Tag Archives: science ficiton

Short Story Of the Day (Flash Fiction), The Wave of Omega Grunion by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Wankelfish

Wankelfish

 

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#39). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

The Wave of Omega Grunion

It was completely dark and Polonius Bunting gazed out over the vast masses of swirling stars. The perfectly flat ground of the Mirror Plain stretched out in all directions. The perfect reflection of the glass made the horizon impossible to see. The reflected stars looked identical to the real ones.

The meteors were streaking the sky – a thousand a minute. How many were space rocks and how many were chunks of metal from the war? He had heard that before the war falling stars were rare. He could see the streaks in the sky and reflected on the ground – watch the falling stars reflected right down to his feet.

Polonius saw the glow in the east. He still had a few minutes and as the glow grew and crowded out the stars he checked the Racer one last time.

He pulled a small gauge from the front of his coveralls and made sure the huge tires were inflated to the correct pressure. He ran his hands over the stiff rubber surface, felt the deep channels of the tread. If all the Racer had to do was speed over the vast glass of the Mirror Plain Polonius knew he would use smooth tires, but the channels were needed when… after….

From the rear of the racer, he looked at the twin titanium V-12 engines and their nests of wires and tubing. They had been cast from the melted remains of the last bomber and there were no others like them in the world. The Racer was idling, keeping warm until the start, and every now and then would give a little shake, a slight pop, and vibrate the motor mounts.

Polonius checked the front scoop and the side diverters, huge heavy steel plates bristling with carefully arranged razor sharp cutting edges – frightening little hungry-looking blades – they would feed soon enough.

Polonius knew it was almost time. He climbed into the cramped cockpit and made sure the hatch and diverters were locked securely behind him. He looked out the front port and watched the patch of sky directly ahead. It was growing light and glancing through the cross-hairs he confirmed that the Racer was pointed due East.

He pumped the accelerator, listening to the huge engines. It would be only seconds more. He pressed the clutch and engaged the transmission, revving up the engines to their red-line rpm.

Suddenly there was a glint of red-orange peeking over the horizon and Polonius popped the clutch. The Racer hurled itself forward, tires screeching and smoking, directly into the orb of the rising sun. Polonius worked the gears furiously, building as much speed as possible, keeping the sun centered in the cross-hairs of the forward viewport.

The Racer was shuddering at its top rated speed, still running straight and true, when the horizon became irregular. It was the First Wave, which was water.

The First Wave came incredibly fast – Polonius barely had time to see the swirling wall of foam covering the solid vertical mass of liquid streaked in green, white and deep blue before the Racer hit and with a giant roar of straining steel, plunged right on through.

The water behind the First Wave was shallow and the Racer was able to regain the speed it had lost in the collision. Soon the Second Wave, the Wave of Omega Grunion, appeared, roaring over the horizon, in a long, smooth silver roll.

The Racer plunged in. The Omega Grunion are small fish, maybe six inches long, gathered by the billions into the massive living wave. The individual creatures are indistinguishable from the total mass when they are piled up like that, but each and every Omega Grunion had a mouthful of diamond teeth and could chew through the Racer in seconds if given the chance.

But Polonius and the Racer had the speed. The plow and diverter plates split the wave, the blades slicing the fish into tiny pieces and throwing them aside in a bloody mass of scales and fish guts.

On and on the Racer ran, the screaming sound of a million fish torn to pieces penetrating the armor and filling the cockpit. Polonius had never heard a sound like it – there is no sound like it.

“The Canterbury Cats will eat well tonight,” Polonius laughed and checked the gauges as the Racer forced its way through, tearing through the wave of fish. The silver wave was cleaved, a scarlet wake thrown high by the power of the impact.

Soon, though, the bodies and gore began to pile up in front of the scoop, the Racer was moving too fast for everything to be thrown to the side. Polonius did not make the necessary adjustments fast enough and before he could react, the Racer began to slide on the ramp of fish offal and he lost steering control. It fishtailed left, then right, then with a groan of stressed steel it flipped on its side, wheels spinning uselessly in the air.

The violence of the high-speed crash threw Polonius around in the cockpit and stunned him against a bulkhead. When he cleared his head he saw the right port was cracked and his face was being splashed with a fountain of salty red water. All around him he heard the horrible chattering of thousands of diamond fish teeth chewing through the steel armor of the Racer. He pressed the big red button in the center of the dash which sent a powerful electric charge through the outer plates. This slowed the fish for a minute or two, but did not stop them.

Nothing would stop them.

Short Story Of the Day, Dog-Bone by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

If the Chicxulub asteroid hadn’t killed the dinosaurs then intelligent reptiles would be building rocket ships.

—-Bill Chance, Dog Bone

Mural, covered by “For Rent” sign
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#19). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Dog-Bone

“After all this time, it is really going to happen.” John Random kept repeating this to himself over and over again. Ever since that layer of Iridium-enriched stuff was discovered on Earth back in the nineteen eighties; scientists, then artists, philosophers, and finally politicians talked about cosmic collisions. Now it was real.

Random kept reading about it. There on the ship, clunker though it was, he had access to all the information he needed. They were far from earth, so there was an irritating delay in conversation, (not that anyone wanted to talk anymore) but there was a constant flow of data. Before sleep period he would request books, journal articles, anything that struck his fancy and by the time he woke up, the information would be in the ship’s computer.

His partner, Zane Miller, didn’t read anything anymore. Two years ago, before the flight, Zane was selected as mission commander. He was the glamour-puss, in Random’s mind. The face of the mission. The first year, when they were still doing weekly news conferences, Zane did all the talking, John stayed in the background smiling and wearing his coveralls. Everyone knew Random was along to do the grunt work.

Well, it didn’t work out that way. As they looped back and forth through he solar system that first year, examining and mapping various objects detected from earth, the big lunar radar picked up the giant comet, the frozen, deadly snowball screaming in from beyond Neptune. It looked like it would be coming close so earth followed it and as that year went by the news became worse and worse.

Miller and Random’s mission was forgotten. First the news conferences stopped, then the mission support went away as earth’s entire focus shifted to the killer comet. It didn’t really affect them, their route was preprogrammed, too far from earth for any assistance, they were on their own. Still it started to get lonely. Random didn’t care so much, it was no mistake that someone of his temperament was selected on a multi-year space mission, but it drove Zane up the wall.

“Why complete the mission? it’s all going to be gone anyway!” Zane would rant on.

“Well, I don’t know,” Random would reply. “I guess mostly ’cause I can’t think of anything else to do.”

“Don’t you understand? It’s the end… we’re out here and earth is doomed. All dead! Gone!”

“I understand. But I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

They had the same simple argument a hundred times during that awful month. Then Random discovered Zane had pulled out the emergency medical kit and broken all the seals. All the drug packs were gone. After that time Zane was a lot calmer, though he completely stopped his share of the checklists, never helped with the observations. He spent all the time in his sleep chamber. Sometimes Random could hear him moaning.

Not that it mattered. Random could handle the duties of the mission alone with no problem. It kept him a little busier but still left him with enough time for his reading. Between the last object and the one they were looking at next they had to loop clear out around Jupiter and back in, It was the longest hiatus of the mission. He had done a lot of reading by then, about the comet and other cosmic impacts.

He read of the schools of thought that held that evolution was largely a function of vast swaths of time and avoiding extinction events. The random nature of these collisions meant that it was a crapshoot for any species to survive long enough to migrate into space. If the Chicxulub asteroid hadn’t killed the dinosaurs then intelligent reptiles would be building rocket ships.

That was the reason for their mission. To examine the large objects floating through the solar system, to help learn their compositions and then design ways to intercept and destroy them. If man could determine a way to protect that fragile blue ball from the ravages of space, then they could gain the time needed to reach for the stars.

It was too late, obviously. Not that the mission had revealed much, anyway. Hunks of rock, chunks of ice, nothing that the spectrographs and lunar radar hadn’t predicted.

Well, nothing surprising until this object, anyway.

They had decelerated down into this vicinity and when the fusion engines had cooled enough to allow them to see out, Random had pulled the telescope into position and started visual observations. Zane had been in his chamber for days, lost in the world of the medical kit drugs.

“Umm, you’d better come out and take a look at this,” Random barked into the intercom.

“Who gives a shit!” came the expected answer.

“Really, Zane, this is something different, really different.”

“You wake me up again and I’ll come out there, kick your ass, and knock you out into space, You Hear!”

Random didn’t have any answer for that so he shut down the intercom and looked back into the telescope.

The object wasn’t an ordinary hunk of space rock, that was for sure. It was much larger than they expected, maybe two miles in length. Jet-black and smooth. He glanced at the radio spectroscope and confirmed that it absorbed almost all the radiation that fell on it. That is why the radar underestimated its size. It was very regular in shape, elongated, with a double lobed swelling at each end. It looked like a giant dog-bone. Like a colossal stylized chew-toy.

Random knew it wasn’t natural. He also knew it hadn’t been made on earth.

For weeks, Random held position near the object, studying it. He tried to get the attention of mission control back on earth, but they weren’t even monitoring his broadcasts. Every ounce of effort, every minute of time was being spent back there preparing the interceptor rockets that would attempt to destroy the comet before it reached earth. They were working around the clock, even though they knew it was hopeless.

Random carefully recorded his observations. “This is the greatest discovery of all time”, he reminded himself. He tried not to think about the fact that there wouldn’t be an earth to return to and nobody to see his work.

On the day the earth was going to send its missiles toward the comet, Zane Miller emerged from his chamber. He looked awful, trembling, trying to shake off his months of drug induced haze.

“Today’s the day,” he said to Random, like nothing had happened.

“Yup,” was all he could think in reply.

“What the hell is that!” Zane screamed, pointing out the view-port.

“It’s the object… other than that, I have no idea.”

The dog-bone wasn’t jet-black any more. It was glowing red now.

“It’s heating up,” said Random. “It’s been gaining hundreds of degrees every day for a week now. It moving too. For weeks it held the same orientation but three days ago I came out here and it had rotated almost ninety degrees.”

Visibly shaken, Zane sat down across from Random and they tuned in the Earth broadcast. Every ear on the planet or off would be watching as the rockets streaked toward the comet, all life on earth hanging in the balance.

The rockets flew, the enormous bombs exploded on cue. But it was like throwing a pebble at a bullet. Everybody knew that it was hopeless, but watched breathlessly as the lunar radar tracked the comet. Slowly the announcer conveyed the inevitable, that the missiles hadn’t worked, that the comet had pierced the explosions unharmed, that the earth was doomed.

“Well, that’s it, Zane said,” glancing back to his chamber, thinking about the medication, thinking about what might be put together to form a fatal dose.

Random was suddenly startled by a bright light from the view-port.

“Jeez, look!”

The object was white hot. Glowing as bright as a small oblong sun. Suddenly, it visibly shuddered and threw off a bolt of incredible energy. For a split second the beam was visible and even though the view-port darkened automatically the light was so intense both men were blinded for minutes.

When their eyesight returned they peered out the view-port, then trained the telescope on the object to confirm what they saw. The dog-bone was dark and black again. Cold. Inert.

They looked at each other. Even before the announcement came in from earth they knew where the beam had gone.

“It is a miracle!” said the announcer. “The missiles must have weakened the comet to the point that once it neared the earth’s gravity, it fell apart. It has been completely destroyed, blown into a million pieces.”

For another week they continued to watch the object as earth reported amazing meteor showers and millions killed as the remains of the comet continued to pound the planet. Man, life itself, would survive, though.

Then they received a message from mission control, the first that had come through in months.

“Hello, how are you?”

“Fine,” replied Random.

“I guess you have heard the great news. What are you looking at now?”

The two men had known this question was coming and they had decided on an answer.

“Only another chunk of ice and rock.”

On the long trip back, Zane helped Random carefully erase all the records of the observations of the object. They spliced together bits of data from other observations and blurred the records, nobody would suspect the location of the dog-bone.

Then Zane retreated to his chamber and his medical kit. He knew he wouldn’t be able to survive without the drugs. It would be a decade before he found that fatal dose.

Random was in charge now. He monitored the mission, fixed the little things that came up, did the grunt work. He read some more, read about how man could protect itself, could continue on, could someday reach for the stars. He chuckled to himself when he thought about that. He thought about the time far in the future when people were able to venture out beyond.

He thought about the blinding light, about the dog-bone; and about what, and who, they would find on that day.

Short Story, Flash Fiction, Of the Day, BN249 by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

Walter woke up in an ambulance. From the swaying he knew they were going very fast. His arms were strapped to the side of the gurney – a tangle of tubes and wires streamed away from him to beeping machines lining the vehicle. His pain was almost gone, but he felt the skin of his neck taught like it was swelling badly. Two EMTs were bent over him, looking very worried.

—-Bill Chance, BN249

Wasps at the Trinity River Audubon Center

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing yesterday’s Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge.

Let’s see… here’s one for today. What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

BN249

Walter was jogging around the outfield of the softball fields that filled this part of the green buffer park between the town and the base. The lights were on and teams were playing on all the fields. He liked listening to the cheers and the clank of the aluminum bats and watching the white parabola of the balls hit through the air. At his usual spot, he turned and started to run home.

As he passed near the woods around the creek he was distracted by a loud, odd, buzzing/whirring noise. It sounded half mechanical and half biological. Turning to see what it was, he saw a dark blur moving through the air from the direction of the woods. It came on fast and before he could do anything it struck him in the neck.

The pain was immediate and incapacitating. It shot from his neck down his spine and had a strange electrical quality; his muscles all contracting as he tumbled to the grass. Bright lights flashed in his eyes as he writhed on the ground. For a few seconds his vision cleared and through the fog of pain he saw it on the ground beside him.

It looked something like a large, glossy, jet-black wasp. Even its wings were black and opaque. It was crawling along on preternaturally long, flexible legs that seemed jointed in the wrong places. Its abdomen was very long and curved and ended in a hook-like point that could have been a stinger. Walter knew it was impossible, but the thing seemed to be looking at him as it struggled to extend its wings. The odd noise began again, loud and close, and it was gone.

The pain increased and the world went away.

Walter woke up in an ambulance. From the swaying he knew they were going very fast. His arms were strapped to the side of the gurney – a tangle of tubes and wires streamed away from him to beeping machines lining the vehicle. His pain was almost gone, but he felt the skin of his neck taught like it was swelling badly. Two EMTs were bent over him, looking very worried.

“Hey, what happened?” was what Walter tried to ask, but he could not get the words out. He felt as if his mind was not connected to his body. Then the siren of the ambulance was drowned out by other, louder wailings and he felt the vehicle slow and then the crunch of gravel under the wheels. He felt the door open behind him and suddenly the two EMTs disappeared.

Someone in a dark uniform appeared and roughly pulled the tubes and wires off and out of him and them he felt the gurney slide out the back. He was rolled through a dark night lit by blue and red rotating and flashing lights until he was lifted into another vehicle. To Walter’s surprise it wasn’t another ambulance but some sort of military flatbed truck with a cover over it. He couldn’t move but his senses seemed to have returned, and he could clearly smell the familiar fungal scent of olive drab military canvas. He had lived next to the base his whole life and knew that smell well. Still, it surprised him that he was aware enough to pick it out.

Someone did something to his arm and he felt a warmness spreading… and everything went dark.

He woke up in a hospital room. He was on his back could not move. He looked down and saw that his arms were tied to the heavy bedstead with thick black straps. His feet were immobile and he assumed they were strapped down too. There were no beeping machines or wires hooked up to him. He saw there was a single IV tube running from his left arm. He surprised to see it running to a large dark red bag that was mounted lower than he expected. They weren’t adding drugs, they were taking blood out.

Looking around he saw two soldiers in full gear standing on either side of the door of the windowless room. They were holding M4 carbines slung across their chests and had sidearms on their waists. The odd thing is that they were wearing black full-face helmets, like riot troops or motorcycle riders.

“Hey, what the hell! Get me out of here! Get somebody!” Walter yelled at the two. His mouth felt like it had marbles in it, but at least he could talk. The soldiers looked at each other, then one left the room, returning in less than a minute with a white-coated doctor.

“Ahh,” the doctor said, “You are awake. Good.”

“What in the hell! What happened to me?”

“Well, I’m not really supposed to talk about that.” The doctor examined the bag of blood. “Ah it’s full. Let’s get another one going.”

A nurse appeared at the door and swapped the blood-filled bag with a fresh one. As she turned and left she was replaced with a large man wearing an officer’s uniform. The guards saluted as he entered the room. He walked to the bed and Walter saw that a piece of opaque white tape covered the man’s name tag.

“Ah, colonel, I’m glad you are here,” the doctor said. “As you see he’s awake and he has some questions, maybe you can answer.”

“You are dammed right I have some questions! What the hell happened to me?”

The colonel paused for a few seconds and then said, “BN249.”

“What?”

“The BN249 project escaped. Before we could track and recapture it the thing had left the base and, unfortunately, ran into you.”

“The project? You mean the wasp-thing that stung me? What does it do.”

“I’m afraid that is classified.”

“Classified my ass! It stung me. It’s inside me.”

“Yes, it is classified. And luckily we have you. We should be able to get what we need.” The colonel gestured to the slowly swelling bag of blood.

“Wait, what about my wife? My car is still at the fields. Let me out of here!”

“I’m afraid your car is gone. Last night it drove off the high river bridge. That bridge has cameras. The river is up, the water is fast and deep. The authorities are dragging the river now. Your wife has been notified. The car will be found. Your body won’t. At least not for a while.” The colonel looked at the bag of blood again.

Walter began to yell and strain against the restraints until, at an indication from the colonel, the doctor moved to the bed and gave Walter another injection. Like earlier he felt the warmth spreading until it all went dark.

But this time he had dreams. Strange, vivid, violent dreams. Dreams of lightening and giant flying monsters and rivers of glowing blood. After what seemed like hours of these frightening and disturbing visions Walter woke up. He was standing. Looking around him he saw the heavy black nylon straps torn into tatters on the floor. The stout steel of the bed rails was bent like a pretzel.

The door to the room was wide open. The bodies of the two guards were sprawled on the floor. It looked like their helmets had been crushed and dark blood was spreading out in a quickly growing pool. He took it in, his preternatural eyes noticing little details like the serial numbers on the guards’ guns or the code on the bag of blood hanging beside him. He noticed the now-familiar smells of gore, fear, and death. He could hear screaming and running down the halls of the military hospital and could somehow separate all the sounds from one another and know what he was up against.

Walter stepped forward, striding over the bodies with strong, confident, long steps. He felt good, better than he had in his whole life.

 

A Month of Short Stories 2014, Day 10 – How To Talk To Girls At Parties

Posted on by Bill Chance

A year ago, for the month of June, I wrote about an online short story each day for the month. It seemed like a good idea at the time. My blog readership fell precipitously and nobody seemed to give a damn about what I was doing – which was a surprising amount of work.

Because of this result, I’m going to do it again this year.

Today’s story, for day ten – How To Talk To Girls At Parties, by Neil Gaiman

Read it online here:

How To Talk To Girls At Parties

It’s a rare pleasure when you start out reading something and you think you know what it is going to be about – about a third of the way you are still sure and then, all of a sudden, you realize you are lost on a dark road and on the way somewhere unexpected… somewhere interesting and wonderful.

Reading something by Neil Gaiman… well, I should have known better. The title, the opening gambit… a young teenager trying to find his way in the world of women, intimidated by a good-looking, silver-tongued friend who has a way with the ladies. We’ve all read this before… we’ve all lived this before.

Then, all of a sudden….

Read it and find out.

You know when you are sixteen and confused and ignorant and you say to yourself, “I don’t understand any of this. Jeez! These girls all act like they are from another planet.”

Well, be careful….

She looked at me with her green eyes, and it was as if she stared out at me from her own Antigone half-mask; but as if her pale green eyes were just a different, deeper, part of the mask. “You cannot hear a poem without it changing you,” she told me. “They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them and it inhabited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses, its outlook, its aspirations becoming their lives. Within a generation their children would be born already knowing the poem, and, sooner rather than later, as these things go, there were no more children born. There was no need for them, not any longer. There was only a poem, which took flesh and walked and spread itself across the vastness of the known.”

I edged closer to her, so I could feel my leg pressing against hers.

She seemed to welcome it: she put her hand on my arm, affectionately, and I felt a smile spreading across my face.

“There are places that we are welcomed,” said Triolet, “and places where we are regarded as a noxious weed, or as a disease, something immediately to be quarantined and eliminated. But where does contagion end and art begin?”