Short Writings

The Heavy Darkness

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There’s a feeling, Elle considered to herself, that can come from darkness.

She clutched the slightly bent tire iron closer to herself as she tried to see further, blinking her eyes in a futile attempt to help her night vision.  All around her, the shadows grew deep and thick before congealing into a solid mass of impenetrable blankness.

Elle normally felt accustomed to darkness.  She was, after all, a creature of the half-dark, spending most of her waking hours prowling in the twilight.  It was always a delicate balancing act; she had to wait until the sun had sank down to kiss the horizon, to the point when most of the other bands of hunters would have already set up their camps and turned in for the night.

But Elle also knew that for each moment she waited, the sun grew a little dimmer, and her window shrank.  And if she waited too long, darkness would come sweeping over her like a crashing wave of surf.  That darkness brought its own terrors with it, far more ephemeral than the bands of hunters, but just as deadly.

Tonight, the darkness felt especially thick…

Up ahead, she spied the outline of a door, and Elle leapt forward.  The door was locked, of course, but she managed to dig the pointed end of the tire iron into the gap and wedge the door open enough for her slender frame to slip inside.

Out of habit, she hit the light switch, even though she knew the power had gone out years ago.  It was a habit, left over from those vague memories of when the switches had still worked, when humans had still held off the darkness.

She shone her headlamp around the room, taking in the disheveled appearance.  Someone had ransacked this little habitation already, but it looked like they’d just done a quick sweep.  There were always more treasures left behind, goodies that a little scavenger like Elle could use.

She was so focused on rummaging through the piles of disorganized goods that she didn’t see the darkness creeping in through the gap between the front door and the frame.

Behind Elle, tendrils of that curiously thick, heavy darkness crept in, sliding along the walls and ceiling.  They moved curiously, as though they were two-dimensional, only painted across the three dimensions of the room.  They slid over precariously balanced piles of junk without disturbing a single item.

Elle’s hands were deep in the pile, but she wrenched her whole body back with a cry of success as the dented but still sealed can came free.  The effort sent her tumbling backwards – and her cry died in her throat as she landed on her back and stared up at the tentacles rapidly combining on the room’s stained ceiling.

“What?” she gasped out, her voice sounding strangled.  She tried to aim her light up towards the ceiling, but although the darkness shrank back slightly, it didn’t peel and burn away under her light’s glare.

A scratching sound made Elle spin around, staring with wide eyes at the door.  Something was tugging at the door, trying to drag it further open.  Something out in the darkness.

“Is anyone there?” she half-whispered, trying to feel around for where she’d dropped her tire iron, her eyes locked on the door’s outline as it rapidly disappeared into that thick darkness.

“No,” came the whisper back, drifting in from a hundred dead, dusty mouths.

Elle’s head whipped around.  The words sounded as though they’d come from every direction at once – and as she tried to scramble back to her feet, tiny filaments slid out from the darkness that now painted every corner and wall of the room around her.

“No one’s here,” the darkness whispered softly.  The tire iron cut through a dozen threads with each swing, but a hundred took their place, moving in on the terrified girl.  “No one is here.”

As those threads wrapped around her limbs, leaching the life and light from her body, Elle tried to scream – but the darkness absorbed even that last cry.

“No one is here.”

And when the darkness in the room seemed to grow less oppressive, less heavy and dense, those words were true.

Writing Prompt: Who owns samurai swords?

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Normally, I’d consider the curved samurai sword out of place.  Who expects to find an actual sword in an office building, even in a gigantic executive’s office like this?

At the moment, however, the sword looked like salvation – if I could only reach it.

Trying not to draw attention to myself, I flexed my arms, testing the ropes that bound me to the chair.  The coil looped around me several times, but I could feel it budge ever so slightly when I strained my muscles.

Maybe, just maybe, I had a chance.

“And now, Mr. Smith,” spoke up the man standing in front of me.  “What in the world are we going to do with you?”

He’d been turned away from me, staring out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the entire far wall.  Dressed in a suit as dark as midnight, he looked as though he belonged in this setting.  Only the dark, dangerous little glint in his shark-like eyes revealed that he was no corporate executive.

The man stepped over to stand in front of me, crouching down slightly in his elegant black suit.  He shook his head back and forth, spreading a sorrowful expression across his face.

That expression never quite managed to touch those flat black eyes, however.

“And it’s repeated offenses, too,” he sighed.  “Sneaking around our operation multiple times, taking pictures.  You’re going to have to tell me where you sent those, by the way.  This underhanded dealing – it’s just not how things should be done.”

I tried to stare back at the man, but my eyes must have flicked over towards the sword on the wall.  The man caught the look, and he stood up, stretching out his knee joints as he walked over to lift the blade off the wall.

“Not bad,” he commented with a note of approval, swinging the sword in a lazy circle.  “Of course, I doubt the man who owns this office has ever put it to use.  Probably just enjoys the delusion of imagining himself as an assassin.”

In a sudden movement, faster than I could blink, the man had the blade of the sword pressed up against my neck, its tip digging into my soft skin.  “Rather ironic, that is,” he continued, allowing himself a small smile.

I tried not to swallow, feeling that cold steel point digging into my skin.

“Now, once more, Mr. Smith,” the man repeated, moving in closer as he held the blade against my bare neck.  “The pictures.  We both know that you’re going to die tonight, but there are so many appendages I can remove before that finally happens.  Let’s be civilized, here.”

One of the burly, muscle-bound thugs standing at the doorway behind me sniggered.  I hadn’t seen them move since they’d dumped me in the chair, but I knew they’d stuck around.  “Civilized,” the man grunted to himself, apparently enjoying the joke.

I saw the shark eyes flick up, and I knew the thug had just made a mistake.  Again moving with that blurred, unbelievable speed, the man lunged past me, and I heard a sniggering cut off with a wet gurgle.

“Something funny?” the man in the suit hissed, some movement of his eliciting another gurgle.  “Come now, laugh!  A severed carotid, isn’t that hilarious?”

A moment later, I heard the thump of a heavy body dropping to the floor, and I knew that I was out of time.

The samurai sword appeared once more, this time draping across my shoulder from behind me.  I could see dark red blood staining the gleaming silver of the blade.  “Now, Mr. Smith,” the man in the suit hissed, his breath hot against the ear.  “I’m very quickly losing my patience.”

I nodded – and then threw my head back, putting as much force into the movement as I could manage.

The man almost dodged.

He pulled his head out of the way, at least, so my backwards headbutt didn’t smash in his nose and face as I intended.  That sword drew across my shoulder, leaving a burning line of fire.

But he couldn’t get all the way out of my path – and the back of my chair slammed into his shoulders, knocking him backwards onto the ground.

And a moment later, I fell on top of him.

The chair cracked from the blow against the floor, and I felt sudden slackness in the bonds around me.  I tugged my arms free and struggled to free myself, even as the man trapped beneath me howled and furiously clawed at me to get free.

He managed to pull out from beneath me, but I had both arms and one of my legs disentangled from the broken chair.  The man rolled in a somersault and burst to his feet, his teeth bared in a twisted grimace, but I kicked myself free as he turned to face me.

The sword was still clutched in the man’s hand, and he spun it in a silver flurry of metal.  “Come here, Mr. Smith,” he hissed, death leaping through the air in front of him.

I turned tail and ran, past the corpse of the thug behind me and his shocked companion.  My foot caught at the raised mantel of the office’s entrance, but I caught at the door, keeping myself from falling and throwing it shut behind me as I fled.

A split second later, with a sound like an axe striking a tree, the samurai sword pierced through the door.  I stared back at the solid foot and a half of quivering steel poking through my side of the office door.  The blade’s point terminated less than an inch from my wide eye.

And then, after that brief instant of paralyzing fear, my body recovered, and I hurtled myself away, back down the empty office building towards the ground floor and escape.

Back up in the office, the man stepped forward and, with a slight grunt, wrenched the sword free of where his throw had embedded it in the door to the office.  The remaining grunt watched him, trying to evaluate his own chances of surviving the next five minutes.

Those chances looked slimmer by the second.

“What now, sir?” he ventured.

The man in the suit sighed, brushing one hand over the fine fabric to remove a few specks of dust.  Even when he’d slit the throat of the first thug, he’d avoided getting a single drop of blood on his clothes.

With practice came experience, he supposed.

“Now?” he repeated back.  “Now, we wait for Mr. Smith to return home – and then we follow the tracker in his pocket to him.  It’s a bit like mice.  Do you know how to kill a nest of mice?”

The thug shook his head, wondering where this was leading.

The man in the suit grinned.  “The best way, in my experience, is to strap a small explosive to one of the mice – and then let it go,” he said.  “The mouse will retreat back to its nest, where the explosive will kill not only itself, but also its brethren.  Quite an elegant solution.”

“So that Mr. Smith is the mouse,” the thug guessed, trying to follow the metaphor.

“Yes,” the man in the suit confirmed.  He stepped over to behind the desk and bent down.  When he stood up, a gray brick sat in his hand, with a small electronic attachment embedded in it.

He stepped over and handed the brick to the thug.  “And you,” the man concluded, grinning, “are the explosive.”

[The Kung War] First Contact

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Frisson (n): a sudden, passing sensation of excitement; a shudder of emotion; thrill

Michael Frederick paused as he strolled along the road, his nose wrinkling slightly.  Something smelled off, he thought to himself.  He took a deep breath of air, and frowned as the word “acrid” wandered through his mind.

For a moment, he glanced down at the muddy road beneath his feet.  “Road” was an optimistic term for it, he thought to himself with a touch of wryness.  The dirt track leading back to his little town of Deven Ride was splashed with puddles and ruts from farmer’s wagons, adding to the already thick layer of dirt coating his boots.

All around him, the scene was quiet, pastoral.  The rolling hills of Idris around him undulated gently, the nearly four foot high crops swaying back and forth in the soft breeze.  If Mike ignored the second moon glowing faintly even in the brightness of the early afternoon sky, he could pretend that he still stood back in the fields of his childhood home in Iowa.

His farmer’s eyes instinctively scanned the horizon.  There!  Up ahead of him, a thin plume of smoke rose up above the crops.  The wind carried the hint of smoky ash towards him.

“Damn,” Mike cursed, quickening his pace slightly.  Deven Ride, the little village that he and Kate called home lay in that direction.  His boots splashed in the shallow puddles as he stomped along, fighting the sucking mud.

Could something have caught fire?  Usually the Ehftians were pretty good at getting any accidental fires put out pretty quickly.  A necessary skill, considering that they still built most structures out of wood.  On Idris, the trees grew quickly, and their small community needed far more material than they could fabricate with the tech they’d brought over.

At first, Mike had balked at the idea of settling on this new world.  “I’m not a settler,” he had protested, standing over the kitchen table in their cramped little apartment. “And you know how aliens make me uncomfortable.”

“But you are a farmer,” Kate had replied serenely, looking as calm and composed as she sat at the table as Mike had ever seen her.  “And I know you’re miserable here, in the city.  You miss gazing out at fields of crops.”

Mike shook his head, but they both knew that Kate was correct.  Even now, in the midst of this debate, he felt a surge of affection towards his wife.  She was the best thing to happen to him, and he still sometimes couldn’t believe that, when she took his diner order all those years ago, he’d managed to summon up the courage to ask for her number.

A farmer and a waitress, he had thought to himself, shaking his head ruefully as he settled down at the kitchen table across from his wife.  Two of the most unlikely choices for interplanetary settlers that anyone could pick.

“Okay,” he finally gave in, after a long sigh.  “Tell me about this crazy plan of yours.”

And Kate told him.

The planet was twenty-seven light years away, discovered several centuries ago and given the name Idris, after the prophet.  Humanity knew it was habitable, but Idris’s borders only recently opened up for immigration.  “The Ehft technically control the planet, but they’re opening it up to us as a sign of goodwill,” his wife read from the pamphlet she’d brought home.  “It’s a little milder climate than Earth, slightly higher gravity.  And it’s got great soil, a lot like our own planet.”

There had been more debate, of course, but Mike and Kate both already knew the final outcome.  Kate had made up her mind, and although a strong man in many respects, Mike was perenially powerless to argue against her.

Now, four years later, he looked back on that decision as one of the best in his life.

Sure, settling on Idris hadn’t been easy.  The Ehft, stocky meter-tall feathery creatures that reminded Mike of old drawings of Kiwi birds, proved to be friendly enough.  Their beaks gave their speech a curious clipped accent, but they quickly mastered Galactic English, and Mike even picked up some phrases in their curious squawking tongue.  He sometimes felt like a giant when he passed through a crowd of the short little aliens, but they were always polite and cordial in their greetings.

Mike reflected on the strange little aliens for a moment.  They weren’t what the farmer would call “his people,” that much was certain.  But they were agreeable, in their own little way.  They always inquired about Kate, and now asked about little Ethan’s health as well.  Mike always smiled when he replied.  In some way, the little birdlike Ehft reminded him of his own child.

After some thought, he and his wife chose a plot of land on the northern continent, inland but near a river.  The climate proved as mild as promised, and although fluctuating rain levels sometimes made him worry about their crops, the river’s irrigation proved a blessing.  His house sat in the little village of Deven Ride, a larger mother bird surrounded by the smaller Ehftian dome-shaped huts.

That little village was just over the next hill.  Still eyeing that plume of smoke with concern, Mike picked up his pace, cutting through the nearest field and climbing up until he could see over the waving crops.

As he crested the hill, he stopped, staring.

The village hadn’t been laid out in any real order.  The Ehft tended to add more homes as their population grew, spreading out in all directions without any true pattern.  But they had made sure to leave a central green, where the Ehft youngsters flapped and bounced off each other.  Mike and Kate imagined that Ethan would soon be running about as well, once he grew steadier on his chubby feet.  Normally, the village reminded Mike of a cluster of mushrooms.

But now, those mushrooms were smoldering and scattered.  Something must have happened, Mike thought blankly to himself as he stared down, trying to make sense of the chaos in front of him.  A meteor strike of some sort, perhaps?

Several of the Ehftian domes looked flattened, completely demolished.  Others looked shattered, burnt and blackened.  Several of the round homes still burned, sending up that plume of smoke.

Where were the Ehft? Mike thought wildly, taking another step down the hill towards the village.  Surely, they would be hurrying to extinguish those fires!

But his eyes fell on an object in the middle of the village and he stopped, staring.

A large, bulbous shape sat in the middle of the destruction, its oval shape distorted by strange blobby growths.  Several short rods protruded from some of those blisters, and with a thrill of terror, Mike realized that he was looking at some sort of armed spaceship.

The ship didn’t look like any he’d seen, either Ehftian or Terran.  But who else could it be?

Movement suddenly caught Mike’s eye.  There!  An Ehft came scurrying out of the wreckage of one of the huts, sprinting across the charred ground.

Mike started to call out, but as his mouth opened, some thrown object shot out from between the huts, and the Ehft stumbled and collapsed with a cry.  As Mike stared in confusion and horror, a new creature emerged from behind one of the huts, advancing on the injured little birdlike alien.

This new creature stood on two legs, like Mike, with a bipedal body, but that was where the similarities ended.  Instead of two arms, it had four, and it looked almost unnaturally thin.  In one of its four arms, it brandished a nasty-looking knife, which it kept pointed at the whimpering Ehft.

Invaders!  Mike’s mind still reeled, but he crouched back, down amid the cover of the plants around him.  The Ehft whimpered again, prompting the attacker to deliver a savage kick.  It made some sort of noise, a harsh scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard, and then raised the long knife in its hands.  Standing over the injured Ehft, it lifted the blade high.

Mike tore his eyes away, but he still heard the crunch and the organic sound that followed.

It still didn’t make sense!  Some sort of unknown alien race, attacking out of the blue?  And why pick their little farming community on Idris?  There was no military presence here, no valuable strategic base.

Confusion weighed heavily on Mike’s mind – but beneath it, he felt a rising tide of burning, furious anger.  The little bird couldn’t have meant any harm!  And this alien had butchered it without a thought!

He heard another squawk, and dragged his attention back down at the ruins of the village.  The six-limbed alien had advanced on one of the still-standing huts, knocking down the door.  Another Ehft scurried outside, clearly cringing away from the weapon in the attacker’s hands.

More movement danced around this Ehft’s legs, and Mike’s blood suddenly turned to ice in his veins as he squinted.  There were chicks, little Ehft youngsters, clinging to their mother’s legs!

It didn’t seem to make a difference to the attacker.  The sword’s blade flashed again, and the Ehft collapsed.  The chicks squealed in alarm and fear, trying to cluster up against their fallen parent.  The alien just grunted, bringing its blade up again for another slaughtering strike.

The boiling anger overflowed.  Without thought, Mike was on his feet, charging forward.  Aliens or not, the little chicks were helpless!  And this attacker was going to slaughter them?  Never!

The six-limbed alien glanced up at the sound of his pounding footsteps, but Mike was moving too quickly for the alien to react.  It tried to bring the blade around, but Mike tackled it, his weight bringing them both to the ground.

Those four limbs scrabbled at Mike, but his vision was edged with red, and he barely felt as slashes cut through his clothes.  He slammed an elbow down, grinning with bitter, humorless satisfaction as something crunched beneath the blow.

His questing hand closed on something hard, something of cool metal.  The blade slid into his hand awkwardly, but he brought it around, slamming it over and over into the creature beneath him until its spasms ceased.

Mike rose up uncertainly to his feet.  The Ehft youngsters had scattered, probably out into the fields.  He stared around at the burning village, suddenly feeling overwhelmed.  He glanced down at the six-limbed alien at his feet, but the creature sprawled, clearly dead.  No creature, human or alien, could survive with its chest shattered like that.

His thoughts felt like sludge, mired and lost in fog.  The blade, still clutched in his hand, felt heavy and useless.

He stood in a waking nightmare.  All around him, little Ehft lay in motionless piles of feathers, while their homes and structures burned.

And then, piercing down to his very soul, he heard the scream.

This wasn’t the squawking cry of an Ehft.  This scream was uniquely human, the shriek of a woman in mortal danger.

Kate.

His heart stopped, and all conscious thought ceased inside the Terran’s mind.

*

The two Kung cautiously entered the house.  This building seemed larger than the little huts surrounding it.  They didn’t anticipate trouble, but both clutched their scimitari in their more powerful upper hands.

Outside, their companions were probably cutting down the last of the little bird-creatures that populated this planet.  There was little honor in killing such weak and worthless opponents, but their duty was to exterminate.  And perhaps, this Kung considered hopefully, this larger building would contain a chieftain of some sort, whose death would bring them more honor.

There!  One of the Kung caught a hint of motion, and leapt forward.  His kick shattered the closed door, and the sentient on the other side let out a loud cry and shrank back.

No bird-creature, this!  Larger, the Kung observed, nearly as tall as he stood.  But flabby, with none of his deadly thinness.  Only two arms, not four.  Pale skin, clutching what looked like a smaller version of itself to its chest.  The smaller, perhaps a juvenile, stared at the Kung with large, watery eyes.

The creature let out another scream, trying to back away from the Kung.  No fighter, this one.  Not worth much honor.  But the Kung were here to purge these lesser sentients.  He raised his scimitari and advanced.

From behind, the Kung heard a pounding sound, drawing closer.  Something approaching?  His companion turned, brandishing the knife and watching the door.

Something burst in, slamming into the Kung nearer to the door with a roar of deep-throated rage.  It yelled something, but even if the Kung could have understood the language, the words blended together into a cry of raw, unhinged emotion.

“I’ll kill you I’ll kill youkillyoukillyoukillkillkill you I’ll kill you kill you I’ll kill you-“

It was another one of these flabby two-armed alien creatures!  Larger and more muscular than the cowering specimen – a male, perhaps?  But even as the Kung drew this connection, his fellow slumped back, as the screaming alien slammed a scimitari over and over into his fellow Kung’s carapace.

Grinning, the Kung turned towards this new threat, hefting his own scimitari.  This, now, this was a fight that promised honor!  He squared off, one blade forward to defend, the other drawn back and poised to strike.

This screaming, raging alien didn’t bother with any form, however.  He threw himself forward, still bellowing at the Kung.

“You hurt her I’ll kill you kill you kill kill killyoukillyou I’ll kill-“

Its first strike was sloppy, wild.  The Kung parried the attack and brought his own blade around to counter, slicing open a line along the alien’s flabby arm.

But then the Kung made his first mistake.

Another Kung, after failing on the attack, would have pulled back and recalculated, planning its second assault.  But this screaming, shouting alien didn’t pause.  Even as strangely red blood erupted from its arm, it slammed the injured limb forward, knocking the Kung off balance from sheer fury.  Its leg swept forward as well, smashing against the Kung’s own leg and upsetting his battle stance.  They both toppled backward.

On the ground, the Kung kicked back wildly against this alien on top of him.  It never entered the Kung’s mind that he might be losing this fight.  He was trained to win, to always seek victory.

Another hit scored, this time along the alien’s ribcage!  The Kung felt his knife sink in deeply, and knew that he’d won.  Victory, as he’d been trained to seek!

Yet still the alien flailed at him.  It howled in pain, but still didn’t retreat.  Did this creature not know reason?  Was it some sort of berserker?

That wondering thought was the second-last thing to pass through the Kung’s mind.

The last thing was the blade of the alien’s scimitari, stolen from his fallen companion, piercing his skull and turning the Kung’s brains to pulp.

*

The six-limbed creature slumped back, still twitching, and Mike found himself thinking again.

He stared down at the thing, below him.  His final, desperate attack, guided by unthinking rage, literally nailed the creature to the floor of the farmhouse.  His hands dripped blue gore, coated up to the elbow.

Mike raised his eyes to Kate, who still clutched little Ethan to his chest.  “Are you-“ he began, unable to even finish the sentence.

She nodded, shaking off her paralysis and rushing forward to him.  “You’re hurt, Mike!  We have to-“

He waved her off, even as the pain hit him and he doubled over, clutching at his side.  “No!” he rasped, covering the wound in his stomach, unwilling to let her see.  “You have to get Ethan out of here.  Get to safety – tell someone about this-“

“I can’t!”  Now she was sobbing as well, her hands grabbing at him, sounding almost hysterical.  “What about you-“

His teeth gritted as he fought the pain, Mike pulled himself back up to his feet.  “There could be more of these things out there,” he said, picking up the dead monster’s knife with his good hand.  “You go.  I’ll hold them off.”

Kate shook her head, but Mike leaned up against her, kissing her softly, almost tenderly, on the cheek.  “Please,” he begged her, his voice a hoarse whisper.  “I can’t – I need for you to be safe.  I need it, more than anything.”

Now, Kate was weeping as well, their tears mingling together as she embraced him.  “Oh, Mike,” she sobbed, holding him for what they both knew would be the last time.  “Mike, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Mike whispered back, meaning the words with all his heart.

After a moment, however, another spasm of pain hit his body, and he straightened back up.  “Now, go!  Away from the ship, and don’t look back.  Head for Caemlyn, over the hill – they’ll have a radio.  Keep Ethan safe.”

Kate nodded, and although her eyes shone with still more tears, she managed to straighten up, showing off the iron spine she possessed.  Mike saw that iron, knew it for the surge of love it summoned up within him.  He watched as the love of his life picked up their son, who still stared, too young to understand, and headed out the back door of their farmhouse.

As she left, Mike staggered back to the front door.  Still clutching the stolen knife from his dead foe, he stared up at the bulbous, ugly ship that stood in the middle of the destroyed village.

“Fuck you,” he growled under his breath, as he started forward.  Once again, the redness crept into the corners of his vision, letting him ignore the burning pain.

*

“Odd.”

The Kung commander narrowed his eyes as he turned to the subordinate officer who’d dared to speak aloud.  “What is it, navigator?” he growled, considering executing the impertinent officer right there for daring to speak without addressing him by his proper title.

The juvenile officer, perhaps not realizing his error, gestured down at the screen below him.  “One of our shuttles, victor.  It’s coming back up – but we received no signal before its launch.”

Now, at least, the officer used the proper term of respect.  The commander leaned over the display panel, watching as the little dot representing the landing craft rose up from the planet’s surface.  “It’s moving quite fast,” he observed.

“Yes, victor.  In fact, it should be visible on the main screen in a moment.”

They both raised their eyes up to the main display, higher than the other screens.  Sure enough, there was the flare of the approaching shuttle.  Its flight path seemed very erratic, and the engines looked out of sync, but it was definitely headed towards them – and accelerating.  Whoever sat behind the ship’s controls clearly hadn’t piloted a vessel like this before, but the ship still advanced – rapidly.

“It’s not diverting its course towards the docking bay, victor,” the navigation officer commented unnecessarily.  Everyone on the ship’s deck could see that, whatever the shuttle was doing, it wasn’t changing course.

The commander sprang into action as the shuttle continued to grow larger.  “Open a line of communication to its comm!” he demanded, waving a hand at the communications officer.

That Kung was already flying his fingers over his keyboard.  “Shuttle 23, this is the main ship,” he called into the microphone.  “To avoid a collision, cut speed and shift heading to-“

The growled, half-garbled response that came back over the channel made no sense to the Kung.  Their ship’s computers could perhaps have created some sort of translation, given enough time, but time was one advantage that they no longer possessed.

For just a moment, before the shuttle slammed into the side of the warship at full power and underwent cataclysmic meltdown of its main drive core, the Kung commander frowned at the nonsensical sounds from the shuttle.

“Fuck you!”

#

*Author’s note: Yes, this will (probably) be a series!  I really want the chance to try and develop some good characters.  Personally, it’s that defiant middle finger, fighting back against impossible odds because it’s the honorable thing to do, that gives me a sense of frisson, that chill running down my spine.  That’s what I want to capture here.

Viruses.

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Excerpt taken from a recording stored in the archives of the Maximegalon Institute, c.o./ZB.

Viruses.

Funny things, aren’t they?  Little buggers, not really alive.  Just a protein coat as a shell, wrapped around the most distilled and basic instruction of life.

Multiply.

Heck, some don’t even have a protein coat at all.  Naked DNA, floating through the void in search of a host.  Eternally patient, willing to wait forever.  And when that host comes, the virus exults in a brief flurry of wild, carefree activity, growing and spreading and conquering all in its path, before once again returning back to dormancy.

Most races try not to think about viruses much.

Oh, sure, there’s sanitary protocols.  Wash your appendages, don’t mix fecal deposits (a breeding ground for viruses, among their bacterial carriers and victims) with nutrient intake, avoid contact with those who are contaminated.  Well established protocols, all built around containment.

Why not eradication?

Well, it turns out that one of the many things viruses aren’t great at accomplishing is dying.  There are so few moving parts on a virus, you see – nothing’s there to break.

So, for most of existence, life has learned to adapt to viruses.  Contain them, avoid them, try to slow, maybe even stop their spread.

This leads to some… interesting outcomes.

Take the Wheelers, for example.  Quite a unique species – they adapted to the long, flat lava flows on their planets by developing the biological appendage for which we named them.  They quickly criss-crossed their planet, thanks to their high rate of speed.

The virus that brought down the Wheelers struck at this advantage.  A hijacked nervous system driven to crave speed, coupled with aerial dispersion through gas venting, rushed around the planet just as rapidly.  In the end, the Wheelers even bombed their own roads, trying to halt their infected kin.

We’ve had to work this all out from fossil records, of course.  Fortunately, the wheel was made from a biosilicon compound that endured for many millennia, long after the Wheelers themselves all perished.

The Spindle Kings, there’s another example.  That race seemed like one of the most likely to survive a virus – as far as we can tell, they were telepaths, and couldn’t stand crowding.  And for a Spindle King, a thousand members of their species per planet was far too overpopulated.

Naturally enough, the virus that got them traveled over those very same telepathic brain waves.  Like a meme, the message altered and shifted the underlying brain structure, reverberating and building to an overwhelming pitch inside their minds.  The Spindle Kings couldn’t help but broadcast it out.

This time, as well as fossil records, we had the actual records, left by the dying members of the Kings themselves.  Most of the records are incomprehensible gibberish, but some are still barely lucid enough for us to understand.

Perhaps the most dramatic response to a virus we’ve found have been the Kung.  “Bloodthirstiest race in the galaxy,” we call them, and they’re a staple villain of the most popular holotoons.  They conquered every other race they encountered – why not viruses?

Viruses, unfortunately, don’t form impressive lines on the battlefield.  They don’t surrender when surrounded.  They aren’t held back by blockades.

Towards the end, the Kung started slagging their own planets.  That’s the only explanation we can imagine, at least.  How else can we explain the apparently intact skeletons of their civilizations, buried under half a mile of perfectly smooth igneous rock?

How did a virus bring down the Kung?  We’re not sure, of course.  So much of history is unknown, lost to the ravages of time.  And perhaps there’s still a band of Kung out there, roaming, hoping to stay one step ahead of the virus that finally succeeded in conquering their unconquerable civilization, decimating their unstoppable army.

Viruses are a sobering realization of our own mortality.  We’ve tangled with them, of course.  Smallpox nearly wiped out our species before we even left the planet.  HIV followed us up from the surface as we spread, as did rabies.  Influenza still haunts us, and one particularly malevolent strain had us ejecting anyone who sneezed out the nearest airlock.

Even now, we can’t cure viruses.  Not quite.

But we’ve come a long way.  Antivirals block many targets of these viruses, and we can learn from weakened, attenuated strains how to combat their deadlier cousins.  Even when the ancient terror once called Dengue Fever re-emerged, threatening over a dozen star systems, we were able to synthesize enough of the receptor-blocking antidote to contain its wildfire spread.

We thought it normal, of course.  Until we met the Ehft, on the brink of collapse, and learned of humanity’s curse – and our greatest treasure.

As it turns out, we’ve been cursed by many viruses, far more than any other species.  On our ancestral world, well over a hundred thousand viruses still exist, and probably many more lay dormant and hidden.  When the Ehft learned of this fact, they considered this comparable to spending every second of life with a poisoned Sword of Damocles perched inches above one’s head.

Many viruses, all rotating through their own cycles of contagion and regression.  They ravaged our species, slaying us by the millions.

But we endured.  And in survival, we learned to fight them.

We found the Ehft ship drifting, most of its crew already victims of their Feathermoult virus.  We ascertained the totally alien structure of the viral attacker, but not before the last of the Ehft had succumbed.

They did leave us a message, however – the coordinates of their homeworld.

Another dozen solar cycles, and we would have been too late.  Over and over, scholars point to this as our greatest stroke of luck.  The first intelligence not long extinct, and we barely managed to save them!  Even as our ships touched down, the last Ehftians struggled to bury their millions of dead comrades.

It wasn’t until after we had treated them that we realized just how alien the concept of pandemic assistance truly was.

Resistance!  At first, the Ehftians didn’t understand.  And indeed, we soon found a disquieting lack of immune response within their huddled bodies.  Feathermoult didn’t need to overcome their defenses.  They had none to overcome.

When the Ehftians learned of our world, of how we fought off viral invasions almost every solar cycle, they were aghast, nearly to the point of shock.  That we survived even short visits back to our ancestral homeland, much less for long enough to evolve space travel, seemed truly impossible.

When we took to the stars, we brought our most powerful weapons, our most enduring defenses.  We imagined death rays, gamma bursts, entire star systems deployed as annihilation weapons.  Instead, we found ourselves already gifted with incredible immunity to the worst of the universe.

We imagined ourselves humbled before a tribunal of ancient and wise alien races, but we found them destroyed.  We imagined fighting for our lives, but found ourselves instead fighting to save the fragile lives of those we encountered.

Before we left our star system, we tried to build up our best physical defenses, even attempting to warp the very fabric of the universe about ourselves in stasis shields.

Who would have thought that our best defense against the horrors that utterly obliterated the other races would be a handful of specialized white blood cells?

[Retrieval] "Perfectly secure."

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“Perfectly contained.  It’s completely secure.”

The man that some called Hatchet waited, drumming his fingers on the table.  His suit was crisp and freshly ironed, and his bland features wore a look of barely contained boredom.  His fit body aside, the man looked totally unremarkable.  No one would ever pick him out of a crowd.

“We’ve set up dozens of redundant protocols,” the scientist across the table tried again.  “Forget Fort Knox.  This is definitely the most secure installation in the country.”

“It’s true,” his colleague chimed in, looking as anxious as his fellow.  “The entry procedures include a half dozen different checkpoints.  Nothing comes in without our knowledge.”

Hatchet waited another beat for the silence to build before he asked his question.  “And things going out?”

The two scientists exchanged a look.  “Out?” one of them repeated blankly.  “Nothing goes out.”
The man in the suit could have asked more questions, here.  He could have inquired about the details of their security checkpoints, about how they screened incoming cargo, physical connections to the installation site.

He didn’t, however.  Instead, he just let the silence stretch out in front of him.

The men across the table from him waited, and fidgeted.  They reminded Hatchet of young teenagers who’d managed to get their hands on a negotiation manual, he thought to himself.  They knew that silence was a tool to be used, but they weren’t yet comfortable with it.

Hatchet, on the other hand, had all day.

Finally, caving to the pressure, one of the men across the table from him opened his mouth.  “We’ve been instructed to give you all the help that we can offer,” he began, before his mouth ran out of steam.  He lapsed into silence, clearly wishing furiously that this expensive consultant across the table would start doing something.

Finally, Hatchet gave a little nod, more to himself than to his clients.  “Something got out,” he said.

Both of the men nodded.

“And I’m here,” the consultant continued, “to retrieve it for you.”

Another set of nods.

This time, Hatchet nodded back.  “Okay,” he said, settling back in his chair and reaching for the bottle of Fiji water on the table in front of him.  “Tell me about it.”

Both of the men, either from relief of concern, started babbling at the same time.  Hatchet said nothing, merely listening attentively until they both eventually ran out of comments and slipped back into uncomfortable silence.

“Four crystals,” he repeated, watching for the expected nods.  “Enclosed in glass tubes.”

The nods came, just as he’d anticipated.  “Still contained,” one of the scientists insisted.  “Totally secure.”

“Missing.”

“But still secure.”

Hatchet let this minor matter pass.  “And what happens if someone opens one of these glass tubes?” he asked.

“Um, they shouldn’t.  It’s secure-“

The consultant’s glare was enough to make the scientist’s words wither and dry up mid-sentence.  “If they open it, you probably won’t have to worry about retrieval,” he admitted, looking down at his lap.

Waiting.  It stirred tongues to looseness.

“If they somehow opened the tube,” the poor man began, looking miserable.

“-and they removed the crystal-” threw in his companion.

“Yes, and if they removed the crystal, there would be a… a significant explosion.”

Hatchet waited.  “Significant,” he prodded after a moment.

Both men nodded.  “Perhaps sixty megatons,” one of them offered.

For once, Hatchet had to struggle to keep his face blank.  A man in his line of work had to know conversions, especially regarding dangerous weapons.  “Sixty,” he repeated, before he could hold back the words.

Two more nods.  “But no one should open the glass tubes, so it should be okay,” one of the scientists interrupted quickly.

“Yes, the tubes fully prevent any unfortunate reaction.  Perfectly harmless, in the tubes.”

“Completely secure.”

[Retrieval] Meeting the Fence

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Normally, the man they called Broiler preferred to take his time.  He liked to listen to his victim’s screams, savoring how they slowly realized that they wouldn’t escape, that they’d die with him.  He’d only been a bruiser when they threw him behind bars, but he soon found his place on the inside – and he commanded far more respect here than he ever did out on the street.

Broiler liked to savor his jobs.  But today, he moved with uncharacteristic swiftness.

Freddy lay quietly in his bunk, but Broiler didn’t doubt that the little ferret of a man had his ears peeled.  He was fresh meat, after all.  He surely expected to be roughed over.  For all Broiler knew, the man might be concealing a blade or shiv under that thin blanket.

Broiler, however, had the advantage of weight – and surprise.  Before Freddy could even speak out, the electrical cord in the big man’s hands looped around his throat and drew tight.

Broiler leaned down on the body as it jerked and thrashed, sawing back and forth with his hands.  It didn’t take long before the smaller man’s movements ceased.

Still, the bigger bruiser flipped the corpse over, waiting for several minutes to ensure that no life remained.  He’d been given triple his usual rate for this job, and he wasn’t going to let anything foul it up.  Only once he was completely certain that Freddy was dead did he stand up and leave the cell.

#

Koseynko watched the car cruise slowly down the street.  His street.  The tinted windows concealed the identity of the driver, but the car itself provided plenty of information to the observing man.

Mercedes, current year, with all the luxury options.  The car’s black sheen didn’t show a single scratch.  Koseynko doubted that the vehicle had ever even touched a dealership’s parking lot.

Furthermore, the thing was armored.  Most dealers wouldn’t spot something like that, but Koseynko remembered enough from the panicked weeks before he fled his homeland, just one more refugee from the Russian unrest.  The tires looked thinner but bulkier, and the car rode a little more heavily on its shocks under the weight of the ceramic panels.  That armor, more than anything else, fed the little spark of nervousness in Koseynko’s gut.

A high-level dealer would drive a Mercedes. But only the most powerful drug lords would pay for armor – and they’d never come to his neighborhood.  Not personally.  They’d send a lieutenant.

Something about this felt very wrong.

After circling the block, the car finally pulled up outside his building.  The engine turned off, but the driver didn’t emerge immediately.  Koseynko knew that there had to be at least a hundred eyes on that car.  He hoped that none of them would be foolish enough to try anything.

Finally, the door opened.  Koseynko’s eyes immediately flashed to the driver as he emerged.  The man wore a charcoal gray suit, perfectly tailored and probably worth more than what Koseynko made in a year.  The cut of the suit helped disguise the bulge, but Koseynko knew how to spot the piece hanging in a shoulder holster.  The driver was armed.

The driver closed the door and, moving as though he wasn’t standing in the heart of the projects, he strolled around to the car’s trunk.  The latch smoothly disengaged, and he lifted a slim aluminum briefcase out from inside.

Case in hand, the driver turned towards Koseynko’s building.  He strode inside, moving with utter confidence.

Koseynko hurried back to his seat, settling his bulk into the chair as the driver entered the room.  The chair’s springs creaked slightly beneath him, and his hand dipped down briefly on the side to check that the butt of his sawed-off was still there.  Reassured by the presence of his weapon, he looked up at the newcomer.

Pale skin, pale blue eyes.  A body in excellent shape, trained, but not a professional fighter.  The man appeared capable enough, but something in how he held himself betrayed him as a leader, not a fighter.  He moved with utter confidence, as if expecting the world to bend to his will.

“Vladimir Koseynko.”  It wasn’t a question.

Koseynko nodded, forcing himself to wait.  He could make no guess about the man, his masters or why he might be here.  The man knew Koseynko, and he had the advantage.  For the moment.

Behind Koseynko’s chair, he could sense the comforting presence of his two lieutenants.  They were armed, and certainly had their guns in hand by now.  Alexei leaned forward, cradling the heavy assault rifle he insisted on toting everywhere.

“Vhat do you vant-” the burly lieutenant began, but the newcomer cut him off with a single, imperious jerk of his hand.

“Freddy Larson,” he spoke.

Ah.  So that’s what this is about.  “A bad turn of luck, that,” Koseynko said carefully, taking his time with his words.  “I heard he was killed in jail, only a day after arrival.  Very unfortunate.”

The man in the suit didn’t even blink.  He might as well have thrown a signed confession down in front of the Russian.  “He came here to sell to you.”

Again, not a question.  For a moment, Koseynko considered hedging.  The man might be confident, but he was certainly both outnumbered and outgunned here.

Yet that confidence shook the Russian.  Somehow, the man in front of him projected deadly assurance, a wolf in human skin.  His outfit and car screamed money, connections, enough power to bring down a world of pain upon Koseynko’s balding head.

“Yes, he was here,” Koseynko admitted.  “Two days ago.  Looking to score enough for a high.”

“He brought items stolen from a nearby facility.”  Again, nothing but cold facts, emotionless statements.  “You purchased them from him.”

So, the man needed information.  Koseynko eyed him, wondering if he should test the waters.  “I might be more inclined to speak,” he offered carefully, “if you did not have that gun.”

For just a second, a flash of a smile danced across the man’s face.  It was gone in an instant, and didn’t reach his eyes.  “What’s the matter, Vlad?  Afraid of one man, here in your place, with your own goons around?”

This time, Koseynko was the one to keep his face blank.  “Freddy had the items you want, and he is now dead,” he pointed out.  “Forgive me for my caution.”

A minute longer, the man stared at the Russian.  But then, he broke eye contact and nodded, and Koseynko felt his heart beat again.

“Perhaps we were a bit too hasty with Freddy,” the man allowed.  He lifted up the aluminum case and set it on the table between him and Koseynko, turning it around as he popped the latches and lifted the lid.

Koseynko forced his face to remain expressionless as he noted the sheen of gold from inside.  “I know how you Russians prefer hard metal to soft currency,” the man commented.

The allure of the gold was too much.  Koseynko leaned forward slightly, but the man closed the case before his fingers could reach.  “The goods,” he reminded Koseynko.

Even with the case closed, the Russian couldn’t get the image of that gold out of his mind.  “Yes, he brought some stolen goods,” he volunteered.  “Mostly worthless, of course.  Addicts don’t know what to grab.  But he had four crystals, each in a glass tube.  That is what you are after, yes?”

“What did you do with them?” The man gave no confirmation, but that in itself told Koseynko his guess was correct.

The dealer held up four stubby fingers.  “One to a chemist at the University, to see what they were,” he counted off.  “One to the shef, the boss.  One to a goldsmith, again for value.  And one,” he finished, forming his hand into a fist and jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “is here.”

The man nodded, maintaining his poker face.  “I would like to buy all four of them,” he said carefully.  “As soon as possible.”

Koseynko hissed a comment in Russian to one of his lieutenants, and then eyed the man in the suit cannily as the lieutenant turned and ducked deeper into the building.  “What are they?” he asked.

“Unimportant.”

“And yet,” Koseynko pressed, “you are willing, it seems, to pay very well for them to be back in your hands.”

The man shrugged.  “And you want the money.  What does it matter what the damn things are?”

It didn’t take long for the lieutenant to return, slightly out of breath as he placed the glass tube in Koseynko’s waiting hand.  The Russian held the glass tube up before his eyes.  The tube was about the size and shape of a large cigar, rounded and sealed at both ends.  Inside, a spiky crystal about the size of a marble floated, suspended in some sort of clear and viscous liquid.

“It is pretty, that much is true,” he murmured, tilting the glass back and forth, watching the crystal lazily rotate inside.  “And what would happen if this tube was to break?”

The question had been rhetorical, but Koseynko’s visitor answered.  The man across from him was leaning forward slightly, his eyes on that crystal and showing more interest than at any point earlier in the conversation.  “We would all be dead, for one thing,” he replied.  “It’s quite deadly when exposed to the air.”

The Russian’s eyes cut over sharply, leaving the shimmering crystal.  “It is poison?  A weapon?”

“It is dangerous,” the man repeated firmly.  His hands moved to the case, and once again Koseynko felt the magnetic pull of the gold ingots on his eyeballs.  “Now, pass it over.  Carefully.”

Obediently, the Russian made the trade.  But then, as the man in the suit started to rise from his chair, Koseynko coughed.

“I notice,” he commented carefully as his hand once again dropped down the side of his chair, “you did not make inquiries about purchasing the other three.”

“And that suggests to me,” he continued as he pulled the shotgun up, and Alexei lifted the barrel of his oversized assault rifle in his thick arms, “that you do not intend to purchase the other crystals from me.  I wonder, then, how you will obtain them?”

At the sound of the shotgun being drawn, the man had stopped, and he slowly turned to look back at the Russian.  He made no move for his own gun – a smart move.  Crystal or not, Koseynko wouldn’t have hesitated to blow apart the man’s chest.

“I assume that you would be smart enough to understand the terms of the deal.”  The man’s voice was flat, but there was perhaps a note of irritation hiding in its depths.  “I will return tomorrow.  Another case of gold, another crystal.  If you cannot obtain the others, I will retrieve them.”

A little voice inside Koseynko’s head cried out for him to shoot the man right then and there.  Such arrogance!  But the thought of another three cases of gold stayed his hand.  Even after the cut to his bosses, that would be such wealth!  He could expand, buy out his competition – or the assassins to accomplish the same purpose.  Such opportunity could change his entire life.

Slowly, Koseynko lowered his gun.  “Very well,” he replied, carefully watching the man.  “I shall send word immediately for the other crystals to be sent back.  Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” the man agreed, and strode out of the building.

Once he had left the room, Koseynko hurried to the window, watching.  Outside, several enterprising street rats had already moved towards the car, and one of them was even now bent over the driver’s side door, fiddling perhaps with a strip of spring steel.

As the man emerged, he calmly drew the pistol from beneath his coat.  The street urchin didn’t even have time to speak out before his head exploded in a shower of blood and brain matter.  The other teens immediately bolted, not even sparing a glance back for their dead companion.

The man in the suit didn’t bother firing after them.  He tucked the gun away, and then once again reached into his jacket.  Was he checking for the crystal?  Koseynko leaned a little closer to the window, trying to see.

No – he had withdrawn something else, something small.  A lighter, perhaps?

The man in the suit turned and glanced back up at the building, and for just an instant, Koseynko stared into his pale eyes.

The Russian fell back from the window, his arms flailing.  “The case!” he panted, spinning around and staring at the aluminum case of gold, still sitting on the table in the middle of the room.

There was no time.  Alexei’s mouth was still opening when the man outside pressed down on the button on the small remote in his hand.

Out on the street, the man didn’t even flinch as the building behind him exploded with a thunderous roar.  He climbed into his car, now covered in a layer of dust from the shattered edifice, and carefully withdrew the crystal from his inner pocket.

“Three more,” he whispered aloud, as he slid the thin glass tube into a cushioned slot in the glove compartment.

By the time the sound of sirens could be heard in the neighborhood, the armored Mercedes was long gone.

He really, REALLY likes those shoes.

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“Sir,” Kate called out as she approached the gentleman, “can I help you with something?”

The man jerked upright, his limbs all appearing to flail wildly for just a moment before he regained control.  He straightened up as he turned around, and Kate realized that this man was well over six feet, most of his figure hidden by a bulky overcoat.  He towered over her short, squat little five-foot-nothing figure.

Still, Kate told herself, a customer is a customer, and a commission’s a commission.  She plastered her patented “retail smile” across her face as she gazed up at the man.

“Snakeskin, very exotic.  Buying a present for your wife, maybe a girlfriend?” she asked, nodding her head slightly towards the high-heeled shoe clutched in the man’s hand.

Kate did have to admit that, despite his creepy factor, the man at least had good taste.  He’d bypassed most of the cheap crap that the store carried, instead going straight for the Louboutins, which were one of the few non-knockoff brands.  The shoe he now held was made from authentic snake skin, and came in a deep, shiny black, with red on the bottom and a price tag that was higher than what Kate made after a full day of work.

“Er, yes,” the man stammered out, after a few seconds of silence.  “Yes, of course.  What you said.  Do you have any other styles?”

There was something odd about how the man spoke, Kate thought to herself.  He seemed to lack a sort of rhythm; his words would get jammed together, then come tumbling out en masse.  Furthermore, he seemed to be wearing silver boots, and occasionally she caught other flashes of silver from beneath the man’s coat.  Was he a designer of some sort?

“We do have a couple of other styles of those,” she remarked, nodding towards the shoe still in the man’s hands.  “Is there a size you’d like me to check for?”

“Size?” he repeated blankly, looking down at the shoe in his hands.  He stroked the texture of the snakeskin.  “How many do you have?”

Kate blinked.  Something definitely seemed off, but the dollar signs of her commission popping in her eyes made it tough to focus on what was wrong.  “We might have eight or ten pairs, total,” she guessed.  “Across a range of sizes, of course.”

“Ten pairs??  Yes, yes, I want them!” the man exclaimed, throwing his arms wide in a gesture of delight.

As the man’s arms spread wide, his coat flopped open, and Kate caught a quick glimpse of a strange silver suit beneath the overcoat.  She only saw it for a moment before he pulled his coat shut, but that quick glance was enough to convince her of his weirdness.  Were there tubes attached to his silver suit beneath that coat??

“Let me go grab them for you,” she told the strange man, ducking away.

Once in the back storage area, Kate grabbed a quick breath, leaning up against a nearby shelf.  “A sale’s a sale,” she whispered to herself, ignoring how the man was obviously crazy.

Yes, she decided after a second.  She’d bring out the shoes, but would keep an eye on them to make sure that the guy didn’t try to do a runner or anything.  If he ended up buying even a single pair, the commission would be enough to double her daily take-home pay.  Worth the risk.

When she brought out the boxes and showed the strange man the shoes, however, he seemed utterly delighted.  “Yes, yes!! All of them!” he cried, clutching the shoes to himself as though they were bars of gold.  “I pay, you give them to me!”

Her heart pounding as she ran the mental numbers on her five percent commission, Kate scanned the boxes.  “How would you like to pay, sir?” she asked, hearing the blood pounding in her ears.

Still beaming, the man reached into his overcoat and pulled out a messy lump of cash, which he dropped down on the counter.  After a moment, Kate reached for it cautiously, feeling that sense of oddness continue to prickle as she leafed through it.  Many of the bills in the wad of cash looked strange and foreign, and some of them seemed to have writing in other languages!

Still, there were plenty of hundreds and fifties in amid the other bills, and she quickly counted out the correct amount.  “Here’s your change, sir,” she said, pushing the rest of the wad back.  “And your shoes-“

Before she could even finish the sentence, the man grabbed the cash off the counter with one hand, the bag of expensive shoes in the other, and went sprinting away, letting out some sort of high-pitched cry as he sprinted from the store.

For a second, Kate just stared after him, her mouth wide.  In her head, however, she was already doing cartwheels.

Eight pairs of authentic Louboutins!  At roughly thirteen hundred dollars each, that was a little over five hundred dollars in commission, just from a single sale!  She felt stunned, amazed at this incredible turn of good luck.

As she stepped out from behind the register, however, a little scrap of something green on the floor caught her eye.  She reached down and picked up another hundred dollar bill, although something looked odd about it.  “Sir!” she called out, waving the bill over her head, but the man was long gone.

Kate lowered the bill back down, peering at it again.  What was so odd about the thing?

“100” in the corners, check.

Green and about the right size and dimensions, check.

Ben Franklin in a 3-dimensional hologram, waving at her – hold on.

Kate rubbed her eyes, but when she opened them, the mysterious bill was still there, complete with a little 3-dimensional hologram of the head and shoulders of Ben Franklin gazing back out at her.  He gave her a kindly little smile as she waved.

For a long time, Kate just stood there, the little wheels of her brain spinning, but no actual thoughts clicking or making sense.  It wasn’t until her manager came over to congratulate her on the massive sale that, perhaps coming to her senses, she shoved the bill deep into her pocket and made her best futile attempt to put it out of her mind.

*

As he headed back towards where he’d parked his time machine (which, for some reason, had apparently decided to disguise itself as a 1998 Buick Regal), Xarthanurx couldn’t keep from hopping up and down, chirping to himself with delight.

Real, authentic snake skin!  And he had more samples than he had even imagined discovering!  Once the gene extractors and the mechanosynthesizers received samples, he’d be able to produce yards and yards of the stuff, maybe even resurrect the extinct species itself!  He’d be wealthy in credits beyond his wildest dreams!

He pulled one of the strange shoes from the bag and held it aloft, bringing it back down to press it fervently against his lips.  Such a strange design, he wondered to himself.  Why would a shoe need a spike at the back?  Was it for defense?  Clearly, he’d landed in barbaric times, and should leave as quickly as possible.

Parking Ticket

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“Okay.  It should be just over this hill.”

Jansen sighed as he watched Ames bound off ahead of him.  The other astronaut might only be a few years younger, but it showed.  The younger man took huge, bounding steps, not worrying about damaging his suit.

Following behind, Jansen insisted on more caution, even though it slowed his pace.  All these young bucks were so eager to explore, to push boundaries, that they never listened to the safety briefings.  Jansen knew very well what even a small rip on the suit could do, this far out from the lander.

“There it is!  I found it – wait…”

Jansen frowned.  His younger partner’s voice had just shifted, dropping from eager to confused.

Had something happened to the rover?  Even as he tried to control himself, the older astronaut felt his heartbeat quicken.  They were planning on using that rover for several critical surveys; any damage to it could set back their mission considerably.

Stay calm.  He forced himself to slow his breathing, to focus on the plodding, bouncy steps.  Crossing the moon was like walking on the surface of a giant marshmallow – each step felt soft, and there was the ever-present fear of his feet slipping out from beneath him.  Conserve oxygen, he repeated in a mantra.

Finally, he reached the top of the hill.  Ames was down below, looking at the rover.

It didn’t appear damaged, Jansen thought as he approached.  It was parked between a couple large boulders, and all the external struts looked intact.  Even the little front shield, designed to protect against any kicked-up scree, was-

Fluttering?

There was something on the front shield, Jansen realized.  Even though there was no breeze on the airless moon, it seemed to be fluttering back and forth.  Ames was staring at it.

“What is it?” Jansen asked as he drew up closer.

You can’t shrug in a space suit.  The shoulders are too stiff and don’t move that way.  But from the way Ames raised his hands, Jansen knew exactly what the younger astronaut was attempting to convey.

“You take a look,” he said, his voice sounding uneasy.  “You’re the lead, after all.”

Jansen fought back a sigh.  Passing the buck.  Weren’t these “best and brightest” supposed to be beyond doing that?

Still, he reached out and tugged the thin, gently waving object free of where it was stuck against the rover’s front shield.  The object seemed to be a thin sheet of plastic, with some sort of markings on one side.

He held it up closer to his helmet, trying to read it.  Fortunately, once he picked up the sheet from the rover, it stopped fluttering and went rigid, like other objects in this airless environment.

The sheet had some sort of writing on it, but he couldn’t read any of the characters… Jansen squinted, as suddenly the letters seemed to swim, rearranging themselves and contorting until they formed block English.

“What?  I don’t understand.”  The comment slipped out of his mouth without thinking as he stared at the sheet of thin plastic and the words on it.

DEAR INFERIOR SPECIES STOP. 

YOUR UNINTELLIGENT APPARATUS IS PARKED WITHOUT PROPER INTERPLANETARY DOCUMENTATION STOP.  EXTRAPOLATION OF BIOLOGICAL CYCLES FROM THE NEAREST PLANET REVEALS THAT IT HAS BEEN UNMOVED FOR MORE THAN TWO STANDARD GENERATIONAL DEVIATIONS STOP.  THIS IS IN VIOLATION OF STARSECTOR ZZ9 PLURAL Z ALPHA TREATISES AGAINST GALACTOCOSMIC LITTER STOP. 

FURTHERMORE THERE IS NO RECORD AT THE INTERBUREAU’S NEAREST OFFICE OF OFFICIAL SANCTIONS FOR OFF-PLANET DEPARTURE STOP.  SUBMIT APPROPRIATE FILINGS AND BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALS FOR MOLECULAR PATHOGEN EXAMINATIONS BEFORE DEPARTING FROM YOUR SECTOR STOP. 

FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH REGULATIONS WILL RESULT IN INTERDIMENSIONAL FOLDING AND QUARANTINE STOP. 

HUGS AND KISSES,
SECTOR OFFICIAL VOGONIS 39174 

STOP.

Ames was still looking at him.  Jansen knew from the man’s silence that he was worried.

Maybe the younger man was still trying to think in the framework of their mission.  Jansen could feel his mind attempting to do the same, to put this new discovery into some form that he could swallow, could handle.  He wasn’t having a good time of it.

This was huge.  This would redefine their mission- no, he corrected himself.  This would redefine all life on Earth.

And then, a totally irrational thought crept into his head, and he couldn’t hold back a chuckle.

“What?” Ames asked, sounding scandalized that his partner was laughing.  Had Jansen snapped?

Jansen pointed at the sheet of plastic.  “It’s a parking ticket!” he cried, feeling tears slipping out of the corners of his eyes inside his suit.  “NASA’s next great mission, for the glory of humanity – we have to go pay our parking fines!!”

It took a moment.  But soon, Ames was laughing as well.

Two astronauts, beings from another planet, the furthest from home that any human being had ever traveled, rolled in the lunar dust as they clutched themselves and howled with laughter.

Wish Upon A Star

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Lying back in the grass, I watched as the star streaked down, a trail of light against the dark sky.

“Make a wish,” I murmured to myself, even though no one else was around to hear.  
Just great, I thought to myself with a twinge of amusement.  I had come all the way out here, to the almost literal middle of nowhere, to get away from everyone else.  And now, on my first night out, here I was, already talking to myself.
My eyes tracked the glowing star as it plummeted down.  It wasn’t a star, of course, I knew.  A meteorite, burning up as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.  But it twinkled and spun as it dropped, looking quite like a real star.
I watched it, feeling a little sleepy, full, and content.  The night’s meal had been a fairly tasty freeze-dried stew that tasted especially good when supplemented with the fresh meat of the rabbit I’d managed to bag.  The burning meteorite hadn’t winked out yet, curiously enough.
And it seemed to be getting bigger…
It took far too long before the thoughts finally managed to click into place inside my head.  My expression turned from drowsy contentment to sudden horror.  I flung my hands across the dirt for a moment, almost comically scrambling, before I managed to pull myself up to my hands and knees.
Yes, it was definitely still falling towards me!  Half-panicking, I threw myself to the side, and heard something hit the dirt and grass where I’d been laying only seconds earlier.
It didn’t sound like an explosion, however.  It was more of a soft “paff” noise.
Once I’d confirmed that I still had all my limbs, I glanced over cautiously at where I’d been reclining a moment previously.
There was something sitting there in the dirt, sure enough.  It was smoking a little, but it didn’t seem t be doing anything else.  I scooted closer, my eyes widening.
It was a star.
And no, I don’t mean that it was a giant, burning ball of fire.  That’s what the real stars are, I know.  
This, on the other hand, was about a foot across, and shaped like the five-pointed stars that children draw and adorn the tops of Christmas trees in December.  It was still glowing a little, but the glow was pale and slightly blue tinged.
I reached out, unsure of what I was doing.  I couldn’t feel heat coming off of the object, the “star.”  When one of my fingers pressed hesitantly against the object’s surface, it felt slightly warm, a bit like plastic.
Slowly, my eyes tracked upward.  
Could the thing have fallen from an airplane or something?  But I hadn’t seen any planes in the sky – and indeed, there shouldn’t be any of them going overhead.  Not out here, in the wilderness, miles from any city or airport.  
It had fallen from up there, between that crack in the branches of the nearby trees…
My eyes roamed up, across the sky.  And then I spotted it, up amid the other stars still glowing in the sky.
There was a spot, there, where the sky was black.  Not the normal blackness of night, of the rest of the heavens above me.  No, in this spot, the night seemed absolutely black, a little hole that swallowed up all light.
It appeared, I thought to myself as I squinted at it, to be shaped a bit like a five-pointed star.
My eyes dropped back down to the cooling star beside me, and then back up to the hole.  Yes, if I squinted a little bit and ignored the mind-boggling shift in perspective, the star would fit up there.
I felt as though my head was packed full of cotton wool.  What in the world was going on?  I turned my attention back to the sky, wondering if this was all a dream.
And then, in the blackness of that hole in the sky, I saw movement.
It was tough to make out, a shifting of black on black that revealed no detail.  But staring up, I saw a roiling, a twisting swirl that put me in mind of the tightening coils of some monstrous python, its scales made of midnight.
The shifting kept on moving for another second, and then stopped.  There was a thin line, now, barely perceptible against the equally deep blackness that surrounded it.
I held my breath, staring up at that line.  I couldn’t pull my eyes away, couldn’t even bring myself to move.
And then it blinked. 
I still don’t know what mysterious force seized me, throwing me into screaming, panicked action.  Maybe it was some throwback instinct, back from when my ape ancestors still had to make use of their fight-or-flight instinct on a daily basis.  Whatever it was, I’m pretty sure it saved my life.
My fingers scrabbled on the ground.  They closed on something, something warm and tapering to a point.
The star.
In a swift movement, I heaved the thing upwards, up towards that baleful, monstrous eye in the sky.  The star flew up, rising higher than it should have traveled, but I didn’t wait to see if it connected with its target.
I was already scrambling away, running for where my car was parked, half a mile down the trail.
I jumped in, managed to get the trembling keys into the ignition slot on the fourth try, and drove.  At some point, the world outside the car began to light up as the sun crept up, but I kept on driving.  
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone.  Somehow, I just knew that this event, whatever had just happened, would never make sense.  I’d never understand, never could understand.
But I knew one thing was for certain.  
No more camping trips for me.  In fact, I don’t think I want to see another star again.

Climbing the Tower, Part III

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Continued from Part II.
Start reading at Part I.

For a moment, he just looked up at the young woman standing above him, offering her hand.  He couldn’t hold back from asking.

“Are you real?”

She just shrugged.  “Are you?” she replied.

There was no way of her knowing, he realized.  Even if she was a projection of his mind, she would act this way.  He was too suspicious to get any answers, even from himself.

He took the proffered hand, and she hauled him up to his feet.
For a moment, as he caught his breath on his unsteady feet, the two of them gazed around.  Up here, the dust was even thicker; it felt as though no one had stood here for centuries, maybe longer.

That might be true, he reminded himself.  No one knew how high the Tower went.  No one really knew anything about the Tower, not even where it truly stood.  The gates opened to it, once every three years, and all citizens, of the Lowers and Heights both, came pouring in.

To not try in the Tower was to drop to the bottom.  Only those who climbed could ascend in life.

But as far as he knew, no one had ever reached the top.

The girl was standing next to him.  She was waiting for him, he realized with a start.  When he turned to her, he could still see a faint spark of wariness in her eyes, but she still waited.

When he turned to her, they didn’t need to speak.  To speak was to waste breath.

Instead, they climbed.

The stairs now spiraled around the inside of the room, ascending higher and higher in a spiral that slowly tightened.  They paced each other, trying not to watch each other’s steps for weakness, trying not to judge how much energy the other still possessed.  They climbed, until the hole in the middle of the room had shrunk to nothing as the stairs closed in.

Eventually, long after they had both lost count of the number of stairs they’d climbed, they reached a door.

And on the other side, in a small room, they found the man.

The man sat on a throne, a massive monstrosity covered in wires, tubes, glowing lights, and many things that were completely unrecognizable.  He looked thin, wasted away, with long and stringy hair that seemed dirty and ill-kempt.  His eyes gazed forward, and a thin crown of silver metal sat on his temples.  A closer look revealed that the crown seemed to be attached to the rest of the chair via a thin wire.

As they approached, the man suddenly straightened up, life flowing back into his face to make his eyes faintly gleam.  “No,” he gasped, staring up at them.  “You can’t be real.  Please be real.”

He exchanged a look with the girl.  She stepped forward; she’d always been the more trusting.  “Who are you?” she asked, moving closer.  The old man didn’t seem like a threat.

“Please,” he gasped, looking up at the pair of them.  “It has been so long.  I want it to stop.”

This didn’t feel right.  “We shouldn’t,” he spoke, but even as the words passed his lips, the girl was already moving forward.  She tugged the crown free of the old man’s head, and he listed forward, half-falling out of the throne.

As the old man left the throne, however, an alarm sounded, and his eyes widened.  “It cannot be empty,” the man hissed, waving weak fingers at the seat.  “Someone must guide it!”

The girl exchanged a look with him.  He ignored the alarm, however, focusing on the old man.  “Is this the top?” he demanded, glaring down at the wretched figure.

The old man stared up at him.  “You cannot go higher without a guide,” came the faint words, gesturing towards the empty throne.  “I…”

He leaned closer, listening.

“I could not,” the old man gasped out.  “I was alone.  The Tower needed a guide, so it brought me here.  No one else came.”

When he looked up at the girl, she was peering closer to the mechanical throne.  “I think… I think that this controls the Tower,” she said in hushed tones.  “I think that this is the center for everything.”

He said nothing, but he looked up.  There was no other door leading out of this room, but he could feel more of the Tower above them.

The girl was waiting for him to say something, but eventually she spoke.  “One of us has to stay here, sit in the throne,” she said, speaking slowly as she thought through the idea.  “The other can’t ascend unless someone controls the Tower.”

He waited.

She stared at him for a long minute.  When she glanced down at the old man at their feet, neither of them was surprised to see that his labored breathing had ceased.  “It’s going to be me, isn’t it,” she said, the words not a question.

Without waiting for him to answer, she sighed, lowered herself into the seat.  “Before you go,” she said, looking up at him, holding the crown in her hands.  “I have to know.”

“Ask.”

“Will it ever be enough?”  Her eyes were beseeching, more vulnerable than he could remember seeing them.  “You’re so driven to climb.  More than anyone else, more than me.  I could never keep up, even now.

“Is it ever going to be enough?”

He didn’t have an answer.

After a long silence, stretching on for an eternity, she sighed.  “I should have known better than to expect an answer,” she said, lowering the crown onto her head.  “Especially from you.”

As the crown reached her temples, she jerked, her muscles going rigid for an instant before she settled back into the chair.  Her eyes opened again, but they were unfocused, as though she was looking at a different landscape.

“Go now,” she said, her voice deeper, flatter.  “Climb, fool.  May you never reach what you seek.”

Behind the throne, he saw a door in the wall.  It had always been there, but at the same time had not existed until this moment.  He didn’t wait, running for it.  The door handle was icy cold, but it turned in his hand.

On the other side, he saw more steps, leading up into the darkness.

“It will never be enough,” the girl called after him in her flat voice, the voice of the Tower, as he left the control room behind.

Her words echoed after him, and he ran.