The Future Is Short

by Anthology

  ***

  Inside the cottage a man sat at a grand piano. He shuffled through a stack of sheet music and extracted today’s selection, “Rhapsody in Blue.” He opened the music, placed it in the stand, then opened the keyboard. His right foot found the pedals and his hands hovered above the keys. He began to play.

  ***

  The vibration struck Yood in every fiber of his being. The sensation was so intense that nothing else mattered and the need to get closer became desire. When the vibration stopped, he slowly came back to consciousness. Then faintly, from another part of his being, he felt a touch and he sensed the greeting, “Dee, have I found you?”

  “You have, my Wobee,” said Yood.

  “It has been so long, my love, let us begin the rejoining,” she said.

  “Wobee Itch, let us just hang a while longer. I have found something new.”

  “But Dee Yood, you promised me the rejoining,” she said. “What will become of our Wois?”

  There was a gentle movement in his fiber, as if a light breeze had blown through. “I. … We have a Wois? Where is she? What is her name?”

  “She has gone to the south in search of her own way. She and I are connected as you and I are now. She feels your touch as strongly as I do. She is named Smee.”

  “I have a Wois,” said Yood with great pride. “Wois Smee.” He was flooded with a new set of emotions and the consciousness that was Smee. However, before Yood could recover, the wonderful vibrations began again inside the cabin, and this time Yood, Itch, and Smee were swept together into the rapture.

  If it were possible at that moment to see all the moss on all the trees in the southeastern United States, about half would have been moving in time to music coming from a small cottage just south of Atlanta.

  W. A. Fix (a.k.a. Bill Fix) is a retired information technology manager, who lives with his wife and three cats in the suburbs of San Diego, California. He has “toyed” with writing all his life and recently became more serious about the craft. Other interests include photography and golf.

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  51.

  The Recruiters

  Joanna Lamprey

  “I’m afraid it’s out of the question.” The Daolan looked apologetically around the four men facing him.

  Admiral Hansen leaned forward. “Because we’re from Earth?”

  The yellow-skinned alien hesitated, then inclined his head. Humans have met many strange variations among the intelligent space-travelling races, but Daolans, acknowledged as the finest navigators of all, are odder than most, with a gelatinous body shape that can change at will. The Daolan had braced himself into a sitting position with four pudgy tentacles, and used two more to make gestures. The upper part of his sac-like body was fringed with silky follicles, which moved of their own accord as though sniffing the air.

  Admiral Hansen looked round at the others, then back. “Gorman, we brought you here at some expense for this interview, you must have known we would be asking you to join our crew. I’ll be frank—we were really excited that you agreed to meet us at all, so this is a great disappointment. I accept you won’t take the job. I would like you to explain why, because yours is not the only race keeping their distance. ”

  Gorman shrugged, his follicles rippling, but answered honestly. “Earth people have already accrued a reputation for a certain, uh, oddity. I wanted to meet you, because I didn’t believe it could be as disturbing as I’d heard, but … you say things that don’t make sense, then look at each other and pull faces. Sometimes you even make odd noises. It is—unsettling. Each voyage lasts at least twenty epochs; I think in your calendar that translates to a year. To be unsettled for that long would be deeply distressing, so I have to say no.”

  “He means joking and laughing!“ Smith realized.” I once tried to tell a Gannan a pub joke, changing it to a Gannan, a Doonong and a human entered a bar—he looked at me as though I was deficient.”

  “What, you guys don’t laugh? So a pompous, very dignified Daolan slips on a banana peel—okay, okay, forget banana peel, slips—and is suddenly on his back with his legs waving in the air—you don’t laugh?” Jackman smirked and looked round for support.

  The Daolan looked disgusted, all his nostrils pinching. “I’m afraid you just made my point.”

  Hansen shook his head at Jackman, annoyed. “So, your children—do they play? How do you know when they are enjoying themselves?”

  “They jiggle, and their follicles vibrate. Sometimes their tentacle ends change colour.”

  “And does that disgust you?” Hansen persisted.

  “Of course not.”

  “But it would be unsettling to anyone who wasn’t a Daolan.”

  “Yes—which is why our young put aside such things when they are of an age to meet other races, at least in public. It is something entirely private.”

  “Well, our smiling and laughing is the equivalent of your jiggling and vibrating. Does that help?”

  The Daolan pondered, then nodded. The admiral scrawled quickly on a piece of paper and handed it over. “Would you at least look at our offer?”

  The Daolan took it delicately in a tentacle and read in silence. Then to their astonishment he started to shudder, and the follicles on his upper body started to vibrate. The tentacle holding the paper turned blue, then purple, and the admiral grinned fiercely.

  “Oops,” he remarked, “I gave you the wrong paper. Here’s the real offer. I think you’re going to fit in just fine.”

  Joanna Lamprey lives in Scotland, near Edinburgh, mainly writes whodunits set in the very beautiful area surrounding the Firth of Forth, under the name E J Lamprey, and will one day achieve an alien amateur detective who solves murders brilliantly. One day. http://www.elegsabiff.com/sf-microstories/

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  52.

  Reprisal Lucre

  Lars Carlson

  Light puffed against the stars.

  “Lost contact with the Rio, sir,” the tactical officer reported.

  Vice Admiral Voan swore. Rio was the third destroyer lost, half of her screening force, and the cruiser Hamburg was making best speed away from the engagement zone on a power plant teetering on failure. That left her with five effective vessels to continue the engagement with the jyajub—including her own badly damaged heavy cruiser Nanking.

  The vice admiral ran the numbers in her head. Between standard deployment fees, combat pay and the Commissariat’s Heroic Image bonus—she glanced to her right to see that the ship’s commissar was still on his feet and handling his camera—her force would break even, after the engagement.

  Assuming they won, of course, without further losses.

  Allowing the camera a heavy sigh, the admiral silently thanked the Lords of the Void for Avenger Bounties. At the rates the survivors of the Versas Massacre posted, she could still come out ahead.

  “All done, sir,” a medic beside her reported.

  The vice admiral nodded and dismissed the man. Bandages encased most of her right arm now, soaked with blood beneath the tattered remnants of her greatcoat’s sleeve where shrapnel caught her. The commissar’s camera captured that side of her from beneath the admiral’s command pulpit, giving her greatcoat’s gold buttons and the smoke-stained lance-in-tsunami badge of the Blue Union Navy on her breast a grim human contrast to their dull shine in the bridge emergency lights.

  Victory demanded bold action.

  “Captain!” said the admiral.

  “Sir!”

  The captain of the Nanking stood from his command seat below the admiral’s pulpit. He bled from a brow cut, yet that seemed only to enhance his command presence.

  “Are there ASOs ready?”

  “We have three available tubes, all charged and loaded,” the captain replied.

  “Prepare to fire, captain,” Admiral Voan said, playing up for the recording. “Let’s not let them get away with Versas or the lives of our brave comrades.”

  “Aye,
sir!”

  The Nanking’s CO sat down and issued orders via his console.

  Klaxons shrieked throughout the ship. The Nanking’s computer warned the crew of the impending launch. It repeated twice.

  Vice Admiral Voan fixed a suitably steely glare towards the main screen.

  A jyajub Killship (nine klicks of scrap conglomerated in a web of cables, screen projectors and weapons) wallowed in space as the remnants of the admiral’s flotilla flitted about it like angry hummingbirds attacking a boar. The Killship streamed debris and atmosphere from dozens of places but continued to fight.

  That ship had participated in the deaths of a billion and a half inhabitants of Versas (against a slightly higher pre-Massacre number) and cost Vice Admiral Voan two months of hunting and four ships. It had to die before it did any more harm.

  “Firing.”

  The Nanking “klunked.” Recoil rams thundered. Lights flickered across the ship. An ozone stink filled the air.

  “ASOs away,” the tactical officer reported. “Terminal in two … one …”

  Built for taking out asteroids and space stations and similar slow, predictable objects at distances greater than one AU, the ASOs were poor choices to attack maneuvering starships.

  Usually.

  Accelerating towards the distracted Killship and light speed, two of three ninety-ton chunks of ferrous-clad tungsten found their mark. They blew through the Killship’s screens and hull, erupting out the far side in cones of silver flame. Seconds later their nuclear seed charges detonated, devouring the Killship’s husk in clumps of golden sunburst. It was a thorough and beautifully photogenic kill.

  Cheers erupted across the Nanking’s bridge.

  Vice Admiral Voan smiled. She didn’t think much of vengeance as an ideal, as a goal, as a way of life, but she could appreciate its loosening the accounts of those desiring it. The dead of Versas had been avenged—as had the admiral’s expenses.

  Lars Carlson is a welder, network administration student, gamer, and avid reader who sometimes manages to find time to write, every now and again (just not as often as he would like). He currently lives just north of Seattle, Washington, after 27 years as a native Minnesotan.

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  53.

  Beta Test

  Tom Tinney

  The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

  The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

  So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

  —Genesis 6:8

  ***

  “Hey, Jidard, how’s it going?” Pelban said, pulling up a stool at the Space Terminal passengers’ recreation bar.

  “Not bad, not bad. Just finished the prototype run on the CB-2675 Cloudbreaker system with my partner, Kirdol,” Jidard replied, pointing his second tentacle toward the third member at their end of the bar. “Ran like a champ.”

  “Really? So you’re ready to present it to the council and get a production license?” Pelban signalled the bartender for another round. Jidard flicked his gill slits, indicating yes. “You kept that under wraps. Where did you do your beta testing?”

  “Well, that is a story,” Jidard said, chortling through the air-holes that ran down his back. “You know that we have to test in the “life-zone,” but the league says you can’t screw with environmental factors on planets in League Territory or uninhabited worlds where life already exists? Well, … we went outside the League.”

  “Wait. You went out into the spiral arm and tested? That must have cost a lot of credits.”

  “It did. And it was boring. No intelligent life for 50,000 light spans. Took ten friggin’ spans to find a test planet, but we did. Took 140 spans to spool up and then we balanced the T-wave. We had 120 percent efficiency, so we are golden.”

  “That’s great,” Pelban said, regretting not investing in Jidard’s startup when he had the chance. “I guess it’s time for some fun now, eh?”

  “Oh … we had fun,” Jidard said, pointing to his partner Kirdol and waving him over closer. “He is a creative type and has a killer sense of humor.” They both broke out in laughter, drawing looks from the rest of the bar.

  “Really. OK, let me in on the joke. What’s so funny?”

  Jidard indicated they should huddle closer. “I am not admitting to breaking the Indigenous Interaction Restrictions, okay? Nothing leaves this bar.”

  Pelban bobbed his feather crest, but his multifaceted eyes narrowed. “Do I want to hear this?”

  “Oh, yes, you do. We were bored out of our minds, during the spool up, so Kirdol drops a spy-bot down the well near a village of the less hairy primates that seem to be over-running the planet. He runs a translation on the indigenous language. We are listening and we realize they are pretty simple and really gullible.” Jidard and Kirdol looked at each other and laughed again.

  “Ok. Enough. Get on with it. What did you do?” Pelban asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “Well, when we are 120 spans from the end of spool-up, Kirdol … what a pisser … he sends a bot down with a holo-projector and voice comp. He tells this Indie … what was his name again?”

  “Noah,” Kirdol said, speaking for the first time.

  “No-ahhh,” Pelban sounded out, and then shook his head.

  “Yeah, Noah. Kirdol tells him that the world is going to end in 60 spans. He tells him to build a giant boat and get two of each animal on it because we are going to destroy the world in a flood.”

  “You . . .what?” Pelban exclaimed. “Did he do it?”

  “Yep. Finished just in time for us to turn on Cloudbreaker and rain on him for 40 planetary spins. The area we encircled with a repulsor field filled up and he floated around until we pulled the plug, 40 rotations later. Man, that boat must have stunk.” They both laughed again.

  “So, we got to prove that Cloudbreaker works like a champ and we drop mucus every time we tell the story again. It’s a win-win.”

  “You two crack me up. The next round is on me.”

  Tom Tinney is a biker nerd and USAF vet with experience in radar systems, aerospace, and instrumentation industries. When not at work, he spends time motorcycling and writing for biker magazines, as well as conservative blogs. He now writes science fiction novels, his favorite genre to read (and watch). Ride safe. Ride often.

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  54.

  The 2000 Parade

  Richard Bunning

  “Bugger it, I feel right old today. Why the heck do I always agree to lead the march-past, Molly? Just because I was born on the 1st Jan 2000 doesn’t make me special. What with that and the Water Wars Parade in September, anyone would think I liked bleeding walking. I watched the Remembrance Day march on Sunday. Parades all look the same, except we don’t get the King at ours, just a few old political farts. Can you remember what Tommy Titmarsh asked me, love?”

  “No, should I? It is a long time since I really listened to you, Dad—since I was about twelve, Tommy’s age, actually. He’ll learn!”

  “Well, anyways, he said, ‘Why don’t you lot have your march on the 1st Jan, rather than in November, so close to Poppy Day? Give folks a break from that stuff on the News.’ ”

  “So I tells him, ‘It is right cold and always bleeding raining, even in November, without we old buggers freezing to death in January. The first few years we did do it in January, but we were all only 50 years old then.’ ”

  “He says, ‘Well it ain’t like we get snow no more’, cheeky bugger. Well, none of us are going to perambulate around in January at our age. Anyways, who the hell hasn’t got a hangover on New Year’s Day? It’s amazi
ng, a 100 and some years on, who’d a thought a century ago that there would be so many from the last millennium still about?”

  “And a right grumpy lot you are and all.”

  “Ah, you just wait, my girl. Just 89, why you’re still in your prime! I may be a fossil, but I’m still driving. Proper cars and all, not these modern things that run on fresh air and bleeding water. I’ve always been a petrol-head. My pride and joy is my DB5, well, you know my replica, and even it’s nigh on seventy year old in its own right. As I’ve always said, it’s the very car they used in the remake of Die On Yet Another Deadly Day. The proper roar of its engine, it’s bloody magic. I’ll never forget last year, what a malarkey.”

  “You are lucky to still be here, Dad.”

  “Put the kettle on, love, whilst I chat to myself, as usual.”

  “Put it on yourself, you lazy old codger.”

  “Pass me my stick then, there on your right, leaning against the table.”

  “There you go.”

  “Can I get you a bite of that cannabis cake while I’m up?”

  “You shouldn’t eat that stuff when you’re planning on driving. You know what the cops think about spaced-out drivers.”

  “Just eases up the old joints, love. My knee gives me jip when getting down in the old girl’s bucket seat.”

  “Well, you should get yourself a proper vehicle, Dad.”

  “Anyway, where was I?”

  “About to tell me, yet again, about being James Bond.”

  “That’s right. You remember when that young ****** hijacked me? He thought it a right laugh sticking that shooter in my face. Any road, there I am heading into London to get as near to the Cenotaph as my centenarians pass allows, that be Waterloo. Well, more like right back at the Imperial War Museum! Any road, at least it is easy for the Underground to Embankment.