Category Archives: flash fiction

Generations

(Originally published as “Neverland” and “On Tormance we stand”

~

A cordial Hello to all who may see this, and may the day embrace you!

From your history books, you will know that our ship Neverland left the vicinity of Old Earth 11,000 years ago, bound for the solar system of Arcturus.  Neverland was constructed in space, over a period of 50 Terran years, and encompasses a length and breadth of about two of your kilometers.  The people aboard, numbering 196 (98 pairs), were the first voyagers.

I am Sheela, a female of the 112th generation born on this vessel.  I am 25 “years” old.  There is an expression that I have read in books.  It says, “We stand upon the shoulders of giants.”  And, yes, so we do.  Many of the ancient stories from the beginning of this exploration tell of the challenges, tragedies, and triumphs of our forebears.  Books have been my world, as I have no other.

I have never known Earth, our ancestral home, except through writings and legends passed down.  I do fervently hope that my little story will reach there.  I hope also that its people still survive, in the eleven millennia since Neverland took flight.

The curious name of our vessel has been a source of amusement for many of us. There is a running joke that we will “never land”.  It is unknown what we will find on Tormance, the second planet in the Arcturian system.  Its name comes from an obscure novel written in Earth’s 20th century.  Our technology tells us only that it will be “habitable” to our species.

We of course have our own sustainable food supply, consisting of numerous crops in rotation.  We do not eat beasts here, as was done on Earth, nor do we have any on board.  Our protein comes from botanical sources, and the fish that we farm.  Diets are kept from being dull through inventive hybrids and recipes, and our chefs enjoy a certain exalted standing in our small society.

Person of Earth, I will never know you.  If we were to meet one another, I am sure there would be much strangeness.  You have known a real world.  I have been farmed like the fish.  Earth has a violent history, and, at the time of Neverland’s birth, its very makeup was rapidly deteriorating.  We too, aboard this fleeing bubble, have at times been in a mode of self destruction, even though our original crew had been picked for their stability.  There have been murders, factions arising within the people, and irreconcilable differences.  Still, we soldier on towards the purpose.  Our numbers have been as few as one fifth of the crew that left Earth, and, as I write this, we are 125.

This may seem unsavory to you, but we compost our dead here, with rare exceptions.  Services are held, in keeping with the beliefs of each family.

We, of “The 112th Regiment” (as we are called) will be the first of The People to set our feet upon the planet of a new star.

Truly, we will be Interstellar.

~

In my twenty-five years of life, all of it aboard the great ship Neverland, I have known naught but the constructs of humankind and the black robe of space.

For the last two years, our excitement has been building here.  Through the luck of the genetic draw, we are the people, the gleanings who will complete this pilgrimage of 111 centuries, born in Earth’s orbit in times that are ancient to us. As I write, we are still many millions of Terran miles from the Arcturian disk, yet its glow of deep orange paints moving murals upon our living rooms, filling a great swath of our vision.  We are in escape velocity, on a trajectory to stay clear of his magnetic influence.

The constellation in which our new sun holds sway was known to ancient Earth as Boötes.  Funny, but constellations now are moot to us, shape shifting as they do, with space and time.  I sometimes think that our early voyagers must have wished that the secrets of new dimensions could have been unlocked, permitting space to be folded upon itself, granting them new worlds within their lifetimes.  These were the bravest of people, spending all their lives to a purpose, but knowing they would never see its fulfillment.  And now, as was said, we stand upon the shoulders of these giants.

~

It is time!  It is THE time!  With Tormance in aphelion from its great sun, our rendezvous has been plotted.  We are but days from history, close enough to see our World.  I feel the adrenalin rising within me as this day of fate comes near.  Sleep is becoming difficult but imperative, and I must medicate at times.  As one of the Science Officers aboard, I will have the privilege of being in the first landing party.

Here.  Now.  Be mindful of your training.  Let not your emotions rule you.  We are twenty, in the first shuttle.  All with at least some piloting experience, gained from trysts with unnumbered asteroids in the cascading years.  Our instrument readings show a mean gravity 1.3 of our normal.  An average surface temperature of 290° Kelvin.  An atmosphere slightly higher in nitrogen than our standard.

And now, we get our first head-on view of the world.  A peculiar thing to say.  A foreign feeling, after a lifetime of steel and glass.  Tormance explodes into our field of vision.  Its dun tarnished silver is like a new color.  The enormity.  The buffeting as we achieve entry into its atmosphere, bathed in copper light.  Will I ever wake from this?  In our fellowship of the shuttle, I see that many of us are overcome with awe.  Someone, in an ancient history book, said “They should have sent a poet”.  As for me, this religion has captured my very soul.

Our touchdown is made on a terraced flat, minutes before the blood sundown, and, still wearing our slicksuits, we crowd the open hatch doors to drink our fill of this miracle. Our First Officer sets his foot upon the gray mica-like rock that glints in the crimson dusk.  And we follow.  We follow.  We hug.  We cry.  A crosswind blows, and the airs smell like brimstone, but we breathe.

Upon Tormance we stand.

Image credit : https://www.zastavki.com/eng/Fantasy/wallpaper-93895.htm

Good intentions

Daguerreotype is the day,
ancient as I drive.

Beside me she is a ghost,
and I can’t speak to the veil-
the closed idiom of her soul.

Or
I am the ghost
and have simply lost the language
to this often-paved way.

***

They got into the car just the same, even though this was a frivolous trip. Even though she knew his silences sometimes lasted the whole way. Today, though, was a study in differentness. It was his averted eyes, his apparent focus on an imagined point just a few feet away or in the upside-down.

She moves to make small talk but it catches in her throat, knowing that it usually elicits impatience and forced responses, and fearing what it might bring today.
“Why did I make him go? What is wrong?”, she thinks. “I can’t stay quiet. I’m just not that person. No. Not alone, with only my own thoughts.”

They cruise, and he disinfects his hands at alternate stop signs. She pats his knee, leaves her hand there. A hundred, a thousand times this road has known them and been peppered with their tire treads.

“Nick, let’s go home, okay?”…in a voice more coquettish than pleading.

But he drives on, comes to the traffic lights which flash alarmingly as if cautioning against any further advance.

“What’s the way, Beth?”
“Nick, what’s wrong? You know the way.”
“Beth, I can’t. I’m sorry. You need to show me.”

And she cries.

[Image: https://pixabay.com/users/music4life-19559/ ]

Winter’s Witch

In a wild wind, I shoveled scoops of sandy snow. As I stopped for a gulping breath, I spied a wrapped-up lady pushing bulky mukluks along the sidewalk. Thin and straight she was, in a salt & pepper coat, and she stopped for a second to watch me throw snow over shoulder.

Walked up to me, she did, as bold as a crow, and I stopped once more, grateful for a borrowed breath. Thinking to be handed a church pamphlet, or to be asked for spare change, I thought to look into her face (half covered by a flying black scarf). I could not see whether she smiled, nor could she see mine, as we both resembled masked bandits. She had bright eyes like grey asters, and when a shock of her long hair freed itself in the wind, I thought it witchy and confused with nettles.

She reached forth with a mittened hand, petting me on the shoulder, and laughed an odd laugh, like a chicken’s cluck. When she pulled her scarf down enough to speak, I saw a sharp nose and a thin-lipped smile. “You’re a good ‘un”, she said, and her aster eyes searched mine. “Yah. A good ‘un.” Once more, that papery smile, and then she patted me again and turned to go. A peculiar feeling welled up from inside me, and I dropped my shovel and made to take her hand. “Are you alright?” I asked.

All that came was a weary nod and then the chicken cluck laugh, and my witchy friend disappeared into the snowfall, just like a winter’s dream.

The coldest knight of the year

Sack of a face. All dragged down by gravity and surrendered muscles. It’s supposed to take more of them to frown than to smile, but nature disagrees. And what’s he doin’ now, that old Aqualung? Shufflin’ along the sidewalk. Dangerous as a stage player. There, he’s found the metal grate, the rising heat curtain. Marilyn Monroe ain’t around today. Takes off his cracked vinyl mitts, sets ’em on the steel, then, by God, his shoes too! Turns ’em upside down for the free warming. He has a small buckle-down suitcase that has kids’ cartoons on it. This is his seat while he warms his feet. It’s funny, you know. He’s at his ease, if you please, as he parts the stream of the flowing crowd. Made his peace, knows his destiny. Has already had his talk. The disdain is theirs. Maybe they see. Some of them stop for our Joe, and they know where to put the coins on him. One woman told him she was coming today with new mitts. If he can stand here long enough, he can store up the warmth for a while. Just yesterday, Joe got told to move on, because he made a mistake. He’d let his bitterness get the best of him, and had jumped out randomly at passers-by, scaring them. Never would hurt anyone, not really. But it’s hard. And now, there she comes. The lady with the red scarf. She waves and smiles, gives him a purple velvet bag with a drawstring top. “Your mitts, Joe”. She smiles and pats his shoulder, then walks on. Joe had nodded and hung his head. He sat a while longer before he opened the bag with cracked fingers. There were his new insulated mittens, and some other things. Some other things. He closed it quickly, put it inside his coat, and hugged himself tightly.

***

[image: https://pixabay.com/users/arttower-5337/ ]

Child of grace

Just this morning, Clarice went to coma. In hallways of cottony grey she swims, but not aimlessly. She has shed the displeasures of the flesh, and does not feel, as they slide the needles and tubes into it and make the lungs rise and fall. Only hears, in a fast fade, the pops and clicks and hisses. She knows there will be no visitors for a time.

So small now, with lightness, this sprite of being.
The singularity awaits, the neutron star that holds the knowing. She can touch it, she senses, but waits for divine invitation. In her life of walking, she has been shown but parts of its great story and, in those moments, her friends and kin have turned away and left her in quietness.

And soon, we know now, Clarice will return, and fill the languishing body with a spirit of soft fire. The quietness will stay in her person, and grace will shine. If you are the one to whom she turns her eyes, beware, for she may ask you to walk for a while.

Nemesis

If you found me this evening time (for such it is),  you would know things that have been out of your sight.  The way that I put on my skin and my bones.    How my legs bend after dark.  What I do with the possibility of fingers.  How my movements compare to yours, since I have learned the body.

In this world, there is one who is Nemesis to me.  Her native name is known to none here.  To the few with whom she has spoken, she is Sarah.  Always, she is young, and speaks with a soothing silken tone.  Know that she is false, though she appears handsome and trustworthy.  Soon, she will reveal herself as an emissary from a benevolent civilization whose great concern is the well-being and survival of this world.

Believe it not, for I and my fellows will show, by our true actions, that we are the ones to whom you should look.  The Sarah-body shall be found and rendered inoperable.  Its pilot may flee or, at the least, face the rehabilitation of another that is suitable.  We will be tireless in our pursuit.