Writers of the Future 32 Science Fiction & Fantasy Anthology (L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future)

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Danny stammered, questions tumbling over each other. His brain crunched and stalled. John’s goggles locked to him, nodding slowly.

  “You’ll die, of course. While they disconnect your nerves. But then. Son. Wings!”

  Danny’s head bobbed on his shoulders like a balloon. He gripped the bar. How many had he drunk again? John didn’t help, rolling back and forth, talking bollocks: “Travel anywhere in a blink. A digger in Beijing. A sub in the Atlantic. A trash-collecting electromagnetic-net in sodding orbit. Real jobs. It’s the new frontier!”

  “’s a joke, right?” Danny’s voice came out his ears. That was wrong. He should go. Sally. His daughter. When was the overwhelming love supposed to start? Where was the door?

  “You got poison in you, son.” John rolled behind him. “Couldn’t have you bolt. Waste all that money we spent on the ‘sad buggers’ list, you know, those most likely to give up, do themselves in. Not to mention my work, prepping your ass. Course, you’re free to ask this fella’s help.” Danny blinked at the pursed lips of the bored paramedic, materializing at his side, fiddling with a needle. “Just say the word. He’ll give you the antidote. You’re back out on the street. With your family.”

  John nuzzled the chair at the back of Danny’s knees. He swayed, and locked his legs, trembling from the bones out. “Sally,” he said into his hood, to call her, but it didn’t recognize his thick mumbling.

  “Pipes are calling, Danny boy. Do your duty! As a man. For your family. Take the king’s shilling. Fight. For them. Or live knowing you’re a coward. That when it came down to it, you weren’t prepared to do what it takes.”

  The bar girl caught Danny’s eye and shook her head emphatically, in warning or in judgment, he couldn’t tell. She pressed her lips and turned away. He swallowed at a rise of bile, forced leaden eyelids to stay open. The room boggled.

  John shoved him again and he teetered. “Got to be your choice, sunshine. Cry for help? Or hold your tongue and man-up?”

  Danny gripped John’s tripod, warm metal vibrating in his palm. He bared his teeth, shuddering uncontrollably. He could snap its neck, rip the thing apart. Then what? The world had a list. Of people who were too crap to live, and he was on it. Danny’s life, Sally, the baby, spilled with the tears off his chin. He never had a grip on them at all, and everyone knew it.

  He shut his mouth, and shut his eyes.

  “Good lad!” A crackling, old voice filled the black, strong hands guiding him into a seat. “Hop on, fella. We’ll sort out the details on the way, eh? Ha, ha, ha.”

  Last Sunset for the World Weary

  written by

  H. L. Fullerton

  illustrated by

  Camber ARNHART

  * * *

  about the author

  H. L. Fullerton was born in New York and still lives there; has never watched the world end from the deck of a star cruiser; writes mostly speculative fiction; tends toward the apocalyptic; likes semicolons and the occasional interrobang; prefers penguins over pandas, fiction over non, and Monopoly over Jenga; verbs nouns; wonders if this should be a bulleted list; thinks thirty-two is a lucky number; occasionally indulges in run-on sentences; once came in third for a Parsec Short Story Contest; sometimes tweets as @ByHLFullerton; might be in trouble with prepositions; uses words instead of emoticons; believes commas are apostrophes gone wild; can’t remember what goes here; finds sunsets more accommodating than sunrises; saves dangling participles; binge reads while watching television; has had (or will have, depending on the time-space continuum one is using) stories published in places like AE, Daily Science Fiction, Freeze Frame Fiction, Parsec’s Triangulation anthologies, Urban Fantasy Magazine, and hopes to sell enough stories to support a growing tsundoku habit.

  about the illustrator

  Camber Arnhart was born in 1996 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised by her two artistic parents. She spent many days creating arts and crafts with her mother and watching her father play fantastic video games, all of which inspired her.

  Her life changed when her dad brought home a Wacom tablet and she became addicted to digital art. She started with basic paint programs but moved on to her favorite digital tool: Photoshop. Along with creating digital paintings, she fell in love with the gaming genre and aspired to create videogames for a living.

  During her time at Volcano Vista High School, her art skills improved dramatically, thanks to the rigorous AP art program. She received a number of art awards, including a national gold medal in the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

  Now she attends the University of New Mexico, where she intends to obtain a degree in computer science and a minor in art. Equipped with both technical and artistic skills, she aims to create her own games that inspire audiences with engaging stories and environments.

  Last Sunset for the World Weary

  We watched the world end from the observation deck of the star cruiser. Pickets sat on my right. “To new beginnings,” he said, raising his champagne flute.

  “To those left behind.” I kissed his glass with mine. My cheeks blushed at the clink. With all the crying going on, it seemed . . . sacrilegious? (Could one even use that word anymore or was it outré like “skyward” and Latin nomenclature?) I half expected someone to spit on us, but if anyone would know the proper etiquette for witnessing a planet’s death-gasms, it’d be Pickets.

  And Earth had put on a show. If one overlooked the deaths-of-millions thing. Which I was a tad uncomfortable doing. But then, I’d always been moved to donate when confronted with pixels of starving children or pandas. I thought of the tiny bamboo stalks on my cabin’s nightstand and how no vegetarian ursine would ever taste them. I teared up and turned to Jawry on my left.

  “To the last sunset,” he said—always the poet—and we all sipped. Earth’s spacely remains did resemble a sunset. Something to do with the gases released from the vaporization—Pickets had explained it to me when he invited us to his little on-deck soiree for Earth’s send off, but I didn’t understand much of his scientific ramblings. Pickets is much more entertaining when he isn’t being pedantic. (Secret? I stopped listening after faux-tropo-something. I’ve never had much patience for knock-offs.) Seeing my expression, Pickets had rolled his eyes and said, “Think of it like a rainbow segregation party for your eyes.”

  I told him he wasn’t allowed to use that word.

  “What, ‘segregation’?”

  “No, ‘rainbow.’” He’d laughed and I accepted his invite as long as he promised not to be boring—I so hated boring. So far he’d been very bon vivant. It almost made up for the captain’s impromptu evacuation drill this morning. Completely in bad taste. Reminding us of our mortality while others were dying. As if there were any point. Who planned for disasters? It simply begged for trouble. And those bulky life-preserver suits might sustain a person until another star cruiser sailed by; but, frankly, I’d rather go down with the ship than be caught dead in one. Plus, there was no guarantee I’d get the same caliber of cabin on another ship.

  “Pickets,” Jawry said, leaning forward to make eye contact—eye contact was very important to Jawry. (My dear poet claimed it let you touch a person’s soul. Making connections was something of a must for him. Without them, he’d be cast off into zero gravity or reduced to server status—and the poor man can’t mix a margarita to save his life.) “You always hit just the right note for the occasion. Thanks for sharing your seats with us. Fida wanted to commemorate this occasion sitting in a pitch-black cabin spouting eulogies for marsupials.”

  Pickets patted my hand. “The colors. Aren’t they beautiful?” Jawry and I both agreed they were. “Better than the aurora borealis,” Pickets murmured.

  “Person, place or thing?” I asked.

  “Thing,” Pickets said, a moue of disappointment twisting his lips, “but not animal, vegetable, or gem.”

  “Then, no, darling
. You know I have no use for things.” I found it unkind for both Pickets and Jawry to laugh and was gladdened to see the other passengers glare at them. A small giggle might be overlooked at a funeral, but guffaws never. “Hush,” I said. “Pandas are dying.”

  “Fida, dear. We’re the endangered species now. Remember to put me on your list to be saved. P-I-C-K-E-T-S.”

  Maybe the morning would’ve gone different if I hadn’t opened my eyes and seen my pot of bamboo first thing. Normally the sight of it gave me the serene greens, which was why I kept it on my nightstand, but this morning it reminded me of a home lost and I plunged into the blue glummlies. Jawry’s lips grazed my shoulder. I sighed, rolled over and pushed him out of bed. He climbed back in and tried to tease me into a happier mood.

  “Really, Jawry. A planet went poof last night. Our home is gone. How can you smile?”

  “We are our home, Fida. Earth was a place we once lived. I’m here; you’re here. What isn’t there to be happy about?”

  For a sensitive soul, Jawry doesn’t wallow in grief the way he should. Probably too grateful he wasn’t on Earth when it ended. If not for me, he would’ve been. I pushed him away again; he went easily. “Today is not for happiness,” I said, feeling a frown gather at my back teeth.

  “I will write you an elegy for yesterday.” He padded toward the shower; he did his best composing in there.

  “No poem,” I called. Jawry’s laments are particularly moving. His ode about a lost earring—how I loved that earring!—critics hailed as a lyrical allegory about souls parted, never to be paired again. One nasty critic (I heard he was Earth-stuck and thought it served him right) blogged: “It’s overblown drivel about a goddamn earring left at the opera. Buy another pair, for christsakes, and get some effing perspective.” This morning I agreed with that ass: the loss of Earth was no different to Jawry than the loss of my earring. I supposed the mourning must be left to me. I dressed in gray—because black washed me out and white reminded me of dead Chinese pandas—and went looking for Pickets.

  I checked the breakfast room, the observation deck, the pool, then the bar, and finally had a steward track Pickets down for me. He’d switched to the blackside deck and was still staring into space at the place Earth used to be. “Pickets,” I said. “Mourning is one thing; maudlin’s another.” I had my chaise turned so I faced him rather than the black and bright of space ruined by purple and pink smudges.

  “This,” he waved a hand at the view, “is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Another few hours and we’ll be out of range. It’s the last piece of Earth we’ll ever get. Enjoy it.” He patted his chaise for me to join him.

  I signaled to a nearby steward and had my lounge repositioned. Pickets offered me his hand and I took it. We sat, side by side, and watched the smeary rainbow sunset disappear from view. “That’s it then,” he said. “We’re star-stuck.”

  Pickets persuaded the staff to serve scones and coffee despite us being blackside. With no one else about, we raised the lights to dim so we could break our fast. Pickets looked wistful, as if he were suffering the blue glummlies himself. “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

  I shrugged. There’d been something ominous in the colored ash against a black backdrop, not a true sunset but a disturbing reproduction. Maybe I was reacting to how the display had been created—the end of the Earth—rather than the art itself. “Did you watch all night?” Night was a relative term, but Pickets understood I meant the hours our half of the cruiser faced away from the sun.

  “I wouldn’t have missed a second of it. We’re one of the few cruisers with sight line. Best view in space. You can tell your great-grandkids about it one day—if you have any.” He sipped and switched expressions, watchful now. “Where’s Fida’s shadow?”

  “Commemorating the event in quatrains. And do stop calling him that. Play nice.” I swatted him.

  “You wouldn’t like me half so much if I did.” He closed his eyes and clasped his hands across his rumpled suit. He was right. Part of Pickets’ charm was his bite. I wondered which of us would tire of the other first. When he drifted off, I left him to his dreams and wandered about blackside. A day of all night seemed just the thing. (Plus, my desertion would worry Jawry. He pretended not to mind Pickets nor envy the time I spent with him, but what artist wanted to see their patron’s gaze caught elsewhere? Not one that liked eating.)

  I explored deserted corridors, tiptoeing so as not to disturb this half’s inhabitants. Without Jawry or Pickets at my side, the cruiser was a strange beast. I wondered if—like Pickets—the longer I was aboard, the more claustrophobic this life would seem.

  Probably not, I wasn’t the adventurer Pickets was. Long before new orbit life became necessary, he was one of the first permanent star cruiser residents—back when the end of the world seemed a doomsayer’s mantra rather than a realism.

  Besides, I liked my creature comforts (even if Jawry had grated my nerves this morning) and entertainment was always easier to find than adventure. I’d be just fine.

  That night Jawry and I joined Pickets at the captain’s table for dinner and Pickets began his catalog of sunsets. “Not,” Pickets said about a Saharan sunset, “that it could hold a candle to what we viewed yesterday.”

  The captain said, “I trust you found the view to your liking?” and Pickets assured him he had.

  “No trouble with the ship?” Pickets said. “I know you were concerned about our proximity.”

  “Everything worked out fine,” the captain said. “We broadcast the demise, and sales from that video will more than compensate for the extra fuel expenditure our delay required. We’ll resume our orbital path by tomorrow. If you’ll excuse me, I have some matters to take care of on the bridge.”

  And I thought, We changed orbit for Pickets?

  Life went on as usual; the way it does. I hardly even noticed Earth was missing. Pickets stopped moping and returned to his buoyant self; Jawry fawned and scribbled; and the blue glummlies left me alone as soon as I moved my bamboo plant to a less conspicuous spot in my cabin. I considered getting rid of it altogether; maybe making Pickets a gift of it. He’d appreciate the symbolism of the gesture if not the gesture itself—“What, Fida? Am I to be next on your list of unsaved things?” But Jawry seemed to derive inspiration from it, so I let it be. I didn’t even object when my darling poet made something of a shrine out of it, though I thought that rather tasteless myself. Pagan, even. (Unless that word, too, has been decommissioned; then I mean something else.)

  Then Jawry had to bring the whole dead planet thing back up. Those lines he’d been scribbling? A poem about the end. Even though I adamantly asked him not to.

  “If I succumb to the glummlies again, it’ll be your fault, Jawry, and I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Ignore her,” Pickets said, making fly-shooing motions at me with his hand. (One of the best things about star cruisers? No flies, no gnats, no nasty mosquitoes. Well, maybe second best. The service was out of this world. I’ve never been so well taken care of.) “Fida has no idea how to act as an audience. That’s the trouble with stars. Too blinded by their own importance to care what we mortals suffer. Give us a listen, poet Jaw-reate.”

  “It’s called: From Blackness We Go.”

  “Does that even make sense?” I asked. Pickets assured me it did. I wasn’t totally convinced, but deferred to his cultural expertise.

  Jawry read his poem; he didn’t mention extinct ursines once. Pickets clapped when my poet finished. I managed a wan smile.

  “You didn’t like it?” Jawry was crushed.

  “It’s very nice,” I said. “Very . . . astronomical. I’ll have to listen to it again. But not now.”

  “Fida,” Pickets chided. “You owe the boy more than that. He made you the Earth in his poem—the center of his moony universe.”

  “He killed me!?”

  “No, no.” Jawry rushed to
hold my hand. “My Earth never ends. She is with us always. ‘And tho we see her not again, her kiss resides deep in our hearts, her dust settles upon our heads. Forever she does carry on, we spin orbit dance! in her stead.’”

  I couldn’t decide if being compared to a vaporized planet was flattering or not. “You can recite it again for me tonight.”

  CAmber ARNHART

  Pickets snorted. “You are solipsistic—the perfect Earth.”

  “And I suppose you’d make the perfect sun? Everything begins and ends with you?”

  “Some of us have more gravitas than others. I’d make a grand sun,” Pickets said. “But let’s not fight. I, too, have a surprise for you. A gift.”

  “A gift? For me?”

  “And Jawry—if you’ll share.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll have to come see.” Pickets led us into the bowels of the cruiser. Everything clanked and hummed and vibrated. Not to mention the dirt and grease. It was very factory-ish. I have to say, I didn’t think much of Pickets’ presentation. It made me appreciate Jawry’s poem all the more. Until Pickets threw open a door marked CULTIVATION BAY 111-G and stepped aside to let me enter.

  “Your gift—my sun, my earth, my moon.” Pickets bowed, a smirk upon his face.

  I stepped inside and there it was. A bamboo forest. Complete with one giant panda. Just for me. “Oh, Pickets!”

  If Pickets hadn’t bought me that panda . . . Ordinarily, gifts don’t make me suspicious—and I adored pandas. Then Jawry had to go wondering how Pickets procured the panda, when Pickets got it, where he’d found it. On and on, he went. I paid no attention to Jawry’s jealous ramblings—a little rivalry does the heart good, or so my mother claimed—until Pickets told that story about a mountain in China that ruined his view.

  Pickets sighed. “Such a majestic mountain; too bad it grew in the wrong place.”