“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.