9781910981729

by Alexander Hammond

  Christian was solicitousness itself. “Oh Tarquin, I’m so sorry. There’s you not feeling too good and I’m giving you a hard time.”

  His head banging, Tarquin fought to keep his eyes in focus as Deville’s calm voice enveloped him. “I didn’t know you didn’t like my movies,” the director mumbled.

  Deville’s eyes flashed with purpose. “Oh, but I do, Tarquin, oh but I do. In fact I love them…they’re right up my alley. I select my show’s guests very carefully. It’s not easy to get in front of me but now I’m convinced you had what it took to get my attention…I had to be sure you see?”

  Now, definitely feeling extremely sick, Tarquin was aware of dampness on his shirt. He looked down at it, trying to focus. His whole torso was soaked with blood. He made to cry out but no words would come. He tried to move, but his movements were sluggish as if his body was no longer his. In blind panic he looked up. The studio audience was nowhere to be seen. Only Deville remained, studying him from his chair.

  “Goodness Tarquin, that accident must have been worse than you thought,” he said, and got up from his chair. He pulled Tarquin up with a surprising strength and started helping him across the now empty studio. Holding onto him for dear life, the director mumbled, “I didn’t think it was that bad at the time.”

  “Yes I know,” replied DeVille. “It often happens that way. But don’t you worry, I’m going to make sure you get extra special attention.”

  By now they’d reached a door at the far side of the studio. “Here we are,” murmured the interviewer. He opened the door and Tarquin felt a rush of heat and saw flickering flames. DeVille roughly pushed the director through it. “See you shortly,” he said, then gently closed the door and paused briefly to pull a bright silk handkerchief from his pocket.

  He bent over and wiped the dust off an inscription in gothic script on the door: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.

  - The End -

  DEITY

  When he first found out it had been quite fun. He’d been too young to find it scary or even awesome, such is the capriciousness of youth. Though now elderly, he could still, understandably, recall the exact moment the differences between himself and everyone else manifest themselves. He’d been standing on a school rugby field on his thirteenth birthday.

  As a gangly youth he had scowled into the wind, bemoaning the wretched weather, his maths teacher, his raging acne and pretty much everything a pubescent teenager has to contend with. The cold rain lashed down as he shivered and walked miserably over to take his place in the scrum. He growled under his breath, “Stop bloody raining,” and it did…just like that. His mood prevented him from linking his comment to the change in the weather. From his place in the second row of the scrum he pushed and shoved, but the opposition was holding firm. Someone kicked his shin bringing a flash of anger to the surface. “Move!” he shouted, and immediately the opposition’s front line started loosing ground dramatically.

  When the ball came loose he broke from the scrum and hung back behind the line of play, willing it to be passed to him. It was. He ran with it for all he was worth. All he could think was, ‘I’m going all the way.’ He knew it. As he ran he felt an empowerment that he’d not known before. Looking toward the rapidly approaching line he saw the imposing hulk of one of his particularly obnoxious classmates. A huge, squat and unattractive individual carrying significantly more weight and less brain cells than him. There was no way he could force himself past this guy. No, he decided in that instant…nobody was going to stop him. As his feeling of empowerment increased he thought, ‘I’m going to hit this guy like an express train and he’s going to go over like a bowling pin,’ which is exactly how it happened. When he’d touched the ball down for the try he turned to see his enraged and bloodied classmate advancing toward him with fire in his eyes and bunched fists. ‘I’m going to knock him out with one punch,’ thought the victorious try scorer and, inevitably, that’s exactly what happened.

  In between the trials and tribulations of normal teenage existence he eventually joined the dots and considered the opportunities. All he had to do was to state what he wanted and it happened or he got it. When the inkling of what was going on began to occur to him he started with little things. A good exam result here and there, an instant respite to his acne and increased athletic prowess. By his fourteenth birthday his requests had matured a little, though only a little. Whilst he’d increased his intelligence level and therefore his exam results, he’d also taken delight during a routine physical in stunning the school doctor with the size of his penis. “Never seen anything like it,” the old man had murmured unsteadily in the staff room over coffee.

  As he sat in his rocking chair he smiled as he reminisced. The memory put him in a jovial frame of mind. It had taken him until he was eighteen to fully realise that he was a God. Not the God perhaps but certainly a God. “Let there be tea and current buns,” he chuckled and, as he tucked in, he continued his reveries.

  The eighteen-year-old God was certainly a very different individual from the pale thirteen year old who had stood on the rugby pitch five years previously. He was now tall, impossibly handsome and rich beyond the dreams of avarice. By the time he’d reached sixteen he was banned from every bookie in the country. Luckily the same constraints were not prevalent in the stock market. His fortune just grew and grew. Nor was he selfish with his requests. Much to his doctor’s dismay his father went from a wheelchair bound asthmatic to a marathon runner almost overnight. To his father’s amazement his mother regained the looks of someone thirty years younger while he’d been out for a game of golf.

  Of course he tried to confide in his parents and indeed when he demonstrated a few tricks to prove his point they seemed impressed. Water into wine was always a good one, but bringing back the family cat that they’d all seen run over some years previously was a bad move. His mother became hysterical and his father bit off the end of his pipe. He did the only thing he could under the circumstances. He told them that they were to forget that he’d ever said anything and of course they did. He had the same reaction when he spoke to a priest. In retrospect he thought that the cleric’s hysterical screech of “Get thee behind me Satan,” had been a bit harsh.

  So he kept his gifts a secret. His vast multinational holding company grew to the gross domestic product of a first world country. His power and wealth enabled him to bed the most attractive of women though his looks alone would have sufficed. The very few that weren’t impressed were just told to find him irresistible, which they immediately did. He became bored, so he told himself he wasn’t, then immediately he wasn’t bored…until he was again. He’d considered issuing the instruction that he would never be bored again, but he realised that he’d be kidding himself and that his lack of boredom wouldn’t be real. This was the first time that the young God had entertained an even vaguely philosophical thought.

  By twenty-one he’d sold his huge empire. He ensconced himself in a sumptuous London apartment and read. He absorbed the great philosophers, the Bible, Buddhist teachings, the Koran…he sought the knowledge of the ages in order to understand what he was. A couple of weeks into his investigation he realised that the study was needless. He simply had to ask for ultimate knowledge and that’s what he would get. So he requested it.

  In that moment he was aware, with empirical experience, of the true nature of all things. When the revelation was complete he shakily muttered, “Let there be a bloody large gin and tonic,” and took a big slug of it. Ultimate knowledge can be a heady brew for an immature twenty one year old.

  In that nano second he understood that ultimate knowledge was limitless unless of course he chose that it was otherwise, which didn’t really help him much. Nonetheless, what he had experienced of infinity was enough to make him realise it was a big place where anything was possible because that’s what infinity was all about. Infinity, from what he’d found out, included just about everything. Opportunity, distance, time…the whole scheme.

&n
bsp; His next request, born out of desperation more than anything, was the only command he’d ever uttered which he didn’t believe would be answered. Respectfully clearing his throat, he demanded God’s presence. A moment later, after an impressive light display, the smoke cleared and he found himself sitting opposite…himself. “No,” he said, “I mean the God, not a God.” “Same thing old chap,” his alter ego replied. After a rather fractious discourse his doppelganger vanished, leaving him with the knowledge, in no uncertain terms, that he was God and that was the end of it.

  As days go, it was a challenging one for the young man. Learning that he was the creator of all things brought with it a measure of responsibility which he decided to address assiduously. He waved his hand and, at a stroke, rid the world of all known disease and insisted that all guns on the planet would no longer function. Considering that he’d ended a day on a high note, he took to his bed.

  Two weeks later most of the Middle East was running rivers of blood with hand-to-hand combat in the streets, as was most of Africa. Old scores were being settled with a vengeance. A month later there was rioting in most of the civilised world as the pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and arms companies laid off vast numbers of staff. Stock markets plummeted and prices skyrocketed. ‘Opps,’ he thought, and immediately changed everything back to the way it had been.

  And so it went on. His overnight cure for Aids caused a population explosion and a resultant famine in Africa. His creative command that cars could run on tap water engendered traffic congestion that simply meant that societies ceased to function and whole economies collapsed. So he stopped interfering. He took himself off to a small cottage and lived a normal life and even allowed himself to grow old. Even if one had ultimate understanding, he reasoned, you could never predict the outcome. Naturally he could command an outcome but if he did where would free will and choice be? If he interfered that would make him a dictator and not God. People, he had learned, were not to be manipulated at his will even with the best of intentions, even if he was God. As he rocked on his chair he smiled to himself in the knowledge that he had at last learned wisdom.

  - The End -

  SCIENCE FICTION

  He shivered at the chill and gazed out at the seemingly endless vista of rich pasture before him. The cattle moaned to each in early morning greetings. The twin sun’s weak rays pierced the low clouds, creating a strange half-light in the clinging mist. It was hard to conceive of the unimaginable violence of a star ship arrival at times like these. Everything seemed so peaceful. Moving slowly towards the waterhole the animals regarded him through soft eyes. He inwardly sighed. This serene tableau was far removed from the gut wrenching reality of his existence; Politics, pressure and occasionally, treachery. He tried to hold on to the moment, only to realise that as he tried to grasp it, it danced playfully away from him like the end of a rainbow. He groaned as his communicator crackled into life.

  “We have an inbound on the net. Please be advised that the err, Christ, I can’t even pronounce its name, incept departure point Ursa Magellan, will acquire planet fall at 07.27 standard reference time. Access velocity is light speed times a sigma variable. Quantum flux indicates pre stage breaking procedure initiated. Expect maximum atmospheric disruption. Occupants, twelve crew and fifty passengers, all triple Y chromosome silicone based Argon breathers...not exactly a party crowd. We’re gonna need rigorous immigration containment. We’ll need the population in shelters by 07.00…this is going to be a rough one…it’s a fast sucker and big…we’d better buckle up.”

  Managing this sector of the quadrant had been a huge promotion. God knows how many parsecs of celestial real estate came under his purview. That in itself was a big enough responsibility. His job was not made any easier by the fact that he was at the very edge of the Empire. They didn’t call it an Empire of course. That was politically incorrect but, to all intents and purposes, it was an Empire and a prosperous one. Even more reason to police its outskirts with a robust and protectionist attitude. The Empire looked after its own. That was the reason for its existence.

  His unfortunate geographic position meant that his sector was the first entry point for visitors from outside. This presented numerous headaches and challenges. Firstly, there were the inevitable customs and immigration formalities, which were a nightmare with some of the more exotic species that chose to visit. Protocol and courtesy were relative things. Trying to get across the nuances of bureaucracy and administration to visitors was a challenge. Visitors who were sometimes so different they were not recognisable as life forms at all. The last lot, as far as the sensors could ascertain, did not literally exist in real space-time and communicated via binary impulses only detectable in super heated plasma. Thank God he had a competent team of translators. He marvelled at the fact that their burn out rate wasn’t higher. Talk about stress.

  The second tiresome challenge was provided by the nature of space travel itself. Due to the unimaginable speeds ships had to travel to cover interstellar distances, slowing down was a problem. Good old-fashioned gravity offered a solution. Binary stars provided a gravity well that did the trick very well. These often exotic craft came shrieking in at huge multiples of light speed, aimed for the middle of the perfectly placed twin suns and let Isaac Newton do the rest. It worked very well, save for the shock waves it sent out over the surrounding few millions of miles causing huge disruption. The population needed to take to shelters to protect them from the shockwaves, as did the multiplicity of livestock that grazed the vast plains of his base of operations. Essentially the planet had to stop work for a few hours every time a ship arrived.

  Inevitably of course, on occasion a colonist was caught outside. Normally some dim witted, idealistic frontier dweller who’d forgotten his communicator. And when it happened there was always hell to pay. Insurance companies asked questions and the paperwork backed things up for weeks. Still, the job paid well.

  His sensitive location ensured that the operation never ran smoothly. ‘Rumour Central’ was its nickname. The shifting politics of the Empire and its repercussions were never far from his door. Though it purported to be a democracy, huge block votes from the wealthier systems ensured the continuity of power of those with vested interests. Inevitably those with less wanted more and those with more held on to what they had. Consequently uprisings occurred, civil violence occasionally flared up and the vast trading houses plotted each other’s downfall with razor like precision.

  His spaceport heaved with the flotsam and jetsam of society. Traders exported their wares, colonists eked out a meagre existence on the land, spies of the Empire plied their murky trade and exotic visitors from outside plotted sedition.

  God, this was good stuff. Really original. He stopped typing for a moment and hit the spell-check. He particularly liked the section about how the Starships slowed down. It was clever; he could really make something of that. His science fiction was for the thinker. His intellectual affectations persuaded him that he had a duty to make his readers think. That was of course when he actually had some readers. As yet his writing prowess had yet to be fully appreciated. Actually, it hadn’t yet been appreciated at all. It would be of course. The market was right for a more intelligent approach.

  A ‘ping’ on one of the many screens surrounding the astronomer took his eye away from his recreation. He mentally jumped from the fantasies of the distant future to the mundane realities of radio astronomy in the twenty first century. He glanced at the readout: a gamma ray spike. Somewhere in deep space, a star had exploded with unimaginable violence. Since God knows when, the ripple in space had travelled from its distant origin to the warm sands of the New Mexico desert, a desert where he now sat surrounded by vast radio dishes listening to the sounds of infinity.

  Gamma ray spikes were not unusual though they had been more frequent of late. If he’d have bothered to check he’d have noticed that their rate was accelerating but he was too immersed in his own fantasy world to bother. The powers that b
e, whilst recognising his technical competence, also recognised his lack of ambition and had assigned him the graveyard watch at the back end of astronomy.

  His spotty assistant arrived in the room in a flustered manifestation of body odour, frizzy hair and unbearable enthusiasm. “We’ve got a new spike,” he offered with tiresome energy. The astronomer stared bleakly at him with hooded eyes. “Log it in and file it,” he murmured. Gamma ray spikes were hardly anything to get excited about. Radio astronomy was about a lot more than that. His superiors agreed. That was why they had him on the night shift. ‘A lack of imagination’ was the phrase that they’d used. It still grated with him. Imagination he had by the bucket load. When his flights of fancy were published, they’d show him to be the towering intellect he knew himself to be.

  “You know we’ve been getting an awful lot of these spikes recently,” gushed the assistant. “I ran an analysis earlier on. The sources seem to be getting closer. It’s almost as if they are, well, coming our way. The algorithms hinted at what could be seen as a pattern.”

  The astronomer scoffed. “A pattern? Getting closer? Where did you go to school? The only thing that causes Gamma Ray spikes like this are exploding stars. Please feel free to commit career suicide by suggesting there is some cosmic phenomenon at work. Be my guest. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some real science fiction to write.”

  He was right of course. It was a ludicrous thought. To even suggest that the exploding stars were anything other than a natural occurrence was career suicide. It was unthinkable. Indeed, there were those who counted on such complacency.

  The astronomer re read his most recent paragraph and basked at his own inventiveness. In that moment, every celestial monitoring device in the facility started urgently chattering out data.