Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
JUNE 2023 SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Stories only)
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THE PARADOXThe world in which Jean-Pierre Beaulieu found himself was even more fantastic than any he’d visited since his abduction from his native era. A few moments ago, he’d been investigating a temporal anomaly in the 21st century Persian Gulf. He’d passed through a stormy dimensional rift in the desert and now…He found himself in a world of castles, unicorns and fairies. Of lovely maidens draped enticingly across brightly flowered fields. The squad of American soldiers who’d followed him into the rift looked as dismayed as he.
Trumpets blared. “Welcome, welcome…” a regal figure of a man called down from an ornate throne high atop a golden pedestal upon a looming hilltop. He was attired in flowing silken robes and surrounded by a flock of admirers…beautiful women and attending slaves. “Welcome to the kingdom of Gold. What gifts do you bring?”
“Will somebody tell me what the hell’s going on here?!” Captain Curtis, the American military commander demanded, his face twisted with horror. “First, an American army unit disappears into some kind of…black hole or something…then, a guy who claims to be a nineteenth century private in Napoleon’s army appears in what he claims is a time machine …and now, we’re in fairy-tale land?”
“The answer would be as fantastic to you as it is to me, mon capitain,” Jean-Pierre replied. “I realize I am an anachronism to you. You 21st century people are, from my point of view, specters of the future. Yet, you are also anachronisms to me, as I am also a resident of the 40th century, and a member of the Time Travel Corps. A paradox, non?”
“Look, enough of this! I’m here to retrieve American military personnel last seen entering…wherever the hell this is. Where are they?” Curtis demanded of the strange monarch.
“You dare question your king!” The strange man stood up, holding his scepter aloft. Lightning crashed, the sky darkened, and the lovely fairy tale kingdom was replaced by a Roman coliseum. Crowds of spectators booed and jeered as gladiators battled fantastic creatures…centaurs, satyrs, harpies, minotaurs…
“Open up!” Curtis shouted. Before his startled men could open fire, they all found themselves adorned in gladiatorial costumes, their guns replaced by primitive swords and shields. “What in hell?”
“Conventional matter is being distorted by dark matter,” Collette’s feminine voice called out from the meter-length cylindrical A.I. module that hovered above Jean-Pierre. “The build-up of dark matter is intensifying. If it continues, this pocket universe will collapse into a singularity, taking with it the 21st century and all eras beyond.”
“What can we do, cher?” Jean-Pierre asked, hacking down a ferocious winged lion as it attacked Captain Curtis.
“That man in the stands is the source of the distortion,” Collette replied. Jean-Pierre looked up at the strange king, now done up as Caesar in Roman robes and wreath. “His thoughts control the dark matter, becoming reality. I can channel the dark matter through our mind link. With my help, you should be able to re-shape reality, to some extent.”
He tested that theory, the sword in his hand becoming a spear. He smiled. “Would you accommodate me, mademoiselle?”
“I’ve no intention of making a habit of this!” Collette complained as the A.I. module transformed at Jean-Pierre’s mental urging into a winged horse. He straddled the magnificent beast and rode it towards the mad and unlikely Roman emperor.
As Jean-Pierre neared him, the strange madman morphed and distorted into something hideous, like a living nightmare…Jean-Pierre’s eyes flared. The immense leathery-winged horror was one moment like a gargoyle…then something like a gargantuan vampire bat with slavering fangs…then a dragon sprouting multiple heads. Jean-Pierre’s blood turned to ice as it had at Waterloo. But, as then, he charged on as a soldier must. “Use thought as your weapon!” Collette shouted.
He concentrated, a protective halo of fire shielding him as he leapt straight into the jaws of the demon, plunging his spear into its heart.
The nightmare world was gone. Jean-Pierre found himself back in the Iraqi desert, in the wreckage of some kind of spacecraft. Before him was the dead body of the ship’s navigator. The name plate on his uniform read J. Gold.
“25th century 1st-generation time-ship,” Collette explained. “They used dark matter power cores. The navigator’s mind was linked directly to the core through the ship’s computer. Apparently, when the ship crashed in this time period and the system was damaged, he went mad, his subconscious taking over.”
“Rest in peace, Monsieur Gold.” Jean-Pierre whispered.
Mod
@2023 by Jot Russell
The only relationship shared between the sister planets of the Harken system was that of their sun.
Harken-B, otherwise known as Lanshain, was a socialist utopia, where uniformity was instilled from birth to conform society according to the doctrine of Jasper. Their strict control over energy and material use was the only solution to avoid their planet from burning itself within the closer proximity to the sun.
John woke up in his assigned 3 by 10 meter pod, gave a stretch and drank his morning ration of water. With his sport clothes on, he hopped on his bike for the required morning ride. With the first kick of wheel, the walls turned translucent until revealing a false trail through the woods next to his friend, Mike.
"Running late?" Mike remarked.
John peeked over as his friend’s power generation screen. "What, by a minute? You just woke up early to say that, didn’t you?"
"Yeah, maybe. Hey see the news? Looks like the Zenithians finally know we exist?"
"What are you talking about?"
"They sent us a radio transmission."
"No, shit! So they’re listening to us? Didn’t even know they knew how a radio works."
"Ha ha, do you?”
“Okay, you got me. But still, wonder how long they’ve been listening?”
“Long enough to know who we are. Perhaps the words of Jasper will help them to end all their endless warfare and embrace the conformity of peace."
**
Harken-C, known as Zenithia, was in the midst of an industrial revolution, when a man, Torakus, invented a device to send and receive wireless audio in the hopes of taking on the kingdom’s communication monopoly, ComTrack. In testing, especially at certain times of the day, the signal was getting disrupted. Frustrated by his failure, he examined the large amplitudes of noise that came over the receiver before phasing in and out of the dial frequency. It required a bit more work, but once his new prototype was complete to listen based on a modulation of frequency, he was shocked to hear a strange sounding voice in a language that was completely foreign to him. And with a shaped antenna, he quickly confirmed its source.
Some years later, and armed a team of engineers with an encyclopedic wealth of Lanshain technology, Torakus acquired ComTrack and slowly introduced media to manipulate the people into an angry uprising against its king. With his new weapons, and the promise of jobs for all, the crowds cheered as the tanks rolled in under a new flag and laid waste to the palace.
The jobs followed, with the focused division of technologies to explore modern materials, turbine and rocket engines, flying machines they powered, semiconductor switches to control them, and even nuclear fission that the engineers knew not of its purpose. Roads, dams and cities arose, with no sight of slowing, but yet, all communication was restricted to hard wire. Each night, Torakus would look at the crescent form of Lanshain, until later that year it eclipsed behind the sun of the Harken system. That night, The Purge, as it would come to be known, took place. In the matter of an hour, streaks of smoke fell from the sky above each palace, and erupted in a star-like fireball.
The only answer provided to the fearing public within the felled kingdoms was that of the words of Torakus. First by pamphlets, followed by video screens set up in each city by the unimpeded armies.
“People of Zenithia, we have a common enemy. The planet we all know as Lanshain is not the desolate dessert that we all thought it was. Quite the contrary. In fact there a race of hideous creatures there that aim to purge us from our world so they can take what is ours. They think they can drop asteroids on us from afar, to kill our children and introduce a lawless anarchy for us to do their work for them. We will not let them! Under a united Zenithia, we will create weapons to stop them and purge them from their world!
Within a week, Lanshain will appear from behind the sun to measure the result of their cowardly attack against us. They will be looking for us to surrender, and we will pretend to cower under their yoke. But they do not know that we have also been working on asteroid weapons of our own and plan a reprisal in a half year, when they will be closest to us.
We’ll have our revenge!”
Revolution RevolutionAndreaus Stent stood before the magistrate’s dais, hands clasped firmly behind his back. With the crash of a gavel his fate was sealed with no recourse. Guards immediately grabbed his arms and placed restraints upon his wrists. Stent went limp, forcing the two officers to drag him from the court room. No sense making it any easier for them. They had already discredited his writings and reputation. Now, they sought to silence him forever. He was stripped, shaved from head to toe, given the barest of loincloths, then led to the glass cylinder from which he would watch the passage of time. Waking-stasis they called it, but it was more like the ninth circle of Hell from Dante’s Inferno – where condemned souls, frozen into ice, were completely unable to move or speak and contorted into grotesque shapes as a part of their punishment. Supposedly the process was nearly instantaneous and pain free, but since no one had been released from deep freeze to tell the tale, it could not truly be verified.
The faintest stirrings of fear rose in the back of Stent’s mind, but he ruthlessly rooted it out of his thoughts. No! He said to himself. He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him panic. Stepping calmly into the cylinder, he turned to face the med techs who would prepare his body to be flash frozen, but keep his eyes open and mind active – all to watch the world pass by for the next 200 years. Needles pierced his forearms, pumping him full of what was cynically called antifreeze. It prevented cell membranes from rupturing, or, as he heard the med techs joke, freezer burn. Already he began to feel sluggish and unable to move his extremities, sounds now seemed far away…mind detached…floating…but still very much alert. The other half of Stent’s glass cylinder slid quietly into place and he was rolled slowly away to take his place on The Wheel.
***
For a while, people gawked at Stent’s frozen form, hands outstretched as if warding off impending fate. Of course, any new addition to The Wheel always attracted the attention of passersby, but like most new things, the novelty soon wore off. Eventually, he barely warranted a cursory glance as his name and the crimes he committed were forgotten by the ignorant masses, despite the scrolling digital summary of his transgressions in thought, word and deed against the State. He was an anachronism from a bygone age and now nothing more than a curious anomaly to those on their way to work, school, and home. Anyone who might have sympathized with his cause was certainly not going to show it, and as the years passed by in rapid succession, were most likely dead.
***
Seasons flew by in predictable patterns, blurring before Stent’s open eyes. Flags changed color as governments rose and fell. Red, blue, black, then red once again. Clothing, technology, and architecture morphed and merged, innovated, stagnated, repeated. Time seemed to stretch on interminably. Days rolled into decades. Stent wanted to scream, to cry, to rage against this frozen hell without end. He watched as men in black fought and killed men in red. War machines screamed through the air and crawled along the ground, spewing fire and death. Buildings crumbled, civilians perished, yet The Wheel kept slowly turning, providing Stent a front row seat to the end of days in three-hundred and sixty-degrees of torture and terror. Then one day, multiple flashes of brilliant light and mushroom clouds erupted on the horizon and marched in rapid succession toward The Wheel – fortunately while Stent was on the opposite side and facing away from the blinding blasts. All went dark. The Wheel shuddered, ground to a halt, then vomited Stent out of his glass cylinder as emergency systems overrode judicial decree. He lay upon the charred ground, arms outstretched as if warding off impending fate, and slowly warmed by residual radioactive energies.
It seemed like another eternity before Stent found he could move his arms and legs. Coughing and gasping, his lungs revolted against the harsh air as he crawled, haltingly, in search of something to cover himself. He stood, balancing precariously on legs unaccustomed to locomotion. He heard people weeping and came upon a group who seemed without direction. They were startled by his pale appearance, but asked him, “What do we do now?” For the first time in over 200 years, Andreaus Stent smiled broadly, then said, “I have a few ideas.”
(750 words in story) Justin Sewall © 2023
Reviews/critiques welcome
The RiftArtemis Cornelius “AC” Granville stared at the Ether Resonance Meter. The readings were a sure sign the anomaly was growing larger. Triangulation placed the rift about five miles off shore.
He needed time, a ship, and a source of tremendous power.
--
He had heard rumors of the tall tales Captain Bohr told of a sea monster. The other sailors, being skeptical, crowded around the bar shunning the old captain off at a lone table.
Grandville introduced himself and got right to the point: “I believe your stories, but I don’t think it’s a sea monster. I think it’s much worse. If I can’t stop it, this town will be uninhabitable in a matter of days. After that, the ocean itself will drain into it.
--
It had been decades since he crewed a ship, but Granville was the only one available. The weather conditions were ideal for Granville’s experiment, but not so much for sailing.
“You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you,” Bohr yelled over the raging wind.
“I’m a scientist. I go where the science is.” Granville watched the needle on the meter rise slightly on the logarithmic scale. In order to repair the fabric of spacetime, he’d need a million times more power. “You’re not exactly a picture of sanity, either. Sailing into a hurricane and all.”
The captain laughed for a moment and then got serious. “Do you really think we can do it? Close the rift?”
“The math works. My experiments worked. But this is orders of magnitude bigger and I don’t have much control over,” waving his hand at the lightning overhead, “the power source.”
He checked the cables again. The wiring from a rod above the crow’s nest to the anchor was secure. When the rope holding the anchor was cut, the circuit would be complete.
The boat lurched to the left and then began a slow spin to the right.
“I’d say we found it. Or it found us,” the Captain let go of the wheel and let the ship slide into the vortex. He slashed the rope with a cutlass and the anchor dropped.
The Granville looked over the side at the swirling vortex and then watched the needle move upward.
He looked up in time to see the lighting hit the main mast and the wire begin to glow. He glanced at the box and thought “just one last test.” before something big and fast hit him midsection, propelling him across the deck. He recognized the captain’s shirt as they went over the railing.
It took several seconds to orient himself and several more to break the surface. The deck where he had been standing was on fire and the sails flashed into flame seconds later. Bits of smoking wood rained down, hissing in the water.
“Over here,” the captain called. Several large casks, lashed together floated nearby. The captain sat on one. He pulled Granville up and threw a rope around his waist. The ship was sinking quickly. The captain slashed the tow-rope before the makeshift raft was pulled under. The night was dark and stormy, but they stayed upright. The captain explained that a second anchor, tied below the casks, was righting them each time the storm flipped them over.
Granville learned the rhythm: Breathe fast and then hold it as the casks rolled. It was going to be a long night. The storm finally abated and the sea calmed. Exhausted they fell asleep still tied to the barrels.
--
Morning broke hard and bright. The barrels washed up on a beach and gently bobbed in the surf.
Granville loosened his rope and fell face down into the sand. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“What doesn’t?” answered the captain, dismounting with a little more grace.
“Being a hero. We saved a town, maybe even the planet. It feels more like a letdown than anything else.” He paused, “Sorry about your boat.”
“Well, I’m still a captain. I just need another boat. But your instruments were incinerated.”
“Well, I’m still a scientist.” He pulled his notebook from his shirt and shook water from it. “I’ve got my notes.” Granville added. “Think anyone will believe us?”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it? I didn’t take you for the hero type.”
The two of them headed away from the town.
Granville said, “I think there’s a cave up ahead that was used by pirates years ago. Rumor has it their ship was never found. Wanna take a look?”
Mod
First round votes:
Tom Olbert => **Greg
Jot Russell => **Tom
Justin Sewall => **Greg, Tom, Jot
Greg Krumrey => **Tom
Tied Champions
The Paradox by Tom Olbert
The Rift by Greg Krumrey
Required elements: Writer’s choice within the categories above!