Pierre

by | Oct 30, 2005 | Story

Peter did not remember the first time he used the displacement generator. That was how it should be, of course. When used properly, the generator always erased the traces of itself. If it didn’t, a person could get tangled up in time, strangled by tethers of conflicting memory. So when he woke up in the white room, surrounded by lights and wires and the generator’s dull whirr, it used to take Peter several minutes to get his spatial and temporal bearings. Not anymore, though. Now, he had a few shortcuts.

When he came to, the first thing his eyes settled upon was the sheet of paper taped to a wire over his bed. He snatched it, squinting at the broad, circular letters. Your name is Peter Graham. You are a displacement technician. You are thirty seven years old.

The statements continued, and gradually, Peter’s memory spilled into the places that were blank when he first woke up. He had two sisters. He lived with his girlfriend and their daughter Sarah. He played tennis. By lunchtime, he’d overcome most of the amnesia of temporal shock.

“What’s it today, mate?” asked the portly, graying man across the table at the complex’s cafeteria.

“What?”

“I’m Will.”

Peter didn’t remember anything about Will, but he unfolded the paper to double check. Nope. Nothing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll come back in a few hours.”

Will nodded and peeled the plastic wrap from around his sandwich before taking a large bite of synthetic tuna. He chewed this thoughtfully, then put the sandwich back on the table and snatched the paper from Peter’s fingers. “Peter Graham,” he read. “Nice. You’ve got a kid.”

Peter nodded. Odd man. Years of doing this made some people go a little strange.

“You working this afternoon?” Will asked. “Check the schedule.” He pointed to a large display on an adjacent wall, and Peter stood up to find his name. It was nothing but numbers.

“I don’t remember it being like this before,” Peter said. Will chuckled.

“Check your arm,” he said. Peter did. At the base of his wrist, a seven digit number showed in crisp black ink. “They can’t do that kind of thing by names, for obvious reasons.”

Peter found his number and followed it across the glowing chart. “I’m working the French Revolution,” he said.

“Fun.”

He continued examining the schedule, picking out what he’d be doing for the next few days. “Hey,” he noticed, “Why do I have a dormitory number?”

“Huh?”

“They have here that I’m supposed to sleep in section 17-F.”

“Well, then you sleep in 17-F.”

“What about my girlfriend and kid?” Peter said. He dimly remembered promising her that he’d take her out for dinner tonight. Was it their anniversary? Her birthday, maybe. Will laughed.

“See you at dinner,” he said as he pushed away from the table. “Maybe you’ll be Pierre by then.”

Villia

by | Oct 29, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Outside the dome, the earth was sealed with cement; the towers of processed plastic, retrieved from the treasure chests of ancient dumps, grew, broke and branched like mad metal trees. The glimmering city sang in a constant low thrum, tiny machines building additions, remodeling for the new and the better, ever evolving, unfinished. The man made cold swept over the hard city, sending citizens running for manufactured warmth and longing for a past that never was.

Inside the dome, the wild Villia embraced herself under thousands of watching eyes who longed for her natural paradise. The constructed environment bore her food and cradled her in eternal summer. Villia thrilled before her invisible admirers, stretched herself in the gaze of the gods of her wide Eden. On neon screens she, natural goddess, worshipped by the clicking of tiny insecticide cameras, smiled at a field of tiny yellow flowers, imagining them as her followers, faces rising, bright and delicate.

The Dead Done Gone

by | Oct 28, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

The walls of Maria Gracia Plana’s prison had long since fallen, the building having crumbled along with the Empire that constructed it. The planet’s wealth and populace have gone, leaving it boundless and bare, a relic of times long past. Maria Gracia Plana’s guards have left her, after she broke the leg of the one who tried to rape her and the skull of the one who was going to watch. The walls were gone but she remained, writing letters to the outside worlds.

But they were no longer letters, not since the Blight. They were now nothing more than a series of apologies. Apologies to her people, who believed in her and her revolution. Apologies to her revolution, for not being strong enough to defend its ideals. Apologies to the dead.

In an open prison, Maria Gracia Plana wrote apologies those lost in the war that she started and the Blight that followed and hoped it would ease their weight off her shoulders.

She was engaged in this activity when the spaceman arrived. His Imperial uniform was disheveled and torn, but his bearing and movements betrayed a life spent in space, a life used to conserving everything.

“Maria Gracia Plana,” he said. “Still here?”

“There is a war on. I am a prisoner of war.” Maria did not look up from her tablet; she had apologies to write.

“War’s over. You won.”

“I did not! I never wanted the Blight. I never asked for it. If I wasn’t here, it would never have been used! Mass murder was never what I wanted.”

“Know. Read your letters.”

“You read my…” Maria managed to tear her eyes away from her tablet. “Who are you?”

“Nadir Faruqi. Captain, Galactic Imperial Fleet. Only, Empire done gone. Just Captain, ‘spose.”

“And you, no doubt a romantic, have come to rescue me, is that right? Well, I am dreadfully sorry, Captain Faruqi, but I have no desire to be saved.” Maria returned her attention to her tablet, and the apologies it contained. The spaceman merely stood stock still, another rock amid the ruins of Maria’s prison.

“Not here to save you. Here to save worlds. Empire done gone. Chaos, now. Blight done that. But so did you. So did I.” The spaceman touched the grip of the blaster that was strapped to his hip. He shifted his weight as he did so, as if the weapon had suddenly grown heavier.

“You’re here to remind me that I’ve failed, is that it? I don’t need you to tell me that! I thought I was being a martyr when I was arrested. I didn’t know then that martyrs are dead, and the dead can’t speak. So when the people you trusted decide to release a devastatingly lethal on the enemy, no one will hear you cry ‘no.’”

“That’s gone. Can’t change, so let go. Worlds need you.”

“I am dead! Don’t you understand? I am dead! No one will hear me except the dead, and all I can do is apologize to them! That’s all I can do! I am dead! Can you hear me? I AM DEA—”

The spaceman placed his hand over Maria’s mouth. It was not an act of violence or anger. Merely frustration, which was echoed in his eyes, black as space itself.

“Not dead. The dead done gone. You’re here. Worlds need you. Was an Imperial Captain. Fought and killed for Empire. But never believed in. Saw much Empire as Captain. Nothing to believe in. Until you. You had a better way. Empire mighty, but not in your eyes. Your passion…your grace. Believed in that. Worlds…I…need you to be worth your name.”

The spaceman withdrew his had from Maria’s mouth, and held it in front of her, ready to lift her up out of the dust.

The walls of Maria Gracia Plana’s prison had long since fallen, the building having crumbled along with the Empire that constructed it. The planet’s wealth and populace have gone, leaving it boundless and bare, a relic of times long past. All that remains are her apologies, and the dead.

The High, Hot Summer

by | Oct 27, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

The thousand babies slept in the high, dry grass as late summer breezes caressed their cradles. Local farmers, paid by the government not to grow food, had abandoned the field and left their farm equipment to rust. The summer had been blazing and the ground cracked under the oppressive sun. For the babies, the heat had been ideal, the same as if they had been tucked under their mothers belly. They swayed inside their hard cradles, rocking themselves in and out of dreams. Their mother thought of them always, they could hear her bright thoughts, even from far away, and knew that they were not alone.

In early autumn, when the weather was still warm but the breeze hinted at an approaching winter, the children crawled out of their cradles. The tiny ones were eaten by their stronger siblings, mewing inside broken cradles that were unable to protect them from razor beaks and sucking orifices. The children played, pecking at each other, snapping at autumn leaves, burrowing in the earth and launching themselves a hundred feet into the sky before gliding downwards back to the wild field. Each little explorer listened for the voice of the mother, trying to pin-point that invisible light in the sky from where her voice came. Food came to the field, tempted by the whistling voices, and the children ate together.

Mother’s giant mind, a processor of incomprehensible power, sent the children loving thoughts and strict commands. When they were too big for the field, having ripped the brittle grass and wet the ground, they spread their scaled wings and leaped, soaring towards a higher, bigger playground, a city of steel and glass, glittering in a twilight haze.

Enlightenment

by | Oct 26, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“So you see,” Bigsby slurred, “So you see, that’s why we’re better than you.”

“No,” Jack replied, “I don’t see at all.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll explain it again. It’s like this. The beer, see–” He held up his own glass for demonstration. “The beer is the Earthmen. And these pretzels, well, the pretzels and the wings and the soda, those are all the colonies.”

“So the colonies are the substantial portion of the menu.”

“But the beer is why people come to the bar. Ya gotta have the beer to spice it up a bit.”

“But that’s why people eat the pretzels,” Jack pointed out blandly. “Because they don’t want to feel the effects of the alcohol. Most of the colonies have outlawed beer entirely,” he pointed out, sipping his own Coke in quiet superiority. He hoped immigration would be next on the list.

“But that’s my point! That’s exactly my point.” Bigsby leaned forward, his watery eyes sparkling. “Back here on Earth, why do people drink alcohol?”

“Because they don’t know any better and they don’t want to change.”

“Wrong. That’s not it at all. They do it because they want change. Thank you,” Bigsby added to the bartender, who had just refilled his glass.

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“It’s true. Listen. Why do frat boys drink beer at parties?”

“What do you do for a living?” Jack cut in. He regarded Bigsby like some kind of rare bug specimen.

“I’m an out of work politician.”

Jack sighed. That meant he wouldn’t get out of this without hearing the whole lecture. At least it would make a great scathing editorial when he got back to Mars. “All right, go on. Why do frat boys drink beer at parties? Aside from the obvious answers of immaturity and poor upbringing.”

“Forget the frat boys, then. Why does anyone drink alcohol? Why does a perfectly sane, well-kempt, mature Earthman go out for a pint with his mates? Because he wants things to change. He wants to push the boundaries, wants to test the limits of himself. He wants to put himself in an abnormal situation and see if he gets an abnormal response. In short, he wants stimulus, and that’s something the colonies are never going to have.” Bigsby gestured widely with his glass, sloshing a respectable amount of beer onto the bar. “What’s the last innovation the colonies have come up with? The latest invention? Have there been any?”

Jack glowered at the increasingly annoying Earthman. “You can’t possibly be saying that an era of peace, prosperity, and enlightenment is a bad thing. Our laws are the best in the universe. They promote the way of life that we want to live.”

“Conflict is a catalyst,” Bigsby replied, eyes widening in an attempt to look wise. Jack remembered it as a catch phrase on the cover of the latest USA Today.

“Don’t go looking for work on Mars,” he told Bigsby shortly, setting the money for his drink on the bar.

“Stay on Earth a while,” Bigsby called after him from the barstool. “I’ll take you out. We’ll go watch pro wrestling!”

Jack was already writing the editorial in his head.