The Future Is Short Read online

  And also on those within it.

  Allen Quintana is a California native. He doesn’t need a “feminine side” since he’s sided from all points of the compass by five daughters and his lovely wife of 24 years and counting, which inspires his muse with plenty of drama and humor and then some.

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  46.

  Unnatural Harmonics

  Karl J. Morgan

  The day they arrived was neither the disaster authors had imagined nor the scientific boon academia had suggested. Massive starships hung like cumulonimbus high in the atmosphere, casting surreal shadows over the Earth. The ships were not metal military masterpieces, but instead were soft, gelatinous blobs that seemed incapable of traversing space. Millions panicked, while most prepared for the inevitable Armageddon when the aliens landed.

  Yet the ships just hung in the sky for days, turning into weeks without activity. “What are they waiting for?” became the most common phrase spoken. After the third week, people tried to get back to their lives, since they had to work in order to eat. After five weeks, life resumed its natural course, even while governments tried to find solutions to the situation.

  It was early on a Tuesday in the eighth week when something changed. Small moss-green vessels left each starship and landed in the center of every large city. It was noon in San Diego when odd figures emerged from the ships. They looked human, but very tall and thin with green skin and moss-like hair. The aliens walked away from their ships and stood waiting while crowds formed around them. The same scene played out everywhere. Where it was night, lights were set up. Where it was raining, free umbrellas were handed out.

  At 2:00 p.m. San Diego time, the aliens spoke in the native language of each city. “First, we need to apologize to you,” the aliens said. “What has happened here is our fault and we freely accept and acknowledge our responsibility. It was probably inevitable that you would enlist unnatural harmonics in your desire to learn and grow. But now we have discovered it, and are here to fix the damage.”

  “I don’t understand,” shouted a voice from the crowd. The alien walked over to the young man standing just behind the barricade. “What have we done wrong, and who are you to tell us to change?” the man asked.

  The alien laughed out loud. The glint in his eyes and the teeth in his mouth seemed completely human. He reached out his green arm and touched the man on his shoulder. “What is your name?”

  “My name is Dave Brewster.”

  “Hello Dave. My name is Pando Krakus, and I suppose I am your brother. We colonized this planet long ago. On my planet, people evolved to look like me. On this planet, humans evolved to look like you. There are many human species in the galaxy. The one thing we have in common is our refusal to allow unnatural harmonics.”

  “What does that mean?” Dave asked.

  Pando frowned. “Look around you!” he shouted, waving his arm at the skyscrapers and at the concrete they stood upon. “You have corrupted Nature’s sacred balance. These structures were built with unnatural harmonics and must be eliminated. It is an atrocity to subject this globe to such acts.”

  “But these are our homes and places of work,” cried a woman from across the circle. “Where shall we live? How can we survive?”

  Pando walked back to the center of the circle as a deep guttural rumble began. “The natural harmonic you hear will continue for several rotations, continually gaining volume. After the third rotation, decibel level will be powerful enough to disassemble the unnatural harmonics. I suggest you use that time to distance yourself from these things. We cannot protect you if you stay here. Once the natural balance is returned, we will come back with new technologies to help you.”

  An old woman standing next to Dave Brewster screamed and fell to her knees. He knelt next to her as she clamped her hands over her ears. Then he yanked her hands free and pulled out her screeching hearing aids, which dissolved into dust in his hands. “You can’t do this to us!” he begged the alien.

  “Leave the city now. Your atrocity is at an end,” Pando snarled, pushing his way through the crowd and boarded his vessel, which lifted off noiselessly and headed back into the sky.

  Karl J. Morgan is the author of the Dave Brewster series of science fiction novels and the Heartstone series of fantasy novels. The Hive was awarded an honorable mention at the 2013 Southern California Book Festival. He lives and writes in Southern California. http://www.karljmorgan.com

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  47.

  Fox, Cat, Fireworks

  Jeremy Lichtman

  “Roman Candle drives are simple things,” declared Wilbur. He brandished a large adjustable wrench in his right hand. “The mathematics are hairy, I’ll grant you that, but the machinery itself is trivially simple.”

  He made a small declaratory tap of the wrench on the base of the auxiliary capacitor bank. “Tesla could have built this,” he added, further clarifying his intentions with a slightly harder tap.

  “Sir, you’re likely to get your jacket covered in grease,” said Fox, attempting to divert Wilbur’s attention , and potentially avert tragedy. “If you’ll allow me, why don’t I take a look at it while you chart our course?”

  “An excellent idea,” said Wilbur, heartily, and handed the wrench to his valet. “Wouldn’t do for us to run into a big rock, or some such.” He headed forwards to the ship’s relatively luxuriously appointed bridge (it had leather command chairs).

  Fox adjusted his monocle, then thought again and placed it in his outer jacket pocket. “Here kitty, kitty,” he said quietly so that Wilbur wouldn’t hear him. The man doted on the cat. “Damn cat. I bet it urinated on a wire or something.”

  He fished in one of his trouser pockets and drew forth a small treat, which he waved around in what he thought might be an enticing manner. A pair of furry ears protruded from behind some bulky, chrome-plated machinery.

  “Tsk, tsk, here kitty, kitty.” The entire cat cautiously shimmied forth, keeping a safe distance from Fox. Neither trusted the other, with cause.

  Fox waved the treat around a bit more, then tossed it through the hatch and into the corridor. The cat stared at him for several long seconds.

  Fox jerked, as if he was about to launch himself at the cat. It twitched slightly, but didn’t move, calling his bluff. “Enough of this,” he said, and charged at it.

  “Not that direction,” he muttered, catching himself on a large brass pipe to change his momentum into a different direction. The two of them circled the room several times, the cat obviously moving with far greater alacrity.

  Triangulating, he managed to cut it off so that the exit hatch became its safest escape route. It hissed at him. “What?” he said. “Get out of here. Scat! Go have your treat.” It left, with a dirty look backwards at him. Fox shut the hatch behind it.

  He reached into his pocket for his monocle. Not there. He patted several other pockets. Not there, either. Must have fallen out. He peered around nearsightedly. After several more moments of futility, he fished out a small, collapsible pair of glasses, unfolded them, and perched them on his nose instead.

  “Where were we?” he asked himself. He went over to a corner and picked up the wrench. He must have thrown it at the cat during the chase, although he didn’t quite recall doing that.

  “Aha,” he said, spotting the problem.

  A few minutes later, he popped his head into the bridge. Wilbur was engaged in a testy conversation with the ship’s AI, which insisted that it knew the correct route.

  “Sir?” asked Fox, attracting his attention. “I found the problem. There were mouse droppings in the engine room. Must have come aboard with those passengers you picked up on the last trip. Filthy buggers. They ate right through some wiring. The mice, I mean, not the passengers.”

  “No wonder Pelly has been back there so often. I know you don’t like him very much, but you have to admit he knows his job.”

  At that point, a bell rang, telling them t
hat their ship’s plasma cloud had charged sufficiently. The AI acted first, before Wilbur could send them off course, and they leaped forwards into the abyss in a cloud of furious sparks and electrical discharges.

  Jeremy Lichtman is a software developer, based in Toronto, Canada. He writes in his spare time, in moments intended not to incur the wrath of his family. http://www.jeremylichtman.com

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  48.

  Ordmak

  Kalifer Deil

  At night I could hear her song echoing in the mountains. It was like a thousand singing voices calling me. It was beautiful, mystical, and it aroused an inner yearning that was new to me. My mother said I was coming of age and that I would be experiencing new feelings unfelt before. Maybe this is what she was talking about.

  It was a new day and I needed to gather ice-radish at glacier edge. It was a long trek, but one I had made many times. There were rumors that there was much ice-radish on the slopes of Cave Mountain, but that was the home of Ordmak. It was closer than glacier, but I was told her song was irresistible and Ordmak would eat me for breakfast. A children's story. I was sure. "It was just the wind playing the caves like organ pipes," I self-spoke.

  As I reached the upper slope of Cave Mountain I saw many caves, which told me I was right and ice-radish was plentiful as well. As I approached one of the larger caves, I heard the voice of Birgo whisper to me, "Hi, Greimo!" He disappeared three weeks ago and was assumed eaten by Ordmak. I entered the cave and, as my eyes adapted to the dark, I noticed bones piled along the side of the cave. Then a dim flickering lit up the cave wall from behind me. I turned to face a creature longer than I could see, with one large eye and a gaping mouth with luminescent walls. It was propelling itself with wavelike motions of its frilled underbelly. It stopped a ways away and my fear turned to amusement. It had no appendages to grab me and the mouth was devoid of teeth. I also knew I could easily outrun it.

  I heard a chorus of voices from its mouth, some familiar, of friends who went missing, and others I didn't recognize. I said, "Are you Ordmak?" It answered, "We are all Ordmak." I was then engulfed in a mist and was instructed to take my clothes off and throw them into what appeared to be a fire pit. My body complied even though my mind said no. Then I went into the mouth as instructed and it closed. Every cell of my body became like my male protuberance and I was engulfed with extreme pleasure. It was beyond anything I could have imagined.

  I found I could see out of Ordmak's eye as he spit out my bones. That thought soon evaporated as I found myself in the company of many others. Birgo took my hand: “You are in the universe of Ordmak's mind. You just fed him so you will have ten lifetimes of pleasure. There are babes here I'd like you to meet."

  I just realized that I missed my mother and would never see her again. "Birgo, I really miss my mother. She warned me about Ordmak, but I thought it was a children's story."

  "Don't worry, she will be here soon. You will call her," Birgo explained. "Now check these out. This is Makin and here is Makin's mother, Milda."

  "They look the same age."

  Bilgo responded, "In here everyone is the same age. You and I are both older and more mature."

  I looked down and noticed my protuberance was larger; then I looked over at Milda and felt my protuberance become firm.

  Bilgo started to laugh. "We are all nude, so there is no hiding place for your feelings."

  Milda took me by the hand and said, "Let's join a circle-of-eight."

  It turns out the circle is more like a sphere of eight of us joined in a copulative manner. The sphere pulsates in and out more and more rapidly until a climax, when it blows apart and we all go flying. It was sensuous and fun and we repeated it several times.

  Later I heard my mother calling, "Griemo! Griemo!" and I instinctively answered, "I'm in here!"

  Very soon I saw her approaching me; she was nude and her body was in her late teens. I grabbed her hand and said, "Mom, let me introduce you to a circle-of-eight." She didn't resist.

  Kalifer Deil is the writer pseudonym for Gary Feierbach, a Silicon Valley engineer. He writes mostly hard science fiction but occasionally branches off into occult, fantasy. He also writes science articles and has a website, http://www.kaliferdeil.com, with curiously interesting science articles and some short stories.

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  49.

  Conservation

  Andy McKell

  We turned the corner of the ancient riverbed and saw more of the same insane greenness—oh, how I had come to hate that color. This piece of jungle was another chaotic mess of green upon green. Again. It was just more of the same—part of this same hell. And we were finished. We could go no further.

  Here, where the trees had not yet managed to enclose the sky and the full glare of the midday sun lanced through to add to our misery … here, our search, our holy quest, was silently abandoned.

  The guide, ever enthusiastic, dropped his pack, jabbering as he ran forward pointing at something, some things, that eluded us. Things here, there, and over there.

  We stared hard into the blazing green-hazed glare; a couple of the women even tweaked at the corners of their veils. We saw nothing but the endless overgrown, buzzing, biting, poisonous jungle that we'd battled through and hated for weeks. What had this solid team of seasoned conservationists become but a loose and bickering assembly of personal and collective defeat?

  No, we still saw nothing but more of the same.

  It was enough—done, finished, over, failed. But the guide kept jabbering and pointing … some of the less-defeated reluctantly drew towards him. Others gazed around, lost. The rest collapsed to the foetid floor in despair.

  Then our disbelief melted a little. Perhaps there was, after all, something … some things … there? Our cautious, unbelieving shuffling slowly turned to a more enthusiastic pace, staggering against and over the boulders and fallen logs, careless of hidden beasts and toxic orchids.

  Suddenly, we became a ragged line of madcap, headlong, rushing lunatics as our pattern-seeking inheritance reasserted itself. Was that a ninety-degree angle? Could that stump indicate a crumbled tower? Was that a suspiciously straight line emerging from within the tangled growth? A building? No—buildings. Many buildings.

  We began pointing, yelling out “Here,” “There,” “Over there!” Crazy people. The guide grinned a knowing grin, perhaps silently thanking his own gods for his lucky break: crazy people.

  It was a city. Gorgeous moss-covered, frond-encrusted angles too sharp even for this insanely cruel jungle to have randomly thrown up. A city–our city.

  We rejoiced. We stood in silent awe. We fell to our knees and offered up thanks. We lost our senses.

  And then the long work of conservation began.

  It was as expected. Long, long ago, all the fabrics had rotted; the useful metals had oxidized or leached away, even the perpetual plastics lay buried under meters of mulch.

  But that mattered not—we had found the fabled ruins. The holy city from the elder days. We could clear away the jungle and all its dangers, scrape away the moss, spray preservation chemicals over the remaining stonework, build a railway from the coast, set up hotels, and stalls at a respectful distance … our joy was immeasurable.

  We were truly, finally there at the legendary lost city so holy that they named it twice—New York, New York.

  Andy McKell is a new writer of speculative fiction, whose short stories are starting to appear in various anthologies. He retired early from the IT world and enjoys acting when he gets the chance. Married with three daughters, all pursuing careers in the visual arts, he currently lives in Luxembourg, Europe. [email protected] http://www.andymckell.com

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  PERCEPTIONS

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  50.

  Yood Must Find Itch

  W.A. Fix

  Above the equator and over what would someday be called the Pacific Ocean, a vessel
containing two beings began to enter Earth’s atmosphere. “Yood, my love, we are traveling far too fast. The vessel will break up in the lower atmosphere.”

  Yood began retracting the fibers, which made up his body, from those of his mate, Itch. “If we are separated, we will find each other again, and on that day our rejoining will be as the first.” Yood and Itch continued retracting thousands of fibers until only one fiber remained of the union. In that one fiber all emotion, all thought, and all sensation was shared. Then, as predicted, the vessel broke into two pieces and severed the final thread of the joining.

  Yood’s half struck the planet in a swamp forest north of where New Orleans would eventually be located. Itch was carried another eight hundred miles north and east. Both were damaged and both took several years to learn that nourishment was obtained by simply extending volumes of fibers into the open air and absorbing the required elements. They eventually learned to hang the fibers from the local vegetation in clumps, and then extend new fibers to another location. In that manner the two began the search for each other. Unfortunately, the planet already had a mute life form so similar to their fibers that it confused even Yood and Itch with first contact. They would cautiously extend a fiber, hoping to find the other and offer the greeting, “Wobee (Wife), have I found you?” or “Dee (Husband), have I found you?” And so the search continued for nine hundred years. Then Yood sensed a structure. There was some kind of wonderful vibration that emitted from it every day at mid sun. Wanting, … no … needing to be closer he extended himself and reached for a very slick surface built into the structure’s side. That surface seemed to amplify the vibrations from within. Just before mid sun, Yood touched the slick surface and waited.