The Future Is Short Read online

  We were still young. I was Parna’s female cultural attaché on conquered Lanos, new to Erigan’s soaring towers and the work. I loved the silvered skies, bold golden clouds, white waves. Garando was (surprisingly, as masculine Erigis there on Lanos are generally sombre like our own) a striking, gold-furred, brilliant creature, fluent in eight worlds’ languages, communicator in each verbal, empath, warbler mode. Someone who had known and suffered much, my lithe and learned good friend and mentor in those months. So wondrous he was, Garando, as we trekked the blasted Flith peaks over Yomba, clambered rock shores to the ancient sculptures of the Isle of Lan, wandered torn museums where he helped me comprehend Erig traditions, and by evening leaned, sleek head to golden breast and toes to claws, together in the slow, bare rail-ride back to Erigan. I trembled beholding his dark warmth, longed to stroke soft fingertips along that tawny pelt, sense feathery feelers on my skin, his swift thoughts in my soul.

  And he, self-trancing on my “innocence,” yearned deep—I now know—too.

  Remember, this was Parna-years before the Lanos Rising and resultant worlds-wide revolutions that, arising from the Seekers Movements of the 2460s, gave each sentience a sense of trusted self to freely seek out love. We were afraid.

  “Hold me, beauty,” Garando’s tongue out-flicked. His fur misted my palms, his feelers coiled my arms. We rode the lift, gilt air below pricked by the darkened spires of Erigan. We wrapped together, heating, swarming dark electric. Squeezed at last into a narrow broken corridor, and lay upon his ivory warm-bed. Silver Moon glowed over Needle.

  So few sentiences dared cross species then; I did not understand. He licked my eyelids; bathed in musk-scent, we sought new joy. Who could know a male Eregi needs, to reach a mode to merge a female … what, ignorant, I could not give. For hours we squeezed, and yet, even adhering, lay unspent. Until, though shamed by my failure, I dared look up into his orbs.

  And he said, “Ah well, beauty, I guess your longing for the alien arises only from some twist,” and added, “I saw a healer once; you must, as well. That you may someday cease to twist an Erig’s gift.” Yet his feeler stroked my cheek.

  I could not doubt him; I left, descending the Thousand Steps. His words had cut a horror of my heart.

  Much as our invasion fleets had etched, through that whole millennium, horror into his world. Leaving the puppet caste and upper sex of Lanos to carve Erigis’ minds. To teach them doubt of I and Thou, divide and isolate.

  No matter. But it was only through Revolution’s changes we could find our own free language and our truths of selves. Only in the years we struggled, together as one—we Parnese, Earthians, Sillas, Erigs—on Jaranda’s barricades, space-trails of ancient Cortiex, darkest Har—could we learn, in sweat and tears, how deep all sentients love. Only then could I come, at last, to see Garando had been wrong, the “twisting” neither mine nor his but simply concepts foisted in Erigis by our long invasion and their loss, and in we Parnese females by our straitened lives.

  I had only, wholly, longed for and loved him.

  Now it is another courage needed, an age away on far Sil’s sands, knowing what we briefly had and ever lost.

  Paula Friedman is author of The Rescuer’s Path (2012), which Ursula K. Le Guin has called “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Friedman has received two Pushcart nominations and several literary awards; her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. She seeks a new siamese cat and a Macarthur, Nobel, or other major award/grant. Sentience appeared as a February 2014 Flash Fiction selection on Morgen Bailey's Writers Blog. [email protected] http://www.paula-friedman.com

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  17.

  Everyman Dies, But Not Everyman Lives

  Mike Boggia

  “Wonder what my friends would say?” Medic Chiron Zingaro’s voice echoed from the cavern’s obsidian walls. “I forgot. It doesn’t matter to them. They’re dead. Everybody’s dead within twenty light years.”

  He laughed until he choked. They all died at once, together. I’m dying alone, without hope.

  Dawn broke, day twenty after the crash. Zingaro struggled to his feet. Moving carefully on a makeshift crutch, he avoided stubbing the toes of his broken leg on the uneven floor. He paused at the entrance, leaned against the rough wall, and studied the foreboding, blood-red sunrise.

  Silence unto the silence of deep space. A boulder studded landscape stretched before him. He limped across the charred terrain to the wreckage of the ship. I’ll bring the last salvageable food here. After that . . .

  With the rising sun-star, the insidious wind stirred. A gentle, beguiling zephyr graduated to a stiff breeze and ended in the daily, moaning gale. He stared at the bronze cloud of hissing sand, wondering if the night’s total silence was worse than the sibilant shh of sand. Cursing, he withdrew into the cavern, donned a respirator, and huddled on a pile of blankets.

  Zingaro relived the last few heart-pounding minutes of disbelief and terror before the crash. He survived because he went into the linen closet to check supplies for sickbay. Three simultaneous explosions racked the craft. Bedding tumbled around him as he fell to the floor. Seconds later a shelf crushed his leg. Impact with the planet ripped the compromised airframe apart. Pain rendered Zingaro unconscious.

  After he regained consciousness, the thought of survivors needing treatment, spurred him to drag himself into the wreckage. Discovering he was the only survivor was a depressing blow. Using a bent doorframe, he set and splinted the fracture, almost passing out several times.

  Alone, with no chance of rescue and hampered by his injury, he calculated the odds of survival were zero.

  The periphery of his vision caught movement at the entrance. He blinked, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. It’s my imagination. Hell, no! Something’s peering around a boulder.

  “Damn!” Zingaro grabbed a chunk of jagged rock and prepared to defend himself.

  Startled by his movement, it halted, just inside the opening.

  What the devil? Appears to be a scabby, wart and horn-covered emaciated snake. He cocked his arm.

  The creature froze for a moment. The horned, oval head moved in serpentine fashion.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Zingaro flung the rock and missed his target.

  The alien rolled into a ball, flipped over, belly exposed. Rudimentary appendages folded against the body.

  Zingaro stared at it until curiosity prompted him to speak. “Okay, I’ll let you stay.”

  The creature righted itself, crept deeper into the cavern, and curled up across from him, head resting on the mottled gray body. He guessed the beast fell asleep. A string of green tongue hung from a fringed, lipless mouth. Zingaro dozed and dreamed of another crash.

  He was aboard a vessel, manned by creatures resembling the one that crawled into his place.

  Frantic activity indicated a malfunction aboard ship. The craft stalled and began a steep descent toward the bronze planet. The crash, though not spectacular, killed or mortally injured the crew. One survived.

  ***

  He shared his rations and named it Macabre. Macabre ate and drank miniscule amounts. Their food and water lasted two weeks.

  Dehydration and starvation sucked fluid and flesh from Zingaro’s body. Macabre sagged against him and dreamed.

  “I’m dying, hopeless, but not alone,” he rasped. He snuggled closer, embracing Macabre’s skeletal body.

  How did Macabre get to the entrance? I see four of him. He sank into darkness.

  Zingaro awoke to the hum of a propulsion engine and saw Macabre curled up on a bench next to his. Macabre’s thoughts entered his mind. You saved me. We return you to your kind.

  He reached over and patted the warty body. “Thanks, pal. I wonder what Command will say about my ‘first contact’?”

  Mike Boggia’s passion since childhood has been writing. He had a gothic novel, The Dungeon, written under the pen name Mary Lee Falcon, published in 1967, sold a shor
t story to Mike Shane Mystery Magazine in 1973, and in 2013 had a short story in Mystic Tales from the Misty Swamp.

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  18.

  The Sound of Time

  S.M. Kraftchak

  Herbert knew those footsteps, he’d heard them before. Ba-lump, ba-lump, ba-lump, as steady as the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of the cuckoo’s clock; first to the corner where ancient floorboards creak under leather boots that click and crack on gravel as they turn back to the middle of the room; ba-lump, ba-lump, ba-lump where steps shoosh sand and dirt between time-worn boards and then continue, ba-lump, ba-lump, wa-lum, wa-lum, wa-lum as his footsteps soften on the rug that hovers over the squishy dank darkness of the cellar where Herbert watches his precious gears turn, their teeth coming together, snick, snick, snick. They had done their job.

  Squinting at the sand raining down in dirty veils, Herbert growls—low like a lion purring—deep in his throat at Adam. What now? What did he care about time? He hadn’t spent a lifetime without the one he loved. Time was nothing to him but currency spent on banging his tankard down and roaring for another drink. To Herbert it meant days, standing by her headstone … Elspeth L. George, beloved Daughter, died 1866 … and nights fiddling in this dim basement. His clock had worked; now he had the time he needed.

  After an hour of tick-tock, ba-lump footsteps; stomp and the man’s roar, “Fine, I’m leaving.”

  “Finally,” Herbert said, looking at his clock in the dim light.

  Herbert’s breath was ragged: puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, but as steady as the scrip-plop, scrip-plop, scrip-plop of his feet and the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of a cuckoo’s clock. He could make it. He had to. The wheels on the horse-drawn trolley rumbled as it gained speed on the next hill back. It would be here shortly. There she was.

  “Adam, wait!” Elspeth whimpers as she pauses on the sidewalk, then steps into the street.

  Puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze; he had to go faster; the whinnying and clattering ca-lump, ca-lump, ca-lump of a spooked horse and thundering wheels is growing louder. He couldn’t let it happen again.

  “Adam Wells, wait—” She stopped to tug at her boot heel caught in the tracks.

  “Elspeth, I’m—puff-wheeze—coming!”

  “Papa?”

  Herbert reaches her as the trolley crests the hill. Ka-chang, ka-chang, ka-chang, the trolley bell warns; metal screeches on metal and the terrified horse squeals and thunders toward them.

  “Move! Move! Move!” the conductor croaks, and waves.

  Herbert thuds to his knees and pops the laces open on Elspeth’s boot.

  “Go-wheeze, go-wheeze, go-wheeze.” Herbert shoves Elspeth as the runaway trolley bears down on them.

  “Elspeth?” a man’s voice cries out. “Elspeth, get out of there!” Adam roars and rushes back to the street as screaming and screeching metal meld in dissonance, smothering the sickening thud-thud, whuff.

  “Papa? Papa? What were you thinking?” Elspeth says, with tears falling from her eyes onto her father’s bloody shirt as she cradles him in her arms.

  Herbert opens his eyes. Whuff-gurgle, whuff-gurgle, whuff and smiles. “I did it. I saved you. If he had left sooner, maybe—”

  “But Mr. George, I was waiting to ask you for Elspeth’s hand in marriage,” Adam said.

  “Yes, Papa, we’re going to get married, because I’m pregnant.”

  Herbert looked between his daughter’s face and Adam’s face, his breath shallow with a soft tick, tick, tick as air just barely passed the pooling blood, and then smiled.

  “When he’s old enough, gurgle-wheeze, give my grandson a present from me, gurgle-wheeze, my clock and papers in the basement, gurgle-wheeze.”

  “No,” Elspeth squawked. “We’ll give him much more. We’ll give him your name.”

  Herbert smiled, “I’d like that, click, but don’t saddle him, click, with a name the kids, click, will make fun of, wheeze. Call him H.G.” Herbert’s eyes closed, his breath a long low wheeze, gurgle, gurgle, tock.

  Elspeth fought back tears as she watched her father fade. “Herbert George Wells, I like that name.”

  S. M. Kraftchak notes: As a writer who spends most of her time in other worlds with dragons, elves, and the occasional alien, S.M. still enjoys sunrise on the beach, sunset in the mountains, and portraying Elizabeth Tudor. She has two dogs, who think they are footrests, a cat who thinks she’s a blanket, and three awesome daughters. Her husband is her best friend, her harshest critic, and her most fervent supporter. Writing is S.M.’s passion.

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  19.

  Escape from Amoluz

  Helmuth Kump

  The red sun of this wretched planet, Amoluz, burned the soil around Pytor with brutal efficiency.

  From his partial shade in the ragged mangrove-like growth, he tried to forget about the Raakei’s advance. It was done. He now yearned only to reach out to Ruth.

  The Raakei had disrupted all dimensional communications. A simplex digital radio was Pytor’s only backup. He’d have to cope with the time required for a text conversation: six minutes for the signal to reach Ruth at the outpost, and six more for her reply. It was all he had, but it worked.

  “The enemy’s latest attack caught me by surprise. I’m trying to shield myself until it’s cool enough to return to the shuttle. How do you like the new facility there? I can’t believe we were together a week ago. I miss you.”

  Pytor hit “send” and peered up through the branches at the antenna, which he’d set up in the highest mangrove he could reach. The indicator on the antenna’s base glowed green, signifying a successful uplink.

  While waiting for a reply, he looked to his left at the yellow-tinged waves of acidic ocean, breaking on the shore about 200 meters away. The constant roar brought him back to summers past, when his father took him and his brother Adam fishing in Captree Park. Memories of plump flounder, pale sand, and golden sun filled his tired mind. His father and brother were gone now, victims of the enemy’s chemical poisoning that devastated New York. Pytor had no inclination to return after that.

  The buzz of the transceiver broke his reminiscing. His heart jumped as he saw Ruth’s reply.

  “I miss you so much, Pytor. This is a huge campus. In one of the halls here there is a keyboard, the heavy mechanical kind. It says Steinway, does this mean anything? I put my hands on the keys and imagine your hands on top of mine, teaching me.”

  He imagined her loving embrace. His fingers typed quickly. “Yes, Steinway pianos were highly prized. The factory was near our home in Astoria. Feel my hand on yours, guiding your fingers into place. Then we push down together, sounding a full major chord.”

  Their exchange was the only thing keeping Pytor from going mad in this brutal furnace. He tried to cover any exposed flesh, but it was impossible to block every inch. Whenever he felt the blisters start, he’d shift any way he could to move that area into the shade, but that would of course expose another area of skin.

  He heard another buzz. Was this another message from Ruth? No, page after page of garbled characters were filling the display.

  It was then Pytor noticed the approaching cloud bank. The red sun abruptly disappeared behind the thick cumulus layer racing across the sky, and twilight replaced the red sunlight. Cursing the unstable weather of Amoluz, he left his mangrove refuge and started running toward the shuttle, leaving his gear behind. He could see his breath as he tried to stay warm by running faster. A few gray acidic snowflakes swirled around him. His lungs burned.

  The leading edge of the pulse caught up with him from behind. He left his feet as the shock wave hurled him forward ten meters. The rocky soil scraped his forehead and cheek open as he landed.

  Dazed, Pytor got up again, feeling the residual thrust at his back. It pushed him onward, as if he were running downhill. He felt blood trickle out and freeze on his cheeks and chin. Gratefully, the shape of his spacecraft was now discerni
ble a few hundred meters ahead.

  Inside the transition room, Pytor looked at his body. Bright red blisters on his legs, arms, and neck contrasted with bluish frost nip on his toes and fingertips. His scraped-up face would take a while to heal. But, for now, he was okay.

  Using an onboard transceiver in simplex mode he sent another message to Ruth. “Made it back to the shuttle. Are your hands on the Steinway?”

  Twelve long minutes later came her reply. “Yes, they are, waiting for yours.”

  An information technology professional residing in Crafton, Pennsylvania, Helmuth Kump has had two short stories published and is presently germinating a science fiction novel. When not working or writing, the native of Queens, New York, enjoys running, playing drums, chess, opera, amateur radio, casino blackjack, books on metaphysics, and spending time with his two adult sons.

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  20.

  Connections

  Amos Parker

  “Go on.”

  On one knee in the alien soil, Jasper pointed at the plant’s radial red tendrils. Cassie, with a glance up at the high galaxy of nighttime stars, shook her head. In the low Delanine gravity, her blonde tresses flew windless and wild.

  “No. No, Jas. I can’t.”

  Her wide blue eyes locked with Jasper’s browns. His hair hung cut to a small fraction of the length of hers, matching his eyes. He looked up at the stars, as she had. The thin Delanine atmosphere scattered a star field twice Earth’s midnight density.

  “It won’t hurt, Cas. That I can promise. Not like the past.”

  Both of them wore the same loose green clothes they’d come out of the long hypersleep wearing.

  “It can’t be love then, now can it Jas.”

  Off in the distance, at the base of a craggy hill, the ship Valentine vented steam from thrusters. None of the others there had changed either.