That was goodbye. The moving parlor ground to a halt, the door opened, and I saw that instead of moving up through the gyrus we’d been ascending the tall spire atop the Motor Palace.
The guards took me out onto the balcony at the spire’s tip. My body felt weightless and I was given a rope to clip myself to the handrails.
Far below, the wrinkled land was a patchwork of glimmers and shadows. Albatrosses and gulls spiraled. Clouds shrank back from the sun. A giant mirror in the shape of a bowl, ten times the span of my body, occupied a platform at the end of the balcony. I was left sitting under it with a bag of dried fruit and a skin of water.
At this weightless altitude, I felt the sunlight as a faint pressure against my face, like wind.
Hours passed before the sun caught my mirror.
Then the whole platform shuddered—startled birds took flight—and broke away into the sky. Up I sailed, away from my dwindling world, into exile.
Copyright © 2010 T.F. Davenport
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T.F. Davenport lives in southern California where he is working on a doctorate in cognitive science. In his spare time he would be writing science fiction, were it not for the minor impediment of having no spare time at all. By some miracle, he has stories forthcoming in GUD and the fiction column of Nature.
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
COVER ART
“Chinese Steampunk Village,” by Raphael Lacoste
Raphael Lacoste has been an Art Director on Videogames and Cinematics for over seven years; he worked at Ubisoft on such licenses as Assassin’s Creed. He won a VES Award in 2006 for his work on Prince of Persia and the Two Thrones. He currently works as Senior Art Director for Electronic Arts Montreal. View his gallery at www.raphael-lacoste.com.
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