. In the history of humanity, that tended to result in revolution rather than a sustainable stasis.

“That gets into things science can’t solve,” said Serles.

“Guns and God can’t, either,” said Theo.

“So we leave it to chance?” asked Annie. “We can’t do experiments that might feed the world while knowing it could lead us to nearly commit global suicide again.”

Serles shrugged. “Boom and bust is a pretty common phenomenon among living things.”

“What, bacteria? Rabbits? Mosquitoes?” Annie stood. She refused to believe that collective humanity would always predictably behave like vermin or germs. There had to be something.

“Socrates was right,” said Theo.

“What?” asked Annie, though she’d heard her father say the same thing.

“Oh, the democratic state put him to death because he thought democracy would fail about like it has. He said it much more nicely, but he believed the voting majority was too stupid to rule itself. He proposed a special state-supported class of public servants who would be educated and trained for their duties, chosen for intellect and aptitude rather than bloodlines or the ability to fight.”

“That would have its own set of unforeseen consequences,” said Serles. He shook his head again. “Can you educate people into being altruistic and self-limiting? I doubt it.”

“So what do we do?” asked Annie. “Use science to come up with tools for people to thrive and just hand it to them, and then watch them use it to nearly kill us all?”

Serles raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Science doesn’t do that part.”

“Maybe we’re not worth saving,” said Theo. “As a species. Maybe the best thing is to let us kill ourselves off so the planet can go back to doing whatever it does without us.”

“Wow,” said Annie. “So keep the Serles sheets to ourselves. And the nano-carbon materials. Just let the Reagan Newcastles of the world ruin it in the name of God and Government?”

“Maybe that’s God’s plan all along,” said Theo. “Maybe He’s sitting up there laughing his ass off right now. We’re his entertainment channel.”

“Science can’t make those kinds of value judgments,” said Serles, looking at Annie, ignoring Theo.

“No,” said Annie, “people do.”

“If we release the Serles Sheets to the world,” said Theo, “I wager that within a decade, some regime somewhere will find a way to turn it into a weapon of mass destruction.”

Serles looked from Theo to Annie. “You two make it sound hopeless. I refuse to believe that.”

“Me too,” said Annie.

“Not me,” said Theo. “Humans are doomed.”

A hot, dry breeze stirred. A dust devil swirled along the white flats beside the incised Chaco wash.

“We need a new Socrates,” said Annie. “Combined with a Thomas Jefferson, and…I don’t know who else. Einstein, maybe.”

“Jesus,” Theo said. “We need a new martyr. Somebody to murder and then worship.”

“Jesus,” muttered Serles.

“Yep,” said Theo. “Jesus Christ Himownself.”

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Serles is the ancestor of the character by the same name in The Pump Jack Potion. Theo is the son of Sean O’Brien from Anasazi Runner. For an excellent and readable book about Socrates, see I.F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates.

“Offspring of a God,” Anasazi Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Flash fiction about the ancient Anasazi, part of the ongoing exploration of Anasazi imaginings by Jeff Posey.

People knew him as Ozzie, though when his relatives and friends uttered his name, the sound had only a hint of “Oz.” It sounded more like “Oss-EE.”

The spring after his sixteenth winter erupted in him like the seeds of rain-soaked weeds and he needed to wander. His parents didn’t like that, though they argued the point obliquely.

“I’ve not finished your new summer shoes and clothes yet, Ozzie,” said his mother. “You can’t go.”

His father looked him not in the eye, but in the chest and spoke after a long silence. “There is no wisdom out there in the world that cannot be learned by the planting of corn.”

Only after they both spoke could he respond. “Thank you, mother. The clothes and shoes I have will serve me well. Thank you, father. It is not wisdom I seek, but the joy of moving over the land.” Like a yearling elk or buffalo kicks and whirls in the warming air, he wanted to say, but it seemed damaging to his case to compare himself to something so young.

By rites, he qualified as an adult. That meant he could stay or go with or without their consent. After he showed them the strength of his intent by not backing down, Ozzie strung a sleeping mat, a few arrows with a small bow, too many pouches of parched corn, bean meal, dried squash, and herb-dried elk meat, he left home.

The white-topped mountains attracted him. They held winter longer, kept a store of water in the snow, and stood watch over the land like indifferent giants.

The first day, he encountered deep snow in a shaded mountain pass. He waded through, sinking to his thighs, soaking himself to the waist. That night his feet and legs felt frozen. Needles of pain prickled him when he continued the next morning.

The second day, a bear chased him. One of the big brown ones. Ozzie shinnied up a tree, skinning his arms and inner thighs, even his face. But he managed to climb out of reach of the bear and hung on, his arms shaking while the bear roared and ate all his food. He wedged himself into branches and surprised himself by falling asleep. The next morning he decided to continue, in spite of his wounds, his lack of food, and his fear of encountering another bear.

On the third day he found a naked woman tied to four stakes in a meadow of trampled grass. He fit an arrow into his bow and circled the meadow, looking and listening. Nothing. He crept to the woman for a better look. He had never seen a dead naked woman before. Her skin had a pallid frost to it and her wrists and ankles were tied to spread her body wide. How sad. Her eyelids were closed, dooming her to wander the after-life blind. And so beautiful. Not a mark on her. A goddess staked to the earth.

When her eyes fluttered open, he jumped away in fright. Fell onto his backside. An evil spirit must have entered her body! But then it occurred to him that she might not yet be dead. He cut the cords and touched her arm. As cold as stone. A gasp escaped her lips and he squatted, thinking. Build a fire. Give her his clothes. Hunt something to cook and eat. Make her drink water. That’s how you kept someone alive.

A strong odor entered his nostrils. He looked at the naked woman, but decided it did not come from her. The breeze stirred from the west. He stood on a rock and looked upwind. A billow of steam rose not far away. Hot spring.

He lifted the woman into his arms and carried her. Sat her into a clear, shallow pond of steaming water. With his clothes on, he lay beside her, held her head to keep her face out of the water. He had never been so close to a woman so beautiful and naked. He hoped she lived.

After her head lolled a few times, making Ozzie think she died, her eyes opened and rolled in their sockets. She blinked. Looked at Ozzie.

“Are you a god?” she croaked.

Ozzie smiled. She had the most wonderful eyes. “Yes,” he said without thinking.

“They sacrificed me to you.”

“What?”

“So you will bless them.”

“I will,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, then relaxed into something not quite like sleep.

On the fourth day, wearing only his loincloth, he carried her on his back toward the house of his mother, which they blessed with many children, the offspring of a god and a sacrificial goddess.

 

For more Anasazi Stories, see the Less Than Nothing: a novel of Anasazi strife and The Witchery of Flutes: forty-seven short dramas of Anasazi daily life .

“The G.O.D. Journal,” a New Novel by Jeff Posey

The G.O.D. Journal: a search for true gold (a novel), by Jeff Posey

Buy in Paperback for $14.99 from Amazon or CreateSpace.

Buy in ebook form for $5.99 from Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Smashwords (any e-format), and Apple iTunes Books. Coming soon to other bookstores.

J.A. Baxter is not who he seems. After high school he takes a new name and makes himself into a high-dollar Texas oil man. But when he accidentally kills his trophy wife in a way that looks like murder, he resumes his original identity and hides in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

When he discovers a family journal full of riddles that lead to a long-lost family treasure marked by an ancient Indian pictograph, he enlists the help of Professor Marshall Garvin, an Anasazi rock-art expert, and Garvin’s niece, Elby.

After Garvin accidentally kills a man in hot pursuit of Baxter, a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier with the initials G.O.D. steps in as judge and jury. He renders a verdict that reveals the true treasure: Elby’s dream for redemption that begins with saving the life of G.O.D.

Categories

Fiction>Adventure, Thriller, Suspense

I call it a Literary Thriller. What does that mean to me? Not as fast-paced (frantic) as most top-selling thrillers, with more character development and less violence.

Read the full description …

“Too Trusting,” Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

April stepped into the blinding white light of midday, her red hair glowing. For a few moments before her translucent skin began to burn, she savored the warmth, like easing into a too-hot bath or doing a rotisserie turn in front of a nice fire in winter.

Serles emerged from the shadow and joined her. “You look like the first red flower in spring,” he said. He closed his eyes and tilted his face to the rays.

The compliment made her throat tighten. The sun felt suddenly hotter. She hated getting flustered around him, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

“What do you think of the new people?” she asked. Talk about something professional. That would save her.

“Two from the Labs seem good,” he said, his eyes closed, face still tilted to the sun. “Odd pair. An electrical engineer and an electrician.”

“Trustworthy?”

“Seem okay to me,” he said.

“But not the others?”

Serles rolled his head and turned his back to the sun. “Couple of rough characters. I’m not sure what we’ll do with them.”

“Can’t you make them leave?” They were indeed rough and they worried her.

Serles shook his head. “I don’t know how to do that. We’re not a police state.”

“What if they vandalize something? What if they hurt somebody?”

“Then they’ll pay, just like anyone else. There’s always a price for misbehaving.”

“They give me the creeps.”

“You shouldn’t be alone around them. None of us should. I think everybody already knows that. But I don’t want to judge them too quickly. The world is a hard place right now. Lot of people suffering. They’re probably good people who have been through some really rough stuff.”

“Or maybe it’s only hoodlums and thieves who manage to survive anymore. They might rob us and kill us and then leave.”

“I’ll get you a gun, then, and you can just shoot them.” He looked at her, a smile curling the corner of his lips.

“I can’t do that,” she said, taking his joke too seriously. She couldn’t help herself. But it did make her think about what Serles really could do. Nothing, really. She trusted him. Since he came to the Labs, she found ways to work with him. They began to almost read each other’s minds on projects. That’s what April liked most. Quiet days in their little Chaco lab, the door closed, just she and Serles, doing the dance of science. It just never seemed to extend beyond the lab.

“They’ll either leave on their own or we’ll find something useful for them to do,” he said. “I think we should just watch them with an open mind and see what they gravitate toward. Antone, at least, could use an extra set of hands on his building projects.”

So reasonable. So trusting. So reassuring. She wanted to take what he said at face value, even saw the practical wisdom in it. But strangers worried her. Until they proved otherwise, she would assume they were criminals or spies. Too much was at stake to take unnecessary risks. Serles was too much of a genius to realize that.

 

Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Antone is the son of the main character in The One-Hundredth Goliath.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.

“Raised Rich,” Annie and Theo Flash Fiction

A flash fiction piece in preparation for my novel under construction titled Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi. Sign up for notification by email here.

“What do you want?” Annie asked Theo. They sat beside a rusty railroad track, the ozone smell of hot electric motors drifting on the warm breeze.

Theo chuckled and shook his head. “Why do people always want me to want something? I’m forty-five years old. My parents are nuts. I don’t fit anywhere. The world is going to hell. I don’t know. I guess I want to just wander the earth and watch what happens until I die.”

“So you want to roam.”

“Sure. I guess. I don’t want to be stuck someplace.”

“No wrongs you want to right?”

“You mean like if I had super powers? Zap! Bigger brain!” He laughed.

“So you want a bigger brain.” She grinned with him.

“Sure, I want a bigger brain. Bigger hat size. Sure. Who wouldn’t. Big hats are in. But I don’t know. I think what you’re asking is what is the driving force in my life. Why do I live? What’s my excuse for breathing.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“I don’t have one. I’ve looked. Tried to join a few things. Find inspiration somewhere doing something. But this is the best I’ve found. Travelling most of the time. Trading. Talking. Listening. The world’s a really screwed up place. Not just now. I think it’s always been.”

“So when you move around a lot, you don’t grow many roots. You dislike roots?”

“Maybe. That’s some of it. My father had no roots. My mother didn’t have many. My grandfather raised me. He made me curious about things. Gave me the joy of laughter. But nothing ever really reached into my soul and grabbed me, you know? I’ve not had a burning passion to do anything. Not like my father did.”

“Tumbleweed.”

“Yep.”

“But not flammable.”

He laughed. “Oh, things like me up sometimes.”

“Like what?”

“Oh. Stupid stuff, I guess. Saw a fellow dump a bunch of plastic waste one time. I hate that stuff. Lasts forever. Never goes away. So I got mad at him. Threatened to ruin his segment*. And I did, I rolled it off the tracks. All by myself. Made him pretty mad.”

“What else?”

“Saw some white men scare a young brown girl almost to death one time. Three of them. I broke one guy’s nose. Another guy’s arm. The other one ran away, the wimp.”

“You don’t like the powerful abusing the weak.”

“I guess you could say it something like that.”

“Justice. You like justice.”

“Yeah. That too.”

“But only close to you, that you see.”

He looked at her, and then turned back to the horizon. “Tried to join the Sierra Club. Green Party. Greenpeace.” He squinted into the setting sun, remembering the impulses that attracted him to those things. Mainly they wanted him for his nearness to celebrity, his famous father.

“But nothing stuck.”

“People drive me crazy. It astounds me we’ve come as far as we have as a species. I look at politics and how people vote and I lose my respect for the masses. I see how childish they act. How stupid they are, even in do-good organizations, and I want to puke. I see racial prejudice getting strong, rich getting to be like royalty, a government that’s no good for the governed. So I just ride the rails and try to ignore the larger state of humanity. People don’t deserve most of what they get, good or bad. Especially the rich bastards. They need to suffer a little more, all of them.”

“But you were raised rich.”

“That’s why I know. And you were raised rich, too.”

Annie nodded. “Yeah. I pretty much learned the same thing.”

*Segment refers to a self-contained “centipede” solar train unit. 

 

Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Theo is the son of Sean O’Brien from Anasazi Runner.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.