Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
***MAY 2022 SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Stories Only)***
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LAST HURDLEDesmond turned his command striker into the hail of laser fire, exploding enemy drones flaring in a raging inferno above the Earth’s horizon.
Accessing the onboard A.I., he concentrated forward attack drones on the the enemy command station…one of the old Russian models, a refurbished relic of the old nation-state days his grandfather had told him so much about.
He winced as the automated space platform exploded in a searing flare of light. Target neutralized, the A.I. intoned in its usual, cold efficiency. Holographic displays swirled around him as Global Coalition attack units, both crewed and automated, cut in from multiple angles, destroying the last few remaining enemy satellites defending North American continental airspace. Desmond wrinkled his face in disgust as the last lingering vestige of the pre-globalist age of barbarism appeared over the horizon…primitive nuclear ICBM’s…the last pathetic display of resistance by the North American Alliance arcing across the Atlantic…easily destroyed in searing white bursts by Coalition interceptors launched from the Lunar command base.
Desmond cringed as the heavy particle beam orbiters moved into position. He grit his teeth as the beams engaged, explosions igniting on the planet surface far below. He shut his eyes, not wanting to think of the civilian casualties as the last ecologically destructive fossil fuel extraction sites were destroyed. He reminded himself for the hundredth time it was necessary. Time was running out for a dying world. And, space assault would avert thousands of casualties on the battlefield. The isolationists weren’t going to give an inch of ground without a fight. He sighed, looking to the stars. It wouldn’t be much longer, he told himself, imagining his reunion with his son Alan in the underwater city. Alan would grow up in a world without war.
It didn’t make it any easier.
#
Desmond marveled at the beauty of the garden cities of Luna. The hydroponic flowered jungles and farms had been laid over the ruins of the corporate luxury domes built on the moon during the tyranny of the corporate era, in his father’s time. A generation after the nation state system had collapsed when the global economy had gone digital, making national currencies obsolete. He vividly remembered the pain…fighting at his father’s side in the corporate war…storming the sky platforms over old New York, when he was barely 18. Everything had come apart when the A.I.’s had achieved Delta level. The corporate boards had built the A.I.’s to help them organize the world after the chaos of the dissolving nation states, the floods of refugees, the tribal and sectarian wars…
But, when the A.I.’s confirmed that fossil fuels were destroying the biosphere and spread the alert through the global web, revolution broke out among the management networks. The warring factions united in the common struggle to build a clean global energy grid. The intelligentsia and the proletariat merged into one front. The religions helped rally the people, old hatreds fading as a movement of youth transformed the old faiths into a new common vision. The last of the corporate elites retreated to North America where they made their last stand.
The V.R. memory sim faded like a dream, as Desmond’s last R&R came to an end. He stretched as he rose from the V.R. couch and walked along the edge of the space station hub. The other Coalition Space Militia officers were watching with mild amusement as the flickering holographic image of CEO Keith Morrison, last dictator of the North American Alliance shouted his lies of defiance to the populace of his rapidly dying empire.
“What a schmuck,” he heard a 2nd lieutenant comment as he passed by.
Desmond smiled.
#
The capitol city of the Alliance fell as flying subs out of the South American Union…now a full member of the Global Coalition…swarmed out of the Gulf of Mexico, cutting through the resistance lines. The feminist and LGBTQ enclaves, armed and backed by the Coalition had joined with the black and Hispanic rebels in liberating the extermination camps.
Desmond planted the Coalition flag atop the mound of shattered masonry that would one day be the site of the provincial capital of the Coalition. He reflected, looking into the rising sun. The last hurdle cleared. Now, humanity could unite in rebuilding.
#
30 years later…
Desmond’s heart swelled with pride as Alan was sworn in as Governor of the first Mars terraforming colony. A haven world for the burgeoning populace of United Earth.
Kemet, DesherMany years later, the historians would call him Yadom the Crenelator.
His many castles towered over the rugged, iron-rich landscape, yet served no military purpose. Rather, they were emblems of his power over the land, over the pipelines flowing through the frigid, bone-dry desert, over the multitude whose lives he burdened.
A cannon would have pierced his walls, a missile flattened them, but there were none such on this world. Who would confront the master of the automated pumping stations that carried life from the frozen poles?
In the light of each new day, the sun reflected off of the transparent, pressurized greenhouses that kept humanity alive.
Overseers, little removed from the serfs themselves, ignored the growing piles of white saltpeter crystals, painstakingly refined from ponds of human and animal waste. Nitrates are fertilizer, after all, vital for the crops that fed all. Then again, those same overseers quietly gathered cellulose from old cotton clothes and from the fibrous bark of fruit trees. And every greenhouse, despite severe restrictions on fires, had its own innocuous pile of carbonized plant matter. Everyone knew the ancient recipe: sulfur, carbon, potassium nitrate, although none would have admitted it.
In the temporary hush of the noon, the serfs ate their daily meal, and quietly recited their history to their children: “We were Princes once, rulers in the Old World, wealthy beyond human ken. The Founder lead us here, but the bitter cold of this world ate our freedom, ate our wealth, and left us only ashes in return.”
In the bright light of the afternoon, the serfs set aside a mouthful of their personal water allotment for the ornamental cactii that all kept. To any who asked, these were symbols of their relationship to the desert, but a cactus could also store precious reserves of water for the day that must finally come.
In the ruddy sunset, in all of the domes and hypogean tunnels of Yadom's frozen world, ancient speakers crackled to life with the daily sermon. As on all days, a reading from the works of Saint Banks. On feast days, this was followed by a shorter reading from Saint Adams.
And in the twilight, the preacher signed off with the catechism, while in every dwelling, the masses recited along:
Glory to Yadom, who rules from Valley to Mountain.
Glory to Yadom, who conveys water to the desert.
Glory to Yadom, who enlightens our world.
A curse on the benighted masses of the Old World.
A curse on their rulers.
Glory to the Founder, who brought us to this world.
Glory to the Founder, who lived out his days here.
Glory to the Founder, who did not die on impact.
###
The DriveThe speaker stepped up to the microphone.
“There are lots of schmucks in the world. Add a bit of narcissism and psychopathy, put them in the right place at the wrong time and they accumulate power.
If those who would oppose them can be killed or just suppressed, they can lead with hatred and fear. These types of leaders littered our history with atrocities.
In our recent past, a leader in Germany extinguished 6 million lives. In smaller countries, they turned neighbor against neighbor. One truly mad man in Russia nearly wiped a neighboring country from the planet. Even here, in America, with a long reputation for the peaceful transference of power, we’ve had two attempted coups.
It is always the same. Someone acting in the interest of a very small group - sometimes a group of just themselves – and, using that very limited scope, they measure their gain. But, outside that scope, the loss is enormous. Hundreds, thousands, even millions suffer for the benefit of the few.
What if we could change that scope?”
--
“We’ve done it! The drive works. There was not a single mutation!”
You could tell he hadn’t shaved in weeks and only bathed a few times over that span. His laboratory had more in common with Bin Ladin’s hideout than a facility for scientific experimentation.
He held up a clear cylinder filled with buzzing insects. They represented a tiny fraction of a billion-strong delivery system, carriers of a host of parasites and diseases, repurposed now to deliver only a custom-built virus. Highly contagious but virtually asymptomatic.
The virus was a secondary delivery system. To reactivate a long dormant series of genes, to take humanity down a different path.
“We had releases on every continent. There is already a detectable decrease in malaria in some areas, so it’s only a matter of time before the World Health Organization figures it out. The secondary effect should have taken longer, but two civil wars have already stalled.”
“Only history can judge us. Today we are equally likely to be called terrorists as saviors. If all there was to it was to present the scientific evidence and wait for a logical conclusion, we’d have nothing to fear. But the special interests, the politicians, anyone who benefits from the status quo or just schmucks who afraid of change will oppose us. And, at last count, that was 70% of the population.”
“I’ve been the face of our little organization for a reason. When they come, and they will, it will be me they are looking for.” He handed out packets. Passports, plane tickets, cash. “I’ll take care of the lab. Your jobs are to disappear. Lay low. Stay out of genetics for a while”
He sent his colleagues away and flooded the lab with hydrogen gas before igniting it.
--
Two warring tribes, so effective at warfare that they nearly hacked each other to extinction suddenly put down their machetes.
--
Tribalism, the US vs THEM mentality that led politicians to power and kept them there, simply failed. The anger and hatred that drove people to take up arms just didn’t work. Rallies, once surging with rabid supporters were now sparsely attended.
Nations on the brink of war inexplicably drew back from that brink. They raced to dismantle their nuclear arsenals, suddenly mystified at why they created them in the first place.
Treaties gave way to trade agreements, international commerce took off.
--
The gene drive enabled mosquito’s immune systems to destroy over a dozen parasites. Without mosquito-borne illness, there was little need to eradicate the insect, leaving it free to deliver the gene drive to humans around the world.
That engineered virus snipped and clipped the human genome, unlocking a long dormant capability. A sixth sense, some would call it. Others would call it emotional telepathy or true empathy.
It becomes very difficult to prosecute a war if every solder feels the pain of their enemies as they shoot them down.
It wasn’t perfect. True psychopaths were unaffected by the new sense. If someone was truly mind-blind, the alteration did not restore their “sight.” The good news is that were just not enough of them to support a violent political movement, let alone a war.
It wasn’t the great thinkers who imaged this new world. Some musicians from the late twentieth century said, “All You Need is Love.” Turns out, they got it right.
Mod
Ⓒ2022 by Jot Russell
“The Earth is dying,” said Luke.
“What do you mean, dying?” asked the President.
“According to our best estimates, the desert's growth is accelerating by an additional fifty-thousand acres a year. At that rate, it will span the planet and overcome even our most fertile land within a hundred years.”
“How do we reverse it?”
Luke looked down. “We can't, sir.”
The President jumped up, stormed around his desk and stared Luke in the eyes. “’Can't’ is not in your job description! The world is united behind me to find a solution to this problem and you were hired to solve it, which is exactly what you're going to do!”
The President walked past, poured a glass of water from the bar and stared back at Luke from the wall mirror. He turned, bringing the glass with him. “You see this? This is all we need! All you have to do is extract it from the sea or from subterranean supplies.”
“Our conservative estimates include our best efforts to desalinate water from the sea.”
“Then we have to double our efforts!” demanded the President.
“There's more, sir.”
“This better be the good news!” he shouted angrily.
“I'm afraid not, sir.”
“You tell me the Earth is dying and then you say that's not all the bad news you have to tell me?”
“I'm sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be a schmuck! Stop kissing ass and tell me what it is!”
“We're dying,” Luke spoke, with the words painfully escaping his lips.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The epidemic that's spanning the planet; it's not viral, it's something else.”
The President let go of his anger and gave Luke a somber look. “If it's not a disease, then what is it?”
“Its start coincided with the initial expansion of the deserts. At first, we didn't think the two could be related.”
“You're saying the same thing that is killing the planet, is killing us?”
“It seems so, sir. The question to us was how? About twenty years ago, our navigational sensors slowly stopped pointing north.”
“I remember. What does that have to do with this?”
“We understand now why the compasses no longer work. Something within the Earth herself has stopped. Something that does more than direct our boats. A magnetic core at the heart of our planet, spinning within a sea of magma.”
“Spinning within a sea of magma? I find that a little hard to believe.”
“We were able to reproduce the effect in an experiment. By spinning a large ball of iron, we were able to control the compasses. What's more, when we blew metallic dust at the ball, its course was partly diverted.”
The President shook his head. “So, what does that mean?”
“We believe the Earth’s core is a massive metal ball. That somehow, it was able to spin faster than the rest of the planet. And by doing so, it created a magnetic force-field around the planet that protected us from something. Something from space.”
The President let out a deep breath. “Did you verify any of these results?”
“Yes sir, in several ways.”
“So what do we do? We can't just sit around and hope for some type of miracle.”
“I don't think there is anything we can do, except to plant a seed.”
“Plant a seed? You tell me we're dying, that our world is dying, and you want to plant a seed? You take me for fool?! You did say anything we plant here is just going to die anyway, no?”
“Not here, sir. We've been experimenting with rockets. We think we might be able to send microbes or even small animal life to the third planet, Ocean. If we evolved from this life, perhaps we will again.”
The president slowly regained his seat and placed his green hands upon his bald head as he lowered it to his desk. After a moment, he looked back up at Luke. “Plant the seed.”
Encompassing MeditationCopyright 2022 by Paula Friedman
It all has seemed so clear. So done—done and dried. Because, you see, I had already borne and begun raising my kids, despite the hardships (or what we who had rarely, in those days, gone out beyond a few A.U.s, called hardships). And my kids would, I knew, despite the bitter, realer hardships like inter-worlds struggles, Dark Hungers, the Clauses—all those fears and near-endgames—survive the latter eras' hazard time.
That was before, of course. Before what soon came to pass—the inter-worlds/inter-species visitations, the “new" interstellar travel, the many many new fears --and then the wide-opened wonder in our widened lives, poor creatures of Earth as we’d thought ourselves. Perhaps most especially--as I soon agreed with my sons (the two who now remain)—perhaps especially in our interspecies Opening and Accord with our Inter-Species Twins, the Meditatants.
Truly what a wonder they were for us, these Meditatants! Silky of fur they were, eyes black and full-pupilled, soft paw-like hands, a grace as of panthers and—what, beyond all else, reached to us and implacably drew us in, holding us close-embraced (as if, as we’ve latterly tended to say, “our outer and their inner lives were one”/“our inner and their outer lives reflect each other"). Indeed, what most has melded our two species so inseparably together has been this clear lucidity between their minds (or “souls”) and our own. For, looking at (looking into, viewing through) the orbs of any close-known Meditatant (“Medie,” as we mostly say), we deep-perceive . . . OUR selves, OUR souls, and souls of our fathers, mothers, children, our beloveds reflected as if seen by Medies through our eyes, reflected by a Mediethrough our mind, . . . as if in some infinite hall of mirrored Eye-Thou human-Medie inner/outer orbs.
Deep-perceiving, that is, All as One.
So there it is—with no outside, of course. As my third son, Rufous, harshly laughed, "What'd you think would happen, 'merging with those hippie-dippie-medie critters? Oy, what schmucks!"--laughing laughing laughing somewhere, in the messaged words of a woman survivor on his last trip outbound (“ship lost far en route to Aldebaran,” as the expression goes, since at first most such losses indeed occurred en route to Aldebaran).
Well, and how we miss our Rufous, I and my surviving sons Rob and Jason, seated around his empty chair. Seated beside the sputtering campfire, hungry as a gopher or cicada on this crowded, desperate, emptying Earth, to which we now are locked—for every time we would think to step toward somewhere else, toward someplace new and fresh, our caring, echoing Meditatants reflect back on us our every intent, our every memory lost and unforgotten, and every recollection-crowded world we’ve known and re-re-mirrored and can, thus, no longer regain—as well as every person we have loved: reflect back, that is, we who are they, their “here” our “there,” with nothing beyond, no way Outside, no means to reach through our/their species' mirror to escape.
[approx.. 498 words]
Mod
First round votes:
Tom Olbert => **Jot
Jeremy Lichtman => Paula, Greg, Jot, Tom
Greg Krumrey => **Jot
Jot Russell => Greg
Paula Friedman => Jeremy, Jot
Winner:
The Earth is Dying by Jot Russell
Jot's rules are simple:
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 speculative fiction, follow a specific theme and potentially include reference to items as requested by the prior month's contest winner. (This change is mine, because I want to mix it up a little. Speculative fiction can be anything in the genre, from space ships to dragon riders.)
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
_________
MAY'S THEME:
Global unification
Whatever that can mean, whether global government or unifying against a global threat or even just technological or social unity.
REQUIRED ELEMENT:
The word "schmuck" or an example of one, a person who is both contemptible and a fool at the same time.