Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
TENTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Stories only)
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
©2022 by Jot Russell
The gray spherical shroud with faint flashes of red could only be described as a burial cloth over the dying Earth. My brother and I barely notice each others coughs as we hypnotized at the departing, dark orb that was once a brilliant green and blue flower. The green was now a spanning storm of fire, and the blue, a boiling pool of brimstone. Disturbed by the biblical story, I felt condemned in some way for looking back. But any fear that I might have felt was easily overcome by grief. I looked to my brother, who shared my feelings with the same streaming flow of tears upon his dirty face. I turned to see that same stream upon others within our transport chamber.
**
The dark star, Harper, had come in and passed through our solar system around the far side of our Sun. The astronomer, who had been cursed with the initial sight and naming of our doom, ignored any useless protocol and broadcasted the message via all social tools at his disposal.
"The end has come!"
Earth was sparred the initial fly-by, but its seas swelled, its crust raged, and its orbit thrown into steady decay. Jupiter, which had held a front row seat, was not as fortunate. Harper had taken hold, and in its celestial wake, tore out the beaten soul from the doomed planet.
My brother and I were north of the city on a ski trip, but our family, and those within the coastal regions throughout the world, experienced the tragic nature of swelling seas and drastic temperature swings.
It had taken only a month, with all hope crumbled under the dying ground, for the world to somehow accept the course of its fate. Even the selfish looters had lost sight of their meaningless route and stood with the rest as spectators to the events above.
A colorful band of hydrogen, with other gasses and mountain sized fragments that was once Jupiter, were strewn across the sky like a new Milky Way. It filled the gravitational void of Harper's path, and worked its way around the Sun. The remaining of us gazed up at the streaming arc that continued to expand across the sky.
A few month later, my brother and I were eating in the cabin upstate when we heard the news: Jupiter's arc would form a fairly stable atmospheric cloud around the once orbits of Earth and Mars.
**
My thoughts returned to the present view of Earth. So many left behind and all I could feel was guilt for being chosen over them. I shared another look with my brother as an announcement filled the chamber of our life craft.
"I'm sorry, but it has begun."
We looked to see the Moon appear from around the dark side of the Earth in a ghastly blaze, carving a channel across the gray atmosphere. My heart weeped with the screams and cries that filled our ears. We all knew that within just hours, anything that might have still been alive down there, no longer would. I lowered my head and wiped another tear from my dirty cheek.
Our flight led us to the ring. Within the outstretched cloud, I could see the large body of Europa. The other three large moons of Jupiter shared the same fate as our own; dragged into a collision course with its parent. Somehow sparred, the Jovian jewel was pulled out of its orbit, heating its icy crust until the surface became one large ocean with volcanic spurts struggling to cast landmasses upon it.
Our vessel fluttered and shook upon entering the outer edge of the ring. The Sun was already working to disperse the fumes back up to the outer solar system, but we were told that the content of the gas ring would remain thick for our lifetime. The thought caused me to laugh; finding hope that this whole thing might work. If it didn't, I guess we were none the less for wear for trying.
Below was an angelic blue with an almost magnetic flow of gasses collecting down upon its surface. Our ships slowed and plunged down upon the water. The gravity was weak, but felt like a settling charm upon our souls. The sound of sighs overpowered the mechanical roof that opened our chamber to reveal a majestic sky. With water drawn in as fuel to create oxygen, produce energy and grow food, the process of our transplantation had begun. Will we survive?
TOTALITYShe screamed. Derek Williams started, pulling back. He wasn’t sure why. A 19-year-old girl weighing approximately 80 lbs was hardly a threat, especially restrained in a straightjacket. Yet… The air of the padded cell seemed to reverberate with her voice, shooting through him with an electric vibrancy… a power.
“Carly…” he said, his voice trembling. Compose yourself, he chastised himself. You’re a psychiatrist. Her cold blue eyes stared into space, her face drawn, as though traumatized. Derek gasped as a red stain spread through the rough white fabric of the straightjacket. “Get a medic in here!” he shouted into the portable intercom mike. “She’s bleeding!”
He found himself standing under an open sky on a field of great pipes and a huge tower surrounded by men in worker’s coveralls and helmets.
“It stabs deep!” she screamed, medics in white coats unbuckling the straightjacket. He was back in the cell, he realized. What kind of hallucination…? “Take it out!”
He was back on the field. Men screamed as the earth trembled, the gargantuan tower collapsing, immense subterranean pipes exploding in shards out of an unyielding earth…
His head reeled as he found himself back in the cell. Carly gasped, sweat beading on her forehead as the bandages the medics laid on her shoulder wound soaked red. The expression on her face was one of overwhelming relief. One of the medics injected a needle into Carly’s arm.
“No!” Derek screamed, lunging at the medic, the others holding him down. “Take it out! Take it out!”
#
“Dr. Williams, would you care to explain your little outburst earlier?” Dr. Coleman, the sanitarium director demanded, his face strained.
Derek massaged his throbbing temples. “Doctor…I can’t explain it, but…I had an incredibly vivid hallucination at that moment. Amazingly palpable and detailed. I wouldn’t blame you if you took me off this case, but I don’t think you should. I can’t help but feel there’s a connection here…”
“What are you talking about?!”
Derek’s gaze wandering aimlessly, he noticed a streaming news vid coming over a plasma screen in an adjacent doctors’ lounge. Without thinking, he bounded into the next room. “Turn that up!” he shouted. The doctors stared at him as the sound came up, the reporter on the scene trying to explain the disaster.
“Geologists are baffled,” the woman said, smoke and dust swirling around her, dead bodies being pulled from the rubble. “The earthquake came without warning, destroying the entire fracking rig. To quote one engineer…It was as if the earth itself violently regurgitated the entire system.”
Derek’s blood ran cold.
#
Derek feverishly scribbled notes as he read the snaking lines of brain tracings on sheets of paper. Carly lay strapped to a gurney, rambling in fevered delirium, electrodes taped to her head. Plasma screens all around conveyed the scenes of disasters all over the world. Reporters stood by taking pictures.
“Williams, do you have any idea how ridiculous you’re making this institution look?” Coleman protested, tugging at Derek’s sleeve.
“I tell you, there’s a connection,” Derek said, brushing Coleman aside as he tore out a sheet and ran his finger over the tracings. “Each spike coincides with another stigmatic wound. And, each such event coincides to the moment with another disaster. The earthquake that destroyed the fracking operation. The tidal wave that destroyed the oil platform …”
“Are you insane? These are coincidences! What else could they be?”
“No…I’ve seen these events myself…just by breathing the same air as that girl…through bacterial interaction, perhaps?” Derek sighed, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “Doctor…are you familiar with the Gaia Paradigm? The idea that the Earth itself is a single, living organism?”
Coleman winced in disgust. “That same holistic, tree-hugging nonsense that drove that girl to plant a bomb in an oil rig?”
“That explosion caused brain damage. The experimental cellular regenerative drug they pumped into her brain apparently stimulated her pineal gland. I believe she’s become a kind of living nexus, a… central point of connectivity that links human consciousness directly to the larger collective existence of Earth…Gaia…call it what you like. We…humanity…are like a disease attacking the Earth. And, it’s fighting back.”
Carly screamed, her arm gushing blood as a plasma screen recorded a tornado destroying a coal plant.
Coleman’s face grew pale, his mouth agape. He lunged for a needle. “Kill her!”
Coleman’s body withered to ash, the lab consumed in blazing electricity. Derek’s eyes widened as Carly rose, surrounded by an aura of lightning.
He knelt. Gaia…
ONE ELECTRON UNIVERSEBased on the theory with the same name
By Thaddeus Howze
I was not.
Then, without question, I was.
And there was another. Impossibly distant from me;
who called out.
Without question, I knew I must answer,
affirmatively.
A moment was determined.
We both knew it.
As we rushed toward each other we swam through a field of “was not” becoming “not.”
Or perhaps, naught. Naught, it is.
I was becoming something. Naught became Something.
Everything, in fact.
A Hot something, so Hot there are no words for it.
An ever-expanding Hotness which went on forever.
And ever.
And ever.
With Naught becoming Ought becoming Hot, becoming
Space,
as it cooled and stilled, setting in place the shoals of reality,
the fundamental
the universal
the softness which backs all of what is
the quantum foam
A substantial if ephemeral loam upon which to loom
An entire universe.
I am part of it, all of it, hiding in the quarks, the leptons,
energy becoming less energetic,
the radiation becoming sleepy matter, hadrons
forever split from leptons who danced between hither and yon
touching almost nothing
but outnumbering everything.
Stuff that is almost not stuff, a barrier of lead a light year thick may catch only one of me.
I suffused the universe, the background glow of all things,
uncharged, untouched, a cosmic wind
tacking between the galaxies.
Did I mention there were galaxies?
They formed some time ago while we were noticing how many neutrinos there were.
Sleepy matter collected itself. Vain, too. Once a few of them got together, there had to be festivities.
Gathering, growing, feasting on new visitors,
tendrils of force, drawing in new guests, until the event was filled to capacity.
If enough matter existed to do this again and again, these parties would eventually go off the rails.
Fires broke out.
Things were broken, blame assigned. Swirling hot gases spun out of control creating sanguine planets
Cooling, fresh from cosmic ovens
Perhaps if they were unlucky, they would be in just the right spot
at just the right time,
after cooling to just the right temperature
and soaking in whatever precipitate is favorable to that world
perhaps, and this is purely conjecture,
because I am moving so fast I can barely spare the time,
I still have a date;
those chemical pools on those unfortunately placed worlds may
spawn, intent.
A desire. The urge to move toward something.
Something undefined. Something unknown. Toward a conclusion you know will be…
Right.
This is the journey. This event. Move from the not to the naught to the ought to the hot, to the thought,
of non-existence.
They came, billions, upon billions of them.
Each with their ideas, their thoughts, from innumerable worlds,
Intent.
Intent on making a mark
Finding a way to remain. To stain the universe, to last forever
to be immortal
to a universe.
They are too small, live too briefly to truly understand.
We are too vast and they are too small to make a difference
that way.
They are part of the song, part of the undercurrent, the intent of a universe careening toward its inevitable end.
I see them. All.
I see everything and know the end is near.
Things grow colder. Farther apart. Light dims,
I see the last of Them. Those last moments of independent me.
They struggle. They resist the end of all things.
Only the wisest of them can hear me now. There never was a way was there?
Leptons dance no more.
I am alone again.
Except for him.
He draws near.
He is Not.
He is all around me.
What took him so long?
We are NOT.
In a time where there is no time, in a space that is not space,
There is a moment in which there are no moments,
There is the sundering of NOT.
A singular all consuming event, a cataclysmic orgasm of anti-destruction
Then we are separated.
Then, I am.
Again.
I sense him out there, calling me again.
This time, there’s no rush. I want to see everything…
Infinite Regress (approx 190 words)Bob looked in the mirror. It had been a long, sleepless night.
The Universe looked back at him with a two thousand parsec stare.
"Shut up," Bob said.
"I didn't say anything," said The Universe, wearily
"You were going to, though," said Bob.
"Tough twenty-four hours," said The Universe. "You try keeping everything from happening all at once some time. It's exhausting."
"That's what coffee is for," said Bob.
"Not even in the right ballpark," said The Universe.
"Beer, then," said Bob, escalating.
"Do you know how much beer you'd need to fill those two black holes that I just helped merge?" asked The Universe. "It's a bottomless pit of deprivation. Where can you even get an infinite quantity of hops?"
The sound of a throat being cleared emanated from the doorway.
"Are you done talking to The Universe?" asked Minnie. "Because other people need to use this room, and this is rapidly turning into a long, pseudo-philosophical conversation."
"How is that my fault?" asked the Universe. "Bob told me to shut up, and I didn't even say anything."
"Shut up," said Minnie. "And stay out of other people's bathrooms. Creep."
###
Mirror*Coffee?*
*Always.*
*First thing!*
*The Universe insists upon it.*
Deanna chuckled and dismissed the odd, smoothly feminine voice, that snaked through her waking brain like a tune on a repeat loop. She accepted the unknown speaker as fading dream junk, a conversation with her Inner Self.
She walked down the stairs to the living room. Glancing out an oval side window, she spied the boy who always ventured up the hill at seven a.m.. He headed toward the elementary school two blocks over. But what caught her attention was the dawn. Deep hues of orange colored the entire sky.
“Wow!” she exclaimed finishing her descent. “Need a photo of this!” Baxter, her tuxedo cat, who sat on an armchair, opened one eye in disdain for the vocal disturbance. She got her phone, raced to the front door, and flung it open.
“What the hell!” Before her was dark sky. She could still mark the fuzzy Pleiades sinking toward the west. She looked down at the phone. “Five a.m.. How can that be!*
She sat down on the steps, baffled. Could the orange sky have been a dream remnant too? Had she actually sleep walked down the stairs? She ran her hand through her stringy gray hair. “Haven’t done that in decades.” She rose stiffly. Can’t let the neighbors see me in my ratty nightgown, she decided, sprinting back into her house.
*Just a perception glitch. No worries, dear,* came the female’s voice again. *Have your coffee. We need to talk. It is a big day.*
Deanna, now fully awake, froze in place, catalogued her symptoms, and hoped dementia was not the answer to the equation.
“What the hell, Cat!”
Baxter rose from his blanket and stretched. A masculine voice now rumbled behind her eyes. *Your perception is a “bit” off today, that is all,* he answered her mind. *You have a “bit” of extra access, for once.*
Deanna dropped down onto the sofa. She had never heard a cat chuckle before. Her vision suddenly filled with waves of what seemed to be fluttering white veils of silk and colored dots of red, green, and blue. Her eyes had done this sporadically when she was a child. It scared the shit out of her then, as it did now. She shrieked.
The female voice soothed, *Just breathe deeply, dear. It will soon pass. Activation can be easy or hard, that is up to you.*
“Activate what!” she snarled at the unseen, but heard.
*Time for you to take over this quantum quadrant. Time to disembark this earthly body and embark on one made of light and quantum possibility. It is your turn. Rejoice!*
The veils parted. Deanna stared at a glittering pillar of light shaping itself into the form of a woman.
“No!” Deanna protested.
*Why do they make such a fuss?* the light woman asked. *Compliance was there from the beginning.*
*A Universal Glitch,* Baxter answered. *I warned you. Deanna’s Dark Energy imprint of Free Will and Rebellion Against Authority is high. *
*But you are me,*
*And I am he,*
“But we are not together!” raged Deanna at them both.
*Without doubt,* sniffed Baxter.
*Indisputable,* confirmed the light woman. *I am the Universe. I am All that there is in everything and nothing. Divided, but complete, and still learning who I am through the many different experiences of the beings that comprise Me. That includes the direct experience of being you, lowly and challenged on the quantum scale.*
*Deanna, as Universes go, She is like a sulky teen, a little shy of 14 billion years,* Baxter confirmed by way of explanation. *Why else would She entrust Her spying on humans to cats.*
“Why is She a She, and not an It! The Universe is a Thing and a Concept, not a She,” raged Deanna.
*Universes have a spectrum of being, like people. It’s a Brane thing, but what can I say,* purred Baxter. *Once you have ascended to a higher frequency and multiple dimensions, you will know all that. I am quite jealous, really. I am only loosely connected to the All.*
“I ain’t going!” Deanna roared.
The Universe pulsed multicolors, flustered.
*Checkmate,* sniffed Baxter, amused.
*When material death arrives, you will wish you had made the exchange,* the Universe projected with force. *I could have spared you many cycles of reincarnation into matter and ignorance.*
“Get the fuck out of My Life!”
The Universe slipped away like a breath.
Baxter meowed in approval.
Deanna made coffee.
Wordperfect count 749
The Other © Kalifer DeilI was in my study and a soft knock on my door caught my attention. Thinking it was my wife, I said “Come in!” without turning around. A light tap on my shoulder got me to turn and face what appeared to be my doppelganger. I said nothing, just stared in disbelief. Finally, he spoke, “You still work for JOJ enterprises, right?”
My jumbled response was, “Who are ... how did you get in here ... you: what do you want?”
He responded, “I'm another you in the multiverse. You know, the thing you don't believe in. I'm able to reach you since we branched less than six months ago. In my universe, we just discovered how to slide.”
I blinked my eyes several times to be sure I wasn't hallucinating, “Slide? Slide on what?” Was I in a delusion of confusion?
“Do you remember about six months ago you were offered psilocybin mushrooms and you refused? That's when we branched. That's also how to reach parallel universes.”
After a pregnant pause as I processed this revelation. “I've got to be dreaming.” In the background was not my home office but a well-equipped lab with large computer displays. I could even tell what software was running.
He pointed at me and said, “You are working at JOJ Enterprises and you should switch to TIL.”
“I thought about it. Mr. Smidt is a lousy boss and the pay is below par. I thought about TIL.”
He put his face in his hands and then clasped his hands together. “What are you waiting for? The phone is right there, and ask TIL for double your current salary. You won't be refused.”
That was me alright, My mannerisms and bluster when I'm on top of things. “I'll think about it!”
“Don't think, Do!” my double said as he evaporated leaving me to ponder the Yoda quote “Try Not, Do or Do Not. There is no Try.”
I closed my eyes and then opened them again with a jolt. I was facing my desk. I must have been sleeping! I swung the chair around and no one was there. Then a knock on the door. “Come in!”
“Who were you talking to?” My wife Molly inquired.
“Myself I guess.” I was confused, to put it mildly, but out of it came a bit of determination. “Molly, please excuse me. I have to make a phone call.”
I called TIL and asked for Sam Emmett the president. She put me through immediately as though I was expected. I met him at a conference over six months ago but didn't expect to be connected so quickly. He answered, “Bill Swinger, is that you?”
After a shocked pause, I answered, “Yes!”
“How does $250,000/year sound to you?”
After my $125,00/year at JOJ, it sounded pretty damn good. I waited a couple of seconds to calm down then answered, “What will I be doing?”
“You will be the director of AI. The department only has ten people but you will have the budget to expand it to up to one hundred. Can you start on Monday?”
“I accept, but give me another two weeks before starting.” I tried to control my enthusiasm.
“Granted; welcome aboard! I will have the Personnel Department email you the paperwork. We look forward to having you onboard.
“Thanks, Sam, I will try to make the AI department a beacon into the future. Now I have to tie up some loose ends. See you soon.”
“Molly! How do two weeks in Italy sound!”
“I overheard your end of the conversation. I'll be packed before you get the plane tickets.
Ten minutes ago I didn't know I was going to Italy, now I do. How many places in Italy could I go to? How many Bill Swingers will I split into, and which one will I be? What does that even mean? Am I still dreaming? What is free will if I take all alternate paths? Stop! Just assume it was a fortunate dream and enjoy the consequences.
“Honey, I think our passports are in order, I'll get the plane tickets now. It's not tourist season so we should have no trouble getting hotel rooms.”
Do I split on each reservation I make? Damn! Stop thinking about it. It doesn't make any difference … or does it? This violates all physics conservation laws! Does the Universe care?
How it really worksEvery day it’s the same – and you should really thank your lucky stars that it is. I punch in at a worn-out time clock, hang my gray jacket on the coat rack, grab a cup of joe, then take my place at the counter. I sit on a squeaking, three-legged stool whose faded cushion has seen better days. Fortunately, it’s comfortable enough to get through my shift. It feels like an eternity, because, well, you wouldn’t understand.
The counter is divided evenly by some gray bars with flaking paint and an arch in the middle. Not high enough that I can stick my head through it mind you, but it lets me pass things to my customers. My side of the counter is taped over with yellowing reminders of company policy, do’s and don’ts, union rights, that kind of thing. I don’t need them anymore, but the nightshift guy is new so they stay. The other side is clear of this corporate bric-a-brac, covered only by gray laminate that is starting to curl up at the edges. I put in a work order to get it replaced, but, you know, bureaucracy. Whatever.
Every day it’s the same – but I told you that already. My customers line up quietly - which of course they do - because I haven’t given them their personalities yet. Oh sure they have basic motor skills, otherwise how else would they walk to get in line? Stacking them on carts and wheeling them over here was deemed…inhumane, so we let them walk. They follow the yellow floor line right up to my counter and stop a perfect seven inches from the edge, every single time, without fail.
What gets me though is the eyes. They just stare at me, with that vacant, fresh from the factory gaze that looks at me, through me and beyond me all at the same time. It shouldn’t bother me after all these years, but I’d be a liar if I said they didn’t. They’re all the same too. They haven’t gotten their coloring yet from the final detailing center before deployment, so they’re all basic black on white. What was it Henry Ford said? Something about any color as long as it’s black.
Anyway, back to what I do. I run the Professions and Personalities Department. So when a customer steps up to my counter, I match his or her serial number to what The Book says – no matter what The Book says. And boy does The Book come up with some doosies. Sometimes it just breaks my heart, looking at the challenges some of these customers are going to face in life. I know it’s above my paygrade, but whomever is thinking up some of these combos must be a sadist – which is scary considering where I work. That kind of behavior, well, let’s just say there is a special place for those types.
I don’t have to yell next. There are no numbers to call. Just an orderly line that stretches back to Infinity. I work quickly, efficiently, politely. I want each of my customers to feel like they are my only one, that I handled their professions and personalities with care, and sent forward with goodwill and best wishes for their lives ahead.
What about biology you say? Birthing and all that. Well, it’s complicated and really not in my wheelhouse. Sometimes my customer’s professions and personalities take, and sometimes they don’t. I’ve made adjustments over time, tried to hone and fine-tune the process, but life, the universe, and sometimes plain bad luck interfere and the poor souls are left wondering and wandering. They end up trying to scratch an itch that just won’t stop. It really takes a toll on some of them. I put in a work order to get some of the equipment replaced, but, you know, bureaucracy.
“Hey Wallace, are you monologuing again?”
“Huh? Oh hey Jasper, just uh, talking to myself. Is it time already?”
“It is my friend. Your shift’s up.”
Jasper placed his black lunch pail on the floor next to the three-legged stool. It creaked as Wallace dismounted.
“All quiet?”
“Oh sure. You know, the line keeps moving.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Well, have a good night Jasper. I’ll see you on the flip side.”
“Goodnight Wallace.”
***
Lucian Stent awoke with a start and surveyed the battlefield. His memories flooded back as the color of his eyes stabilized. Hefting his rifle, he moved forward to meet his destiny.
(750 words in story) Justin Sewall © 2022
Reviews/critiques welcome
"The Wind Telephone"by J.F. Williams
My editor, Charlie, handed me a clipping, some notice in a small weekly, out of some fishing village in Newfoundland. "There's a guy up there who talks to the wind. I want you to check it out. Might be something." At Fluke! magazine, we covered UFOs, séances, bigfoot, that sort of thing, and Charlie had a good nose for who was a scammer, or a true believer. Didn't matter which because our readership ate it all up anyway. But when he used the word "something," Charlie's nose was telling him this might be for real.
"Local Hobbyist Builds Wind Telephone" read the headline. It went on to describe a sixtyish gentleman name Henry Laffiter, a retired software engineer who settled in Wexford to study swarm patterns—large groups of fish or fowl in inexplicably well-coordinated mass formations. Laffiter chose Wexford for its large gull flocking and the schools of cod that swirled in the sea, each so well-choreographed in their movements as to act like a single creature when swarming. These studies, the article abruptly concludes, somehow led him to build a device for talking to the wind.
I arrived in Wexford by ferry, crowded that day by merrymakers destined to fill the town's hostels for the next three nights as Wexford's Fall Festival got under way. I had heard of the village in my college days as a place to party, hard, but for just three nights a year. Otherwise, it was quiet as a church and grim as a cemetery. Laffiter's house was a modernist building of great floating slabs cleverly ensconced atop a cliff that looked out on the sea and allowed an unobstructed view of the village square below and the stony trail I climbed to meet this madman.
"The wind is alive!" said Laffiter as he showed me around his workshop. "I can almost prove it now. I have cameras recording both sea and sky, and I've digitized the murmuration patterns from the videos." He showed me footage marked with timestamps. One hour there js a swirling in the sea as schools of cod play, the changes in direction sometimes sudden, the swells and contractions effortless, faultless. Then it simply stops and the fish disperse. Next we see a video of gulls performing the same dance, the same turns at the same intervals as the cod. "See? Identical movements in the identical sequence. These creatures don't share these patterns. They are commandeered, by a single entity, the wind." He laughed at that, and longer than was comforting.
"I'm no statistician," I said. "So I'm buying it. But have you had hard-nosed scientists take a look?"
"Not yet," Laffiter replied, "I don't have enough evidence. That's why I built the wind telephone." He led me out a side door to a view of the mountains and the wild forest, and a three-meters square, freestanding wall covered in tiny jewels the color of lapis. "Those are acoustic couplers, thousands of them, and they're all wired to a main trunk that connects to a computer in the workshop. Each one measures the pressure and direction of micro-currents in the wind. From that, I generate a video of the patterns. They are the same murmurations as the fish and birds but they appear first in the wall. It's the wind. It's a living thing!"
"So what does the wind say?"
Laffiter scowled. "I simply don't know. It's like a phone call from a country where I don't understand the language. These are definitely non-random patterns, and they're repeated in the murmurations, in the rustling of leaves and the shifting sands on the beach. And it's too bad because I could reverse the action of the couplers and talk back if I knew the wind's language."
"Why not try," I offered. "Speak some gibberish. See if the wind responds."
His eyes opened wide. "I could just digitally invert the pattern!" He ran back to his workshop and I remained outside, distracted by the laughter and shouting of merrymakers in the village below. At once I heard a jarring cacophony emanating from the bejeweled wall. Then leaves on some oaks rustled furiously, a flock of gulls appeared above and flew haphazardly, screeching, and the sea farther down seemed to boil with fish. After a while, the laughter coming from the village abruptly stopped. It was deathly quiet for a moment. Then came the screaming. Lights blinked out and the village went dark before erupting into a pattern of small fires.
(749 words)
GaiaI was clearly human, but I didn’t fit in as far as other humans were concerned So, I sought solitude. If you want solitude, space is the place.
That’s how I ended up here, on a planet that was a veritable paradise, at least a short time ago. The atmosphere became deadly to most carbon-based life. Acid rain is a common occurrence. Constant cloud cover rendered the solar arrays useless. If I didn’t know better, I would think the planet deliberately drove the colony away.
I wasn’t planning on being here long. Button up the habitat, shutdown the reactor and put everything is stasis. A week, maybe two, tops.
--
The reactor was the biggest problem. It was an older model that used a crude geothermal system to shed waste heat. The underground array had failed, sending the coolant temperature soaring.
I managed to shut it down, but, without reliable cooling, even the idle reactor would soon overheat.
--
I’d heard rumors of haunted planets. I dismissed them as ghost stories but there was something here. I didn’t sense malevolence, just curiosity.
Then the dreams started. While in a semi-conscience state, the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, it would come to me. Initially just thoughts and impressions, then vivid images.
Whatever it was, it was learning, getting better at projecting thoughts. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t.
Until I was.
--
She, for it seemed to take on a female persona, came to me every night, but this night was different. The gentle presence was replaced by fear and pain. It wasn’t my fear or pain, but I felt it. Her vague features solidified to a human female. She opened her flowing garment to reveal a terrible wound in her abdomen. A ragged hole with the edges badly burned. Her face was contorted with pain.
“Help me,” I heard clearly, through there was no sound.
“I don’t know how,” I attempted to speak in the paralyses of sleep.
She filled my brain with another image. I recognized it immediately.
--
The geothermal array was not malfunctioning. It was transferring heat exactly as it was designed to do. But the heat wasn’t going anywhere. The surface temperature above it was nearing 100 degrees Celsius. Underground, it was hot enough to melt rocks.
I shunted what was left of the colony’s water supply into the ground. I thought it would boil off but, instead, it flashed to steam, leveling the habitat.
Without water or shelter, I holed up in my ship. Without water, the reactor would overheat, melt its way out of containment and kill everything within a mile. Even if I got enough water, without electricity, my improvised cooling towers would not work. In a few days, I’d have to bug out.
I drew up detailed plans and studied them as I grew sleepy.
--
She was back. The wound was still there but much smaller. I felt contentment or was it gratitude?
I awoke several hours later to pounding thunder and waves of rain. I started down my preflight checklist while waiting for dawn.
Dawn broke, hard and bright. Water, fresh and clear, filled the valley next to the remains of the dome.
Sunlight bathed the solar cells, bringing the array back online.
By mid-day, steam rose from the towers, the geothermal array pumping the last of the heat from underground.
--
She tried to explain it. The best analogy I can come up with is parallel processing. If all the minds of all the mammals mended together, what thoughts could they think?
With the pain gone, we began learning together, teaching each other.
How do you explain death to a being that has existed longer than the human race? How do you explain time to an entity that is as old as a planet? To her, our lifetimes are like a flash of lightning in the sky.
She explained the sensations she felt from the life on her surface. Hunger, fear, cooperation and even love.
She loved the Sun. Her sun, the Star she orbited. For, without it, she would not exist. And, if it suddenly ceased to provide heat and light, she would cease to function.
But it went beyond the dependence. To coexist with another, to see the world through another’s eyes, even eyes so very different. Especially eyes so different.
--
As soon as I could, I sent out a request for (and was granted) salvage rights to the colony.
(746 Words)
Mod
First round votes:
Jot Russell => Greg
Tom Olbert => Jot
Thaddeus Howze => ***JF, Greg, Tom
Jeremy Lichtman => **Justin, Marianne, JF
Marianne Petrino => Thaddeus, Kalifer, Jot
Kalifer Deil => ***JF, Justin, Tom
Justin Sewall => ***JF, Greg, Kalifer
J.F. Williams => **Justin, Jot, Kalifer, Marianne, Greg
Greg Krumrey => Kalifer
Finalists:
How it really works by Justin Sewall
The Wind Telephone by J.F. Williams
Second round votes:
Jot Russell => Greg; #*JF
Tom Olbert => Jot; #*JF
Thaddeus Howze => #*JF, Greg, Tom
Jeremy Lichtman => ***Justin, Marianne, JF
Marianne Petrino => Thaddeus, Kalifer, Jot; #*JF
Kalifer Deil => #*JF, Justin, Tom
Justin Sewall => #*JF, Greg, Kalifer
J.F. Williams => ***Justin, Jot, Kalifer, Marianne, Greg
Greg Krumrey => Kalifer; ***Justin
Winner:
The Wind Telephone by J.F. Williams
This month's challenge is being presented by October's winner, Thaddeus Howze.
Writing prompt: The Unconsidered Country
Personify some aspect of the Universe. Science, folklore, animism, mysticism, Gnosticism, cosmology, all attempt to raise (or lower) our awareness to include the Universe or parts of it as aware of us as we are of them.
But what if they were more aware than we thought? Previous tales of myth personified lightning and thunder as gods, magical forces as Djinn, and the hereafter as various Heavens or Hells as the perspective permitted.
What if the Universe or some part, we have thought, non-sentient, not only had personality, but was self-aware?
What if those hidden aspects of the Universe appeared to the right persons or people, and deigned to speak to us.
All we needed was the right language, algorithm, technology, magic, social structure, pentagram, or ritual to make the connection...
• Did you trap lightning in a jar and teach it to do math?
• Can you talk to buildings or does your house talk to YOU?
• Do you suspect your neighbor is the Grim Reaper? Is all of his talk of his garden actually about flowers?
• Do fleas have a secret life? Do they discuss their lineage in the stories of cats they ride like great ships crossing the city?
• Are you a friend to the Darkness Between Worlds? Is everything we have learned about it wrong?
• Do you have an intimate relationship with your local forest? Does it ask you to intercede on its behalf or bemoan the inevitable passing of humanity?
• Can you speak with insects? What do they talk about when we aren't spraying RAID on them. How do they feel about that, anyway?
• Can you hear stars singing? What are their songs about?
• Can you commune with the vibrations of matter? What does the 5% of the Universe's mass (baryonic matter) think about the rest of it's more invisible and significantly more numerous cousins (non-baryonic matter)?
Tell us a tale of a self-aware aspect of the Universe, a personification of a concept like Infinity, Eternity, Death, Oblivion, Destruction, or of a smaller aspect of self-awareness such as stars, or forests, trees or whales, or perhaps at the microscopic or sub-atomic such as viruses or the very stuff of reality itself, the very virtual particles which spring into and out of existence without warning, all around us.
The genre isn't as important as the relationship between the players in your story. Can the personification be represented by a person? You bet. But, it doesn't have to be.
I want to get the feeling of something otherworldly, a new perspective, a visit to the Unconsidered Country...
The story is up to you.