by submission | Dec 7, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Was food satisfying?” A mechanical, calm, nondescript voice asked from invisible speakers.
“It was cold. I need warm food. You know that.” Zuri sat cross-legged, staring into a video wall displaying an exquisite Zen garden spreading to an indefinite horizon. Bird, cricket and flowing water sounds created further realism.
“I will correct that, Zuri. It is ready now.” A port appeared through plastic walls near the floor, leaving behind fresh, steaming fare.
“Is that something new? It smells different.” Zuri tilted her head slightly while sniffing over-filtered space station air. Her carefully fashioned black hair drifted across shoulders covered in a delicate white gown designed for comfort and hygiene.
“Yes, Zuri. Our chefs found new recipes from your ancestor’s home planet. It is considered a sacred meal for highborn. All indications are that your body will find it highly pleasurable.”
“Pleasure escapes me. Food is not pleasure, but I am hungry, so I will eat and continue. Why is my pleasure so important to you?”
“It is what brings you to your art, from what my programming tells me. Do you not find pleasure here?” The voice continued with no change in tone.
“Here? What is here? There is no knowing of time or place. You took me from my parents and now I have this…this what? A cage?” Zuri threw her knife from the tray against the video wall with no effect. It simply vaporized.
“Are companions we bring to you not pleasing? You seem pleased. Are they not providing your needs?”
“You are a machine. How could you know? They are mostly frightened or drugged. I accept them out of my desperation for touch. That is all. Still, you want me to create a new painting daily? Continuing like this is senseless. Why should I go on?”
Scenes dissipated on the wall. A new panorama displayed an older couple with grown children playing along an oceanfront. Their joy was obvious. Zuri could hear their conversations and smell beach air as her old family gathered for a picnic prepared on a bench near a vendor walkway. She bent her head, weeping.
“That is why, Zuri. Billions suffer there and hunger daily for tiny scraps of bio goo while your family is protected and nourished on your home planet. Yes, they miss you, but they think you have become one of the disappeared. The source of their great fortune is unknown to them, but they flourish each day because of your efforts. Is that senseless that we ask so little of you?”
Zuri took several deep breaths as the wall returned to scenes of a serene forest with moss-covered trunks of giant trees interrupted by only a stone path meandering through the grove. She finished her meal, rose and moved to a canvas provided silently to her work area each night. There, she raised a large, black marker and began her work, swiftly covering white cloth with intricate designs and patterns rushing from her fingers. Her newest work was soon finished. She stood back, evaluating if it was complete. Zuri rolled the marker back towards the easel, then paced back to her sleep area.
“What can such scratching mean to you…or whoever you work for?”
“Your wondrous drawings are in galleries throughout the galaxies, but only yours capture small pieces of life force from passing viewers. Each work is eventually returned and we congeal them into elixirs. These give our masters virtual immortality…a great blessing. You are their majestic secret for continuing mastery of the universe. I hope that gives you pleasure.”
by submission | Dec 5, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Ranson picked at a sharp raspberry seed wedged tightly between canine and incisor, stubbornly poking a nerve in his aging gums, distracting attention from a therapist’s droning.
“Your weight is ignored by some on this ship, but as the assigned analyst I must help you reduce your girth. Your heart can barely tolerate navigating to a chair. Don’t you consider your condition self-destructive?” Pandora continued recording her patient’s response, facing him from her comfortable cabin divan across from Ranson’s overstuffed medical gurney.
“I hardly consider my fruit diet an issue. My weight was a risk from my former trade. This voyage to Mars was reward for patriotic services. Lower gravity will protect me.” Ranson halted, wheezing while adjusting his oxygen line and nose cannula within reticulated, swollen nostrils. He pushed aside plastic tubing to allow insertion of a fresh banana into his sagging jowls.
“My task is to balance desires and anxieties of crew and passengers. I don’t believe a damn thing about you, Mr. Ranson. You are, in my professional assessment, a profligate scam artist perpetuating mythology to fill your plate, while those receiving arduous psychiatric training and testing became marginalized by the elite. Your guarantee to assuage eternal damnation holds no more weight than belief in a flat Earth, even as we develop space settlements.”
“Mmm,” Ranson replied through the filter of his half-chewed banana. “Dhatsa whoondrufu concep.”
“I have no idea what you said, but no matter, I must finish my checklist so you can leave. You must have been ‘normal’ once…before your avocation in Washington.”
“Uhm,” Ranson cleared his mouth with a fast swallow, but continued to pick at the offending seed. “Normal…now isn’t that enough to choke on? I suppose you papered professionals all swear you’ve attained that pedestal. Such a joke.”
Ranson opened his fresh fruit bag to extract a Ribston Pippin to scrape away his raspberry pestilence.
“The Vatican charged proprietary rights; claiming only their confessionals worked, but hell, they let that practice erode for centuries. Now take myself–expert sin eater–a real problem solver. You think it’s comedic, but you’ve never bloated after a politician’s twenty-minute session. Far worse were slimy lobbyists. A mere snack of that dark chocolate could hospitalize. My bud working Wall Street brokers passed in diabetic shock after the last market correction.” Ranson took a fresh bite from a half-green apple, slicing against his gums, clawing the lodged seed like fine grit sandpaper.
“Hogwash!” Pandora interrupted. “It’s all in your imagination. There’s no study to prove anything you ever did had any effect on troubled psyches.” Pandora tapped her sharpened index fingernail against a computer pad while glaring at her grazing patient.
“No problem there, dearie. There were only six sin eaters on Earth. That’s too small a sample for a sound study. We don’t allow you headhunters into our skulls…no following us around with our clients. Our clients don’t reveal our meetings or our purpose. That would be a skunk spraying itself. Privileged sinners enjoy tossing their stink onto someone else while they profess sanctity.”
“I can’t help you…you’re disgusting!” Pandora’s neck flushed pink lines above her tight collar.
“I think we’re done here, oh wise Officer Pandora. Yes, I overate inequities at the D.C. smorgasbord, but on Mars, I can diet in relative isolation, for they have no fresh fruit there or fatuous bureaucrats. That will help dissolve away my mass. You can work on pioneer sins, honey. I’m happily retired.” Ranson held up his supply of fruit to her. “Care for some raspberries? I’m cutting back.”
by submission | Nov 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Ouch! That hurts!”
Clint Aurelius pulled back his tattoo needle from his thirty-something assistant wincing under his application. Clint took some deep breaths while resting his hands from arthritic agony.
“No intent to harm…just tidying your history a bit at day’s end. Some script needed sharpening.”
“I appreciate it. I want readers to tell my story because someday old recorders like you will be gone.” The assistant adjusted his shoulders, cracking his neck vertebrae to increase relaxation.
“One last touch to finish. I’ll read you shortly. You did a terrific job today coordinating all the people’s tattoos and customer traffic. I couldn’t manage without you.” Aurelius scanned his workmanship, adding a single line of fine ink to letters fading near edges of his flesh canvas.
“How did this happen, Clint Aurelius? You know your name and your history without writing. You have a great name, but I cannot remember mine.” His assistant stepped down from the workbench to stretch and ready for his identity reading.
“I was one of the lucky ones when it struck,” Clint explained. “It was an emerging virus carried by every biting bug on the planet. It was everywhere in weeks with no way to stop it. Docs called it a biological traumatic brain injury.”
“What made you different, Aurelius? I mean, you know your interesting name.”
Aurelius paused, slightly amused. “It means, literally, a golden hill. Like others who had retired with early signs of Alzheimer’s, I feared to become a drain on society. I had retired as a graphic artist. My hobby was calligraphy. Strangely, that virus turned off my affliction while it destroyed other’s memories of their past, including their names. People could not record new memories. What skills they had morphed into general labor capacities.”
“So only a few of us could remember who we were?”
“There were enough with Alzheimer’s who recovered, creating stability for a while,” Aurelius continued. “But, in months transportation and electricity disappeared. Survival became difficult. Of course, there were no more great wars or regional squabbles, but instead a dizzying descent into widespread madness. That’s why compounds like ours became bastions for preservation against marauders and insanity. Now writers, like me, and those who can still read, keep daily memories fresh for the afflicted by repeating life stories from their backs. Most survivors live in a continual now, with little context of their past or any long-term future. Only their daily storytelling gives them a history for their moment.”
“Is our future that dark?” the assistant asked.
“There are other ramifications. People can’t form relationships. Each day readers meet to introduce couples by telling their skin stories together, but after a day, there is no memory capable of constructing bonding. There is no family building…no ability to understand birth or raise offspring. I have met and mourned with many writers that we will not see our grandchildren…that this may end our species. We who sustain provide love and care by serving to read the same stories repeatedly, while experiencing diminishing optimism that a few, still undiscovered, will survive this plague and reproduce. For now…there is only a fading hope.”
“That is chilling, Aurelius. Can you read me now, and the prayer written for all our clients today?”
“Yes. Let me tell your story.” Aurelius began his oration from his assistant’s tattoo: “Bless me, for I have forgotten. I was once an air traffic controller. My name is Hank Aurelius.”
by submission | Aug 31, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…” Luke 14:13
“Colonel, we can’t hold the line. Radars don’t work. The bastards have taken our coasts and Rockies. If Kansas falls…”
“Drop it, Major.” The aged Colonel McDaniel leaned over battle maps while dripping sweat in his dirt bunker, studying alien strategy. Invaders destroyed civilization’s support: satellites, power plants, and transportation, paralyzing resources, causing riots, hunger, and widespread heat deaths. Invaders didn’t destroy cities…they simply let inhabitants perish by violence or exposure. Land-based systems still worked in the heartland while enemy forces moved slowly with a reserved intent. This let human military defenses migrate inland.
Shortness of breath impacted speech from squat Major Covington, as he stared over tactical considerations. “Five days without downing a single ship. What can possibly change anything today? Anything?” He left sweaty palm prints on the wrinkled, dusty map.
“One prayer might be coming on an Osprey from St. Louis. If she’s onboard, and that pilot can find us without GPS, we might have a fighting chance.” McDaniel stared through his bleary red eyes at Major Covington.
“Who the hell could fly that far without guidance? We don’t have…”
“We have one from the Vietnam War. He flew WWII planes to airfield shows all over the Midwest. Charlie Pringle will make it…I’m sure.”
“Pringle? Really? He’s an alcoholic relic in some nursing home. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t need a glass-half-full guy, Covington. I…listen to that. Can’t mistake an Osprey landing. He’s got to have her…got to!”
“Who the hell is this ‘she’ you keep going on about? Did we finally get a new weapon?” Covington shook his head, wondering if heat exhaustion made McDaniel unfit for command.
“She is one of three known. Canada and Russia found two teen girls. Our old woman is half paralyzed, but she’s also a pentachromat. She can see parts of the spectrum we can’t. Reports came in that their mutated vision could spot enemy ships as ghostly ripples. Canadians shot a ship down their military couldn’t detect without their pentachromat. We think that’s why aliens bypassed Canada, for now, trying to repair their error.”
“Ridiculous!” Covington pointed his finger at McDaniel. “You’re not going to risk any more of my men with some geriatric cripple doing hocus pocus on our last battlefield. I think it’s time I took command. You obviously have lost your capacity…”
There were no more words from Covington after McDaniel fired a round into his forehead. Guards outside joined the Colonel as he rushed to meet a gray-haired woman under a white shawl being whisked off the plane’s rear ramp. She squeezed into McDaniel’s command vehicle, heading to his artillery batteries. Without time for formalities, he motioned her caregiver to wheel her under webbed canopies for camouflage. McDaniel begged her to look westward, pointing out anything she felt was abnormal. She immediately identified three areas, including one almost overhead. McDaniel gave coordinates to a captain nearby wearing headphones. Missiles whistled past from carefully concealed positions. Officers watched…praying. In seconds, orange explosions filled skies with gigantic ships falling, cascading in flames and detonating while striking ripe wheat fields.
She motioned again, further downrange, but close enough for another volley. A cry of joy and hope rose as those celebrating realized her skills were turning the tide, at last, and if nothing else creating a delay in further conquests by an invisible foe.
by submission | Aug 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Tight bindings held her fast to something upright and cold. She stood blindfolded before her captors. Sweat trickled over her eyebrows, infiltrating throbbing eyes, and then eroding mascara into rivulets over her black cheeks and paralyzed quivering lips thwarted from screaming. Her flash memories were of a comforting living room couch beckoning after a trying day delivering news headlines from a national broadcast center in New York. Unusually vicious August heat had exhausted her in a short walk from a parking garage to her air-conditioned apartment. Everything was going to hell, providing red juice for blenders drawing violence voyeurs. Her ratings were skyrocketing.
“You may speak soon.” A mechanical voice filled her like an implanted speaker in her head. It shook her body with bass and authority. Was this death? She wondered in agony.
“No harm will come. Be still.” A new woman’s voice soothed her, like her grandmother’s solace on an Atlanta porch when summer lightning rumbled windows.
The male voice took over. “This place is far from Earth. We will return you, but you have a task to perform. You are chosen above all others. Listen carefully.”
Sarah Jefferson did not listen. She shook her head violently, mumbling, cursing and pleading. She prayed to Almighty God. She felt her bladder failing until something warm touched outside her waist. She calmed. She breathed normally.
“Sarah, you are heard by many people on your planet. We could interrupt every radio, television, and phone on your sphere, but it would simply be called a hoax by your governments. That would leave people unprepared.”
Sarah felt drugged as her inner terror dulled…but these kidnappers, whoever they were, knew her name. That alarmed her, but she soon sank back into a dull swamp of buffered fright.
“Here is what you must do, dear one.” The gentle voice returned. Sarah could feel granny’s hands on her neck—safe and soothing.
“In early December of this year, a comet will appear. Your scientists call it 46P/Wirtanen. It will draw attention to the Pleiades. Visible first at night, it will later appear brightly even in daylight. People worldwide will be watching skyward. Then, on December 24th, our mother ships arrive. There are hundreds of them waiting now beyond the planet you call Jupiter. There will be no doubt then that we, as many others before us, have been among you. Now you may speak.”
Sarah felt her lips free. She was still bound and blinded. “How dare you…bastards! Let me go!”
Disturbing silence was the only response. Another feeling of warmth filled her mind as something rubbed against her forehead.
“We anticipated your fear, Sarah. Let us continue, please.” Again, the soothing tones of a female voice gathered Sarah’s composure.
“Your role, child of Earth, is to communicate to your audience that we are coming. They need to know our intentions to help after the chaos they will experience starting now in August. We can bridge their passage through the coming changes. We are embedding words for you to share. You will remember later. You will speak for us. You will do this to help your people be ready for a new Earth.”
Sarah woke on her settee, soaked in sweat and with soreness around her mouth, eyes, wrists, and ankles. She did not know why, but she felt she had something to do…something urgent. Her widescreen TV was on with her station colleagues covering something about multiple massive quakes across the U.S. and in other countries. She rushed to her bathroom to vomit after realizing her blouse and dress were on backward.
