Patchers

by | Oct 2, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Talia looked out over the cacophonous melee of engineers in the warehouse. Each of them bustled about; porcupines of fused wiring and welding tools. It made her so proud. A rapid metallic pounding announced the arrival of a messenger.

“Take it easy, Dobs. What ya got for me?” Talia brushed her fingers back through curly white hair, curiously awaiting his news.

“Tex says there’s been another breach. Some knucklehead dropped an X33 flyer on the Italy. Accounts say it was witnessed by a whole village.” Dobs made no effort to conceal his stare. It wasn’t necessary. Talia’s eyes became unfocused and eventually closed. Dobs had heard of this before but had never actually seen the progenitor at work.

Slowly one hand made its way to her abdomen. After a few seconds her body snapped to attention. Her eyes opened and Dobs noticed for the first time that they were the precise green of new leaves in springtime.

“I got an idea.” She said, incandescent with excitement. “Have Fells and Watson make up an architect mold, have this one be a genius, draw with one hand, write with the other at the same time sort-of-thing.” Dobs turned to carry out her order. “But we need to have him be subtle.” She turned and watched the engineers working, piecing together life-like models of individuals from all manner of places and times.

“Call it DaVinci. He’ll be a jack-of-all-trades. But for God’s sake make sure his work is programmed to invent the X33 flier. Some crude form of it.” Dobs’ face showed his amazement. Standing up he wiped off his greasy hands and regained his professional composure. “I don’t know how you do it, Tal. Government asks us to fix problems left and right and you just keep coming up with ideas. Ancient Rome, Middle Ages, hell, even 20th century. How?”

Her glance up at the dome roof, the way it curved and rounded out, gave her away. “We’re Patchers, Dobs. When they make a mistake, no matter what time or era, it’s my job to ensure we don’t mess it all up. Now, get the message to Tex.” Dobs nodded and began to trek back down to the main floor.

“Oh, and Dobs? Give it to Leon for inspection before we ship it out. Have him give it a first name.”

“You got it, Tal.” Dobs saluted and went on his way.

Checking Out

by | Sep 28, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“Any personal belongings you’ll need accommodated in your craft, Mr. Mercer?”

“Nope.” John shook his head at the distribution agent before him. “No baggage.”

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.

Late

by | Sep 27, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

In the full body cycle Linda’s chest burned, sweat slipping into her eyebrows. She could feel their eyes on her, the children watching the old woman strain. The lines of her skin betrayed her. Generations blended, their cells dividing perfectly, making exact copies, eternally renewed. She pressed her arms and legs into faster rotation.

Last night she lay with her lover, his head on her naked breast, silent, exhausted, fulfilled. He traced his fingers over her body, touching the tiny red dots that marked her age. He pressed his nail harder with each mark, pinching her skin.

“Can’t you get rid of these?” She stiffened.

“Gregory, I was stabilized late.” His soft face twisted.

“I know, I just thought there might be some treatment.” She shook her head.

“There isn’t. They’ve stopped looking into those problems a long time ago.” He rolled his eyes and bit his lip, like a child denied its favorite toy.

“Are you sure? Have you asked your doctor?” She laid her hand on his soft curls and swallowed. She wanted to sound firm, but her voice was small.

“No. There isn’t anything.” He rose and sat on the edge of the bed. His back was a blank screen.

“It just looks like you don’t care.”

Linda spun faster till she could feel her heartbeat, till the sweat salt reached her chin. Around her, the frozen faces of youth skipped blithely though the gym routines, perfect curves in infinite wheels.

Favor Fishing

by | Sep 26, 2005 | Story

Malcolm should have been thinking about shrimp, but he was thinking about Sumitra’s smile instead. He hated himself for it, but he was almost glad for the leak in the shrimp pond, since it gave him an excuse to call her. And Sumitra’s voice was well worth the cost of a call from Lee County to Bangkok, or wherever the heck she lived.

Whether it was worth asking a favor from Clem Greentower, well, that was another matter entirely. Sumitra did smile on the phone’s display screen when she saw it was Malcolm calling. She’d only been doing that recently. And that smile went a long way.

“Clem, I need to borrow your boys.” Malcolm shifted from one foot to another. The itinerate glow of Clem’s bug zapper made Malcolm uncomfortable. He twitched every time a mosquito got too close and the passive azure energy erupted. Mosquitoes were as big as Malcolm’s thumb this year, and their charred husks littered Clem’s porch.

Clem regarded Malcolm with folded arms. “Whatcha need ’em for? I know for a fact that you ain’t got no more stumps.” Clem was not a tall man, but he made up for it in girth and attitude. “They sure as hell ain’t plowin’ your field for you.”

“Aww, Clem, I wouldn’t ask for them to plow. I’m hurt you said that. ‘Sides, you know as well as I do that the state won’t let me plant tobacco on Pa’s field no more.” Malcolm searched for sympathy in Clem’s face, but found none. “Shoot, Clem. I just need ‘em to walk around.”

“Walk around?”

“Yessir. See, my shrimp pond—the one the state suggested I put on Pa’s land ‘stead of tobacco—my shrimp pond has a leak.”

“You can just put Hydrochlrone in it, cantcha?”

“Nope, that’ll kill the shrimp. Now, I called my friend Sumitra. She does this sorta thing up in Thailand, and she says to just let some cattle graze around the pond to compact the earth. There ain’t been cows within miles of this county since the plant went, Clem. But I got to thinking, you been giving your boys beef hormones since they’ve been old enough to crawl.”

“You just gonna have ‘em walk? I charge for labor, you know.”

“I’m aware of that, Clem. You can ask ’em when I’m done if they did anything but circle the pond.”

“I will, too.” Clem said. “‘Spose you want ’em now?”

“If it ain’t a bother.” Clem grunted and went back inside the house. Malcolm removed his cap to scratch at his hairless scalp, and watched as another mosquito twitched its last. He didn’t know why he felt the need to mention Sumitra. Covered in the blue light, Malcolm felt very exposed.

Clem’s boys pounded out of the front door, five love-children of some epic tryst of an elephant and a refrigerator, the blue light glinting off their bald heads. Four of the boys had moonstruck, glazed-over faces, save for the oldest, who’s mind probably had the most time to develop before his father took nature into his own hands and stunted the developing grey matter with muscle steroids.

“Pa said we’re suppose to go with you, Mister.”

“Well, you best come on then,” Malcolm said, and led the boys onto the bed of his pick-up. Malcolm’s truck was not an old model, but it strained under the weight nonetheless.

Down at the shrimp pond, Malcolm gave the boys as much direction as he could, then busied himself by dumping bags of sugar into the pond water.

“That ain’t sugar, is it?” the eldest of Clem’s boys asked.

“Yep, it is.”

“Whatcha puttin’ it in the pond for?”

“It’s to control the PH bal…it’s to fix the acid it…it’s to make the shrimp sweeter.”

“Oh! That’s really smart!”

“Yeah, it is. My friend Sumitra told me about it. She’s a smart girl.” There he was, bringing her up again! If Malcolm could, he’d kick himself in the ass.

“Is she your girlfriend? Are you gonna get married?”

“I seriously doubt it. She ain’t gonna want some poor son of a tobacco farmer who’s been on this land so long he ain’t got no hair and his piss glows in the dark.”

“I dunno, she might. You don’t know.” Clem’s eldest contemplated joining his brothers walking around the pond, but thought better of it, and turned his attention back to Malcolm. “I got a girlfriend. Least, I like her a lot. Her name’s Chablis. She’s got the prettiest hair.”

That would be Chablis Levee, Malcolm thought. He remembered her from school. “She wears a wig, you know.”

“She does? Huh.” Malcolm watched the gummed-up mental calculations necessary to process this new information play across the boy’s face. “I guess it don’t matter. I like her anyway. It looks good on her. I think she likes me, too. She smiles whenever she sees me.”

“That’s usually a good sign.”

“Thought so. That’s why I smiled back. One day, I’m definitely gonna ask to hold her hand.” The boy’s giant eyes shifted down to Malcolm’s bags. “Can I have some of your sugar?” Malcolm couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Sure thing. Just don’t tell your Pa.”

“Oh, I won’t.” The titan offspring of Clem Greentower licked a gargantuan finger and jammed it into a sugar bag, only to quickly shove it deep in his mouth. “Oh, man. That’s good. I don’t think that anything could ever be better than that, ever.”

Malcolm found himself doing the same with his own finger. “You’re right. That is good.”

“You’re a good man, Mister,” Clem’s boy said. “I like you. You ever hold your girlfriend’s hand?”

“No, I…I haven’t. She lives…I just haven’t.”

“You should ask. I bet she’d let you if you asked. It never hurts to ask.”

Licensed

by | Sep 24, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Slug eased himself onto the barstool, a lazy grin on his face. His hair had been professionally tussled that evening, and with his new hologreather jacket, he was confident in his irresistibility.

“Start me up a tab, barkeep,” Slug said, withdrawing his credit card and inebriation license. With a movement made automatic by constant practice, he placed both cards in the bartender’s hand while not losing eye-contact with the azure-coifed beauty across the room. No point in wasting time, Slug thought. “Gimmie a Mai Tai and send one over to that girl with the blue hair.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the bartender said. “But there aren’t enough points on your license for a single Mai Tai, much less two.”

Slug scowled, and forced himself to look at the bartender. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“How about a gin and tonic?”

“I’m very sorry, but you don’t have enough points for that either.”

“How many do I have?”

“For alcohol? None.”

“What? How can that be?”

“Let’s see…it says here that three days ago you apparently called three ex-girlfriends while under the influence of alcohol, causing a deduction. There was a bar-fight last Thursday that you participated in—no, I’m sorry, instigated. And then there was your sister’s wedding—”

“I know what I did at Shelia’s wedding.” At least, Slug knew what they said he did at his sister’s wedding. It was all sort of a blur.

“That poor flower girl…” said the bartender, scanning the report.

“Forget alcohol,” Slug said. “How about some cocaine?”

“Not after your last misadventure with it. I wouldn’t go back to that aquarium anytime soon, either.”

“Ecstasy?”

“Nope.” The bartender cocked an eyebrow. “Forty poodles? All of them?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” The blue-haired girl was now deep in conversation with a guy sporting leopard-print facial stubble. Slug pinched his nose in frustration. “What can I get?”

The bartender placed two pill capsules in front of him. Slug looked at the bartender’s grin in askance.

“Diet pills and ginseng, sir. The finest in the house!”

Slug weighed his options. It didn’t take very long. “I’ll take ‘em.”

“Excellent, sir. Shall I send some over to the young lady?”

“You know what? I think I’ll just take these to go. Think I’m gonna spend the night in.”