The Future Is Short Read online

  It was one of those moments that imprints into the collective memory of an entire family. Something was wrong. The moon had set. The fire had burned down and now cast a sinister light on the scene. He held the smoking sapling that was inexplicably only a foot long.

  “Mommy, I don’t feel good,” said Billy.

  “I know, sweetheart. Let’s go to bed. Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning,” said Jennifer.

  Wayne watched the vacant eyes of his daughter and saw consciousness slowly returning. Kathy glanced around confused, then met his gaze and he saw darkness in her that had never been there before.

  W. A. Fix (a.k.a. Bill Fix) is a retired information technology manager, who lives with his wife and three cats in the suburbs of San Diego, California. He has “toyed” with writing all his life and recently became more serious about the craft. Other interests include photography and golf.

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  25.

  Becoming Again

  J.J. Alleson

  “So … we right direction.” Jerala’s statement was more accusation than question. The accused watched him with eyes like black ice. The other three circled them, still a loose-knit group after six days in close company. The women were Nye and Kismet. The men: Jerala, Thomas, and Olain.

  In the murderous fahrenheit of an endless summer, it was Kismet who stood toe to toe, if not eye to eye, with Jerala. Nye stepped in, cooing mediation. “Please. Our quest is almost over.”

  They were five strangers whose paths had crossed on the way to Syti, the place where Earth’s population converged as one corporate laboratory. Four had left behind the braying scorn of their people.

  One had left a pile of unbleached bones.

  “You all sure? We close?” Jerala was a pedantic nit-picker; an outcast who had offended bio-engineers with no time for clinical validations. As they travelled, he spoke of better days three hundred years ago.

  “Big fuss ’bout oil once. ’Til one company found ways to make hydrocarbons. Used corn starch, sugar cane … even grasses. All happy-happy. Couldn’t save ’zone layer, though. We overheated. The UVs came. Rogues took over. Stole those catalytic conversion techniques and put melanin in the mix for the staying-alive market. Not like the polka-dots from chemo, but all over smooth-smooth.”

  They all knew the history. The black-body scramble had, overnight, turned pariah-paupers into the Untouchable Dalit Gods of Afrik-Syti, protected day and night from contact with desperadoes seeking skin-scrapes. When wealthy clients demanded more customised physiques, biochemists had simply added another transhuman DNA string. The procedure, a powerful injection known as “The Mosquito”, was aggressively promoted. Until a glitch began to throw up terrifying foetal deformities.

  “Mosquito wiped out billions. Made billionaires. Many more in Syti, waiting to become.”

  But not everyone cared for Jerala’s protocols. In a private moment, the ultra-slender Olain expressed concerns. “He’s completely paranoid.”

  “Should we eat him?” Twelve-year-old Thomas had been alone a year. Like many facing starvation, he had learned pragmatism at the dinner table.

  Kismet winked her agreement. “Why not?”

  Nye’s dark eyes flashed angrily at Kismet’s shark-like instinct for the kill. “We can’t eat Jerala. We need his stronger moral discipline.”

  But her words fell away into empty air.

  ***

  Early dawn, the group awoke, ate, and left camp. Already Kismet’s moonlit glow was shifting towards its midday onyx. Aquamarine hair fell towards child-bearing hips, cloaking breasts from which no infant could ever safely suckle.

  At six-foot-five, with a land-and-water speed that blurred the vision, Kismet embodied that supreme throw of the DNA dice. A playful fate had granted her, at conception, an almost perfect Mosquito. Her glance at the discarded hump of fur was simply practical. “Should we bury it?”

  “For the love of Dalit, Kismet! It’s him!” Beneath Olain’s hissed anger lay a good deal of satiated guilt.

  “Didn’t you enjoy … him, Olain?” Kismet watched Olain, her eyes speculating something that no one there could decipher. Or wanted to.

  Thomas jumped in quickly. “He was delicious.” Thomas’s limbs were equally useful for killing, eating, or running. He would apply all six, he decided, if Kismet ever came for him. Easing closer to Nye, he asked, “Do you think we’ll become human again? In Syti?”

  Nye smiled reassuringly. “Of course. They have a faster, stronger Mosquito now.” All ethics had been left behind with Jerala’s carcass. But Nye could still honour his memory. Turning to Kismet, she asked, “How you know right direction?”

  Kismet gave her an open-mouthed grin. And each companion silently counted the endless, endless rows of teeth.

  “Smell blood.”

  Thomas fought down the urge to seek shelter under Nye. He wished that her great wings held the power of flight. Then she could carry Olain and himself, coiled on her back, safely to Syti. Or to anywhere that would be far, far away from Kismet.

  J.J. Alleson is a London-based freelance editor, multi-genre writer, and poet. She writes across the spectrum of romance, science fiction, murder mystery, and the paranormal. Her anthology of science fiction short stories, A Step in Time, will be available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other online platforms from December 2014. [email protected] http://www.jjalleson.com

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  26.

  Unnatural Gas

  Thaddeus Howze

  An industrialist put on his plastic face, his expensive suit, and dragged an indentured lawyer into town with him. His Bentley arrived in a cloud of choking dust and stinging flies.

  The town had gathered around a podium to listen to the complaints of some locals while they waited for the industrialist to arrive.

  He took the podium, confident, smiling but after a few minutes, one of the townsfolk hurled something which landed with a solid thunk on the raised wooden stage. It was an old Colt revolver. Already loaded.

  The industrialist looked closer at the crowd. He noted their pale mien. Many were coughing into towels. The bitter iron stink of blood wafted through the air. He knew that scent, intimately. Their condition had to do with residue from the hydraulic fracturing process.

  He considered their condition … unfortunate.

  His gaze swept over the crowd but he appeared unaffected. “What’s this for?” he asked as he gingerly picked up the gun.

  “If you plan on robbing people you should be appropriately armed,” someone shouted from a distance.

  “I don’t understand what you mean. I’m genuinely happy to report how wealthy we’re becoming through your sacrifice. It’s legal, I assure you.” Unlike the industrialist, the attorney refused to meet anyone’s eyes.

  Looking around, the industrialist saw the stage stood in a pool of stagnant and foul-smelling water. “You should do something about your plumbing.” It was then he noticed the stones people carried.

  Reverend Ames staggered up to the front of the crowd, his eyes rheumy, but still sharp enough to see their way through to the heart of a man. “We are a god-fearing people. Galatians, chapter 6 verse 7: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

  The reverend spit and threw his stone at the industrialist and his lawyer. Others followed suit. Ducking, the two men tried to escape but large unhappy townsfolk waited at the foot of the ladder with metal bats.

  The industrialist pointed the gun at the crowd. “Don’t make me use this.” A rain of stones arced through the air with more hitting than missing. The lawyer dropped and lay still. Shaken the industrialist fired the weapon at the Reverend.

  The weapon flared and in seconds, vapors beneath the podium ignited, with the contaminated water beneath the stage acting as fuel. Both men were surrounded and engulfed by a makeshift funeral pyre.

  No one fled.

  The townsfolk leaned forward, silently sa
voring the screams of the two men. One or two looked a touch uncomfortable, but no one turned their back to the flames.

  The reverend smiled at his parishioner who had given the industrialist the gun filled with flaring blanks. He turned his gaze toward the fire and with venom said, “Yes, sir. You are so right. We should do something about those leaky water pipes. Not to worry, the water stops burning in a couple of hours. Plenty of time for you to get used to your new accommodations in Hell.”

  The townsfolk rejoiced quietly and agreed to never speak of this.

  When the methane was expended, only a pile of dark ash remained of the stage, the industrialist, and his counsel. As the townspeople turned, the pile of ash shifted suddenly and slowly the industrialist stood up and brushed the ash that used to be a podium, and possibly a lawyer, off of his once again pristine suit.

  The townspeople stood agape. Dust rose from his footsteps as he walked from the ashes toward his car. He turned, the setting sun behind him.

  “Just who did you people think you were getting in bed with?” His horns and winged shadow lingered in the setting sunlight, reaching out toward the townsfolk for an instant, as he got into his car.

  I can’t believe they did that. People can still surprise me . . .

  The roar of his Bentley could be heard over the sounds of water mains and wells exploding, fire flowing toward the very center of town. No street was clear, no avenues for escape; a river of flame from every direction.

  Collectively, they screamed, cowered, and burned.

  Nearby, a murder of crows took wing and celebrated.

  Thaddeus Howze is a technology consultant, science enthusiast, and speculative fiction author. His short fiction collection, Hayward's Reach, came out in 2011. His writings revolve around environmental themes and question the nature and value of humanity in a world enamored of technological cleverness. See his speculative fiction at http://hubcityblues.com.

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  CONFRONTATIONS

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  27.

  Time of the Phoenix

  Carrol Fix

  I was the first to make contact. I awoke from my dreaming slumber to hear the screeching collapse of my distant siblings. Fear gripped me and slowed my folding processes, making my leaves tremble as I drew them inward to protect them within my firm bark fiber. I could almost feel my sap congeal in terror, as I began the process of bending my denuded boughs downward against my trunk. As I waited, the sounds of death continued. Reluctantly, I began withdrawing my roots from the nourishing soil, pulling them upward into my root hand, while disengaging my working hand from the side of my trunk. When five walking branches remained, I bent my trunk, resting the limbs firmly on the ground. I straightened my other half, drawing my root arm down, with my “face,” as the humans call it, near the top in the position we use when migrating and meeting others of our kind.

  Humans came to our planet in the year 9, when we were fully arisen, and they found our world lush and promising. They began clearing space for their settlements, and thousands of my family perished before I managed to communicate our intelligence. Our process of Inversion takes nearly an hour to complete; one of them could cut down six of us before we could walk among them. They say we look like birch trees and that, once killed, our bodies function in the same manner as their wood.

  I managed to make the humans understand me, even though our sounds were nothing alike in the beginning. They ceased murdering us and eventually we could speak together. I learned their language, and a few of my siblings also were willing to make the effort. For many years, we maintained an uneasy coexistence. More and more humans arrived, and our own population increased, causing conflicts over choice land—where the humans invariably prevailed.

  By the year 58, there were open disputes; the humans found minerals they considered valuable, but which were life-sustaining elements for us. The inevitable happened and, despite some protests from the original humans, new arrivals began killing us to clear the land they wanted to exploit. They built structures from our bodies, burned us for fuel, and drove us from our rich food sources.

  Lacking the mineral nourishment they needed, my brothers and sisters living closest to human settlements began deteriorating; losing rational thought processes. In year 89, a large group of my nearly wild siblings attacked a human colony, inflicting deadly devastation upon their tormentors. Because human lives were lost, the resultant backlash saw hundreds of thousands of us destroyed. We lost our homes to the invaders, who continued to pillage our planet to satisfy their greed, slaying us without mercy. For the next ten years, we gradually fled to the barren slopes of the mountains, eking out a miserly existence.

  As always, we began our celebration in the year 99. Only a hundred thousand of us remained, but we gleaned enough sheddings of leaves and unwanted branches to light the ritual fires. Each night, we watched our tiny line of dancing flames, while our grandmothers told stories of the Times Before. New sprouts of This Time listened raptly. We all waited in anticipation.

  This is the year 100 and it has begun, as it has since the dawn of time. At first the ground trembles. Plumes of smoke and steam from the mountaintops waft softly against the blue sky. Across our planet, the volcanoes awaken from their 100-year sleep. For 1000 days, the mountains will pour forth rivers of flaming lava. They will cause the ground to shudder and shake and to break open vast chasms that will devour the humans. Before the volcanoes return to their century-long rest, their mighty wrath will cleanse our planet of the alien infestation.

  The conflagration will consume us and protect us, and the volcanoes’ blessings will replenish our food sources from the belly of our planet. In time, my family and I will rise from beneath the ashes, and reclaim our home. When, in our eternal cycle, we arise again, and again, we will tell of this Time Before and vow that our world always will belong only to us.

  Carrol Fix is a short-story writer and novelist whose science fiction work includes the novel Mishka: Book One of the Quadrate Mind. She is currently writing the second book in the Quadrate Mind series, while working on a young-adult fantasy novel, Worlds Apart. “Time of the Phoenix” appeared in the May, 2013 issue of Perihelion Science Fiction. [email protected] http://www.mishkabook.com

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  28.

  Meek Survive

  Richard Bunning

  No one really knows how long Treen have lived on the Earth: literally, sub-terra, under the feet of humans. They, themselves, claim to have almost always been there, though it is hard to find many traces of them in the historical records, between the writing of the Book of Revelations and the treasured Eagle papers of the 1950s. However, Venus is so close that it is hard to believe that they didn’t at least regularly visit.

  The Current Meekon of the Treen, Ampson Meek, had greatly expanded Treen bases on Earth. As humans had emigrated, they had steadily been replaced by Treen settlers, who have no trouble dealing with the oxygen-depleted atmosphere. Most humans had left for less overexploited planets centuries ago, but ties had never been completely broken. There had been a state of peaceful coexistence between all but a few renegade Meeks and humans since the death of “The Supreme Scientist, Chairman Mekong” in the 1990s.

  ***

  We imagine ourselves looking back through history into the last human military outpost, entrenched deep in the Underground tunnels of the once City of London, the Waterloo Brigade. In these final days of mankind’s tenure of the Earth, the troops are being led by General Don Read. He has a deeply ingrained hatred of Treen and is determined to make sure the Meek never inherit the Earth.

  By then, most humans have long accepted that prophesies in the old scriptures would be fulfilled. The Governors of Gliese were only too pleased at the prospect of being able to rid the exchequer of the expense of running the last Earth Unit. Read knows that departure is inevitable. However, if he can help it, this won't be before he has seen the Treens �
��burn in Hell”. Reed is intent on making the Earth uninhabitable, even for the hardy Versuvians, before man departs.

  ***

  “I will turn the surface of the Earth into the fires of Hell. I’ll watch the bloody Meeks burn. How can I convince the fleet to launch a full atomic strike against the Meekon? I need to make out that we come under attack as we dismantle our defences prior to withdrawal. Those I trust least, Dare’s second division, will be my pawns. No other units ever question my orders. That bloody Meekon-loving Colonel Daniel Dare, how fitting to destroy him with his alien friends.

  ***

  “Launch a drone strike on Bedford, wide pattern, atomic warheads. Fire on my command!”

  “But sir, isn’t that where Dare’s unit are?”

  “They have been overwhelmed in a Treen attack, led by the Meekon himself, who intends to keep humans to breed as slaves. We will also be overrun before the Evacuation Force arrives, unless we strike whilst we are sure to catch the Treen leadership off-guard. I have received a dispatch telling me that Dare himself is already dead. We must act now, burning them and all the Earth.”

  “Sir, I refuse to carry out such an order.”

  “Launch, damn it. How dare you disobey a direct command, Lieutenant Dolos.”

  “I have higher orders, sir. In fact, you are under arrest. You see, the Quads never left barracks. You have been fooled into believing that your earlier orders were carried out. Colonel Dare is still right here. We all knew that your hatred runs so deeply that you would try to destroy the Treen at any cost. We are at peace with the Meekon, as you well know. They are even assisting our safe evacuation. The Governors now have reason to be done with you.”