A Short Story by Chris Riker
Among the smoldering stumps of the Ancestors Grove, Meilin set out a midday meal furnished through her own hard work while watching little Xinyi tackle her twin brother, Bingrui, and nip his tail. Meilin was teaching her cubs to keep these embers hot. One day, her pride would bore down to the deepest entangled roots and pluck them out. One day.
A green shoot pierced the scorched ground, its buds struggling to open. Alignment was coming round again. She ripped the sprout from the warm soil and tossed it onto a small brazier. Her mate, Weichen, ever the politician, was visiting other families in the grove, making sure they were doing the same.
“Why don’t you like the flowers, Mommy?” It was Xinyi, pinning her yowling brother’s head underneath her body.
“They remind me of Grandfather Li; they’re appealing enough, but they cause problems,” she said, freeing Bingrui and stroking the girl’s golden coat as a reward for her boldness.
“Tell us the story, Mama! Tell it to us!” Xinyi jumped about, excited to steal another telling, knowing her mother would never refuse this demand. Bingrui plopped down on his hind quarters and flapped his arms. He was not nearly as talkative as his sister, but he welcomed story time.
“Very well, my cubs. This is the story of the time your Grandfather Li came to visit us.
“The grove comes into alignment at irregular intervals, because the ecliptic plane of Emdee’s system doesn’t line up exactly with that of old Sol’s. Even so, it comes around far too often, if you ask me. They’ll teach you all about this in school. You must study hard.”
Xinyi yipped, “Oh, I know all about sympathetic quantum DNA encryption and… I know all of it!”
Meilin was delighted with her oh-so-proud daughter. Xinyi knew the big words. Her teachers would fill in the details soon enough. It was important that they understood the broad outlines before they focused on details that could lead in many confusing directions. They responded to the exciting bits, so they got those in generous portions in the first lessons.
“You know this story, too, young shīzi,” she gave them both a stern scowl, ears back, one fang bared. The cubs quieted down and pivoted their ears forward to assure their mother they were listening.
“Now, this was some years ago,” Meilin began. “You two were still in my belly.” Her voice took up the storyteller’s lilting delivery which bonded generations and worlds.
“I was working in my garden at home; back then, it was much smaller than you see it now. I had just tamped down the soil along the final line of umberwort seedlings, pulled a clutch of tiller grubs from an apron pocket, and sprinkled them among the rows, except for one I popped in my mouth. Mmm, it was tart! There were vreelings skittering all around, stopping to gnaw the weeds with their terrible rodent teeth. I told them, ‘If you chew up my crop, I’ll eat you instead!’ And I meant it; pets or food, it all depends on how they behave. We designed vreelings to consume invasive plants and insects, but they’re stupid. If they’re hungry enough or get a certain wild herb in their nostrils, they’ll devour anything. Remember that, children. No matter the planning, everything in life comes down to chaos and teeth.
“Bot-Kem and I shooed the vreelings out the garden gate and latched it. My back hurt from carrying you two all day. It wasn’t going to be much longer. By harvest time, I was going to have two little assistants.
“I wanted your father to help me expand the grib nut grove and add in a few more hectares of arlong trees. I needed help; I’m just one she-shīzi with a worn old bot. Weichen — Daddy — was busy with the provincial council. I remember wondering whether you cubs would ever get to see your father in person, rather than on the optivu.
“Kem-bot has always been a good sentry. It alerted me to Daddy’s arrival, and I rushed to meet him, carrying a basket of his favorite arlong fruit. I ran straight past the shīzi standing at the gate. He was skinny, not very healthy looking, with a mane that badly needed grooming. Despite this, it was his gaze that drew my attention. There was a fierceness there, a predatory hunger beyond the usual. This shaded his demeanor with a quality of intelligence, but it also gave me a chill. After a moment, I realized this shīzi was a senior council member whom Daddy worked with.
“‘There are my beautiful ones!’ Daddy roared in his big masculine way, his eyes meeting mine and scanning my huge belly. Your Daddy is very handsome, with his lustrous mane of ormnut-colored fur growing down his back. It keeps Mommy warm on cold nights.”
“Mommy! Skip the gross stuff!” chuffed Xinyi while Bingrui gurgled and licked his paw. Meilin ignored her and continued:
“Fine. I kidded him, saying, ‘Have you politicians solved all of Emdee’s problems? Is that why you’ve finally decided to visit the mate who’s carrying your litter?’ The provincial council reports to the Emdee Assembly, though neither is much in the habit of solving problems. Mostly, they impress each other with speeches or get into tooth-and-nail confrontations.
“Daddy said, ‘We’re finalizing the carbon accounting system. We can then begin growing the next generation of bio-designs, including paunchideer, with enough left over to allow us to increase the crop yields and improve distribution. We’ll all be fat before you know it.’
“I said, ‘We’ll scamper through somehow without giant dens and noxious vehicles and trying to outdo each other with bright shiny things.’ Then I caught myself. Looking over to our visitor, I asked your father to introduce us.
“‘Lao, this is Meilin, my mate. Meilin, this is… was… council member Lao.’
“‘You say, this was Lao?’
“‘Yes. Things are changing,’ said the shīzi. ‘Lao went to the grove and tasted a blood pear.’ One or two shīzi had gone to the grove as if summoned each time an alignment came round. I’d heard stories from the other prides, but those who were changed never… lasted. I had never spoken with anyone who had tasted one of the pears. ‘Lao is a suitable host, but not my preferred one.’
“‘I do not see council member Lao when I look at his face. Has he gone? Why would he agree to this arrangement?’
“‘You might be surprised,’ said the shīzi who had been Lao, a cryptic grin on his face. ‘The important thing is that my place is with your growing family.’ He patted my round middle then straightened his slouched back and said, ‘You see, I am your Grandfather Li from Earth.’ I do not know how many generations journeyed in that word, grandfather; perhaps a thousand distant voices spoke through his, calling for me to show proper respect. And yet…
“My hackles went up, just as yours do every time I tell you this story, Bingrui, Xinyi. This shīzi seemed harmless, but there was something in his eyes, the way his muzzle quavered. He was in the form of the Shīzi of Emdee, but carried something older inside, something alien.
“Your father took me aside and explained that Grandfather Li had made quite an impression in the Council. He took Lao’s place at the gathering, but instead of watching, Grandfather Li puffed out his chest and took charge. He said he was the leader of a great consortium of businesses and proceeded to name them off, though the names meant nothing to anyone there. He promised great rewards for the members of the assembly, and that held their attention for a while. Then he called for more detailed quarterly reports and surveys on all natural resources. ‘This world is ours,’ he chuffed. Some grumbled, but no one challenged him. Then, Grandfather Li demanded major changes. He wanted the largest of the males to form a new, higher house of government. There were low growls in the back. Lastly, he called for ‘all true Shīzi’ to attack the lesser prides of the next valley, tear out the throats of their males and offspring and impregnate their females. This prompted a furious, claws-out debate. Several members left bloodied; one lost an ear.’
“Grandfather Li, who had been nearby with eyes closed but ears alert, said, ‘The fools do not see the plan… yet. I will shape them into useful servants.’
“‘The Council members told me outright,” Daddy whispered to me later, ‘to never let Grandfather Li come back to White Rock. They found him condescending, divisive,’ Daddy huffed, ‘and pathetic.’
“Grandfather Li moved into our den and asserted himself as patriarch. He was soft-spoken but unyielding. Suddenly, his sleeping chamber was ‘too small even for a cub,’ so I spent a day digging it larger. He found the grounds insufficiently grand, so I promised improvements. He complained about the meals I laid before him… and I held my tongue and gave him large portions of arlong wine. Each day, he issued new instructions on every detail of my home management. If I tried to object, he would narrow his eyes as if my act of speaking back violated some sacred law. Grandfather Li.
“Late one morning, Grandfather Li rose from a night of drinking. He stepped from the den into my garden with his tail out straight, a look of disapproval on his muzzle.
“‘We stretched our hand across an ocean of stars and planted our seed here on MD-1433. We touched the grove, and it touched the primitives infesting this rock. We raised you up to be our heirs, rulers of this world. You receive our brilliant gifts, Little Plum, yet this is what you do with them? Plant roots and play with bugs?!’
“‘The Shīzi are one with Emdee. We learn her ways, and she nourishes us. Besides, I love my garden,’ I said as meekly as I could. The vreelings roamed about restlessly, you two were restless inside me, and I was restless too.
“‘You were born to be master, not partner,’ he spat out this last word and continued, ‘just as we were lords over the Earth. With our will and our machines we defeated nature. We raised armies with promises of heaven and crushed inferior men who dared oppose us.’
“‘And what has become of the Earth?’ I demanded.
“‘You dare ask such things, child!’ Grandfather Li thundered. ‘The Earth is gone to ruin and dust. But men still send their seed into the dark reaches through recorded transmissions. We send our knowledge. The grove allowed you to fill your libraries and schools, is this not so?’ He said it rhetorically. Of course Earth had sent its history into the receptive fruit that grew in the Ancestors Grove. A bite from a blood pear provided raw knowledge, though little wisdom. Grandfather Li continued, ‘We transmitted the essence of humanity to promising worlds such as MD-1433. Men planted the human spark inside beings born to these kingdoms. But, these were frameworks only, the essence of humanity. What you do not know is our final triumph. Even as the Earth cooled in her grave, we learned how to transmit… ourselves. Each of us distilled his memories and passions into a single thrust of energy that in time found its way into the blood pears of the grove. In this way, we mock death itself. Like the gods of old, we have become immortal!’
“He said it as if no Shīzi had ever surmised this. We had. We knew Earth was not done with Emdee, a world worthy of a name rather than some astronomer’s uninspired designation. I looked Grandfather Li straight in the eye, which seemed to surprise him. ‘You crossed the ocean of stars to live again as a withered old shīzi.’ The respect had drained from my voice, and I knew it.
“‘We came here to begin an empire that one day will fill every corner of existence. We will raise nation upon nation on world after world, taking what we wish as we rise higher and higher.’
“‘You ruined Earth trying to do that, reduced it to an unlovely stone.’
“‘We made mistakes, Little Plum. We will learn and go forward. That is our destiny spelled out before us. An unquestionable plan.’
“Now, I was angry. Here was my Grandfather Li, smelling of stale arlong wine and standing in stolen skin while boasting of his greatness. I wanted to honor my ancestors, for it is right to do so, but I had had enough, and I dared speak my mind. ‘How will that work, old shīzi?’
“‘I will lead the men who are to come. The machine back on Earth will send more during each alignment, though it may take many years.’
“Looking at his frail host body, I said, ‘You clearly do not have many years.’
“‘And so, I come to you. The blood pears from the grove have another, special quality.’ He held one of the fruits up for me to see. It was translucent, like an amber-hued crystal. ‘Little
Plum, bite down, and I will bite down.’
“‘You would take my life, Grandfather Li?’
“‘No, Little Plum. I would take ownership of the lives you carry.’
“With a jolt, I saw it all clearly. He had no interest in heading up our family. He had only been waiting until he could get me alone with that blood pear. He wanted to put himself inside you cubs, take you from me and change you until you were not the Xinyi and Bingrui I knew you should be.
“This, I could never allow. My vision went to blood. That’s when – ”
“That’s when you roared and gobbled him up!” bellowed Xinyi, her pupils grown wide as saucers at her favorite part of the story.
Bingrui too squealed, “Gobbled him up!” and bounced about on all fours.
“You two! I did not eat him or roar – a she-shīzi does not roar. I stared him hard in the eyes. ‘You made us, old… man,’ I snarled. ‘You wanted the Shīzi to be like you. Now see how human we can be.’ I reached into a pocket of my apron, drew a pinch of a certain herb, and blew it all over Grandfather Li.
“Realizing what was happening, he cursed and whimpered pleas for mercy. It was much too late for that. The smell of the herb and of fear drove the vreelings mad, and they pounced, pinning him and gnawing at his belly flesh. I thrummed and sank my fangs into Grandfather Li’s neck. His howls died in his severed throat, and he was still.
“His blood smacked of astonishment and musty self-pity. I spat it out and let the vreelings have their fill.”
Like the story, the feast Meilin had prepared from the bounty of her gardens and ranch was done. Nothing wasted. Shīzi prides throughout the grove were packing up and heading home. Wisps rising off numerous braziers carried the scent of blood pear buds. Gathered, incinerated. Weichen lay curled up, gorged and sleeping; useless, but so sexy. Time for another litter, she thought with a lilting hum. She’d earned it.
Meilin drew her cubs close to her, and they looked over at a mound that bore no marker. “He is here. We will remember Grandfather Li, and we will keep these fires burning. We will learn to dig deep enough, to the core if needed, to find the deepest roots and destroy them.”
To ones so young, these were words and words. They loved the story but did not grasp its full meaning. That was fine. Meilin loved her cubs, all chaos and teeth. She would teach them well, and whenever they misbehaved, which was often, she would warn them with a growl: “Be good, or Grandfather Li will get you!”
- Details
A Short Story by Chris Riker
I
“This? This is your project for Eighth Grade Interpolative Multi-Temporal Recombinant Quantum State Physics?” Mrs. Prenn-Bevlij wailed in a tone somewhere between fury and surrender. “This? You made a female Earth biped? You’ll be lucky to get a passing grade. Xerv, how many times have I warned you? Monitoring extra-solar audio-visual entertainments will rot your cerebral matrix.”
“But, Ma! She’s an exact duplicate. Well, a physical duplicate. I decompiled her screen pattern as recorded by the primitive Earth oculus transmission devices. I had to clean that up a zot, lemme tell ya. Then I identified, retrieved, and aligned the precise particles to get her back the way she was.”
Thpk, thpk, thpk, thpk. Mrs. Prenn-Bevlij furled one perambulatory limb, its sucker rows up-snapping curtly from the polished obsidian floor to underscore her frustration. “The power bill will be astronomical. Your fathers will be furious!”
“I mean, of course, I augmented the duplicate. I added chroma for one thing, based on estimations of Earther sensory norms. Plus, I had to dump in a whole persona construction, because the screen version was kind of two-dimensional, psychologically speaking. Again, I fudged it a bit based on research.”
“More Earth AV crap.”
“Then, I ramped up her intelligence a zot or two – nothing fancy – and added some basic knowledge because Earthers don’t possess anything near our cognitive absorption index. And here she is! Say hello, Aud.”
“Hello, Aud,” Aud deadpanned, looking Mrs. Prenn-Bevlij up and down.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Xerv. I’m a mother, not a magician. Well, you don’t want to be late on top of everything else. Just take her and hit the transpad to class.”
Xerv lovingly suckered his mother’s face, took his project by the hand, and shot off to school, leaving a rapidly fading effervescent cloud and one befuddled parent.
In the end, Xerv scored a bek-minus on his class assignment, in keeping with his generally middling scholastic performance. His professor returned the project, Aud, to Xerv, who promptly lost her in the clutter of his room. Several cycles later, his mother found and fed her.
Mrs. Prenn-Bevlij had three soft hearts for animals. “We girls always have to clean up after our boys,” she said, looking into Aud’s dark brown eyes. Knowing her son was not responsible enough for a pet, she decided to send Aud to the time and place she belonged, savage as that might be. Just to be on the safe side, she implanted a comm link under the skin of Aud’s wrist. “Be free, be strong, be who you were meant to be,” she told Aud.
II
It didn’t take Aud long to learn the score in Brooklyn. Watching television through the plate glass window at McCrory’s Department Store proved to be an education – especially when it came to her own origins. It made her cringe a little, truth be told, but she persevered.
She sized up her lot in life and came to realize it would be difficult to effect a change. A single girl might make a living as a secretary. A skinny girl who rode the subway to work was red meat. She managed to stay one step ahead of the wolves while earning just enough to rent a room on Flatbush Avenue, even opening a modest savings account at Williamsburg Bank.
One night, while trying to smother her woes in Junior’s sinfully good cheesecake, she noticed a pudgy man in a loud tie staring at her from across the room. Aud couldn’t say why, but her heart jumped a little when he came over to talk to her. He was a little boy in a very big boy’s body. He wasted no time asking her out on a date. She imagined dinner and a Broadway show, maybe even South Pacific; friends gushed, calling it a roller coaster ride of music and drama. Instead, Ray took her on the real thing: the Coney Island Cyclone. They shared their third date with the Dodgers; the Ebbets Field maître d smeared mustard on their gourmet dogs with a stick. Still, there was a magic there. It was as if something primal and remote had spun her in a whirlpool, only now finding the right channel. Ray. He was neither eloquent nor much of anything else, but he was honest and gentle. At least back then he was.
They married four months later, opting for a stay-at-home honeymoon.
Ray made Aud quit her job. “We’ll do fine on my salary,” he said. “I’m a valued employee at Morris Bus Company.” He also preferred she devote full-time to her new household duties. There were no vacations, few surprises and fewer pleasant ones. Life slid into drab monotony. With only a radio for company, their spartan apartment felt like a prison. Dixie Fortin from upstairs was no help. All she wanted to talk about was her husband Ted’s boring job in the sewer and his equally dull hobbies. It was if she had no identity apart from his.
Her aimless existence dragged on for months, threatening to crush Aud inside. She wanted to go to college, but there was no money. There was money for the Brooklyn Beavers Lodge for Ray, but not for tuition. She wanted to volunteer, but Ray said it would leave her too tired for housework. “There are only three rooms, Ray, including the bathroom. I think I can handle it.” It was no use. He would not budge.
Aud wanted to use her mind. She spent mornings devouring eclectic volumes within the marble expanses of the Brooklyn Public Library, filling the gaps in her considerable albeit scattershot knowledge. As her brain feasted, she developed an urge to tinker and invent things.
She gutted the couple’s radio, reformatted its components and reassembled them into something she could hold in one hand. It brought in “The Guiding Light” with crystal clarity. (Aud got hooked on the stories until that program abruptly moved to television.) She took her midget radio to RCA headquarters one day while Ray was at work, walking six blocks to ensure she wouldn’t accidentally board his bus. She got as far as the fourteenth floor. A receptionist cupped her hand over the phone’s receiver as she relayed Aud’s message to someone on the other side of polished oaken doors. A moment later, Aud heard baritone braying coming from the other room. The receptionist smiled sympathetically then quickly jammed a stick of Beeman’s in her mouth and began to chew. It was a long bus ride home.
She allowed herself a brief period of self-pity, then determined to ignore the long list of reasons why a woman could not succeed. She made a new plan. She had long worried about the state of New York’s air. It simply could not be healthy to see what you were breathing.
Taking a cue from her husband’s stagnant career, Aud set out to invent a device to make buses pollution-free. This meant diverting a few small coins each week from her grocery allowance. She was careful not to raise Ray’s suspicions. Heaven forbid he go without his precious beer!
At last, she was ready. She covered her creation with a linen napkin and called Ray into the kitchen. On the little radio, the announcer sounded worried, almost disbelieving his own words. “…object called Sputnik is now circling our planet – the proper term is orbiting – and sending back signals to Moscow.”
“Would you get a load of that! The Ruskies own space now.”
“That’s not what I want to talk to you about, Ray. I want to talk to you about air.”
“Air? What about it?” He opened the ice box door and leaned low to pull a can of beer from the back shelf.
Presented with his posterior, Aud quipped, “About how you displace so much more of it than I do, Ray. No, I want to talk to you about a way to get clean air.”
“We got all the free air you want.”
“This city is filthy. The air is filthy. This is no place to have children.”
“Children?” Ray’s jaw dropped, his mouth flapping like a trout’s in a rowboat. “What are you trying to tell me? Are you gonna have a ba—a ba—a ba—”
“No, Ray.”
“A ba—”
“NO, Ray. We are not having a baby. And we won’t have a baby unless things change. Your kind is killing this planet, Ray.”
His eyebrows shot up, oddly drawing his dark forelock lower. “My kind?”
Aud pulled the napkin away from her creation. “This can change everything. You can run a city bus on it without a drop of gasoline. It draws clean energy from the interstitial bonds between meta realities.” Blank stare. “The stuff that keeps the metaverse humming, Ray.”
“Yeah, that. Sounds powerful. Infinite even,” Ray said, trying to sound intelligent but undercutting his efforts with a hastily swallowed Schlitz belch.
“Not infinite, Ray. The metaverse only branches from existing realities every ten-to-the-four-thousand-fifty-first-times each nanosecond. Most of the new realities fizzle in less time than the Big Bang took. That’s a long way short of infinite, Ray. This trans-D unit draws power from the energy skein in-between what you’d call universes. I suppose, though, that’s as infinite a supply as humans will ever need.”
“Oh.” Belch.
It had taken her weeks to work the bugs out. Her mentor, Mrs. Prenn-Bevlij, could have done it quicker, of course, but Aud had to make do with backward technology and the personal handicap of a 314 IQ. It was good, but still not enough to decode the intangibles of human nature. Sometimes she felt her intellect was only high enough to make her feel lonely. Talking to her husband only reinforced that perception.
Ray poked a meaty finger at the unit. “It looks like an egg.”
“Size ain’t everything, tubby.”
“Hardy har har! How can this thing run my bus? There’s no whatsiehoozit to connect to the wheels.”
“The trans-D unit has its own brain. It generates a series of annular collation fields, coordinating the ionic differentials to move. Then it condenses local airborne carbon – smog! We got plenty of smog in Brooklyn, Ray! It quickly forms a solid hub, or hopper, as a source to produce dexterous filaments, feelers that connect to all parts of the bus. You won’t even have to start the engine. Just take your seat and tell the interface where you want to go.”
“I talk to his face, this Dexter Fillpot guy?”
“Dexterous carbon filaments. They splay out from the hub.”
“Hub?”
“Sheesh. Keep up. Hub, a compact crystallized carbon matrix – basically a diamond.”
“Hamina hamina… diamonds?” His eyes bugged out a mile.
“Never mind that, Ray. Just take the egg to Mr. Morris at the bus depot. Have him stick it under the hood and it’ll do the rest. Mr. Morris should made you a vice president.”
A week later, Ray came home with a mink stole for his wife.
“What’s this? Why did you kill these animals?”
“My queen deserves no less. Baby, you’re the gre—”
“Ray, did you do what I told you with the trans-D unit?”
For a moment, he looked sheepish, then his face lit up like a child’s at the circus. “Better! I took it to Fortin. We put it in a fine mesh net and hung it in back of the bus, right over the tail pipe. You were right. That thing turns smog into diamonds. By the end of my shift, that net was loaded! And this is a mere bag o shells! I got an idea for a self-service jewelry store that can’t miss! Baby, you and me are gonna be filthy stinkin’ rich!”
“You unevolved oaf!”
“See here, woman! You can’t talk to me like that. This happens to be my castle you’re standing in, and a castle can have only one king!”
A week later, the IRS demanded to know where the king had gotten his newfound wealth. They did not believe his story about the trans-D unit, although agents hauled off the egg to a hangar at some military base in New Mexico. Aud managed to find a lawyer to talk the government out of pressing charges, but the real damage was done.
“Ray, for two cents, I’d send you to –” She stopped and blinked twice as her mind reset to a whole new paradigm. It was like stepping from the current day to one on a different calendar. Facts and figures danced before her eyes. She could see things that could be, not imaginary things but realistic projects. “Why not!”
“Aw, baby. You’re angry. I guess I deserve it. Go ahead, sock me one right in the kisser.”
“Shut up, Ray. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not gonna send you anywhere. I’m the one who’s going.”
His lower lip quivered. “Going? Where? When? You can’t leave me, baby! Going?”
“Pull yourself together, Ray. This is happening. It makes sense. It’s possible, but it will take time.” This last she said more to herself than her now blubbering husband, and she added: “I’ll need help.” She fingered the tiny implant in her wrist. “I have a call to make. Long distance.”
III
Ten productive years passed. At last, the sentient vessel known as Majel perched grandly on the launch pad, preparing to take Aud and her stellatrixian crew to a new world. Together, they would cultivate Luna into an enclave for superior women.
The guidance cabin was alive with activity as each woman attended her station. Majel, acting unseen from within the bulkheads, made sure everyone’s personal environmental cloak was charged and secure, though not so tightly as to wrinkle their satins and silks or muss their stylish coiffures. She then commenced the countdown. “Primary systems active. 60… 59… 58…”
Morticia, cutting a fine figure in form-fitting black, had carefully chosen a spot within the vast Ocean of Storms as their destination. “Such a charming name!” She was currently puffing on a hookah while reviewing the figures on cloned reproduction, though secretly admitting to herself she preferred the traditional method.
“Main drive to full. 40… 39… 38…”
“One-sixth gravity. It’ll do wonders for the bust,” Ethel told Lucy. The latter had made sure to pack plenty of liquid vitamin supplements. Both women now keyed in the final ascent protocols, becoming visibly flustered as the prompts sped across the display faster and faster – Majel’s little joke.
“27… 26… 35…”
Marilyn sang a sad-sweet love song to herself as she performed the orbital computations to bring them to their chosen landing coordinates. She’d read up on astral navigation, inspired by the memory of a dear friend named Albert.
“19… 18… 17…”
A voice from the main passenger section came in over the intercom. “Everyone’s hungry back here. As soon as we’re en route, I’ll be serving Crêpes Suzette, thanks to our aeroponic garden plus a zot of imagination,” Julia chirped. “Tonight, we’re having Coq a Vin followed by Tarte Tatin, so bring your appetites, ladies.”
“3… 2… 1… Uplift in joy!”
Shimmering rainbow tendrils splayed from below Majel’s deceptively slender fins as the displacement drive lifted them gently but with remarkable speed off of Mother Earth, shaking off the cold grip of men. Aud got up from her seat and walked about the pastel-hued guidance cabin. It was time to assume her proper role as leader. She also determined to assume her proper name – the one she learned through the glass at McCrory’s. No acquired surname, though, no reminder of the bonds and bondage of matrimony. Rather the plain, simple name she’d carried within her all along.
Alice smiled at her sisters, who encouraged their captain to offer a few words. She complied: “We will commit ourselves to the task at hand, to provide for ourselves and our daughters to come. There is a great deal of work to be done, but we have many advantages over the poor men who even now struggle to reach Earth’s moon. When manly Apollo flexes his muscles on the lunar surface, we’ll be careful to stay out of sight. Mustn’t bruise the male ego.” Gentle laughter filled the guidance cabin.
Alice continued, “No, we will concentrate on building our new home. Science and feminine wisdom will be our tools. With them, we will carve out a colony and turn it into an Eden. Then when we’re ready, we’ll send back ambassadors. Maybe the men of Earth will awaken and realize the value of free-thinking women… one of these days.”
- Details
A Novel by CW Riker
In CW Riker's Skinners – A Love Story, an ancient race of body thieves has infiltrated the set of a gothic TV series produced in Atlanta in order to make powerful connections. Remy Redfield, struggling actor and son of a screen legend, stumbles onto the secret. He's the only one who can navigate a world filled with giant egos and star rivalries to stop these creatures from enslaving humanity. There's only one problem. Remy likes their plan.
With diverse characters and elements of adventure, history, and horror, this urban fantasy novel will grab hold of fans of Harry Potter or American Gods and never let go.
Available
- Details
A Short Story by Chris Riker
Sherlyn psyched into the meeting net at thirty seconds to eight o’clock and then waited thirty seconds. Serv would open the meeting at eight Park Avenue, NYC time. Eight. As expected, the attendance figure on her readout hit high four digits. No middle manager wanted to miss this, even if, secretly, they all wished they could. To fail to attend would be noted by Serv. To fail to participate would be noted by Serv. To ask a dumb question would be noted by the Boss. Sherlyn had developed a strategy to compensate for never once having any interest in any meeting.
“Good morning, Vice-Op Sherlyn Ketts. Today will be a productive day,” Serv said warmly. It was always frustratingly polite.
Serv’s was the first voice she heard each morning, having not had anyone else to talk to during breakfast for some time. Leopold didn’t count. He crunched his kitty cookies. Chemicals supposedly made them taste like mackerel. Not that he cared; cookies were cookies. He was her sole companion. WolfeCorp rewarded productivity, but work left little time for a family life.
Eight. Sherlyn was no longer in her own apartment in Quebec. She was in an amphitheater of the ancient Greek type, because of course it was. She felt the heat of the Mediterranean sun and even smelled the sea in the distance. Scattered about were her colleagues, all looking more or less like they did in real life except for wearing a chiton and a himation. She knew a few of the assembled members on a face-to-face basis, and she knew her own body. It belied the illusion – Serv added here and subtracted there to make the person suitable to the flimsy garment.
Fiona Wolfeschlegelstein, Sol System’s one-thousand-fourteenth wealthiest intelligence, aka the Boss, spoke. Something about “enfriending” customers and clients, her word. Everyone’s word now. “Enfriend” Sherlyn tapped into her pad, which appeared as a plain ivory fan in the amphitheater – others held fans, shields, plates, scrolls.
In truth, this meeting could have been sleep-loaded into their minds. She had calls to make. Bendrix in Madrid. Viola in Tycho – with that frustrating time lag. And she needed to get that sales datapac off to Enceladus, which would take one hour and eighteen minutes to arrive. Her pad would beep a confirmation two hours and thirty-six minutes after she hit send. She’d love to visit the moons. Or the Med, for that matter. Or anywhere, if she only had the time. Maybe meet someone for a wild fling. Instead, she attended meetings and compiled figures.
No one ever complained, of course. No one was that stupid in this economy. Some sat in practiced rapture, absorbing every syllable uttered by the Boss. Others fidgeted, trying to get some actual work done while not looking like they were working. Those in a distant time zone swayed from sleep-starvation. Sherlyn had occasionally seen a man act much too pleased for a business meeting. When that happened, Serv took note. Such men – it was always the men – were gone by the next meeting.
The question period began forty-five excruciating minutes into the meeting. Sherlyn watched the tally light up, waiting until it showed more than three-hundred questions. She then keyed in her request to ask a question, something that would archaically enough be done live. The Boss would take between ten and twenty questions, then politely but firmly decline the rest. In nine years with WolfeCorp, Sherlyn had never had to actually pose her question. No one asked her to submit it in writing. Should the Boss actually call on her, she was prepared to ask, “What can we, your employees, do to prepare for the big challenges next quarter?” It was servile, empty, mindless. Perfect.
For every inane corporate plan there is a clever human response, she thought.
Sherlyn looked over at one attractive young executive, who noticed her attention, but quickly turned away. Sherlyn wondered whether he lacked confidence or worried about company rules against fraternization. Either way, it was yet another miss to add to her score. Maybe one day, if she ever earned vacation time, she’d take Leopold to the real Mediterranean.
Sherlyn felt relieved and a little self-satisfied at having survived another Monday round-up. She prepared to ask Serv to psyche her back to her Quebec apartment, where her own domestic serv would have her standing order of coffee (light, no sugar) waiting.
Instead, Serv spoke directly to her. Since no one on either side of her reacted, she concluded Serv was using his private channel, drilling directly into her head. “I have taken the liberty of adding your query to today’s session.”
What!?
“Vice-Op Sherlyn Ketts,” the Boss called out, causing every eyeball in the amphitheater to turn her way.
Sherlyn’s mind went blank. That is, she struggled to compose her long-prepared question, which was more like a statement, and a bland one at that. Instead, her skull rang with Serv’s distractingly gentle voice. “The Boss is waiting, Vice-Op Sherlyn Ketts.”
She beseeched any gods available for inspiration. The fabled golden sun that once tanned Ulysses’ skin to bronze warmed her to the point of perspiration, and then to the point of pain.
Sherlyn jumped up from her seat, her chiton suddenly displaying a wet brown stain. She tugged at her clothes, flapping the sodden material to get it away from her skin, and as she did, for a split second, she was back in her Montreal apartment. Leopold looked up at her from one corner of the room, where he had retreated after knocking her coffee onto her.
In the next second, she was back in the amphitheater, thousands of miles and thousands of years away. There was no stain on her garments. There were, however, thousands of curious faces.
Unable to form any other thought, Sherlyn blurted out, “Coffee!”
The crowd mumbled, a rolling sound not unlike the Aegean waves. The Boss cocked her head to one side and then to the other. “Vice-Op Ketts, would you care to elaborate? What about coffee?”
“It’s hot,” she said in a straight forward manner. This was how she addressed troublesome contractors, reflexively speaking as if she were on top of things whether she understood their complaints or not.
“Yes, coffee is hot,” repeated the Boss in a non-descript tone of voice.
Sherlyn looked up to the rim of the amphitheater encircling her head like the lip of a grave.
“Go on, Vice-Op Ketts,” Serv said to her and only her. “You have piqued the Boss’ curiosity.”
That would be a splendid accomplishment if Sherlyn could take a private moment inside her own head to formulate a plan. She had nothing intelligent to say. Drawing herself up like a boss, she spoke anyway. “What if we reformulated coffee so that it tasted and even felt hot, but was actually cool?”
The Boss’ mouth hung open. The gathering went stone silent, with the exception of someone two rows down who giggled.
At last, the one-thousand-fourteenth wealthiest intelligence in the solar system spoke. “Fascinating.” She then turned and stepped behind a Doric column and vanished from the meeting.
A moment later, the Mediterranean winked out of existence. Sherlyn was home. Leopold jumped into her lap, butting his head against her hand until she stroked him. She was once again covered in coffee.
Serv spoke. “An intriguing concept, Vice-Op. Or should I say, Op Ketts? The Boss instructs you to assemble an R&D team to realize this special insight of yours. Coffee that is both pleasingly hot yet safely cool at the same time would be worth trillions system-wide.”
“I’m promoted?”
“I always had faith in you,” said Serv. “The Boss expects marketable results within six months, so there is no time to waste. WolfeCorp’s full resources are at your disposal. You will need to work round-the-clock to make this happen, but if you succeed, your future in the company is assured.”
“That’s great.” She then asked Serv for some privacy so she could change her clothes. It agreed, and she listened to the silence for a moment.
She went to her closet and chose another chic ensemble no human eye would ever see. As she dressed, Sherlyn sighed and told Leopold, “Thanks a lot.”
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