Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
Congrats to Greg Krumrey and J.F. Williams, tied champions of the Science Fiction Microstory Contest
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Mod
by J.F. Williams
A few years had passed since Krimel last visited Whisper Lake and he noticed the changes. Once a narrow strip of sand at the lake's south shore, the beach was now several yards deeper, running all the way up to bushes that bordered the Whisper Lake Inn's promenade, a wide, pebble-paved path winding from porch to beach. The Runyons had sold the hotel to a chain which expanded both the building and its seasons. This was the first year the inn was open in winter, and it had been fully booked, so Krimel came in the third week of March to observe the thaw.
The first time he saw the lake in winter, the inn was closed and not a single other human was around. He performed his experiments in solitude, gathering water samples and tracking temperature changes. He also saw the dead bodies of fish floating at the surface, frozen yet pliable as though thawed. He knew the inn had to restock every spring to attract anglers, and the Runyons never knew why fish were dying but Krimel had a theory. The lake never froze over even when the temperature reached twenty below. With no ice to protect the fish from the temperature drops, the cold penetrated deeply. What he found in the water were traces of gamboline, an iron-silicate with an oddly stable curly-Q molecular shape. It was only found in meteorites, and one had hit this place long ago, blasting the crater that became the lake's basin. Even in trace amounts, Krimel found, gamboline appeared to dramatically lower the freezing point of water, making Whisper Lake a big bowl of natural anti-freeze.
Krimel had convinced the folks at All-Bindings Corp that gamboline water could be a cheap and efficient refrigerant, and his team began testing its parameters. A glass drum of it was kept in a clean-room variable chiller, its temperature slowly reduced until a freezing point could be gauged. An inexperienced tech named Amundsen had been scheduled to monitor the chilling sequence overnight but had fallen asleep, waking to see the drum crowned with ice. That was at only five below. Not sufficient, as Krimel had calculated it should be past minus two hundred.
All four techs gathered to monitor reversing the chilling, progressively heating the drum to gauge ice stability, but the ice melted normally, which was of little concern to the techs who stood around bent forward and crossing their hands in front of their crotches. They remained this way until the ice had melted completely. Afterwards, each of them admitted to an odd feeling but had forgotten the nature of their experience, except for Amundsen, who remembered thinking himself standing before a crowd but without a stitch of clothing.
"It's like a dream I had recently," he had told Krimel.
Funding dried up and the team disbanded, leaving Krimel on sabbatical to pursue his own interest in the otherwise dismal test results. What Amundsen said still bothered him. During an evening of cannabis intoxication, he worked out a hypothesis that gamboline water only freezes in the presence of dreams, which somehow catalyze the freezing process, and at the same time are somehow recorded in the ice crystals so that when the ice melts it somehow replays the dreams into human brains. A few weeks passed and Krimel himself suddenly remembered the event. But in his memory, he was standing in front of a classroom.
As the morning wore on, Krimel stationed himself on a bench halfway along the promenade. It was going to be in the seventies the next few days and he had to test this out. While the ice was melting, would he see any disturbance in the behavior of guests returning from the beach? As the noonday sun beat down on the lake, he watched while a pair of young boys fled in terror from an amorphous creature, a man in a suit swaggered around like a pirate, brandishing an invisible dueling saber. Some guests thought they could fly and danced around with outstretched arms, while others crouched to the ground, flailing as though in freefall. A young women pantomimed skiing and hitting a tree repeatedly. A housekeeping staffer appeared to be counting coins and smiling wickedly. These observations faded as Krimel found himself driving his first car, a Plymouth Duster, in the canals of Venice, unable to find a spot to drive onto the pavement.
It would be several days before the ice in Whisper Lake would melt completely.
Congratulations, Greg! As I was last month's theme master, I'd be happy if you would do the honors for March.
Mod
Congratulations, J.F., great concept!I'll get a theme out in the next few days.
I agree with Jot. We need more judges. More writers would be good too. I put the word on in my local Mensa newsletter but it doesn't look like anyone joined as a result.
Anyone else know where would be a good place to promote our contest? I have a subscription to Peots and Writers and they often publicize contents.
Greg Krumrey
“What did the boss say?” Asked the ICE agent, sitting in his trailer, somewhere west of Area 51.
“He better not hear you call him that. He’s The President or Mr. President,” corrected his superior.
“Well, he acts more like a mob boss, like Willie the Rat or No Nose. But I don’t want to piss him off. So, what did ‘Mr. President’ say?”
“Get rid of him. Or it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! This is the chance of a lifetime. I’ll call NASA’s Planetary Defense Office. They’ll take him off our hands.”
“That office was one of the first defunded. You can call if you like; no one will answer.”
“Well, it it’s not like we can send him back where he came from.”
“We’ll send him to GITMO. Then he’s no longer our problem.”
--
A guard was speaking into his satellite phone, the communication device of choice in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp: “No, he’s not causing any problems. All the detainees seem to be drawn to him and listen intently when he speaks. He’s not riling anyone up, if anything, he is a calming influence. Nobody seems to care that he’s green. They just…accept him.
There is something weird, though. The infirmary has been keeping statistics since 9/11, checking for outbreaks and quarantining people as needed. But they haven’t gotten a single patient from Camp 5 since he showed up. Somebody’s always getting sick on the base but not here.”
The subject of the conversation was sitting on a bench, having an animated discussion with a large crowd, gesturing with his three-fingered hands, his big oval eyes beaming.
Three days later, that guard awoke to blinding sunlight. “Some asshole stole my tent! Can you get one sent over?” he said into his phone. He stood and turned to face the camp, gasped and said “Patch me through to the General!”
After a few minutes of waiting, he said “It’s gone!”
“The alien?” So what? We lose a few a week. The Nigerians probably barbequed him while you weren’t looking,” said the voice on the phone.
“No, not just him. The entire camp. The fence is still here, but there’s nobody and nothing but bare ground inside of it. Even the guard towers are gone!”
“Oh, man. We are so screwed.” He seemed to ponder a moment, then lighten up. “Does anyone else know about this? Good, we'll keep quiet, rebuild the camp, fill it with new detainees, nobody will notice.”
--
Somewhere on the galactic rim, a little green man was standing in the front of a conference room. Others like him stood around taking in the presentation. A blown-up map of the galaxy hovered over the table and a series of blue curves snaked through several solar systems. He spoke with authority, “The gateway wormholes will become the new Galactic Thoroughfare. They’ll cut travel times from arm to arm by more than 60%. We have completed our survey. Our advance scout has obtained a sample of the indigenous sentient life form on the last Planet of Concern as required to preserve the species.”
The image focused on a yellow star and it’s eight planets. A blue curve intersected with the third planet from the sun and then the planets faded out.
“What of the remaining beings?” called out a member of the audience.
“Simulations show an 87% change of self- annihilation within 4 years. Our negotiator, instead of being allowed to meet with the world leaders, was captured and jailed. While in captivity, he did his best to observe the society he was immersed in. He quickly determined that his capture and jailing was most fortuitous. While most of the humans, as they are called, possess many traits unacceptable to our society, the individuals he was imprisoned with were of much better disposition and possessed sufficient genetic variation to make species transplantation viable.”
“So, when can we begin construction?”
“Very soon. The Demolition crew has already destabilized the star so it will go nova. Once the solar system is cleared, we can bring the first wormhole pair online. The rest of the network will be complete shortly afterward.”
--
A backyard astronomer stepped away from his telescope and said “What’s up with the moon? I’ve never seen it so bright.”