The Future Is Short Read online

  He liquidated his fortune to bring together the minds most capable of building him his starship. He invented misinformation and ploys to maintain secrecy, but his fame fast punctured those schemes.

  Plans were assembled, prototypes built, failures accumulated, and lessons learned. At last, he had bankrolled the best vessel he could, and outfitted it with the most capable AI, navigational, survival, and musical gear possible.

  Boseda was determined to have no coverage of his launch. Equally determined news organizations, however, obtained crude amateur footage from technicians showing Boseda entering the hatch, then the craft lifting off. Telemetry reads showed all systems activating as designed for the solar slingshot. From Boseda, uncharacteristic silence. Over the months, he transmitted only snippets of observations and wonderment. As he neared the sun, data reported an irremediable malfunction in the ship’s AI. The navigation failed to recover, and with the last words the earth would hear before his sunfall, Boseda assured his listeners that he had chosen the right road, no matter. He would die ablaze and smiling.

  About that same time, a man so ordinary one could scarce remember his face came into a small town somewhere in Africa. He hustled gigs singing in bars. He had a pleasing voice and patrons would urge him to try for the big time. He demurred and lived a long, happy life there. He was appreciated for two traits: riffing effortlessly on any phrase, and needing no audience to applaud his act. He rather seemed to prefer an empty room to a packed house.

  Andrew Gurcak and his wife, Elaine Lees, divide their retirement time between Pittsburgh and the Finger Lakes region of New York. The Science Fiction Microstory Contest entries are his first fictional pieces. [email protected]

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  42.

  New Chinatown

  JD Mitchell

  —You sure look uptight, mister. You going to a funeral or something?—

  Wernher wished things could work out that simply. They couldn’t. Not today, not ever.

  —Not really, sir. Please watch where you’re driving. —

  The cab careened over the newly-laid causeway’s rubber surface. Wernher wanted to say the ride reminded him of the autobahns back home. But the cabbie was a Chinese refugee, and you just didn’t see people like that in the Socialist West. Not with the Big Berlin Wall.

  —Hey, don’t worry about me, mister. I learned to drive from a G.I!—

  Wernher looked out the window as the last of the Marina merged into the Mudflat District. New Bay Street’s columns flew by at a fast clip. A blur of speed.

  —Can’t you go faster, sir?—

  Already, the traffic hemmed them into the lanes on the causeway. There was barely any room to make it around other flivvers.

  —You’re crazy, mister. Everyone on the coast is coming for the USS Hornet. Even the president will be here!—

  Wernher knew that wasn’t true. MacArthur would stay far away from this event. His advisors wouldn’t have wanted the scandal to tarnish his reputation.

  The causeway looped around the projects of the Mudflat district. The grand land-filling of the Bay continued. Lamps from the night shift workers bathed the sides of the temporary brown tenements. The flivver’s “fifth” electric wheel made sparks against the causeway’s wires.

  —Why you in such a hurry, anyways, mister? The astronaut’s speeches will last for hours.—

  Wernher half-listened. He took his mind off the scenery of filled-in Bay Area sprawl, the webwork of canals, and trains of container ships. In his hand, he held a tooth—the tooth of Jacqueline Bouvier—the only proof he had to implicate astronaut Michael Collins.

  The cabbie looked back at Wernher in the rearview mirror. They made brief eye contact. Most likely the cabbie was a refugee of the very brief Sino-American War.

  —It’s a pretty big deal, huh, mister?—

  For a second Wernher feared the cabbie realized the significance of the tooth. The cabbie smiled. Most of his teeth were gone. Radiation sickness. . . .

  —It’s a big deal, right?! What the astronauts found, right? Proof of life on Mars.—

  Wernher felt relief cover the terror on his face.

  —Oh … oh yes.—

  Sure, Wernher thought. It made everything worth it. The Apollo Applications Program. And the murder of Jackie.

  New Bay Street’s terminus was ahead, at the end of the causeway’s slope. He could see the Golden Gate Bridge. BART station New Embarcadero. An aircraft carrier was docked at the wharf.

  —How much do I have to pay you to get me right … there … at the foot of the stage?—

  —Right at the stage?—

  He pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills and held twenty of them out like a fan.

  —You got it, mister!—

  Wernher smiled.

  The cabbie engaged the gasoline tank and drove off the causeway, onto the street, and into the BART parking lot. A crowd of thousands upon thousands cheered enthusiastically for the returning heroes of Apollo 13.

  Wernher jumped out.

  The noise of the applause was deafening. Michael Collins, the first man to step foot on Mars, spoke at the podium. Applause washed out his voice. Wernher dashed up the steps. Then he felt a sharp weight of pain in his back. Then another. He saw blood.

  The crowd cheered.

  He stumbled, fell back, looked down the steps. There was the cabbie with a smoking gun. Wernher could read his lips.

  —Forget it, mister, this is Chinatown.—

  JD Mitchell has been a writer since he first played with Legos. Since then, adventures as a butcher and teacher have inspired and informed many of his narratives. His main interest lies in the origins of science fiction, specifically as a way for him to study the problems of the present day. [email protected].

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  43.

  Under the Slaveways

  Jon Ricson

  I reach up and push in the stuffers. They barely keep out the waves of sound from the roads above. The above world of the Primes. Their shiny world with automated roads, abundant food, freedom, safety …

  Down here all we get is the noisy turbines, cast-off sparks from the slaveways above, and the darkness, even in the daytime.

  The world above calls us Strags, when they call us anything at all.

  I made a job for myself. I find stuff that Primes cast off, then sell it to black marketeers. They pay good for slaveway or hover parts, foodstuffs that fall down here, or other Prime things like commlinks or jewelry.

  Looking up, I watch the hovercars whiz by, never ceasing.

  I feel the vibrations of the huge steel supports that hold up their world. I feel it in my teeth.

  Then I push my cart towards the next open area.

  They used to call this area The Loop. My momma once said this used to be one of the bigger cities in the world. Now Chicago Prime is the city. We live below in the old world. We are just the Strags. Life is hard down here.

  I see some dark figures ahead. I know who they are.

  They yell at me, so I pull one stuffer out. I can barely hear them screaming.

  “Hey you,” one of them says. “What you got today?”

  “Not much yet,” I say. A large transport rushes by overhead.

  They push me around a little. They see I just got started. They move on. I push the stuffer back in my ear. It’s just a dull roar now.

  Regular Strag folk come out of hiding as the gang leaves. So many. They look at me, wondering what I got, but they don’t cause trouble. They are just hungry too.

  I walk towards a ray of light coming through the slaveways above. I feel the sun on my face. I wonder what it’s like up there in the sun all day. I wonder what it’s like to be a Prime.

  My momma once told me she and some friends went up there in the old days. That was before Strags were told to stay down here. That was before The Laws.

  Momma said that once Strags lived with Primes. She said in the old days Strag
s weren’t even called Strags, they were just folks with no homes. But eventually there just was too many of us.

  The Primes wanted a world without us. They wanted a new shiny world.

  Something reflects the sunlight near my feet. I pick it up. It’s a little girl’s bracelet. Momma taught me to read a little. It says “Marcey.” I like that name. If I still had a sister, I’d like that to be her name. But she died. Strags that get sick don’t get well that much. Just like Momma said.

  I look around to make sure no one sees I have the bracelet. Strags don’t have much that’s shiny. That’s for Primes.

  I know it would probably bring good trade from the black marketers. Maybe even real food from Chicago Prime. Maybe some meat—hopefully cow and not dog. But I like the shiny bracelet that says “Marcey.” I want to keep it for awhile.

  One of the stuffers comes loose and the whooshing traffic above fills my ear. I push it back in.

  Time for me to move on, before the gang comes back and finds what I got. Time to see what else I can find today under the slaveways.

  Jon Ricson writes science fiction, detective, and other entertainment literature. He resides outside Orlando, Florida, and you can often find him walking the streets of Disney or Universal soaking in the creativity.

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  44.

  Martian Hoard

  Lars Carlson

  “It will suit our purpose?”

  Olaf Ivarsson, Viking jarl and thane of the late king Bjorn Jormunson, stood on the prow of his longship while regarding two men standing on the white sands just ahead of its beached prow. One hand rested on the hilt of his sword while the other stroked his great braided brown beard.

  “It will, jarl,” gasped one man, crouched on one knee and breathing hard behind a gray cloth face wrap. “Not a sign of any man about and as forbidding as the African desert. We could not hope for better.”

  The second man, standing tall and leaning on a gnarled walking staff, nodded assent. Unlike Olaf and his retinue, this man wore heavy robes of blue and gray.

  Ruddy dust covered both men.

  “Very well,” Olaf said. “Beach the ship and unload.”

  The rest of Olaf’s retinue clambered from their rowing benches. Half jumped the gunwales into cold black water gleaming with reflected starlight to muscle the warship fully onto the shining beach. Those remaining aboard lowered the mast so that it would not snag on the many stalactites jutting from the starry darkness. Both groups passed cargo from the vessel’s center once the ship was made fast.

  Olaf labored beside his men to see the task done.

  The robed man circulated among the jarl’s company while they worked. He handed to each man gray cloths like that the dust-covered scout wore; intricate golden wires and matte blue nodules laced their hems. Veterans of Olaf’s black-water expeditions thanked the robed man and set the cloths about their faces. Vikings new to the matter were instructed in their use by the robed man’s keen, sibilant voice in hushed tones.

  Within an hour, Olaf’s company set out from their landing. Pairs of them carried heavy chests and crates, marching up the shining sands toward a dim orange tunnel hollowed from the starry night. Passing through it the Vikings found themselves on a scree-covered mountain slope beset with red dust. The sun shone small and cold in a yellow sky.

  Olaf’s men muttered uneasily amongst themselves.

  The Viking jarl ordered them quiet; they obeyed.

  In wheezing silence, the company marched, following their scout and the robed man. The way was not difficult, but whether from the dust or the mountain’s height (dust obscured its lower slopes), they all labored for breath. The Viking’s shirts of iron rings and the burdens they carried did not help them any. Stops for rest were frequent.

  Eventually the company arrived at a pile of boulders. Pleased with the site, Olaf directed his men to dig. A trench was excavated in the dry, red dust and the cargo laid inside. This cargo represented the best of Olaf’s latest raid on the Irish coast as well as the bulk of his wealth. With King Jormunson dead, some of his jarls sought to make themselves king in his stead—or just take tribute like one. Olaf had no intention of seeing his riches stolen. He hid his treasure to recover in better times.

  Olaf’s company erected a small cairn at the foot of the boulder pile to mark the site. In this, Olaf laid a broad silver baptismal bowl, looted from a Britannic church years ago. He’d marked the rim with his dagger.

  When this was done, the Vikings rested briefly before marching back to the black-water beach. They were eager to set sail for home, to see the blue seas again and familiar fjords.

  ***

  What did one say about such a find? What could one say? No one in the Curiosity Mission Control room knew.

  The big monitor showed the rover’s main camera staring at its own dusty, distorted image in a neat pile of rocks. Days prior, the rover spotted a twinkle on the Gale Crater’s outer slope and came to investigate. Scientists expected some kind of crystal formation, hoped for ice. They found a silver bowl bearing Scandinavian rune-marks and a cross defaced into a Thor’s hammer emblem.

  The next day, a translation of the bowl’s runes was received from a Norwegian college: HERE LIES THE HOARD OF OLAF IVARSSON, TO BE CLAIMED BY HIM OR HIS KIN.

  Lars Carlson is a welder, network administration student, gamer, and avid reader who sometimes manages to find time to write, every now and again (just not as often as he would like). He currently lives just north of Seattle, Washington, after 27 years as a native Minnesotan.

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  45.

  The Ghosts of Gale

  Allen Quintana

  “… and—and, then he said, ‘I’d sure like to try that in zero-gee!’”

  The confined walls of Hermes One shook against the laughter as the pair punched the bulkheads with the soft edges of their fists or butted them with the backs of their heads as they threw back laughs at the tasteless joke.

  “Jeez, Joe, that gets me every time!” said Benson, wiping a tear away. “That never gets old.”

  His partner yukked; his grin was ear to ear.

  “Even after forty years.”

  The guffaws trickled down to chuckles, then light laughter, then titters, eventually pooling into snickers, and finally evaporating into silence.

  “Well,” said Joe.

  “Well,” said Benson.

  “What’s happening outside?”

  “Same old red,” Benson said. “Wanna look?”

  “Nah,” his partner voiced. “Call me if you see a rescue ship,” he said unenthusiastically.

  “Will do, commander,” said Benson. He craned his neck at the window, and then twisted again with a grunt, at an awkward angle, to peer at the back of Hermes One via the mirror, which gave him that rear-view. “I sure could swear I saw something out there.”

  “Uh, huh,” the commander of Hermes One nodded unconvincingly at his crew of one. Joe then smiled to himself and looked back 200 million miles and wished he could go back and change his mind. He and Benson had been the prime crew for the flight, deemed secret and experimental. The NERVA rocket was only a prototype and worked too well for orbital trials. What was supposed to be a wide Earth orbit and a splashdown after a few days got extended when both Houston and the crew couldn’t shut down the engine. Hermes One went well past its intended flight path. He and Benson never could get an answer from Mission Control about why the flight computer was programmed for a Mars window. NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) worked too well, all right.

  “There it is again,” said Benson, contorting himself to get a better angle from the mirror. “Just beyond that ridgeline.”

  “Sure,” said Joe.

  “Really, Joe, take a look.”

  Joe hated two things about looking outside. First, the bad angle was more trouble than it was worth. Their ship lay on its side with a list that offered a bad view of the landscape, and it hurt to ca
nt oneself for a look. Second, Mars never changed; the view was the same. No trees, no fall colors, just permafrost now and then in rust-colored desolation.

  There was a piece of the sky, Joe could see. A line of clouds scudded westward like a wagon train from another time and another place. The pastel hues reminded him of Janet, who would have adored the pinkish shades, the dominant color of her bridesmaids’ gowns, which she so loved and he so hated. Off in the distance, a row of rusty mountains had been weathered down for uncounted eons by the thinnest wisps of air, air that carried dust to coat everything to the outside of every nook and cranny and crevice of Mars, and to the inside of every crumple and crack of crashed Hermes One. No, there was nothing new out there. The same as it always was. How he longed for home and for Janet, for he hoped they were still—There.

  It slowly came over the ridge; a cautious track of its wheels slowly purchased each inch of ground that gave underneath. Time meant nothing to it as it slowly panned the landscape with something new to see.

  “Hmm,” observed Joe. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  With every inch, every turn, every pebble of Gale Crater over which the wheels spun, the thing came closer to the ship. The discovery of the crash site didn’t strike the thing as shocking or give it even a passing fancy. It lumbered at the same slow pace as before.

  “There’s nothing alive in there,” said Joe.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Benson. “There’s nothing alive in here, either.”

  The robot poked its electronic eye into the shattered window, past the cracked, weather-worn mirror off to the side of the long-gone-cold wreck.

  It was here that the lonely Martian winds for time uncounted had whipped a-frenzy its red dust in its high, opaque altitudes, skittered across its salmon plains, and wafted over its crimson, barren peaks. For here is where its fine grains had finally settled, more recently on the remains of the broken shell of Hermes One, burying what they could.