Sky's the Limit

by | Feb 12, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

The catwalk was narrow, rusty, and in violation of at least four safety codes, but Juan didn’t care. When he stepped from the concrete landing by the elevator onto the precarious metal walkway, he grinned. It was a good day.

“Eight pounds seven ounces,” he told his coworker for the sixth time. Still, Jamal afforded him a hearty chuckle as he dragged the heavy light-box from the elevator. “Juanita. I like the sound of that. It’s a good, solid name, right?”

Jamal grunted an affirmation. “Get the other end of this, would you?”

Juan returned to the landing and grabbed the handle without breaking from his train of thought. Together, they hauled the metal crate onto the catwalk. Nine thousand feet beneath them, the light-studded skeleton of San Diego was recumbent with sleep, twinkling lazily in the hours before artificial dawn. Somewhere, in the more twilit area to the south, Carmen and Juanita were sound asleep in the concrete cradle of their home.

“She’s smart, you can tell already. Her eyes are all open and she keeps looking at stuff. She’ll be a city planner, I bet, if I can get the money for taxes. Or a doctor. Doctor Juanita Del Rosa. She’ll live on the upside.”

Again, Jamal grunted. “How much was the hospital bill?”

“Four thousand,” Juan said. “That included registration, though. And taxes aren’t due for a month. If we sell the car, we’ll be class A next year and everything’ll be covered.”

“No way.”

“We’ve been planning for years,” he said. Juan swung his end of the light box over the edge of the railing and hopped down to the broad, flat surface of the sun panel. Jamal lowered his end slowly, but it still fell the last six inches with a shuddering clatter.

“Christ!” Jamal yelled. “Pay attention!”

Juan dragged the crate to section 34-b, where the carbon-copied orders directed him. “Doctor Juanita Del Rosa,” he repeated with a smile.

“Ain’t no maintenance-worker’s kid gonna be a doctor,” Jamal snapped, now irritated at his partner’s lack of focus. Juan was unfazed. He popped the latch of the light box and Jamal leaned in, checking the massive LED panel for cracks.

“She will. You watch.”

“So what are you going to tell her, then, when she comes home crying because all the scientists’ kids are making fun of her? Daddy’s an ‘illumination technology specialist?'”

“I’ll tell her the truth,” Juan said as he slid the black and silver pane into its slot. “I’ll tell her I keep the sun from burning out.”

No Exit

by | Feb 2, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

This way, she says, and I follow.

There was no real direction, of course. The surface had been frozen beneath a mile of ice long before humans evolved, but still, I follow. Two hours after we lost our way in the snowstorm, all directions have become meaningless.

When I was a child I read a story about an oceanaut who followed a rope to the bottom of the sea. That was how they did it, then: you held on to the rope, buried beneath suits of rubber and glass to hold off the thickest weight of the ocean, and when you were ready to surface, you followed it. Anyhow, he somehow lost his grip at the blackened base of the sea, where the heaviness of water prevented anyone from floating to the top. Down was up, up was down. So he chose a direction and swam.

Obviously, the guy survived to tell the tale. If you listen to it like that, it’s not even a very good story, but here’s what I remember: as he was moving, having committed to the direction with the last of his oxygen, the light of his helmet revealed small bubbles. They were moving quickly over the glass, and when he saw them, he knew. He was moving up. He was moving in the same direction as the air.

Here, though, that’s irrelevant. There are no air bubbles, and there’s no way to tell left from right. The needle of the compass has frozen in place and the horizon is a blinding blur of white and silver, so pale that I can’t tell the ground from the air. The sun pours over the atmosphere without revealing its position. Her body, coated in thick rubber and plastic and thrown blackly against the endless white, continues on. It leaves unshadowed footsteps in her wake. She says nothing further, though it’s possible that our communicators have frozen. They weren’t designed to stand cold for this long.

She keeps walking, as if she knows where she’s going. I follow, because that’s all I can do.

TW

by | Jan 27, 2006 | Story

Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on Io, I thought I would sail about a little and see the most distant reaches of space.

Despite the limitations of technology, the endlessness that spread before our ship pulled me with a unique gravity. The bounty itself was naught. In retrospect, it was a meaningless and futile obsession, but the captain persisted. I followed, as I was wont to do given the limited quarters of the starship, and it never occurred to me that the quest was impossible. After all, I longed for nothing but the sight of stars through the viewscreen, so I was content to drift along in the wake of his unwavering determination.

TW was regarded as the most feared man in the seemingly endless reaches of the solar system, and despite the minimal reward I was compelled by the captain’s inexplicable, unwavering persistence to pursue the ghost of the pale ship through the asteroid belt, through the orbits of nine planets, and through the gentle and burning licks of solar flares.

“He’s out there,” the captain said. “He’s out there.”

TW had claimed innumerable victims, and even in my green and formless years the myths had flickered across television screens as the magnetic residue of a legend. I must admit that I was infatuated with the concept. When the captain himself raised the bounty my interest was piqued, and the lot of us were incited to impossible action.

“Have you sighted the ship?” he broadcast over all frequencies, but the replies were foreboding or outright prohibitive.

In my quarters, I dreamed of the solar system stretching out before me like an arm that never reached a hand. Doubtless, he dreamed of whiteness streaking the dark of space.

“He’s out there,” he said. “He’s still out there.”

Months passed like days, occupied by the dreariness of daily duty and the shadow of passion that the captain cast upon us. I kept a log of activities, though it was surely tedious by the standards of occupied worlds.

“He’s out there,” the captain said. “He’s still out there.” Despite the protests of the senior staff, he continued. Our transmissions were denied by ships which busied themselves with far more likely prospects.

Behind me, Io was a frozen world. I watched the great shroud of space roll on as it rolled five thousand years ago, and I followed orders and monitored the empty radio broadcasts. Space collapsed into distance and the blackness of the signal screen revealed no blips of existence.

“He’s out there,” the man said. “He’s still out there.”

Good Morning, Sunshine

by | Jan 24, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

After a while, you forget that it’s summer. Months and weeks become meaningless numbers on the monitor’s clock, and you don’t bother asking anyone what they are doing on the weekend. You know. They’re typing. You know.

You wait for the end of the shift and walk to the bar, seven blocks of August rain. “Beer,” you say, and the man obeys. Drops a pint on the table in front of you. You drum your fingers upon the wood, imagining text on the wall.

The beer is flat. The room is flat. They’ve left you hanging, like they always do.

Hours later, after you thought you’d fought it off, you surface in the lobby but the receptionist does not smirk. She’s used to this. You know she’s used to this.

“Overtime?” she says, and you nod. Overtime. Undertime. Time. They sit you down in the room lit only by the blue of a monitor, and you unfold into the refresh rate of the digital screen.

It seems like the document is typing itself, but in an accidental glance you see your hands floating over the keyboard. They seem to be plastic. You realize that it’s been days since you slept.

Your bell tolls eight hours and you push yourself up, forcing numb muscles to move to the door. You walk to the bar, seven blocks of August rain. “Beer,” you say, and the man obeys. Drops a pint on the table in front of you. You drum your fingers upon the wood, imagining text on the wall.

Meanwhile, at Fox Headquarters…

by | Jan 20, 2006 | Story

“Can we say that on television?” Mool asked. He narrowed his eye at the monitor and raised a turquoise tentacle to his mouth as his other three appendages worked the digital controls.

“Mistep? Sure. It’s been clear for a decade.”

“But what about the Xedrin colony? We got an eight percent pull there last season.”

Nick pondered this for a second. He pushed his rolling chair away from the desk and slid over to the other tech. “If they’re going to bar us for mistep they’ll bar us for having a Relana, period. Leave it. It’s edgy.”

Mool sighed, a sound that hovered in the air for nearly thirty seconds due to his third lung. He dragged a tentacle over the trackpad and a scantily-clad blue female broke into pixels before reassembling at a different time signature.

“Molting season is just an excuse for her to turn down the environment,” the Relana complained as her overdue feathers bristled beneath the old ones. Her bare cheeks flushed to an irritated magenta. “’Oh, it’s so hot!’” she whined in a horrid approximation of a Terran accent. “Yeah, maybe on your ice planet, you frigid mistep.”

A tap to the panel, and her image froze. “Nice,” Nick said. “Do we have a retort clip?”

“We can skink one. Kelly was malko about the feathers in the sink last week.”

“Hmm.”

The cutting room filled with relative silence as the two techs pondered the next scene, Mool still sucking on his fourth tentacle and Nick gnawing on his thumbnail.

“Don’t we have a Penguinair ad?” he finally suggested. Mool’s skin tightened to inspired attention.

“A Texaco heating one, too!” he said, and his second tentacle yanked to the advert box. The clips were found almost immediately, and he slid the first cartridge into the control station. “We could run this pleb for centuries,” he said, as his mouth opened to a grin. “It’s like it never gets old.”