The Ultimate Collection of Science & Speculative Fiction Short Stories (Short SSF Stories Book 5)

by Nicholas C. Rossis

  I heard shouts all around me. Angry claxons blared in alarm. People clamored. Lights dimmed, and shone again. Then, it all stopped. An eerie silence fell. Dazed people struggled to get their bearings. Expensive leather shoes and elegant high heels stepped on salmon and pheasant as stunned diners rose to their feet. Fear and silent pleas for help filled the passengers’ eyes. I turned to the ship owner, but he had disappeared. From afar, I heard one long continuous wailing hiss, like locusts on a midsummer night in the woods. Are we decompressing? I decided to follow the noise. The flickering lights allowed me to reach the nearest exit, pushing through the nervous throng.

  I had just reached the door handle when the floor tilted. The vessel reared up, followed by a rumbling roar and a muffled explosion. I pushed through the door and grabbed the railing. Above me, the dome cracked. A small chunk flew away, blown out by the pressure. My eyes gaped at the ugly sight. A second piece followed. The ship let out a terrible groan and quivered, like a mongrel trying to throw the fleas off its back. Crack! The dome split open with a deafening blast. Deck chairs and sculpted wooden benches flew around me to burst through the fracture. The clamor drowned out my scream.

  The gushing atmosphere sucked me upwards. The shock took the breath out of my lungs. I flew towards the dome at an increasing speed, gasping for air. The lifejacket sprang to life. Nanocarbon blades clasped and banded together to form an impenetrable barrier that covered me from head to toe. Air hissed in my ears. After a heart-stopping moment of weightlessness, I crashed against the dome and yelled in pain. My hands grabbed the dome’s torn edge. I held on for a moment, my feet already dangling in space. I started sliding, carried away by the rushing air. My eyes searched in vain for anything to hold on to. Then, I let go.

  I popped through the gap in the dome, like a cork. I drifted away from the safety of the spaceship and into the endless void of space. I flailed my arms and legs to stop the dizzying motion. My heart beat so fast, I thought it would pop out of my chest. Finally, it occurred to me to let my lifejacket guide me to safety. Valves hissed and the mad rotation stopped, just as I was about to hurl my stomach’s contents against my mask.

  Something banged against me. I spun around, startled, and came up against a lifeboat. An airlock opened up silently before me. Too exhausted to haul myself, I let the men already inside pull me inside.

  The door behind me closed in silence. Air hissed into the airlock. My ears popped as sound returned. I punched the clasp deactivating the lifejacket. With a soft clicking sound, it retracted back into my belt, ready to spring back to life at a moment’s notice. I landed on the metal floor, still nauseated. It smelled of engine oil, petrol and ozone. The sweetest smell to ever hit my nostrils. Someone helped me to my feet and sat me down. I nodded my thanks and coughed to clear my lungs. Tears burned my eyes and my throat.

  “Are you all right?”

  Recognizing the voice, I looked up and saw the ship owner. “I will be, thanks,” I rasped after a moment. I drew a deep breath, grateful to be alive. “What the hell happened?”

  “A ship collided with us,” the man said. “Those idiots must have been drunk or something.”

  I shook my head. I had heard stories of crews drinking on the job, but this was one for the books. The huge cruise ship was not exactly hard to miss.

  I glanced outside. The dome had now disappeared. Silent explosions dotted the ship’s hull. Numerous lifeboats shot out of gaping holes in the decks. A second spaceship tilted drunkenly next to it. In the darkness of space, it was hard to make out, but it looked like a freighter.

  My eye caught on something like countless heads bobbing around is. “My God,” I whispered. “Are those people?”

  The man leaned next to me and craned his head to look. “No, that’s not heads.” He looked forlorn. “It’s lettuce. Frozen lettuce. That damn ship was filled with it. Probably for the moon colonies.” His eyes glinted with something akin to madness. “We were struck by a freighter carrying iceberg lettuce.”

  “Iceberg lett—” I coughed to swallow the mad cackle that rose to my throat, shaking my head. “Buddy, that’s why you don’t call your ship the Titanic II.”

  Infinite Waters

  She burst into laughter. “Good one!”

  I shrugged. I’ve seen the stories before. I reach for the ball. “If that’s—”

  Her head jerked towards me. “More!” Without waiting for me to speak, she shoved away my hands, and stared into the globe.

  The Lucky Bastard

  The low-lit bunker was as quiet as an old grave. The kind of grave the entire world would be like, if I didn’t stop the upcoming apocalypse. I glanced at the stony-faced people in the room. Uniforms of all shapes and colors surrounded me. A clean-shaven aide pushed a briefcase onto the table. His hands shook with a slight tremor as he popped the lid open. The insides contained a screen and a compact keyboard. He tapped it and the screen flickered to life with a soft beep. I inserted the crescent key hanging from my neck into a silver slot, while the aide took a respectful step back.

  A man with as many golden stars on his lapels as the fingers on both my hands produced a similar key and pushed it into a second slot. Our gazes met for a moment. I nodded. We both turned the keys slowly until a soft click confirmed the system was now armed. Behind me, the entire wall lit up, mirroring the small screen facing me. I felt nothing. No emotion, no fear, no hope.

  Is this what destiny had in mind all along? To hang the fate of the entire world on me?

  Destiny. Fate. Luck. Whatever you called it, I was intimately familiar with it. ‘The Lucky Bastard,’ the papers called me; friends and foes alike. Little did they know just how accurate that was.

  I never knew my father. Probably some loser my drug-addled mother met on the streets. She died within minutes of delivering me. My luck kicked in right away. I stole the heart of the doctor who delivered me. He and his wife had been trying for years, with no success. He later said I was the perfect child for them. He knew the minute he laid his eyes on me.

  With no known relatives, the adoption went through right away. My parents lavished me with all their love and attention, the way only adoptive parents can. All I had to do was ask for something and it was mine. I didn’t let them down, either. Luck had gifted me with unusually spacious lungs and a unique metabolism. I won one competition after another. A string of athletic scholarships let me skim through school. As long as I could remember where and when the race took place, all I had to do was show up and the win was mine. I won my first Olympics barely out of high school. Didn’t even have to train.

  Universities fought over me. My second Olympics, I won while studying management at a prestigious Ivy League university. Although studying may be too strong a word. I didn’t even have to show up at class. At the finals, I was sure I would fail. Luck saved me again. A computer glitch somehow caused my test to disappear. Eager to avoid embarrassment, the department offered me my degree without so much as a peep.

  I lacked for nothing. Money, fame, women; all mine for the taking. Especially the women. They fawned over my proverbial chiseled jaw, my sparkling blue eyes, and my mane of thick, black hair. Plus, I was an Ivy League -trained manager on top of being an Olympic-winning athlete. A jock with a brain. Who could resist that? I had a different girl in my arms each night. I never committed to anyone, of course. Why would I? The moment one brief relationship was over, a dozen more were beckoning.

  Some took it harder than others. My only long-term relationship—two and a half months—committed suicide over me. Stupid bitch. Luckily, her best friend also had a crush on me. She spoke to the press of the girl’s depression. Again and again. I still wonder how much of it was true. Regardless, in the end, I came out as a martyr. Instead of dragging me down, my stock had never been higher.

  The publicity attracted the attention of a head hunter. She tracked me down and invited me to one of the best law firms in the country. I was to start low, but as luck would have it, the owner had just
lost his son. Not only were we the same age, but he had been the spitting image of me. When I entered the man’s office for the first time, his bloodshot eyes widened as if he had seen a ghost.

  It took me less than a year to make Junior Partner. Within five, I was Senior Partner, then, when the old man died, he left me the company and everything he owned.

  Some grumbled, of course, but soon afterwards, a local politician was impeached. He swiftly became our largest client. The money he poured into the office put a stop to any complaints. And when we saved his skin on a technicality, he introduced me to his party leaders.

  A couple of years later, he died of a Viagra and coke-induced heart attack in the arms of his mistress. I made sure none of it reached the papers. In gratitude, the party nominated me for his seat. Naturally, I won. My track record—both figuratively and literally—did all the work for me, really. Once again, all I had to do was show up and the spoils were there for the taking.

  The only thing my record was not good for was the presidency. Not having a wife, three point five children and a cute dog does that. I was good enough for vice president, though. And when a crazy bastard shot the president, barely a year into his term, I found myself at the top of the world. POTUS by default.

  I barely had time to enjoy it, though. My predecessor had poked the Bear once too often, and now the Bear just poked back. With nukes. Or so our sensors told us.

  “Mister President? The code?”

  The general’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. It had a hint of a quaver. I could hardly blame him. I stared at the screen in front of me. My finger hovered over the keyboard. All I had to do was punch in the codes that would activate our defense grid. Powerful lasers and a barrage of missiles would take out the nukes fast approaching the East Coast within seconds.

  The Russkies knew this. Hell, they depended on it. They didn’t want an apocalypse any more than we did. They only shot their missiles as a warning, knowing we would shoot them down. It was just their way of growling, “Back off.” So, why had I not entered the command yet?

  Dozens of tiny dots raced on the screen. I squinted to see them better. Red pixels edged towards the green line separating land from the sea. They would cross over at any moment now.

  A smile tugged at the corner of my lips. What if I let them through? Maybe they carried nukes. Maybe not. My heart drummed in my chest. Was this excitement? It’d been so long that I couldn’t even recognize the feeling. My pulse quickened. If we were nuked, even my cursed luck wouldn’t be able to save me from a life of toil and struggle—would it?

  All my life, Luck took care of me, and I loathed her for it. Never struggled, never strived. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed something. My food had no flavor. Sex was a chore. Music had no melody. My life was reduced to satisfying one pathetic need after another. The highlight of the day was my morning piss.

  My finger still hovered over the buttons. Then again, perhaps I didn’t make it. Maybe even the half-mile separating us from the surface was not enough in case of a direct hit. I shrugged. If I died, then this cursed life of immeasurable blandness would be over. I could see no downside.

  “Mister President?” The quaver in the general’s voice was palpable now. He bit his lower lip. His fingers twitched towards the briefcase. His gaze shot between the wall screen and my face.

  I glanced at the bug-eyed people staring at me from across the table. Beep beep beep. A warning. The red dots had just crossed over the green border. My smile grew into a grin as I snapped the lid shut. “Feeling lucky, gentlemen?”

  Infinite Waters

  “Son of a…” She leaned back and shut her eyes, drawing in sharp breaths.

  I reached and placed my hand over hers. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, then opened her eyes wide and stared back into the misty shapes. “Ready.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to—” I started to say.

  “Shh!”

  A Twist of the Tail

  Despite the early hour, I was covered in sweat. The day promised to be another scorcher. It was August, after all. I let out a small groan and faced the cloudless sky, grateful for a brief whiff of morning breeze, before I grabbed the suitcase’s handle again. What have I put inside, anyway? My mind was foggy and my head heavy, like the luggage in my hands. One of its plastic wheels squeaked in protest as I tugged, to remind me that it was made to travel on the flat surface of an airport; not on a street’s gravel.

  Where was I, anyway? Nothing looked familiar in this small town. I knew I was only passing through, but still, it couldn’t be that different to every other town I’d seen on my journey. Or could it? I felt like a salmon navigating the currents of infinite waters to reach an unknown destination. I shook my head in a vain attempt to clear it. I was trying to piece together my memories, but it was like working on a puzzle that was missing half its pieces.

  A portly man emerged from a grocery store. “Morning, Jill!”

  Who’s Jill? I ignored him and fixed my gaze to the bus stop ahead. The suitcase bumped over a large pebble and almost tipped over. I hastened to steady it with my other hand. My tail twisted in irritation.

  Wait, what? I let go of the handle and touched the bump on my lower back, just above the place where my body split into a shallow crack. There was a small protrusion there, twitching left and right. Huh. That’s a new one. I felt sure I should be worried about it, yet I shrugged it off. Perhaps it’s just my imagination. I have to visit a bathroom later, to see what’s really there.

  “Everything all right?”

  The grocer waved at me and my hand snapped back to the suitcase’s handle. I forced a smile on my lips. No, it’s not! I don’t know you, I’ve got some sort of protrusion growing out of my butt and I have no idea where the heck I am. “Never better, thank you.”

  His white moustache twitched under thick lips. He smiled back at me and nodded, making his crimson jowls shake like cherry-flavored jello. “Need any help?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” I looked away, tugging once again at the suitcase’s handle. People are strange when you’re a stranger, a voice sang in my head. I couldn’t wait to get away from this strange town. Or was it just me who was weird?

  My gaze caught on a dog licking himself clean at the grocer’s feet. He stopped to stare at me, one leg stuck in the air as if warming up for a dance recital. He was a scruffy, brown thing, with white patches and twitching whiskers like those of his owner. The sight triggered conflicting emotions within me. I like dogs, don’t I? Or am I afraid of them? Something stirred in my mind, but disappeared as soon as I tried to grasp it, leaving me frustrated, as if trying to grab smoke with my fingers.

  The mutt stretched lazily, then made a beeline towards me. I froze and let him approach. He sniffed my leg, first almost absent-mindedly, then with ever increasing urgency. As soon as his nose reached my behind, he let out a surprised yelp and dashed off to cower between the grocer’s legs. His neck hair was standing up, making him look like a tiny dinosaur. A strange sound, like a growl interspersed with plaintive yelps, was coming from his throat.

  The grocer knelt to comfort the dog. “What’s the matter, boy? It’s just Jill.”

  I ignored the man’s surprised stare and finally reached the bus stop. I crashed on the chipped wooden bench that sat under its rusty roof. With a loud sigh, I let go of the suitcase and checked my hands. They shook from the effort and felt numb. I rubbed my palms against my forearms to start the blood circulating again. When the feeling returned to my fingers, I closed my eyes and leaned backwards, resting my head against the bus stop’s glass pane.

  “Jill?”

  My eyes flew open. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. It cut through my mind’s fog like a foghorn. Two soft, green eyes met my confused gaze. A handsome face hovered over mine, worry etched on it. A name emerged from somewhere within the oblivion of my soul. “Henry?”

  Relief shone in his eyes. “Hey, honey! What are you doing?”

/>   His gentle features set off memories, each dragging the other into my consciousness like a string of pearls. Our meeting, at the grocer’s, thirty years ago. I had just arrived to the small town, from… I couldn’t remember where from, but it mattered little. Memories flooded me now; our brief, yet intense courtship. Our wedding. Our first dog, then our second one. The birth of our children. My hand shot down involuntarily and clutched my belly, as if tracing the stretch marks hiding under the loose skirt.

  I remembered our first house, a tiny apartment that we filled with our love. Then our second one, the one with the large garden. The one where our children grew up, before heading off to the world. How could I have forgotten it all?

  “What happened?” I whispered the words and grasped the handle of my suitcase, in a desperate attempt to unite the two worlds; the elusive one in my head and the physical one surrounding me.

  “When I woke up, you had left. Mister Stevens called to say he had seen you at the bus stop, and that you looked confused.”

  Mister Stevens. The grocer. Of course.

  “So, I came to find you.” Henry sat down next to me and I scooted over to give him more space. He moved even closer and took my hand into his, his slender fingers hot on my skin. “What’s wrong, darling?”

  My eyes misted. “I… I’m not sure. I don’t remember much. Just that I woke up and I had to go…” My mind struggled to remember, but the memory of this morning had already melted away, like dew disappearing from the leaves under the morning sun, leaving them dry as bones. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “How is she?”

  I spun around to face an elderly man.

  “Hey, Doc,” Henry said and stood up. “She seems fine now.”

  The newcomer sat next to me, on the other side of the bench, and I swallowed nervously. “I’m fine, really.”

  He stared deep into my eyes. “Do you know who I am?”