Checking Out
“Any personal belongings you’ll need accommodated in your craft, Mr. Mercer?â€
“Nope.†John shook his head at the distribution agent before him. “No baggage.â€
It was John Mercer’s last day on Earth.
He’d lived here for thirty-eight years, give or take a decade or so spent on Luna or the nearby outposts. Never once had he gone out of the solar system, not even on vacation. John Mercer had spent his life working, just like everyone else. He’d been a paper-pusher, a street cleaner, an asteroid skimmer, a window-washer, a cheap thug, and even a postman for a few months, but no matter where he went, she followed him. There was nothing he could do to escape her. Nothing except this.
As John climbed into the small craft the distributor had assigned him, he felt the weight of those thirty-eight years shifting, readying for flight just as he was. Her face lingered in the back of his mind, stern and matronly, as it had since he was a child hitting baseballs into solar panels. He grinned to himself as he closed the hatch and flicked the switches to prepare the in-ship lights for flight mode.
After today, he’d never see the face of the Earth again. After today he’d no longer be a paper-pusher or a street cleaner or an asteroid skimmer or a window-washer. He’d be a pilot, somewhere in the outer colonies—goodness only knew where. John hadn’t specified. He’d just asked for a first assignment somewhere where he’d never be able to come back.
The base doors slid open and John met the field of stars with the white of his teeth. He could feel the rumbling of the ignition through his entire body and made sure the IV drip in his arm was secure. He wouldn’t want to wake up during the jump, after all. As the outpost’s bulkheads fell away beneath him, he stared a challenge back at the blue-green planet he had once called his home. So long, Earth. Nice knowing you.
The drip started right on schedule, just as the engines shot him away from everything he wanted to forget. His consciousness dissolved in time with the drip of the IV, and he could feel her face dissipating as well, fading away as surely as the planet behind him. With his last moment of coherence before the three-year jump, John Mercer grinned.
No baggage.
The Past
365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.
The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.
Flash Fiction
"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."
Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member
Submissions
We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.
Voices of Tomorrow
Voices of Tomorrow is the official podcast of 365tomorrows, with audio versions of many of the stories published here.
If you're interested in recording stories for Voices of Tomorrow, or for any other inquiries, please contact ssmith@365tomorrows.com