Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
***JULY 2021 SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Stories Only)***
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IT ALL ADDS UPJack McDaniel
Rosa plays the numbers, punching invisible digits on the tabletop with a pinkish fingertip. A grin stretches across her face, eyes wide like she is conjuring dark magic.
“It all adds up.”
She places both hands palms-down on the table and looks into my eyes.
“Emersons is slaves, always been, always will be.”
“Stop that nonsense, woman.”
“Ain’t nonsense and you know it.”
“When Tomorrow come over the horizon you see it different.”
“Ha! You a fool, Book Emerson. Ain’t nothin’ but trouble come over the horizon.”
“We see soon enough. You heard the man. Say they got power, loads of it, too. Say ever’one welcome, ever’one free. Ain’t no slaves in Tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh. Ain’t no history I know of where our kind is ever free. Bunch of hoo-doo talk. Who he say he was?”
“Said he was a recruiter. Don’t know what that is.”
Rosa shrugs. “That why you turn him away?”
“That, and I don’t trust a man that smiles so much.”
We walk. Before the Great Collapse this was a two-lane country road. Now, it’s all gravel and weed.
“Book you think that’s where all the slaves are?”
“Yep. Sun goin’ down quick. Ever’thing is orange and lost its color. We better stop.”
We make camp in the woods and gnaw on the little food we have left. Before she fall off to sleep, Rosa say, “Somethin’ ain’t right in the world, Book. That man, the recruiter, just let us walk. We need to take care.”
“Maybe you should talk to the numbers again in the morning.”
“Maybe. Not so easy with no people around. Hard to feel anything.”
Come morning we awakened by a far off noise, something unusual. Neither of us wants to wait so we pack and go, forgetting the maths.
“Look at that.” It’s near lunch time, bees buzz around us and the air is sticky with honeysuckle and our sudden apprehension at the sight—lights blazing in the daylight. “It does exist.”
“Easy, Book. May not be what we think.”
“It’s freedom, that’s what I think.”
“That’s a starving slave talking. You walking too fast. We need a good set of eyes on the place before we march on up. You see freedom but they might see fugitive.”
“We got a good hour to walk. Anyone comes along we hide.”
As we get closer, Rosa says, “No rain here in a while. We kickin’ up dust with every step. There’s a weird energy coming through my boots.”
Rosa stops and sits on the ground and pulls off a boot. A web of static electricity spreads from the boot to each finger as she pulls her hand away.
“Thana said they got plenty of energy.”
“Thana, the recruiter? Name ain’t right, Book. Feels wrong.”
“You ain’t never tasted freedom before, that’s all.”
“What the recruiter say about the energy?”
“Said Tomorrow is powered by the oldest source of energy they is, what’s driven the world from the beginning. He say the souls of the people light it up. It’s a spiritual thing they harnessed.”
We can hear the noises of the city as we approach and a large transport vehicle rises from inside the outer city wall and accelerates away, quickly disappearing from sight.
“Something wrong with this road, Book.”
Road’s new, been recently paved. It’s a crushed material that is near white.
“Come on!” I holler at her and run up the road toward Tomorrow.
“No, Book! You have to stop, now!”
“What you mean ‘stop’?” But when I turn and look Rosa watches as pieces of the road fall between her fingers. She sits crosslegged and punches out invisible numbers. There’s an aura around her and sparks fly from her shoulder and hand, dust puffs up and swirls on some invisible eddy and rises over her head.
“It’s all wrong, Book. They ain’t no slaves here because they all dead. The roads are crushed bone. They trapped their spirits here, their souls. They use it to power the place. That recruiter is an agent of death. Quiet your mind. You can feel the anguish here. The place is screaming.”
Rosa’s eyes is wide again but this time in fear. I hear it—the anguish, pain and fear. I feel them, all of them—trapped forever powering the man’s city.
“Ain’t no slaves in Tomorrow,” my voice is weak.
“Ain’t no slaves, Book.”
Rosa starts with the numbers again.
“No need,” I tell her. “It all adds up.”
NewAge City @2021 Kalifer deilThe city of NewAge was in planning with endless revisions for decades. Each time they thought they were nearing the end new developments would upend the design. At first, they thought it was an illness that was creating schizophrenic symptoms in hundreds of people. It was the satellite beamed quantum downlink from Starlink-5 that apparently stirs up some neurons in the part of the human brain whose function was unknown. When they switched back to Starlink-4 which was non-quantum communication while keeping the old microwave power source transmitted from a large geostationary solar array, the symptoms vanished.
Chief Architect, Mel Trane commented, “Well there's Einstein's spooky action at a distance!”
His Assistant, Cindy Flower shook her head, “Neither he, Bohr nor Planck would know what to do with this one. We can always upgrade later when the geniuses figure this one out. I say we roll out the printers and get started.”
The land had been cleared for two decades but was now flooded with giant machines creating tunnels, utility pipes, and roads. Two weeks later even larger machines were 3D printing buildings some as tall as a dozen stories using carbon fiber among other atomically structured materials. The city was completed in eighteen weeks nearly ready for occupancy. Most units were sold months before.
The futuristic city was built between Arlington and Mt Vernon just off highway 5 in Washington State. Oh, I didn't mention that the land was part of the Swinomish Reservation west of Burlington. The deal was a swindle in compensation for illegal taxes not paid to Skagit County. People moved in quickly but noted there was some tension between newcomers and the natives. After a while, this seemed to subside.
It was the 4th of July and everyone was outside enjoying the seasonally warm weather. Dogs were howling in the distance then several loud bangs were heard and the earth shook, “Fireworks, one yelled and everyone laughed. In the bright daylight, nothing was seen. Mel and Cindy were there as well and Mel seemed a bit unsettled. He looked around and saw none of the natives, They had cleared out. Cindy noticed Mel frown. “What's the matter?” Fireworks don't shake the ground! Now the ground is pulsing up and down, It's the Cascadia subduction earthquake! I think we're screwed!” The words no sooner out of his mouth and large cracks appeared. The ground was shaking so badly that most people were falling. They both wrapped their arms around a metal railing that seemed to be the most solid thing around and the shaking finally stopped.
They then ran to the twelve-story structure that seemed to be still standing but at a slight angle. They ran up the ten flights of stairs to the top floor and looked out the window to see a wall of water coming towards them. “Okay, we're screwed! That has to be twenty stories high!” They held each other tightly as the giant wave swept over them.
A day later the Swinomish natives returned to see what happened to NewAge. It was totally flattened. Picking through the wreckage they found many bodies, none alive. Mel and Cindy were found, still embracing, locked together in rigor mortis. The tribal chief walked by glancing at the pair, “The Great White Father takes no prisoners!”
A young Swinomish native about age fourteen overheard and remarked, “That's mighty harsh chief! I had friends here! It isn't always about land!”
The chief turned to the Boy, “Son, You need to read some history. With the blacks, it was slavery and a lack of civil rights. With the Chinese it was dangerous jobs with little pay and no path to citizenship, with the Japanese it was rights and land taken away once earned. With us our hunting rights, that's land we can hunt on taken away, the land we can migrate to for the seasons taken away, and in many cases, the land we made our homes on, in the white man's tradition, taken away. Many rich oil and gold-bearing lands we were cheated out of. It's always been about land, our land, being taken away!”
“Jesus! Chief, Sorry.”
The Chief's eyes welled with tears, “Jesus too! They took the land in his name to build a damn church on our reservation. They converted my daughter Cindy Yellowflower to not cherish the land and now she lies there with this man who destroyed our sacred forest to build a city!”
The Illuminated CityThe skyline shifted from the glow of the sunset to the glow of Edison lamps. Those electric bulbs spread from a few homes in a wealthy neighborhood to most of the city. Carriages worked their way down the streets, the neighs of horses mostly replaced by the hum of electric engines. 1871 was turning out to be a very good year in the city of Chicago.
--
The Automatic Luminiferous Ether Engine filled the old warehouse. It harnessed the energy of the universe and fed it to the cables that led into the city. Very few knew of the true nature of the source of Chicago’s power, fewer still had any idea how it really worked. It was nicknamed “Latimer’s engine” after Tom Edison’s colleague, Lewis Latimer, its inventor.
Other than occasionally raising the hair on their arms, it seemed to have no adverse effects on the workers that kept it running.
--
Dock workers down the block noticed a lot of dead rats one morning. They assumed that the stray cats they’d been feeding had a really good night.
A hundred yards from shore, a shaft of steam rose out of Lake Michigan and a dozen fish, cooked alive, floated to the surface.
Across the city, a horse whinnied and fell over, dead. A veterinarian who examined the deceased equine remarked, “I’d say it’s dehydrated, but that would be an understatement. It’s desiccated, dried from the inside out. Best damn taxidermy job I’ve ever seen.”
Several spontaneous fires started but were quickly extinguished by the city’s pumpers.
Soon hundreds of reports of strange phenomena began pouring in. Edison and Latimer plotted the locations on a map. The pins formed radial lines, all originating from the building containing Latimer’s Engine.
--
Edison, Latimer and Reginald Fessenden stood outside the warehouse. It was enclosed in some kind of shimmering barrier, shocking anyone who touched it. In the time they observed it, it grew several feet. Fessenden fiddled with a slide rule and announced, “Within a week, it will cover several blocks, within a month, the entire city will be enveloped.”
--
Latimer said, “I feel like a medieval soldier in all this chain mail.” Fessenden explained, “It’s actually a Faraday cage. Any electricity that comes into contact with you will flow on the outside of your jacket. Mind your feet, though, I suspect there will be a bit of arcing.”
Latimer stepped into the field. A crackle of energy rippled across his chest. Small bolts of lightning flashed from his pants cuffs to the ground. The air became eerily still.
--
“He’s stopped moving.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so. He’s just standing there. Like a statue.”
“No, he’s moving. His arm was straight up and now it’s at a slight angle.”
--
Latimer shook his arm violently as if to shake off the static. The room got brighter and then faded. The electric indicators on the engine were constant. It was… the sun.
The rising and setting of the sun became a blur of Stobo scopic light. As he reached for the main switch, sparks arced off his protective vest and shot up his arm. He pulled it amid the blue-white flashes of lightning between the machine and himself. As the engine spun down, light/dark cycles lengthened. The near darkness between cycles was replaced by a red glow as the machine ground to a halt. The high-pitched crackle of energy resolved into…chaos.
Horsed whinnied and neighed. Men shouted. “It’s spreading too fast! The pumpers are dry. Fall back. Fall back to the river!”
When the space-time bubble burst, all he could feel was the heat, hot as any blast furnace. Latimer sprinted through a gap in the flames. Every non-metallic component of his engine immediately ignited.
The fire burned for two days, jumping the river twice and devouring a third of the city before it ran out of buildings to burn and a nighttime storm put it out.
--
“Yes, it is too dangerous as an electrical generator. But, I believe, it could have other uses. It runs time forward too fast but I’m fairly certain I can slow it, even reverse it. Think of what uses this could be put to!”
--
Latimer reviewed the racing forum, careful to hide the date on the page from prying eyes. He walked up to the window, put twenty dollars on the counter and said, “Old Grey Mare to Win in the third.”
The Ceaseless DesireLesten of Vallagren groaned, blinking his eyes open to the faint rays of a morning sun through the cracks of a shadowed room. He’d been on the run all night and massaged his shoulders, remembering the fall he’d taken – plunging through the floor into the darkness below.
“Finally, you’re awake,” an aged male voice asked from the blackness.
Lesten shuffled anxiously away. “Who are you?”
“An observer. A caretaker,” came the response.
“Caretaker?”
“Of everything here,” the old voice said.
“Lesten glanced at the dusty broken furniture, “You’re not doing a very good job.”
The old man chuckled. “Indeed. But I care for this district and the forgotten knowledge here.”
“You mean the Verge?”
“Ah, is that what they’re calling it now?” He leaned in, sunlight catching upon a deeply cowled head. His long beard extended past the edges, and Lesten could just barely perceive kindly, deeply-set eyes. “I’m Isaac. At least that was my name.” He rose, leaning into an old crooked staff. “You were very brave to venture past the signposts. Or very scared,” he surmised. “What were you running from?”
“Noth…Nothing,” Lesten lied.
“Bah, no one runs from nothing! Your elders have your people so scared of this place, no one ever breaches the quarantine anymore.”
“Quarantine?” It was an unfamiliar word.
“The edge of the Verge, of course! Come with me.” Isaac led him up the basement stairs and back into the sunshine. “Tell me young man, what do you know of this place?”
“This land is forbidden.”
“Yet here you are,” Isaac noted.
“They say the earth is cursed and air, poisoned. A land of evil magic.”
“Evil magic?” Isaac chuckled again. “Tell me, do they still use flame lanterns in your village? No machines, right? No technology?”
“They’re outlawed. The stories say machines destroyed the world.”
Isaac sighed. “And they’re not far from wrong.” They approached a broad plaza overlooking the land below. Isaac motioned to the lengthy building-lined streets stretching away in all directions. “Now, try to see this city through different eyes.” There were thousands of structures in the valley. Some were small, not much larger than the cottages Lesten was used to. Others soared to the sky, yet all were broken, overrun and reclaimed by the natural world.
“A city? I’ve heard the stories. Places were great numbers of wretched people lived together.”
“Lived and worked, but hardly wretched. Most of them were quite good. ‘Twas the fools they followed that destroyed the world.”
“From the Calmlands, you can only see trees,” Lesten said. “And I’ve snuck past the limits before, but never this far. It was dark and…”
“I see. The texts say this city was once New Atlanta, a city of the future. Look here.” Isaac’s staff pointed to a heap of rusted metal along the road. “That was a machine called a car. People used it like you use a horse and wagon, but it relied on an engine instead of an animal. And that crater in the distance?”
Lesten nodded.
“The destructive power of man – a time of atomic energy and the final promise of Tesla’s wireless power. Mankind had even advanced so far, we could cross hundreds of miles in a single day, even took to the air and nearly reached the stars.”
“What happened?”
“Same as always happens – conflict and death. The ceaseless desire for more. Even the dogmatic drive of religion,” he answered. “All of these machines, which brought so much convenience and power to mankind…”
“Power?”
“An invisible power – electricity – the source of energy that made the machines work, even the devices of war.” Isaac produced a small object from beneath his cloak. A beam of light shot from the end into the nearest car, carving a hole into the side.
Lesten was astounded. “So could anyone use this power?”
“With some training, yes,” Isaac replied. “In fact, I’d been hoping for someone to continue my research. I’m getting too old and won’t live forever. Humanity has so much more potential than horse-drawn carriages and wooden villages. Perhaps, someday, we can relearn to use this technology safely and reclaim our destiny among the stars. Back in my lab…” Isaac suddenly froze.
Lesten withdrew the knife from between the man’s ribs and tossed it away as he fell. In its place, he took Isaac’s weapon. “This should do,” he grinned. “Now, maybe they’ll fear me. I’ll show them what real power is.” Then, he bolted away.
His life fading, Isaac lamented, “The ceaseless desire...”
"Magnetic City"by J.F. Williams
There was an exit to Magnetic City, and I was going to find it. Already, a hundred or so had disappeared. Marta Gables, in accounts payable, was the first, but at least one a day since. I won't be among them. I will find the exit before I disappear.
I first came to Magnetic City a year ago, along with my co-workers. It was billed as "The City of Tomorrow, Today" and a striking, glorious, lucid dream of a city it was. Skyscraper's sheathed in speckled, tawny glazes rose gracefully into the sky, effortlessly floating above the stretches of gleaming ceramic tiles the size of trucks that covered every square mile of municipal land. It was the first electricity-free urban center of the 21st Century, as the complex interplay of magnetic force that bathed every cubic inch of its space met all our needs.
We cooked our meals in oscillating waves that excited the food molecules, drove our levitating vehicles, walked effortlessly along the wide, humming streets, our muscles always relaxed, our joints loose and reviving. There were no electronics of any kind here, no screens of any kind, as none could be shielded enough to produce an unwarped image, and most would burst into flames. The only music was our singing, the only entertainment, a detached viewing of the ordinary lives of fellow citizens. Our work required a constant reckoning of numbers, a task we met effortlessly, with pencil and paper, and communicated through micro-perturbations in the magnetic field that reached to the city's edge, where they were transcribed into electronic data that informed the technological development of Simon Venable's factories and laboratories in the outer, low-magnetic world.
"Another has disappeared," said Tobin, as he took me aside on Maxwell Street. "Wyndham Chavers of HR."
"I haven't seen Wynd in a while," I said, astonished. "Had you?" I recalled the day before, when the quartz lamps on Samhita Avenue had brightened in the middle of the day, and the air felt hot for a moment, and the humming was briefly louder. "Was it yesterday? In the afternoon?"
"Yeah," Tobin grimaced. "You still looking for the exit?"
"Yeah. You?" I hoped Tobin was still looking. "Do you know when Wyndham stopped looking?"
"Maybe a week ago. I asked him. He wasn't."
"A week, then."
"Not always the same. Emil stopped looking and was gone in a hour."
I had forgotten about Emil. Is this forgetting an early sign? Does memory get eaten away, little by little, until the memory of looking for an exit gets chomped?
I walked down Fermi Boulevard past the foot-high tungsten obelisks that had worn and softened over the past year and noted the wear had increased, the sharp angles gone. Tobin had told me the magnetic flux of the city fed on them, deriving more power as their atomic structure degraded. This was the fuel source of all the magnetic energy, as Venables had not defied the first law of theromodynamics like many assumed. Among the crowds of passersby, I notice one woman, a stranger to me, who thinned and faded as she ambled purposefully, until she was gone. She had forgotten.
It was then I realized where the exit was and why each person's exit could not be shared. I ran to my office and reckoned more numbers, deliberately writing the wrong ones on paper. The perturbations accepted the reckonings and ported the bad numbers to the city's edge, wherever that might be. Soon the walls began to shudder, and the air felt cooler. I made my way to the street as my office building imploded behind me, all around the great gleaming walls of skyscrapers fell to the street. No one else walked the streets, no bodies crushed by the collapsing city. I was completely alone.
I woke up in a hospital bed and drank greedily from the straw a nurse had handed to me.
"You had a pretty bad case of heatstroke, mister," she said. "You'll be okay now."
"Magnetic City," I blurted. "Did everyone get out?"
"Is that where you came from? I thought so. You folks keep showing up here. I would never want to go there myself: no phones, no TV." She sighed. "I guess you folks get kind of desperate after a while. I avoid that exit on the highway when I can. I drove by once and my radio went all static. It's a pretty place but I stay away."
(743 words)
The City of Tomorrow Never Comes“Father?”
The Man looked up from his meal of rabbit meat. Smoke from the cooking fire stung his eyes and filled his nose.
“Yes Son?”
“What will our Clan be like in the tomorrow times?”
“Same as today I guess. Maybe more people.”
“Lots more people Father? And more caves, bigger caves?”
“I don’t know Son. What do you mean?”
“Will things always be the same even in the tomorrow times?”
The Man put down his food and ruminated. His heavy brow ridges furrowed. He looked up at the distant fireflies, the ones so far away in the Up Above.
“Do you see the fireflies Son? All of them in the Up Above?”
The boy nodded.
“One day, our Clan will be so big that we’ll travel to that cave and be reunited with those who do not wake.”
“Really Father? I wish I could see the tomorrow times!” His son capered about on his slightly bowed legs.
“Sleep now and you will see them in the Other Place.”
His son quickly lay down next to the fire and was soon resting peacefully.
The Man looked up again, and wondered.
***
“Hey Dad!”
Little Jimmy burst through the backdoor, baseball cap in hand and grass stains on the knees of his overalls.
“What is it son?” asked George Smith, patiently folding his newspaper and laying it on the dinner table.
“Can we go to the World’s Fair? Can we puh-leeze?! Bobby Stewart went yesterday and he says he saw the Graf Zeppelin a hundred times!”
“Now don’t be ridiculous. How could he have seen it a hundred times?”
“He blinked his eyes a hundred times so it’s true!”
“I see…” said Jimmy’s father, trailing off after realizing he’d loosed another bad pun.
“Oh Dad! It will be so neat! Bobby says they have the newest trains and auto-mobles and,”
“You mean automobiles,”
“Those too, and even a cigarette-smoking robot and something called tela-vision – which is like radio with pictures! Can we go Dad? Can we?!”
“Well George, they do have the Homes of Tomorrow exhibition, with all the modern conveniences,” added Jimmy’s mother from the kitchen. She gave their recalcitrant stove a sharp kick.
“I could certainly use some modern conveniences in here George.”
“Yes dear…”
George reopened his newspaper to a full page advertisement for the City of Tomorrow. Sleek, glistening cars and trains promised to whisk him away in comfort and speed. Autogiros flew between gleaming glass towers in a shining metropolis. Giant airships would make international travel accessible to all. Automated factories powered by the atom would increase free time for the average working man to enjoy such luxuries. He clamped his pipe between his teeth, and wondered…
***
“Progenitor?”
“Yes Progeny?”
Their consciousnesses floated above the Earth, taking in a view they had seen countless times before - except this time the Earth was surrounded by a blockade of Telask warships. Angry red pulses dotted the planet’s surface like an infection.
“What will the City of Tomorrow be like?”
Progenitor hesitated and Progeny sensed it.
“The Telask are going to kill most of us and scourge the surface of the Earth.”
Progenitor extended his thoughts so that Progeny could absorb them. Humanity’s massive domed cities would soon be destroyed by orbital bombardment, and their stasis bodies along with them.
“Others yes, Progenitor, but what about us? You said we were safe.”
Progeny’s anxiety and fear flooded over Progenitor’s mind.
“And we are, I assure you.”
“Then there will never be another City of Tomorrow, not after this.”
In unison, the Telask warships unleashed another fusillade that scorched millions of hectares in an instant.
“Do not fear, Progeny. There will always be a City of Tomorrow, though perhaps not the one we think.”
“I don’t understand.”
Progenitor’s mind stretched back through the centuries of human history. Cities rose, fell, vanished, and rose again as Progeny watched in quiet fascination.
More hectares across the Earth evaporated into oblivion.
Back and back they went, until there was nothing but vast, lush forests. A shimmering river wound its way through the trees, and on one sandy bank, a thin ribbon of smoke rose steadily.
A Man and a Boy sat on the shore, roasting fish near a small collection of thatched huts.
“Do you see it Progeny?”
“Yes Progenitor.”
“Right there. That is our City of Tomorrow.”
And using an archaic word that had almost lost all meaning to humanity, Progeny said, “I’m so excited Father…”
“So am I Son.”
(750 words in story) Justin Sewall © 2021
Reviews/critiques welcome
Mod
©2021 Jot Russell
Hank flew his pod from the launch pad outside the dome over New Olympus. Beneath the transparent shield lay farms, lakes, secondary domes and a ten thousand souls. He hit the outer rim of the atmosphere and set course for L2.
**
"New Olympus, this is L2. Photosynthetic cells now installed in place of the old A-1000 panels. Bringing the system back online now."
"Roger that."
Cliff released the mic and turned to his friend. "Yeah man, that's what I'm talking about. Summer has returned to Mars."
John laughed. "About freakin' time, cause I'm freezing."
Beyond their small command dome, the artificial dawn beamed through the large, primary dome that stretched a hundred meters over the city. Cliff felt the warmth, and smiled. Outside, many of the inhabitants cheered.
Far above at Martian Lagrange Point 2, the massive array slowly narrowed its field to focus the sun’s light to cover the dome protecting its city below, but with the factory calibration reset, it continued tightening.
Under the glare of the strengthening light, John quickly checked his console. “Cliff, something’s wrong. The beam is focusing in too tightly.”
“Yeah, I feel that. How wide is the field?”
“It’s at fifty meters and narrowing in on the center, on us!”
“Hank, this is New Olympus. Something’s wrong. Deactivate the array.”
“New Olympus, can you repeat that?”
“Deactivate the array. You’re cooking us down here!”...”John, hit the alarm.”
Sirens sounded, and people looked to the sky at the brilliant circle of fire focusing in on the center of the dome. It was only a moment until their mouths dropped, along with their tools, to panic dash for the nearest secondary dome.
Command, under the smaller, interior dome, reached 50° C and was quickly heading toward the boiling point...
**
After activation, Hank flew his pod from the dark side of the array. As he neared the edge, a message blurted in over the music.
“New Olympus, can you repeat that?”
“Deactivate the array. You’re cooking us down here!”
His pod reached past the back side of the array and he brought up a view of the city. The beam narrowed into a ten meter circle on top of the dome.
“Holy crap, what did I do?!”
Hank thought to return to the back center to pull the plug, but in the five/six minutes that would take, the city’s primary dome might be burned through. Quickly, he extended the pod’s arms, grabbed the rim of the array and set thrusters for maximum. The large disk’s focus deformed under the dragging of its fabric and the light started to scatter more safely over the dome.
With the calibration cycle still running, the array’s thrusters fired and struggled against the engines of the pod. With only minutes of thrust left, Hank knew that he couldn’t out match the reserves of the array. He set course back to its center, rolling the side in on itself like a taco.
With his own reserves all but spent, he reached the array’s center, released the rim and move the pod arms in toward the photosynthetic cells he had just installed. As he reached, the rim of the array crashed down upon the pod and caused him to miss the grasp of the cell connection. It held him there, just out of reach of the cell cord. In one last push, the thrusters jarred the pod loose before they went dead. Hank reached, grabbed hold, and severed the connection.
“New Olympus, the array has been deactivated. You guys okay down there?”
**
John collapsed on the floor and Cliff try to drag him out under the intense radiation and light, before being overcome himself. In his last breath, he could smell the burning of his own flesh.
The smaller dome burst from the intense heat and pressure of the expanding gasses. Above, the pressure on the primary dome was still stable, but the beam focused further in until it reached the diameter of only a few meters. As the fabric neared critical temperature, the beam suddenly shifted and dispersed.
**
“New Olympus, this is L2...”
The pod’s screen flicked off from the lack of power, and Hank got a chill that ran down his spine. It wouldn’t take long for the cold to seep it’s way in. He sat there in the darkness of space, wishing that he had double checked the system settings.
**
Hank woke within the cryogenic chamber. Outside, the city bustled with light under the now working, artificial dawn.
What Was Snow, Mom?Copyright 2021 by Paula Friedman
So then I said “What was snow?” and Mom said well she’d show me, it was like a powder, wet.
So she and Dad took both of us, Hattie an’ me, to the museum, where they’ve got some powder, down into town. The walk took us two days, and even by night the going right sweaty and hard, Ol’ City’s “pavement” (out around the northside there) crushed glass and everything, but we got there, yes we did. And got to see this soft stuff women usedta use, and the stuff for grinding knives, all sorts of fancy stuff, although the nice thing, up in the museum, is they got the Caged ones pushing fans (the malcontents, I mean) like Ancient Ancient times an’ all, and it’s so cool inside.
So we stayed the whole day, and next night and day too, just like everybody, and Mom said, “Usedta be, Jaycey, Hattie, families all had fans,” and I cut in, the way Dad says I always, saying “Mom, you mean they had their Caged,” and Dad laughed, cutting-in himself, “No no, not malcontents, Jaycey, just fans. But that takes too much energy.” Well, so I just couldn’t resist and said, “Oh yeah, takes ‘too much energy’ to explain, huh?” and he said, “Jay-cey” and then “No, just took too much energy.”
What’s that mean? I was thinking, but Dad smiled above my head at Mom and said “The problem wasn’t malcontents in our day, honey, it was Too Contents.”
Then Mom handed me and Hattie (Hattie’s much too little—she’s a pain) six Finite Salties and she said—by now, we were already heading back toward Free Way Trail—“Look at the bright side, Hat and Jay. Now it’s nice’n quiet, no loud neighbor vids, no NetFlix bully-bros, no cellphonin’-crackle-pop.”
So Hattie said, before I even could, “Ooo-ooo-ooo-oooh, Mom’s talking ’bout e-l, e-c, t-r-i-c-i-” and Dad raised up one hand, just like someone shouting, “Hattie! Hattie, don’t you ever say such—”
Only, Mom, then she got really quiet, and she said, “Hattie, Jaycey, if you keep on talking like you do, once you start into school, you . . .” and she didn’t finish, and oh wow I knew. I knew before I even thought it, Yeah, our big mouths gonna get us Caged someday.
So then we all shut up. Besides, it was nearly 4 a.m. and getting far too hot and smoky for talking any more.
[423 words]
Mod
First round votes:
Jack McDaniel ==> **Paula, Justin
Kalifer Deil ==> Chris, Greg, JF
Greg Krumrey ==> ***Jack
Chris Nance ==> Greg, Justin, JF
J.F. Williams ==> **Paula, Greg, Kalifer, Jot, Justin
Justin Sewall ==> **JF, Greg, Jack
Jot Russell ==> **JF
Paula Friedman ==> ***Jack, Justin
Davida Cohen ==> ***Jack, Greg
First round finalists:
It All Adds Up by Jack McDaniel
Magnetic City by J.F. Williams
What Was Snow, Mom? by Paula Friedman
Second round votes:
Jack McDaniel ==> **Paula, Justin
Kalifer Deil ==> Chris, Greg, ****JF
Greg Krumrey ==> ***Jack
Chris Nance ==> Greg, Justin, ****JF
J.F. Williams ==> **Paula, Greg, Kalifer, Jot, Justin
Justin Sewall ==> ****JF, Greg, Jack
Jot Russell ==> ****JF
Paula Friedman ==> ***Jack, Justin
Davida Cohen ==> ***Jack, Greg
Finalists:
It All Adds Up by Jack McDaniel
Magnetic City by J.F. Williams
Third round votes:
Jack McDaniel ==> Paula, Justin; #JF
Kalifer Deil ==> Chris, Greg, #JF
Greg Krumrey ==> ****Jack
Chris Nance ==> Greg, Justin, #JF
J.F. Williams ==> Paula, Greg, Kalifer, Jot, Justin; ****Jack
Justin Sewall ==> #JF, Greg, Jack
Jot Russell ==> #JF
Paula Friedman ==> ****Jack, Justin
Davida Cohen ==> ****Jack, Greg
Winner:
Magnetic City by J.F. Williams
Jot, did you not count Justin's Jack vote?
Mod
Ya think I would have learned that by now. :)
1) The story needs to be your own work and should be posted on the goodreads (GR) Discussion board, which is a public group. You maintain responsibility and ownership of your work to do with as you please. You may withdraw your story at any time.
2) The stories must be 750 words or less.
3) The stories have to be science fiction, follow a specific theme and potentially include reference to items as requested by the prior month's contest winner.
4) You have until midnight EST on the 22nd day of the month to post your story to the GR Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion. One story per author per month.
5) After, anyone from the LI Sci-Fi group or the GR Science Fiction Microstory Discussion group has until midnight EST of the 25th day of the month to send me a single private vote (via GR or to author.jotrussell@gmail.com) for a story other than their own. This vote will be made public once voting is closed. Voting, and reading each story before voting, is required. If you do not vote, your story will be disqualified from the contest. You don't need a qualifying story to cast a vote, but you must offer the reason for your vote if you don’t have an entry.
6) To win, a story needs at least half of the votes, or be the only one left after excluding those with the fewest votes. Runoffs will be run each day until a winner is declared. Stories with vote totals that add up to at least half, discarding those with the fewest votes, will be carried forward to the next runoff election. Prior votes will be carried forward to support runoff stories. If you voted for a story that did not make it into the runoff, you need to vote again before midnight EST of that day. Only people who voted in the initial round may vote in the runoffs.
7) Please have all posts abide by the rules of GR and the LI Sci-Fi group.
8) For each month, there will be three discussion threads:
a) Stories - For the stories and the contest results only.
b) Comments - For discussions about the stories and contest. Constructive criticism is okay, but please avoid any spoilers about the stories or degrading comments directed towards any individuals. If you want to suggest a change to the contest, feel free to start a discussion about the idea before making a formal motion. If another member seconds a motion, a vote can be held. I will abstain from voting, but will require a strong two-thirds majority to override my veto.
c) Critiques - Each member can provide at most one critique per story, with a single rebuttal by the author to thank the critic and/or comment to offer the readers the mind set of the story to account for issues raised by the critique. Critiques should be of a professional and constructive manner. Feel free to describe elements that you do and don't like, as these help us gain a better perspective of our potential readers. Remarks deemed inflammatory or derogatory will be flagged and/or removed by the moderator.
9) The winner has THREE days after the start of the new month to make a copy of these rules and post a new contest thread using the theme/items of their choosing. Otherwise, I will post the new contest threads.
Jot Russell
Contest Creator/Director
Hey everyone, here's the challenge for this month.
Theme:
The City of Tomorrow
Required elements:
A disaster or calamity
A retro-futuristic power source