Stories of Hope

by Aussie Speculative Fiction

  “Halt! Do you know where my son is?” she asked.

  Quilkor had almost made it back to The Fishy Apple undetected. He cursed his luck, the look on Timmar’s mother’s face was more guilt and shame than he could bear. At least he should show her where the body was, he thought.

  He turned towards her. “Yes! We were in the forest when the fires started and I came to get help. Here . . . follow me and I’ll show you where I last saw him.”

  She didn’t trust this lad, but he did say he had news of her son, so without another word she followed him into the burning forest. Quilkor pulled out his wand and asked the mother to say back as he summoned another water elemental, but then he summoned yet another and another until there were ten in total. He directed them to cut a path through the trees, putting out large patches of the fire as they travelled deeper into the burning forest. With all the smoke and flames it was hard to know where he had been before, but he eventually made it to the clearing. It was here that he found the fire elemental circling area looking for its master. He quickly commanded three nearby water elementals to put the fire elemental back out, this time, he ensured he collected the piece of charred wood with ruby eyes.

  Timmar’s mother spoke, “That’s my son’s! Here give it to me.”

  She took the charred wood, looked at it to make sure it was his and pocketed it in a sack she carried tied to her waist. Quilkor looked around and headed east as he knew it was only a matter of time before the fires might reach the area where he had left Timmar’s body. He had his water elementals begin to put out the flames of the fire, while two cleared a path out into the forest. It was Timmar’s mother who saw her son’s body first. She wailed in panic towards him. As she rolled him over on his back, she uncorked a red healing potion and emptied the contents into Timmar’s open lifeless mouth. Timmar coughed and slowly sat up. Quilkor was shocked, he was alive! Upon the sight of Quilkor there, fear swept across Timmar’s face. But then he saw his mother was there too and confusion set in.

  Quilkor reached out an open hand to Timmar to help him up, “I’m sorry about earlier, but everything is fine now, I found your mother.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JON Ray is a writer, director, and actor in film along with a large assortment of other titles when it comes to entertainment. Since the age of 13, he has played and enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons normally running his own games as the Dungeon Master for others. Originally from Tyler, Texas in the U.S., Jon currently resides in Sydney, Australia where he prospects for gold in the outback when not writing.

  http://author.jonray.net/

  Breakaway by Rhiannon Bird

  “KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN,” Apollo murmured at Artemis.

  She dropped her head, so the hood fell forward casting a shadow over her face.

  He nodded at people as they walked past, not that they really cared anyway. The son of the Greek-obsessed historians was someone that most people steered clear of. They paid him little attention and even less to the faceless figure walking beside him. She pulled the hood further, just to be sure.

  “Here.” He pushed Artemis in through a small door. Once it shut behind them, she threw off her hood.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well believe it, you are now free.”

  “Until they catch us.” She sighed, ditching the hooded robe—it was too hot in the ship to be wearing it.

  “They won’t catch us.” He gestured to the door with a small glass port hole. He bunkered down at a small computer, typing in lines of code.

  Artemis walked over to the door and gasped. “You can’t be serious. Stealing an escape pod.”

  He glanced at her. “You stole a rover and destroyed the main hall.”

  “That was a political statement.”

  “Still landed you locked up,” he said, typing the last line and the door beside her hissed and slid open.

  She jumped in surprise. “Really though, I don’t understand what you want to achieve by this. We struggle to even fly this thing out of here until we are caught and brought back to the Quinten. Then even if we do manage to get away, what then? We float in space until we die?”

  Apollo bounded closer and pulled out a small tablet. It emitted a low beep and a dull light flashed slowly on it. “I’ve been in touch with the breakaway colony.”

  “What?” she gasped. “No-one knows where they ended up, how did you even find them?”

  “I have my ways,” he said, and she shoved him. “They’ve offered us sanctuary. Once we are safely away from the Quinten, we use this”—he shoved the tablet forward—“to find them.”

  “I don’t know, what about Mum and Dad?”

  He stepped into the escape pod, running his hands over the controls. “They stopped caring what we did as soon as we decided not to be Greek scholars on a space station that has long left that behind.”

  She still hesitated.

  “Come on Art, this is it. Our chance to get out of here. You always talked about if there was somewhere else and here it is. Somewhere else.”

  Behind her, alarms rang out through the station, loud and intrusive. They’d discovered her empty cell. With a resigned sigh, she followed Apollo into the escape pod. “I trust you,” she said, strapping herself into the co-pilot’s seat as he sat in the pilot’s. The lights of the control panel flickered on and he turned on the pod. It rumbled to life loudly.

  “It’s louder than I expected,” he yelled to her.

  “You know how to fly this?” She gripped her belt.

  He shrugged, flipping switches. “I read about it.” With that, he shot the pod out of its hangar and away from the giant Quinten station.

  Almost as soon as they were clear of the ship, tiny unmanned Quinten fighters dispatched themselves and followed them.

  “What are we going to do about them?” she asked. “We can’t outfly them or outgun them considering our lack of guns.”

  He grimaced. “We just have to.”

  Artemis tightened her belt. “Love the confidence.”

  The Quinten fighters spread out behind them. A few appeared on their left side, guns aimed. Apollo banked to the right. They turned until more appeared on the right side, then he gunned the thrusters. Yet the fighters kept easy pace with them, guns aimed but not firing.

  “They’re herding us,” he said, turning to try and blast through the wall of fighters. As soon as their direction changed a barrage of fire from that side, he pulled them back on course. “Definitely herding us.”

  Artemis glanced above and below them, fighters there as well. The only clear way was forward. “Maybe if we flipped around and—” she stopped in surprise as the fighters beneath them disappeared. She turned to look behind them. “They stopped. Why did they let us go?”

  “Umm, we may have a problem.” He was grappling with the controls fruitlessly. “You may want to hold onto something.”

  “What is that?” she gulped.

  He let go of the controls and gripped the armrests of his seat. “Black hole.”

  Artemis held her breath and closed her eyes as they were sucked in by a strong gravity as the Quinten fighters watched to make sure that they were dead.

  There was a thud, then a clunk, then nothing. She opened her eyes in time to see ground rushing up to meet them.

  The crash rattled her bones and jolted her. Her body tried to fly through the front window, but the belt held her hard, she could already feel the bruising. Artemis gasped, trying to get air back into her lungs as she unclipped the belt and crawled over to Apollo. His head had hit the control panel as they landed, and the cut was gushing blood. It had been a while since she’d practiced as a nurse. She ripped off the bottom of her shirt and pressed the cloth against it. He groaned.

  “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, “what happened?” He blinked rapidly as his eyes rolled around in their sockets.

  “We made it through the black hole to who knows where.” She pulled the blood-soaked material away. Artemis re
laxed, the cut was shallow. It was bleeding heavily because it was on his head, but it would heal well after the flow was stemmed. She rummaged through the first aid kit that was overturned on the opposite wall. There she found a bandage and gauze that should do the trick.

  “What do we do now?” he asked as she finished tending and wrapping the wound. “We don’t even know where we are. We need to get off this planet. The ship may be salvageable, if we can—”

  She interrupted, “First we need to move, in case the ship is dangerous from the crash.” Artemis could have sworn she smelt leaking gas, but her brain felt so scattered it was hard to tell. She unclicked his seat belt and helped him stand.

  “But we don’t even know where the space suits are.”

  “It’s a little late for that.” She nodded at the gash on the side of the ship, exposing them to the unknown atmosphere. They walked towards it—through the gap there was flashes of blues, greens and purples. As they moved, the tablet fell from Apollo’s pocket. The dull slow flash of light had become fast and bright. It was also beeping shrilly now that it had escaped its fabric prison. They stared at it for a moment.

  “What does that mean?” she asked quietly.

  “It means,” he breathed in wonder, “that we found the breakaway colony.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: RHIANNON Bird is a young author. She has a passion for words and storytelling. Rhiannon has her own quotes blog; Thoughts of a Writer. She has had multiple works published online and in anthologies which vary between short stories and poetry. Her favourite genres tend to be fantasy or young adult, but she has a complicated relationship with genres and will often jump around to whatever she feels at the time.

  Tomorrow by Alice Lam

  IT WAS AN ORDINARY morning as Mirai got ready to leave for work.

  But today she opened the creaky desk drawer and rummaged around for the package. Just as her fingertips grazed it, something else vied for her attention in the shadows. It had been five years since she had last held it.

  For a moment she gently cradled the photo. Enjoying a hike on a warm spring day, Vaughan stood with his arms around their girls, their son Emery lurching to one side, lanky and shy. Mirai stroked her thumb over the faces of her husband and son. Before she could stop it, a rising wave of grief crashed over her, the picture ablur with silent tears.

  But she knew it would pass; it always did. She replaced the photo. In her loss she had learnt strength.

  Once she was able to refocus, she found the cigarette-sized package and slid it into a compartment sewn into the underside of her work bag. Satisfied with its appearance, or disappearance, she slid the bag strap over her shoulder and strode to the local monorail station. She remembered taking the girls to school via the train but so much time had passed and now they were independent young women.

  Anya used to be a restauranteur and Serina a pilot, but after the devastating flu epidemic had taken the lives of most of the males in Australia, everything took a backseat to essential services. So, Anya now drove a taxi and Serina worked as a labourer. Anya found she could tolerate the work but Serina was always complaining about the roughness of her hands.

  Her mind went back to the conversation they had had, when they were all coming to terms with life—without Vaughan and Emery. The girls were teenagers, angry and afraid. It had been the grimmest of times. In a way, it still was, but they were more used to it.

  A few weeks after the memorial service, the three were taking a weekend break in the bush. It was one of those hot, humid days with flies swarming at every turn. They sloped along a dirt road, lined by overgrown grass and disused farm buildings. A rusty sign at the end of the trail proclaimed, “Welcome to Bridge Farm”.

  “I don’t get it,” said Serina. “Why did it kill so many men and boys? It’s not fair we’re still here.” She kicked a rock into the bushes.

  “I know,” said Mirai. She started to put her arm around Serina, whose eyes were shining, but felt her daughter tighten and withdraw.

  “Come on Mum, you’re a scientist, what do you think?”

  “There’s stuff on the news but it’s all about Senator Amanda Stone and how she’s going to help us all make a fresh start. All politics, nothing to explain what happened. Was it bioterrorism? Will it happen again?” said Anya.

  Mirai’s heart was pounding. Surely the girls were too young to hear the full truth, but she felt they deserved to know some of it. Given her part. “Okay, bear with me. Now, you know females have two X chromosomes, and males have an X and a Y.”

  The girls rolled their eyes simultaneously. Sometimes people mistook them for twins. Mirai almost smiled.

  “The Y chromosome carries the ‘master switch’ gene that determines whether the baby will be male—XY, or female—XX. Over human existence, even as early as other mammals from a hundred million years ago, the Y chromosome has been shrinking. The shrinking Y chromosome means it is less able to heal itself.”

  They stopped in the middle of the road which had narrowed to a single trail.

  “The Y chromosome is weakening from more mutations, getting less able to fight infections like viruses. A father passes it to his son, and there’s only one copy.”

  “Ooh, girl power,” murmured Anya sarcastically.

  Serina elbowed her sister in the ribs. The only sound came from a family of sulphur-crested cockatoos flying overhead. “What else?”

  Mirai squatted down and picked a fluffy white dandelion head. “Self-pollinating. Solves a lot of problems, doesn’t it?” She blew gently onto the flower and the seeds dispersed in a sudden breeze.

  The girls shared a sidelong glance with each other.

  “You want to know how we got here. I owe you that. Just . . . don’t hate me.”

  “Mum, no!” exclaimed Anya, wrapping her arms around Mirai. “That won’t happen.”

  The three sat down. She knew this was the moment where she could lose them forever. She took a deep breath. “Viruses infect the cells of their host and use the materials of the living cells to replicate. Not long ago, I was heading a team of virologists in exploring the susceptibility of the Y chromosome to the flu virus.” She paused. “We used a flu virus that we had engineered for use only in the lab, for in-vitro specimens.” Here she felt a heaviness in her chest.

  Serina leant back. Her face hardened.

  Mirai continued. It was too late to stop now. “Though we were only in the preliminary stages of designing an anti-viral treatment for infected cells, we began to develop a vaccine to protect males in the event of a flu epidemic. But someone in our team leaked our research to someone in government.”

  “Amanda Stone,” breathed Serina.

  “Suddenly our funding was cut, and that’s why we officially lost our jobs. Senator Stone and her political cronies only needed to plan targeted dispersal of the virus—like domestic flights—and once the population was decimated and the male-dominated government was toppled . . .”

  Anya and Serina were both holding each other and crying.

  “Well, I think that’s enough for now,” said Mirai.

  AS THE TRAIN GLIDED towards the city centre, Mirai looked out the windows and marvelled at the sparse number of people out and about at what used to be rush hour. Most were women, of course, but there was something else. Few wore makeup or bothered with anything more than plain hairstyles and functional clothing. Fashion had almost been vanquished without men to judge and women to compete against.

  Alighting from the train, she walked across the track to the Corporation for Population Renewal, housed within Prospect Tower, thirty stories of geometric steel and reinforced frosted glass. She took a moment to enjoy the feeling of the sun on her skin and faced the retinal scan to the side of the revolving door. Once through, she smiled as she approached the guard. Her legs felt shaky.

  “ID and bag,” said the guard. She wasn’t the usual one. The guard scanned her ID, rifled through the contents slowly, laying them out on the table. Phone. Laptop. Diagnostic kit
. Specimen collection equipment. Purse. The guard took time patting her down. Finally, Mirai was allowed her bag and motioned to the lift.

  At the second floor, Mirai presented her wrist to the door sensor after a keen-eyed guard rechecked her ID. She pulled her jacket around her. The air-conditioning seemed to be set to freezing today. She’d heard it was a deliberate ploy by the Corporation to keep the inmates docile and less likely to escape. The men were survivors of the flu epidemic, yet no longer free men, for they had become valuable commodities. They were imprisoned by their ability to maintain lines of genetic material. Despite the cold, she felt a trickle of sweat run down her back and prayed it would not show.

  In any case, few wished to escape their gilded cage. Those who tried ended up on chain gangs, slaves to the new government with no release date. No one had escaped a chain gang.

  She glanced over the open plan lounge, soft furnishings and CCTV, gym, kitchenette stocked with pre-packaged food designed to optimise sperm health.

  She spent an hour each with six inmates, performing health checks, collecting specimens, going through the motions.

  Now it was Dimitri’s turn to be called to the interview room. The door had a small window for the guards to look through, should they have any cause for concern. He was as pale as the others; outdoor exercise having been banned after an inmate attempted escape last year. She knew from his records that he too had lost a son, but they never discussed it.

  At their last meeting, he had removed a tight roll of papers stored within the hollow of a bed leg and passed it to her while she pretended to check his blood pressure. That action had been the final catalyst for today.

  “Don’t say anything,” she said, taking his hand and using tweezers to tent the skin of his wrist. Without warning, she inserted the ID microchip via a plastic gun with a sharpened point. Metal would have set off the detectors. He sucked in his breath. “In case we get separated.” She applied a tan dressing and he exhaled shakily.