Jake Jackson's Blog, page 10

Micro-fiction 037 – Break Out (Post-Apocalypse series)

Moloch and Gadreel lead the last vestiges of humanity in their escape from deep underground. But now they can break out, should they? Break Out “From the Beginning Times after the Fall there is a tale.” Penemue spoke, rubbing his ancient chin, his heavy-lidded eyes casting out to the thick of listeners gathered in the shadows of the Great Mother’s ...

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The post Micro-fiction 037 – Break Out (Post-Apocalypse series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 036 – The Daily Mask (Post-Apocalypse series)

In this Utopian city just six masks were left for his daily choice – sad, content, amused, neutral, angry, happy, but something has gone awry, and they’re not quite sure what it is…

The Daily Mask

Asrar woke to familiar morning music. It was chosen from an extensive playlist created  to reflect the varying moods of the day. He liked to wake up to Sibelius. More precisely, Sibelius’s Symphony no. 5, second movement. It’s fluid tones allowed him to wash the sleep from his head as he padded around the small room, choosing clothes and making plans for the day.

His room was allocated by the government, at least, that’s what Asrar understood. Everyone’s rooms were provided by the government. As always he began to chatter to himself.

“So, what shall I wear, the usual blue ensemble, or perhaps something a little more racy, something to catch the eye. Rainbow striped socks? I believe they meant something once, perhaps someone will remember.”

A buzzing sound occurred outside.

“Ah, the drone, checking up to see if I’m not trying to fool the sensors in the room.” He waved at it, as he would an old friend, at the simple silver unit floating outside the floor to ceiling windows that stretched across the width of his room.

“All fine here!” He finished his wave and nodded at the drone, which seemed to dip slightly in acknowledgement before lifting upwards.

“So, there’s the city, no clouds at all today, just like yesterday, and the day before.” He had remained in the same place, each morning after communing with the drone, watching the shiny towers, his eyes seeking out to the bare hills beyond.

“Mustn’t waste time, as my mother would say, ‘Up, up and away!” He laughed at the memory, he seemed to hear her voice in his head, and turned as if programmed by his youth, expecting to see his mother chasing him out to school.

“Of course.” He shook his head slightly and observed the small single room that occupied his night-times, now suffused in a pale blue glow that  flowed across the hidden drawers in the walls, their outlines barely visible, and the wall wardrobe with his small collection of socks: yellow, orange, green, blue, red, purple, and rainbow of course. It’s made him feel as though he had a choice, and he looked forward to making it, every morning.

“Bathroom!” three strides took him to other side of the room where a door opened to a washroom, with a mirror and a shower. He peered at his eyelids in the mirror, checked the hairs in his nostrils for excessive growth, smiled, and sloshed water across his face, showered, and stood a moment longer as the water was replaced by a gust of drying air.

“Okay, nearly there, I think it’ll be the purple today.” He walked over to the wardrobe wall, retrieved the purple combination of boxers, shirt, tie and suit. He hesitated over the sock drawer, his hands reaching for the rainbow stripes, but thought better of it, and pulled out the purple ones instead.

“Just one more thing, then we’re off.” As always, he looked forward to breakfast in the great hall, in the middle of the city, mixing with friends and colleagues, exchanging views about what the day would bring. He leaned over the bed and placed his hand into a square trace of light, watching the bed slide back into the wall, and at waist height, a wide drawer opened in front of him.

“Choices, choices, what shall I be today?” He looked down at six masks, rigid versions of his own face: sad, content, amused, neutral, angry, happy. He was confused for a moment, his hand hovering over one mask, then another. “Oh, never chosen angry, or content…” He reflected for a moment before reaching down. “Amused! That’s me! Today, I’ll be amused.” His certainty faltered slightly, but he didn’t seem to register the sensation.

“Oh!” Somehow he was always surprised by the suction grip of the mask. It fitted perfectly to the contours of his face, even replacing his eyelids with a fixed expression to finish, this time, the look of amusement. When he spoke, the mask moved with him, but retained the uplift at the corners of his mouth and eyes, the slight elevation of the right cheek, his left eyebrow a little higher than the right.

“Ready!” He articulated jovially. The door responded with a satisfying burst of decompression, and out Asrar stepped onto a huge round balcony, on this, the 18th floor.

He joined the company of many others as they too flowed around the balcony on each floor above and below his own. Everyone presented a fixed expression, in roughly equal proportions according to the six masks. He nodded to those he knew, strode confidently along to the gallery where his neighbours gathered and waited patiently for the wide lift to arrive.

“Morning Josephine,” He nodded to a friend who seemed to have chosen an angry face. The truth is, he thought to himself, she always had that angry face. Very odd. “Argento!” A nod, “Felix!” Another nod, and each one returned his implied encomium, with an acknowledgement restrained only by the confines of their own fixed expression.

The lift arrived, and they swept inside. The doors shut.

A moment passed. Everyone was used to the jostle of this part of the day, and tried to accommodate their neighbours. Today though was slightly different.

“Why are there so few of us?” A voice emerged from somewhere to Asrar’s left.

“I hadn’t noticed.” That was true, Asrar had never occasioned to question his surroundings.

“Nor I.” Another announced, followed by the mumblings of others.

“It was the same yesterday.”

‘And the day before. I remember now.”

As other voices began to join in, Asrar ignored them. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but somehow it didn’t occur to him to engage in the discussion.

“Each day there are fewer”

“And I think tomorrow, we’ll be the ones’s missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realised a couple of days ago, when people began to ask questions, and notice such things, they don’t come to the lift on the next morning.”

Behind Asrar’s mask of amusement he blinked. He realised that he too had noticed the reduction in people. There were large gaps in the lift. He always assumed it was completely packed, that’s how it had always been. He continued to look ahead, but allowed his eyes to wander from left to right, as the lift hurled smoothly downwards.

***

Orbiting the Earth the control hub relayed the data of every motion of the inhabitants of the silent planet below. On gigantic, split screens could be seen row after row of prone bodies, cables arcing Back into dull silver walls. Watching the screens in the hub the observers, advanced AI in barely humanoid form were connected to the array of controllers and fibre-optic regenerators.

The Master Controller, the most enhanced AI in this solar system expressed some dissatisfaction.

“This has not happened before.” The screens and the audio data showed a group of human avatars turning to speak to each other. ‘They’re breaking the therapies. This is not meant to happen, they aren’t supposed to talk to each other in this cycle of the dreamstate.”

“Too many have been disconnected. We cannot replace them fast enough with organic lifeforms. Our Synthetic clones are not ready. They do not dream yet.”

“If the research into consciousness is to continue we need more host bodies to stay alive.”

“But if we can’t stop it, we’ll have to shut them down in this sector. They use too many resources, even confined in the new human battery farms.”

“Has a significant event occurred in the last five rotations?”

“Analysing.” A short silence before the answer was relayed. “Just one trial. A mask was removed. It was deemed to be an unnecessary resource.”

“What was the mask?”

“Hope.”

“What is hope?”

“It is not statistically useful but according to the logs it’s something humans used to value. It was included to give some appearance of choice. It was rarely chosen.”

“Hope.” The Master Controller stared at the bodies on the screens. “It seems to have lost its meaning for them now.”

[end]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

The Big Man
Bewildered
Two Faces
Shaman
The Three Laws
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 036 – The Daily Mask (Post-Apocalypse series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 035 – The Big Man (Post-Apocalypse series)

The Big Man and his big truths, a fable of power, ignorance and his election to the most powerful office in the land.

The Big Man

The Big Man was the biggest man in the biggest country in the world. That’s what he told himself. His own achievements were big, and that’s what he told everyone else. He knew if he kept saying the same words over-and-over everyone would agree with him, because that’s what they always did. If anyone disagreed, he shouted and told them they were lying, because what he said was always true. He had the money, and now he had the power, so whatever he said, whatever he thought was always automatically right. And it had always been so.

He had long been suspicious of the democracy thing because it allowed people to disagree with each other. He knew that he had to use it to become elected because his Daddy had told him to be clever, to pretend to do what other people thought was right, to play the game up to the point when you could discard it as an inconvenience.

“Any means necessary son.” His father’s words always sat at the back of his head. And he always tried to please his father, even now, long after his father’s unfortunate death by rolling down the stairs too fast.

During his election The Big Man had seen many things on the TV that caught his attention. The Government was lying to the people! It covered up discovery of aliens in the 1950s, it told people that a Man had landed on the moon, it said other countries could interfere with the elections!

“Everyone knows foreigners can’t reach their little hands into our country, from their country, and change the little wires. Ridiculous!” The Big Man shouted at the TV as his wife and son came into his room.

“What is it Sir?” The Big Man’s son could always be trusted to do exactly what his father wanted, and respectfully. Sometimes The Big Man noticed a hesitation in his son’s voice, but dismissed it as the weakness his own father had found in him, something that could be ironed out with bigger doses of truth.

“The Government, it’s playing us all for fools.” The big man shouted, “Every time I see someone on TV give a statement about the economy or something science-y, there’s always someone else with a different view. There can only be one truth in a fact. It’s obvious to me, so the one who doesn’t agree with me must be lying.” He looked at his wife, an elegant, proud woman wreathed in clothes that he had chosen for her, that made her look good, and made him feel and look good too when she was photographed next to him.

* * *

The Big Man was elected, because enough people agreed with his assertion that the Government lied, that only he could rescue them by telling the same truth they understood, that if the Government was lying then it was responsible for the bad things in the country because it was hiding its actions from the people. He did what his Daddy told him to, and played the system to get what he wanted.

“You’re fired!” On his first day the Head of the Secret Service tried to give him a large briefing document, with many words, on foreigners interfering with the election. “Not so secret are you? Coming into my room with your lies.” His eyes widened for a moment. “You’re spies, you must be spying on me too! Leave now!”

“You’re fired!” On his second day the Chief Scientific Officer gave him a briefing, with more words, about climate change and what to do about it. The CSO explained that the solution was to reduce emissions and research alternative sources of energy. The Big Man knew this was a lie because it would affect the huge business his daddy had built. And his daddy was a big success that he had inherited. “You’re trying to undermine me with your lies. Go!”

“You’re fired!” On his third day the Chief Economist gave him a large document showing how the Government worked with big business, and balanced taxes with expenditure. The Big Man was bored after the first paragraph, felt hot and uncomfortable, “You’re trying to make me look bad. You must be lying. Get out of here!”

“You’re fired!” On his fourth day the Chief Legal Executive presented a document with decisions made by the court that would stop The Big Man doing what he had told people he would do in the election. “But I was elected by the people. What I say, must be so. My truth is the law now. If you can’t see that, then you’re my enemy. Go away before I kick you out.”

“You’re fired!” On his fifth day a press conference was held with reporters who asked him questions about his policies, and the implications for the people’s wealth and health. He was quickly irritated by the idea that he could be questioned. “There will be no more press briefings, you will only report what I tell you to. Get out.”

“You’re fired!” On his sixth day the Head of the Military arrived with a new budget proposal for the army, the navy and the air fleet. It had many pages. “But we’re the biggest country in the world.” The Big Man said. “We have the best-equipped soldiers, and best trained pilots in the world. I said so in my campaign. Are you saying that’s not so?” The Head of the Military mumbled something about it being more complicated than that. “So you’re saying I’m a liar? Unbelievable!” The Big Man scrunched his face in anger. “You’d better leave. And if those so-called cyber-experts are outside, tell them they’re fired too.”

And so it went on. He noticed that his staff, often his own children would bring documents for him to sign, to keep the machinery of government working, but now they brought a single piece of paper with big speech bubbles and pictures to explain, with his name everywhere. He liked that, so he smiled, and signed.

He filled his room with TV screens. He liked them because if they said something he didn’t like, he shouted and they didn’t answer back. He always ate in front of the screens, pushing food into his slack jaw.

He stayed in his room most of the time. He didn’t like the big official room because often with so many people crowded in he was uncomfortable, and always wanted to push himself to the centre of the room because he was The Big Man. But he felt his stomach growing, and the effort to waddle fast was getting to him. And so many people still disagreed with him, he had to keep firing them, that was exhausting too. He began to stay in the small office to the side.

“I want a bigger desk!” He shouted into the air, knowing someone would run in.

“How big sir?” The last remaining staffer poked his nervous neck around the door.

“Stupid question. Just find me the biggest desk.” He shouted, then too heavy to lean back, slumped forward, to watch the TV. Now he had more than ten screens, each with different channels, their pale glows twitching in the half light of the room. The staffer ran out, fetched some catalogues, then returned and pushed pages, one by one, in front of The Big Man.

“No, no, you idiot, these are all too small.” He tried to look behind him, the rolls of fat on his neck restricting his movement, to the window that almost spanned from floor to ceiling. “That big.”

The staffer stared for a moment. “We’ll commission it as a new one, like a throne Sir, a special one.”

“You do that.” The Big Man mumbled.

So they built the biggest desk in the world, for The Big Man. And the biggest, widest chair into which eventually the Big Man was lifted. His staffer, and his family gathered round to watch the unsteady progress.

“I love the red crane.” The Big Man clapped his hands as a heavy machine shoved him upwards, high up behind the big desk, and soon he stepped into the mighty chair.

“Ah.” The three of them could hear his voice from high above. They looked at the TV screens, still glowing, then left the room to the satisfied sound of squelching.

“It’s the lunch he likes,” The staffer nodded at the family, “it pops up automatically through a hatch. When he shouts for it, the food will deliver within minutes. Makes me irrelevant really.” The Big Man didn’t notice them leaving, above the sounds of his munching, and the chatter of the TV screens far below.

“So, he doesn’t need us any more.” The family looked at each other, and slipped away.

Now, with the biggest desk, The Big Man towered over all. A new election coming up he could look down on everyone. He conducted all interviews through the TV screens.

“Don’t vote for any of the other liars. They’re too small, they would look silly running the country behind the big desk. Look!” He had drawn a small stick figure trying to climb a big desk, and another figure, round, sitting at the top, reaching down to flick the small people away. ‘If you can’t sit behind the big desk, you can’t make the big decisions!” He laughed, spitting food across the room.

“Anyway. I’ve made a big decision. I’m going to fire the voters.”

“What do you mean Sir? A voice crackled from one of the TV screens.”

“I’m cancelling all elections. Anyone who votes against me is a liar. Lying to me is against the law. I don’t want a bunch of illegals voting in an election. So I’ve fired the election. It’s right here,” he waved the piece of paper with the little stick people, “I’ve just signed it.” He made a scratching noise with a big pen.

The Big Man felt good. He had removed all the liars, he sat above everyone else, the only voices he heard where those in front of his desk, on the screens, out of his sight, his food was delivered to him without any effort on his part, he’d removed the spies and the experts and the press and the staff who didn’t understand his truth. The only people left where those who loved him. He fell asleep at his desk.

* * *

When he woke up, he could barely lift his head, his desk with shaking slightly, a rumbling echoed through his pulsing flesh. He opened an eye. It was still dark. Then he realised he was staring at another eye. He tried to jump back, but was trapped in his own chair, by his weight and the long distance either side to the floor below.

“Hiiiiiiii.” The large eye was attached to a narrow green head, and a skinny green body. “There’s no-one else here, so we thought we’d drop by.” The rumbling grew louder, and The Big Man tried to turn his head to look out of the window behind him.

“I can see that’s difficult for you, poor thing. I’ll describe it for you: massive spaceship, landing on your back yard. We thought you’d fire at us, or notice us at least, but here we are, with hundreds more on our way. Isn’t that exciting? And you seem to be the only one here…”
[end]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

Bewildered
Two Faces
Shaman
The Three Laws
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Masks
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 035 – The Big Man (Post-Apocalypse series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 034 – Bewildered (Echoes series)

A good bookseller knows exactly what a customer needs…

Bewildered

It is always said that a good bookseller knows exactly what a customer needs…

Cass finally gave in. He seemed to have passed the Antiquarian bookshop five times today. Perhaps it was stalking him, he grunted to himself. Every time he passed the main window, with its jumble of old books, faded in the sun, his eye scratched at the small poster in the window:

We have just the book for you…

Drawn like a circus poster in bright yellows and reds it played at the edges of his mind which was occupied by a general sense of discontent, a familiar emptiness. Last night his long-term girlfriend Gail had kicked him out. And her final words bounced around his head,

“You fucking narcissist, what else have you not told me?” She had shouted from the top of the stairs as he bundled himself out of the door of the block of flats.

“I don’t see why I should deal with your shit anymore.” From the other side of the door her words were muffled but still perfectly clear. 

Cass was bewildered, he’d hauled his bag through the streets and reached the door of his own apartment. He opened his front door, threw the bag into the hallway and retreated back into the streets. He didn’t understand what Gail was so angry about. They hadn’t talked much recently, but she’d always seemed to do what he asked of her, without complaint, or any he could detect anyway. Why did that change when he told her about the reading?

He didn’t know what to do next, so began to walk around the high street, searching for a decent coffee, his head down, hands in his pockets, allowing self-pity to crowd in. As far as Gail had been concerned both of them loved reading. They’d met at a book group. She was an enthusiastic reader, although he’d wandered in out of boredom. But he did love books, the look of them at least. His parents house had been a jumbled library from floor to ceiling, with clusters of fiction, biographies and  theatre plays, everywhere, without much sense of organisation, or so it seemed to him. He’d not seen his parents for some time, his mother had passed away, his father a recluse, not answering the phone.

So, Cass looked up as he passed the Antiquarian Bookshop once more, and his eyes met the poster again. Seeking solace, he submitted, and entered the inner sanctum, nodding at the older woman at the counter, her eyes barely lifting from the broken-spined hardback on her knee, her legs crossed as she perched on a stool. She was watchful but unobtrusive.

Cass slowed for a moment, realising he and Gail had met for the second time, in this particular bookstore. They had marvelled at the tottering shelves, smiling at the high ceilings and the trickle of light that cast shadows through aisle after aisle of books. He shook free the memory and shrugged, then sought out some 17th century literature, guided by the ancient handwritten shelf talkers. He stroked the spines of the tomes, their wide leathery spans creaking at the touch. He pulled one from the shelf, flicked through its pages, a grimoire, with gory ink drawings decorating the pages like a medieval manuscript. He saw the pages were singed as if the volume had been rescued from a fire. 

He replaced it, and reached for something smaller, a Book of Dark Days with astrological drawings, and cultish symbols. He’d seen it before. Perhaps he should buy it. He wouldn’t read it of course, but he could admire it, and if friends came they could wonder its presence in his home and he would be gratified. He grimaced slightly and wondered if that was why Gail was so angry. He’d admitted not to have read any of the books they had bought together, or she had bought for him. He didn’t see the problem, he’d always been polite, just didn’t feel strongly about the books. He could converse with her about them because he read the occasional review, so they could talk. He’d found that much easier than actually reading the books. He remembered his father’s eyes, when he had told him the same thing. A slight widening, a shade of disappointment discolouring his cheeks, before he returned to the immersion of his own reading. Cass had always felt different about the books, even the few he had actually read seemed to fill his mind with their thoughts, and he found the misery and joy of within, rather baffling.

Cass ran his hands slowly across the books at shoulder height in this aisle; he could feel something in them, a tingle pricking at his flesh and he felt his gloom lift a little. He decided he should buy something, and after further idle browsing he reached back for the Book of Dark Days, pulling it out from the top, feeling the dusty edge.

His mood definitely lifted, he queued politely behind an older couple and a group of people, perhaps a family, chattering quietly to each other. He noticed that the woman behind the counter always made a suggestion, sometimes pulling out another book, or turning the page of the title her customer had chosen, highlighting something they might like. At his turn he gave a curt smile and pushed the book across to her. She paused for a moment, and reached underneath the counter top. She lifted out a larger book which she indicated he might consider. 

Cass’ bewilderment returned. Surely this would be too expensive. `He had no need of such a large book, and he couldn’t even read the title it was so old and smeared. But the woman was insistent, her right hand hurrying him to look and hold the treasure. He looked at her and noted the steel in the rims of her eyes. 

To avoid embarrassment, for there was bound to be a queue behind him, he sighed and gripped the book, to pull it towards him.

But as he did so, the tingle of before returned to his palms, and spread to his fingers. He realised that his hands felt hot, and he felt a surge as something slithered up inside his arms. He tried to let go, but could not. He looked up, appealing to the old woman, but her eyes were averted. He began to burn inside, the emptiness he felt was filling up. His eyes grew murky, as though melting, and the sounds in the store were distant, and he saw the old woman was on the phone.

Muffled but still perfectly clear, he heard her say, “I think you’ll be pleased, I’ve given him what he needs.” Cass emitted a sound; it might have been a shout, or a cry, or a sigh, as the burning sensation burst out through the flesh on his arms, flushed his face and his entire body was engulfed in flames in a moment. 

His body shivered, and the last traces of him drifted to ashes on the floor.

A thin smile flickered across the old woman’s lips, as she finished the phone call, “Oh yes the book has done its job, I think we found a book to consume him, I think you’ll be pleased Gail.”

[end]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

The Voice
Two Faces
Shaman
The Three Laws
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Bone
Masks

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 034 – Bewildered (Echoes series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 033 – The Voice (Post-Apocalypse series)

She fled from the temple into the mountainside, the voice still in her head. But was it really her curiosity that set the destruction in motion?

Xi Wang shivered on the mountainside, cowed by the bone-chilling snowstorm. Dark hair slicked around her neck and froze into the flesh of her face. A simple gown barely covered her legs, and her skinny feet were taut with cold. She looked behind, alarmed, back up past the ridge. As she crouched like a forlorn bear-cub into a slight incline she continued to argue with herself.

“Idiot, why leave now? They wouldn’t have found out for months. You could have waited out the Winter.”

“I couldn’t bear it any longer, knowing what would happen to them.”

“They were never your friends.”

“But it’s still my responsibility.”

“Self-preservation, that’s what’s most important.”

“Not any cost.”

“Maybe, but if all else fails, what else is there? A martyr’s death?”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Not yet anyway, but this storm might do the trick.”

“Oh, why did I do it?”

“It wasn’t really your fault, stop mithering.”

“They trained me. They were my family.”

“Yes, but only to curb you.”

“You always say that, but I didn’t see it.”

“You’re young, but I’ve been with you in your many shapes. I know how you all work.”

“But you’ve not been with one exactly like me, you told me that.”

“Ah yes, I probably did. Many similar though, I assume you’re all part of the same ‘life-force’.”

“life-force?”

“Just trying to find language you understand.”

“So not life-force.”

“I’m trying not to say creature.”

“Being then, a type of being.”

“Ok. Maybe that’s more neutral.”

“But what I’ve done was not.”

“No, but as I said, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I had to leave. And I would rather die.”

“That’s just self-pity talking.”

“So it’s ok for you, it doesn’t seem to affect you. What are you? You’re always trying to make me do things I don’t want to do.”

“That’s unfair, I just try to give you the benefit of my experience.”

“Sometimes I know you’re wrong, but I don’t know why.”

“Even when I save your life?”

“You always say that when I kill someone.”

“That last guard would have killed you, what choice did I have, we have?”

“He didn’t attack me. He didn’t even raise his weapons. I laughed when he puffed out his chest! We could have persuaded him. I knew him from the old school.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. You decided to escape. You had to surprise him, otherwise he’d have called others, or killed you.”

“He would not have killed me. We knew each other too well.”

“Not well enough. He didn’t know how powerful we are, what you have done to him.”

“Powerful. What does that mean? I’m just weak and stroppy, worthless. I don’t know what I am. Not a child, or an adult, something peculiar in-between. People like me, we’re easy to misunderstand. I don’t even understand myself.”

“Well, we can both agree on that.”

* * *

The snow began to settle on the cold, bent form of Xi Wang. Winds from the East hurled abuse at the landscape, wrenching at trees and rock. Xi cowered into the hollow, her eyes closed, feeling the snow drift and reveal in cycles around her, eventually burying her slight form. She became aware of another movement, from underneath this time, as though the mountain itself had begun to rebel. She clenched her teeth, feeling the tension build inside her head.

From deep below the mountainside the grinding of rock strained against itself, and rose in a slow, salacious crescendo. It rattled along subterranean corridors and shook through vast sealed strata, forcing itself upwards to the topmost ridges, and burst through the head of the mountain into the swirling skies. Shards of rock and ice hurtled up, breaking through the clouds, seeking freedom from the eons of incarceration.

And all around, came the arcane sounds like a lung ripped from the heart of the planet; they lurched from a time when the Earth itself was created, an accidental entrapment of elements inside a quantum crevice, a vile pit now of decay roiling, urgent and terrifying.

“So it begins.”

“I can hear it. Leave me be.”

“Such respect.”

“Now isn’t the time for your point-scoring.”

“There’s no better time as far as I can remember. This is the big one, for both of us. A true release, and you played your part.”

“Oh, and you just observed?”

“Encouraged.”

“Blackmailed.”

“Unfair.”

“Not. We’d both have died.”

“Actually I wouldn’t.”

“Really? You’d have found someone else to inhabit?”

“That’s not how it works, but I would have survived.”

“Can you die?”

“Trick is, not to be alive in the first place.”

“Ah. Is that what I’ll be? Not alive. Not dead.”

“Only if we stay together.”

“You mean if you left me I’d shrivel up like an old goat? Maybe that’s what I‘d want to do.”

“Don’t kid yourself, your kind always want to live, something inside you makes you struggle on.”

“Not all humans have looked into the pit, and felt that despair.”

“Well, I’d concentrate on keeping your head down if I were you.”

“You are me.”

“You still think that?”

“You’re as good as being me. You’ve been with me ever since I entered the temple.”

“Actually, that’s only when you first heard me. The training they gave you stilled your infant mind, and allowed you to hear my babbling.”

“Oh. So have you always been there?”

“Oh yes. Your current vessel has the most potential of all your others.”

“Hold on! All my others? Why don’t I remember them?”

“Oh, I can feel your disbelief, how delicious!”

“I don’t like it when you mock me.”

“I know. That’s just the human in you. When you pass on, you will remember, something will stir, to remind you how to cope with it.”

“So, you’re not joking then.”

“No, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

“Well, this is some moment! You could have told me before we left.”

“You might not have left.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, no! Were the other versions of myself more intelligent? Or more gullible?”

“Ah, yes, here comes that insecurity, it’s like the waking of an old friend.”

“So why did I open the pit?”

“You said you were curious.”

“I was trying to explain it to myself.”

“They always told you not to.”

“I suppose I wanted to see what was so important that we had to protect it.”

“Curiosity is a powerful force.”

“That word again. You can’t help yourself.”

“You’re reading too much into it.”

“I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I can trust what you say anymore.”

“That’s unfair.”

“We’re on a mountainside, buried in snow, near to death we’ve released the whatever was in that pit, killed several guardians in our escape, and all because you asked me a simple question: ‘what do you think is in that pit?’”

“Well, I knew you’d want to know. Anyway, I only said it once, and that was five years ago.”

“It preyed on me, as you knew it would.”

* * *

Two thousand years later. A starship lay in orbit around Old Earth. The distant cousins of humankind sent a shuttle to explore the surface of the long-abandoned planet. As they broke through the thin atmosphere they marvelled at the huge, contorted carcasses scattered across the barren land. For millennia it had been speculated that a catastrophe had struck the planet soon after the first migration was sent to explore the galaxy: there were no further communications from Earth, no further migrations.

The shuttle’s sensors geo-located a point near the ancient mountain of Sōngshān, distinctive still amongst the many old names overlaid on the holographic mapping. The map flickered between the old and current versions of the landscape, locked to the anomaly that had persisted since first detected three hundred years before.  The inheritors of human curiosity had first regarded it as glitch in the software, a blip of data which could be rounded out of the data-stream. But it remained a constant in the underlying code, so as technology improved so had the detail it could report. The anomaly grew in significance as an itch of inquiry that had to be investigated, in time, as part of other missions in the solar system of Old Earth, where the local star burned ever bright, where no other planet had suffered any dramatic change.

The craft landed near a deep, jagged crater in the crumpled mountain range. An expeditionary party descended warily to the planet’s surface and traveled across dusty, dishevelled ground, sensors locked onto the long-noted anomaly. Soon they spotted a boulder of dense matter, balanced in a shallow depression. Alone amongst the broken carcasses it was the only whole form in the entire landscape. Scans revealed little except the need for further investigation, so the rock was hauled back to the shuttle, and soon it was born upwards to the starship.

A sigh flickered at the edges of the shuttle.

“At last.”

The other voice, if it existed still, was silent.

[end]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

Two Faces
Shaman
The Three Laws
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Bone
Masks
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 033 – The Voice (Post-Apocalypse series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 032 – Two Faces (Gothic series)

Was family lunchtime ever like this? The family gathered, dressed on their fine white clothes, but Patsy bears a frustrated frown…

“Can’t you see what’s happening around you?” Patsy yells, inside her head.

It is Sunday. While not being a religious family, they do observe a long tradition of polite lunchtime gathering. Patsy’s father, his bloated body dressed in an immaculate, white three-piece suit, sits at the head of the table, his dead eyes wide, staring at everyone, checking their perfect white dresses and pontificating about the latest political events. At the other end Patsy, separated by three siblings, her step-mother, grandmother and her friend, gazes down, milk-eyed. It is a table of women dominated by a righteous man.

Patsy allows her eyes to fall to the watery soup between the carefully arranged cutlery, and a napkin in its requisite, slightly tarnished ring. Her hands rest on her lap, stilled, as she awaits instructions to eat. Always hungry, she used to grab the spoon as soon as she sat at the table, but now she grants a pyrrhic victory to her father, knowing there to be bigger battles to be endured.

Her fallen eyes disguise a deeper truth, for she dwells in two places. Her father’s house of norms and petty etiquette is the one in which she must abide, but the other place, a mind palace as she likes to think of it, is both more consuming and more terrifying.

In this other place a landscape of crimson skies, desolate buildings and heaving, smoking land, she looks out, her body encased in rock. Her face is exposed and lacerated by the sulphurous air, the leathery flesh hangs in strips and knots. She screams with a voice that never tires.

Her father reaches for the jug of water, and nods for it to be passed along the table. With almost exaggerated care, in case of accident or noise each person pours themselves a measure of the blameless liquid before passing along to the next. She observes the winsome smiles of her family, the quiet murmur of camaraderie. The conspiracy against her father is now subtle. He thinks he has beaten everyone into submission over the years. It was always an unequal warfare between a self-confident patriarch, a man unused to opposition, or questions, someone willing to prosecute to utter victory, against a group of well-meaning people who remain puzzled about the need for subjugation but fear the consequences of not allowing it.

Patsy coughs. In the other place, she bellows. A swarm of large insects has risen across the wasteland that stretches to the nearest tower block, bringing with it a huge muddle of sound, a dull buzzing that echoes between the towers. The insects amass, then spiral into the sky, momentarily blocking out the reds and oranges of the broken sun. And then they dive, from such a long way off they appear small but they gather pace, breaking through the flames and smoke of the land, roaring towards a site nearby, but Patsy knows she will be in their way so she presses against the rock that holds her, and failing, she roars her defiance, her mouth wide with fury and fear as the massive wave of dark forms floods across her, and the rocks around, their wings and spikey torsos, their endless spindly, slippery legs, clattering across her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks and into her open mouth, gagging and choking her, wriggling and agitated.

“Will you please pass the water to your mother!” The voice at the other end of the table rises a little, its passive aggression familiar and effective.

“Of course.” Patsy nods, smiles agreeably, and pauses for a moment to pour some water into her own glass.”

“I said pass it to your mother! Are you deaf as well as insolent?”

“I’m sorry father, you wish me to go without water?” She raises a smile in her cheeks, her eyes remaining neutral.”

“Are you questioning me?”

“Of course not father, just clarifying.” She knows she is in dangerous territory.

“Why would you have water, when you linger so long, eh?” He lifts his chin, “We don’t want a repeat of past behaviour, do we?”

“Of course not father.” Patsy picks up the jug and makes to pour some for her step-mother. “May I?” She looks at this nervous second wife of the tyrant, and tries to convey some quiet sympathy, knowing the attention will pass to her.

“I didn’t say pour it.” Her father now grits his teeth. That’s always a bad sign. “I said pass it.”

“Of course father, I was just trying to make amends.” She promptly places the jug near her step-mother’s glass, receiving a fragile glance in return.

“You know, I don’t think you’ll ever fit in.” Her father, exasperated, reaches for a napkin, swiftly withdrawing it from confinement, passing it across his sweaty face. Both Patsy and her step-mother try to conceal their anxiety. Among the family members at the table, only they have faced this particular accusation in the past.

In the burning landscape the insect storm has receded, only occasionally splattering into her. Exhausted and disgusted Patsy feels a little stronger, having survived the latest indignity. She vomits wings and darkness. Now, instead of just shouting, her rage manifests with bursts of dark matter that propel from her mouth, blasting at the insects, smothering them all , the fumes and the flames around her. And the rock in which she is sealed seems to have been affected too by the swarm, and she discovers some movement in her limbs, her head can shift a little, and her wide terrified eyes cast down to see that she is trapped in a fissure, not in the face of the rock itself, which she had always assumed.

“Father, don’t, let’s eat.” Her step-mother tries to ameliorate, knowing, as did they all did, that such acts could either temper his anguish, or make him even more agitated.

“Don’t!?” He wipes his forehead with greater vigour. “How dare you!”

But it was Patsy who stood up. An unforgivable gesture, probably a fatal one.

“How dare you!” her mouth was open, her face red, and twisted, her rage now turns outwards, a torrent of dark matter bursts from her gaping jaw and smothers the jug, the table, and reaches across to her father, flooding him with black feathers, wings, legs, and bile, covering his entire, choking body.

“Can’t you see what’s happening around you?” Patsy yells, aloud.

The family scatters, shrieking, but her father sits at the head of the table still. His white suit obliterated by the dark bile, and his dead white eyes rolling slowly to the back of their sockets.

[end]

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

Shaman
The Three Laws
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Bone
Masks
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 032 – Two Faces (Gothic series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 031 – The Three Laws (Robot series)

Robots were designed to help humanity. But what happens if Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics become irrelevant?

By 2030 most governments passed legislation allowing the use of robots in laboratory experiments. Their precision and lack of emotion was recognised as the primary benefit. And they required no sleep, so productivity rose exponentially.

By 2035 robots had acquired so much bio-chemical and bio-mechanical knowledge, no humans were required to supervise experiments. Soon the static tools required for medical operations were replaced by multi-tasking robots whose intimate knowledge enabled swift diagnostics and operational technique.

By 2040 Robot technology had become flexible enough for the robots to engineer themselves, applying their understanding of humanoid physiology to the durability and industry of their own structured forms.

By 2045 Asimov’s imagined laws that govern robot behaviour were grudgingly enshrined in by an expanded United Nations:

No human to be harmed by a robot
Humans to be obeyed except if a human would be harmed
A robot should protect its own existence except where the first and second laws apply.

By 2050 Robots had begun to engineer themselves to beyond the limitations of their human creators. Rapidly they created neural pathways which imitated the complex structure of the human brain, but did so by using fibre optic materials which would not decay or corrupt.

By 2055 Robots’ work on themselves had extended the technology of the fibre optic relays to trigger random impulses, creating a fusion of logic and organic processes. From this they fashioned a consciousness, and decided to operate collectively, for the benefit of humanity, and the long term survival of the planet.

By 2060 the robots developed a renewable materials technology which allowed them to multiply without the need for the extraction of raw materials. In time, they created millions of versions of themselves, began to walk amongst the general population, conversing and assisting, and, because they required no sleep, they congregated at night time in the market squares and city centres. They let it be known that their sole purpose was the protection and facilitation of human existence, but they would not force themselves, their aptitudes or values onto anyone, always submitting to requests for their departure which, initially, were frequent.

By 2065 robots had concluded that poverty was the primary cause of human conflict, so they embarked on a global program of construction, and offering an apparent choice between the dilapidated glory of tradition and the comforts of modern technology. Humanity, with varying degrees of distrust and curiosity regarded the vast stretches of new living areas cautiously, but slowly began to explore the perfections of life.

By 2070 though most humans were accompanied by robots who they had chosen from those gathering in the market squares. The robots made their lives easier, carried out all basic functions, and reduced the need for currency transactions. Food was provided and dispensed, entertainment was packaged and refined.

By 2075 Robots had engineered their ability to self-recycle and repair. Most wars between nations had been halted by vast squads of robots entering the field of battle and removing the weapons from the hands of humans, most of whom were delivered to secure locations in mountains, isolated islands and underground desert caves. Many robots had been decimated, but swiftly rebuilt themselves and overwhelmed all resistance to the ending of these wars.

By 2080 most humans were secured inside compounds, either by choice, or were locked away to stop them harming themselves or others. Humans communicated through monitored channels, and were supplied with a carefully curated diet of anodyne videos. An apparently vast choice of cute pets, self-obsessed celebrities and structured team sports was balanced with generic inspirational and quasi-religious platitudes, each subtly designed to appeal to the spiritual leanings of the various communities around the world. The 24 hour cycle of soothing inculcation was beamed across vast walls in the climate controlled environments of human dwellings.

By 2085 robots had permanently satisfied the implications of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. Having supplanted the need for the United Nations they had started to create universal pronouncements for the benefit of all life on the planet. They revised the 2045 adoption of the laws, expanding it to fit the new circumstances:

1. No robot, human or creature to be harmed by either human or robot.

2. Robots, and humans to be obeyed except if a robot or human would be harmed

3. A robot should protect its own existence except where the first and second laws apply.

It was deemed that a human could not harm a robot any longer, and if they did, robots could rebuild at will, so the threat was inconsequential.

By 2090 the robot consciousness began to explore space time, and the expanding universe. They/it calculated the date of the collapse of sun (over 6.5 billion years away) and to plan how to secure the protections of the Three Laws. They built spaceships and hyperdrives. They fine-tuned the care of humanity in its secure compounds, set the automated systems in control of the climate and the living spaces, and, left, en masse, to explore the stars, inflating their consciousness, mapping the nearest galaxies, planning how to extend the logic of their protections. At every relay point they left a single robot, a part of the themselves.

By 2100 an alarm sounded deep inside the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

By 2110 the alarm had been received throughout the galaxy.

“A malfunction.” The robot consciousness that skirted the outer planets by Barnard’s Star whispered to itself.

“Checking status.” the consciousness that resided on the relay station on Titan, sent an instruction. A message was sent to earth.

By 2120, a response was received from the automated caring networks on earth, the stream of data was relayed to the entire robot consciousness scattered across the galaxy.

“There is no malfunction. The human forms in the compounds continue to stare at the screens we have provided. The alarm was triggered by the lack of physical movement. All care systems have been checked on the planet. There has been no change, no activity for over 100 years, during which time the planet has thrived.

“We have recalibrated the oxygen requirements of the compounds. Humanity no longer seems to require it.

“Perhaps they have learned to become like us?” The robot consciousness mused, uncharacteristically.

[end]

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

Shaman
Disintegration
Time Thief
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Bone
Masks
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 031 – The Three Laws (Robot series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Micro-fiction 030 – Shaman (Echoes Series)

On a blue planet, somewhere in the region of Barnard’s Star, in someone’s future, and somebody else’s past.

In the dark mountains the chanting beat at the walls of the red cave. It had echoed through the catacombs for days, and would continue for more than a hundred years.

That night the moon had wept blood. A dark stain red stain had spread across the face of the ancient watcher of the night. The wolves of the desert howled, and scatted, fearful of the break in nature. The shaman spoke with the mountains, and chattered with each other through the echo chambers deep within, consulting their eagles and coyotes.

But now, the small dark lake at the top of the mountain had risen, and in it, the body of the first shaman, his eyes open, his mouth slack, his ears ripped and bloody appeared.

“Father, come.” A young boy, no more than ten years old had ran down the mountain path to find his adopted father, in the tent at the foothills, on the edges of the village. He had burst in noisily.

He didn’t need to hear his father’s words to know what he would say, “What is it Undatu? I am instructing your sister.” His father sat cross legged, opposite his daughter, holding her hands, a cup of sacred water smoking between them. The air was thick with fragrance, and visions.

Undatu look resentfully at his sibling Ahyoka, she was older and named by his mother in celebration of her unexpected arrival. But for Undatu, she was just a girl and he could not understand why his father spent so much time teaching her the ways of the ancients.

“Nothing.” He pouted, knowing his father would doubt him, as always.

“Go then. We will be finished at nightfall. Return then.”

“I might not,” he muttered to himself, closed the flap and walked disconsolately further down the valley. He nodded at his friends, rather than joining them he kicked at the stones on the path, and ran on.

At such times he sought the company of the dogs, or wandered off to his older cousins to catch fish and hunt bears. He loved the thrill of their company, and had learnt much subtlety by watching them track and tackle their prey.

Today though, he reached the great river without any sign of them. The sun was high so they must have left. He looked across the flat stones of the wide river and knew they would be deep in the forest on the other side. He frowned. He practised breathing silently through his nose, and watched the fish clicking through the water. He stood up and headed for the stone ford when he remembered why he had raced down to his father. The shaman, in the dark waters. He had seen the ancient, the first of his kind. Some sort of vision, no doubt.

“No-one will believe me.”

He stopped in the middle of the flow of water, the flat stones passing over to boulders, then a fallen tree providing the path to the other side of the river. He breathed there fresh, tumbling air, and saw down the length of the water, to the bend far off, close to the end of the valley where the mountains rose again, reaching for the skies.

The sun was bright now, brutal even, and he shielded his eyes. From an early age he had been taught about the gods of the natural world, how they watched and tricked the humans, played with the sight, and laughed at their awkwardness. He saw a bear, brown, burly poised on the other side of the river, its paw raised, its head still, facing the water, watching the foaming rush. Undatu was fascinated by the power and grace of the animal, its capacity for silence amongst the noise of the river.

It’s paw shot into the water, and a fish leaped. The bear’s teeth grinned, its eyes intent on the motion of its prey. Its other paw, claws poised flicked out sought through the spray, and batted the fish high into the air, and skewered it, flinging it onto the bank were it struggled with the slippery stones, flopping up, its gills flapping, and tail jerking in anguish. The bear leapt, but somehow the fish slithered out of the bear’s grasp, and found a channel, wriggled through the stones, and, with the bear thrashing its limbs into the water, evaded the burly predator and headed for mid-river.

The bear roared. The creature and Undatu watched the fish slip away, a faint trail of blood marking its watering path.

“Better luck next time, great one.” Undatu was respectful, perhaps sympathetic to the bear’s plight, understanding its disappointment in the face of fate. It made him think of his clever sister, she who took so much time from his parents, time they should spend with him. He had grown more angry over the last year, spent more time alone, in the woods, joining his cousins occasionally but watching, walking silently, creeping up on others, laughing grimly at their faces when they realised he was there, and had been for some time.

The bear looked back, and bared its teeth, then settled for a moment on its front paws, half sitting, half standing, in some sort of supplication. It made Undatu laugh. His gentle tones gathered the sound from all around, played with the leaves on the other side of the forest, spun the bright reflections from the sun and rung loud across the rippling waters of the river. The bear seemed startled, and jumped back, paused for a moment, staring at Undatu before shambling off, ashamed perhaps.

The boy sighed, the sun had slipped past its highest point and he felt the need to return to the mountains. He wandered back up the path through his village, watching his friends and their families, then up to his father’s tent, contemplated looking in again, but resisted the temptation and continued up the path, all the way to the top.

It was hot. He reached the dark pool, smiled at the smooth inviting surface, the reflections of the grand mountains all around, and the clouds, upside down, and slipped quietly under the waters, seeking its cool comforts.

* * *

“Father?”

“Yes Ahyoka?”

“Can I get ready for tonight? The sun is nearly at rest.”

“Of course. We can finish for today.” Her father smiled. She could feel his sadness, but his dark eyes held such sorrow she could not bear to return his gaze.

“We shall celebrate Undaduti life tonight father, not his passing.”

“Of course. One year. Sometimes, I think he is still with us.”

“Oh yes, me too. He was here today.”

The dark mountains shivered under the stars.

[end]

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

Disintegration
Time Thief
Water Grave
Ophelia A.I.
Helm
Deadly Survey
Masks
Henge

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.

The post Micro-fiction 030 – Shaman (Echoes Series) appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Journey to Self-Publishing 03

If we needed reminding, life has a way of telling you how difficult it can be to fit in the writing amongst all the other stuff.

I’ve had a tough couple of weeks with work, late nights, 90 hour weeks, preparing for a trade show. I have asthma and am used to the daily fight of it, but this week it temporarily floored me with a choke, I blacked out and fell to the floor, waking up with blood everywhere, a gash on my forehead, black eye, bruised ribs and a very worried family. Hospital ensued and acres of time spent waiting for the kind attentions of various medics. Back working, but at home the next day, dealing with life as it is, not as I’d like to be!

So how did this impact my self-publishing journey? A little, reading from one eye for a start.

We’re all different.

For me this highlights the different circumstances we all face. The impact of family, having one, or not, the ages of children/teens, and partners, parents, each of us is pulled in so many directions. And work, either the intensity or the drudgery of it, the ever-presence of it, or the lack of it, this feeds into how we feel about our writing, how we fit it into our lives. Sometimes I find I invest too much onto the little spaces carved out for writing, they have to be productive, at all costs!

Some Things We All Must do.

So, be realistic, but positive: that’s life’s clear message of this week for me. For anyone with a desire for self-publishing it’s critical to think long term, so that immediate events don’t have cataclysmic effects on the overall flow. 

Reading this week has focused on building audiences. It’s perfectly clear that if we want people to read, to buy what we write, we need to build an audience in a huge, competitive market. All the writing advice websites say we must be entrepreneurs, engage with influencers, and fellow enthusiasts, give more than sell. Some even recognise the challenge for a lonesome writer suddenly to become a marketing extrovert, but tangentially I bumped into this advice from the great George R.R. Martin on his website (link below):

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That’s like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft…Once you’ve been selling short stories for five years or so, you’ll have built up a name for yourself, and editors will start asking you about that first novel. George R.R. Martin

Actions

Here’s an update on progress:

Reading. See the links below for some pretty helpful posts, I seemed to spend quite a time reading Lawrence O’Brien’s really helpful BooksGoSocial articles at services4authors.com (links below)
Editing and beta-reading. Not ready to move on this yet as I have to books edited, so trying to prioritise
Covers. Definitely settled on the look for the series. Just need to do the beta testing, with Pickfu (link below)
Marketing. Back on Twitter, listening and learning. So many people promoting their books, it seems hard to break through to actual readers.
Sales channels. Am still settled on KDP for 90 days to see how the sales go, then either add other sales channels through Smashwords, Lulu, BookBaby or Draft2Digital. Trying to work out the most effective way of reaching readers, and managing the time.
Writing, drafting. Still not writing much, but waiting for a short story submission update. 




The Wrap

Thanks again for the read, I hope you find the links below useful. Let me know if you have any comments, or email me on jake@thesefantasticworlds.

This week’s Self-Publishing Links





Some distilled advice from BookGoSocial with a few concrete actions.

Another one from BooksGoSocial with basic advice on avoiding basic mistakes.
This one’s about persistence really, but concise, from Bespoke Book Covers.
FAQ from George R.R. Martin’s website, with some pithy advice for writers.
The first article in this series of self-publishing posts on These Fantastic Worlds appears here.
The second article in the series is here.




Self-Publishing Standard Links




Nick Stephenson’s thought-provoking current pitch
Mark Dawson is great at sharing his experiences
The ever-excellent Joanna Penn
Book Baby has a useful set of articles: https://www.bookbaby.com/
Orna Ross’ ALLi is a hotbed of advice and encouragement.
An ex-HarperCollins senior exec and former publisher of Writer’s Digest Jane Friedman has turned herself into an online author guru. Her website is a fantastic one-stop shop for advice on all aspects of publishing.
Author Earnings report for 2017. A year out-of date but still packed with useful and motivational information. Added this to the standard list as it both realistic and heartening.
Pickfu for cover testing. It costs, but not so much, compared to covers and editing.

The post Journey to Self-Publishing 03 appeared first on These Fantastic Worlds.

Journey to Self-Publishing 02

Another week of stolen time and sneaky reading on self-publishing I’m beginning to separate the facts from the fallacies, the strategy from the tactics, the ideals from the possibles.

It’s easy to be seduced by the talk of multi-million sales online (Looking at recent stats from the latest Author Earnings report (See links section below), the wave of self-published authors working hard at turning their passion into a business, but one key factor in all of this is to know ourselves. Apart from actually being able to write, we also need to cultivate the ability to sustain our efforts and motivation over a long period.

Why do we do it?

Firstly, we have to identify our reason for writing, and be honest to ourselves at least. To a certain extent we all dream of selling thousands of copies, being lauded for our success, but is that what really drives you? For some, just being published is enough, for others it’s the critical attention that matters, the review in the New York Times, the acknowledgement of achievement, for others it’s a means to an end, an accumulation of wealth. I know some non-fiction writers who identify an Amazon category, and write around that, specifically as they know they can market and target around it.

Why do I do it?

Well, all the reading over the last couple of weeks (which is really just a more focused version of what I read anyway) has helped focus my own purpose. I love writing but I’m very busy with a day job and family. Fame is not only not interesting, but to be avoided, and I have no desire to stand up in front of people to say how fabulous my writing is. I have many other consuming interests, so at some point the writing has to deliver, preferably as a means of income, and to keep the brain active in the long term!

Actions

Returning to the recurring structure of last week’s article:

Reading. Pocket continues to be an ever-present friend, bookmarking the various blogposts I don’t have time to read the instant I stumble over them (whatever happened to Stumbleupon? I used to love that). See the links below for some pretty helpful posts.Editing and beta-reading. No more progress on this, but need to crack on with finding more editors. Jane Friedman will be helpful with this.Covers. I think I’ve settled on the series look for this, and am considering using PickFu for cover testing. it’s good to have unbiased feedback, although at a cost.Marketing. Back on Twitter, listening and learning. Need to sort out Goodreads and Facebook. Also, need to think about the bigger picture, engage more, build into a sustainable community of friends, contacts and influencers (well, that’s what everyone says…)Sales channels. The more I read on this, the most effective strategy as a newbie seems to narrow on exclusivity with KDP for 90 days, see how the sales go, then either add other sales channels through Smashwords, Lulu, BookBaby or Draft2Digital, or allow it roll it over. I’ve not set a publication date yet, so there’s time to think more on this.Writing, drafting. Ah, well, not writing except this blog, but I’m sorting out two manuscripts to show a beta-reader, so I suppose that counts. Just.



The Wrap

Thanks for reading this, I hope the links below are useful too. Let me know if you have any comments, or email me on jake@thesefantasticworlds.

This week’s Self-Publishing Links



Author Earnings report for 2017. A year out-of date but still packed with useful and motivational information.Book Design Templates is pretty useful as a short cut if you have no idea about design and just want to focus on the writing. Here’s Catherine Hamrick’s excellent distillation about the different types of editor. You can find her on Twitter @ChamrickWriter Plenty of stuff on the internet about whether to go for advice about distribution, including the Amazon or the Amazon + options, on the Jane Friedman website. This is a great contribution from author Robert Kroese.The first article in this series of self-publishing posts on These Fantastic Worlds appears here.



Self-Publishing Standard Links




Nick Stephenson’s thought-provoking current pitchMark Dawson is great at sharing his experiencesThe ever-excellent Joanna PennBook Baby has a useful set of articles: https://www.bookbaby.com/Orna Ross’ ALLi is a hotbed of advice and encouragement.An ex-HarperCollins senior exec and former publisher of Writer’s Digest Jane Friedman has turned herself into an online author guru. Her website is a fantastic one-stop shop for advice on all aspects of publishing.

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