Category Archives: science fiction

A Time To Follow Your Heart

chanukah

Image: StepByStep.com

Sarah stood across the street from her Bubbe’s and Zayde’s house. The evening of December 24th, the first night of Chanukah this year, was cool, even in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, but she had dressed for the occasion. She made sure the coat she was wearing wouldn’t attract attention in case anyone saw her.

Sarah wished she could get closer. She wished she could just knock on the door and go inside, but she wasn’t supposed to be there and she wasn’t supposed to change anything.

Wait! There they were. She could see them through the window in the front of their house. Bubbe and Zayde. Her big brother Aaron, all of seven years old, was excitedly jumping up and down next to them. Sarah couldn’t hear anything of course, but she could see everyone’s facial expressions and imagined Zayde firmly but kindly helping Aaron to calm down.

Tradition says that the Chanukah menorah must be placed either in a central area of the home or by a window. The latter is to proudly announce that a miracle had occurred and this was the commemoration of that miracle. Sarah was watching her family tonight thanks to a miracle she had created herself.

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Rocketship to Mars

flight to mars

Image: From the 1951 film “Flight to Mars”

The four glittering, silver tail fins of Space Ship Ares One settled firmly on the red sands of the planet Mars as Colonel Bradley Graham flipped the toggle switch cutting the rocket thrust.

Then he picked up the microphone and depressed the transmission button on the side. “Space Ship Ares One to Earth Space Control. We have landed on the planet Mars. Repeat, we have landed on Mars.”

It would take minutes for the radio waves carrying his message to make the trip from Mars to Earth, but Graham vividly imagined the cheers of the crowd at Space Control and all of the Americans watching on their televisions or listening on their radios when they finally heard his voice from across the void.

“Okay, let’s get to it. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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The Good Old Days

orchard

Image: Core Orchards Detroit

Alexander May had created a way to save the world. Unfortunately, the rest of the world found out about it.

Dr. Alexander May, Ph.Ds in Particle Physics and Temporal Mechanics, retired Owner and CEO of TimeTeck, one of the largest and most profitable technology companies in the world, had watched that world continue its downward spiral toward an ethical and moral vacuum for most of his life. Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, plagues, and runaway environmental pollution was bringing life on Earth to a slow and agonizing end.

May knew he could fix it all. He could make the Earth life-sustaining again, bring peace to all nations, tribes, and clans. What was required was totally reorganizing the time-line and completely rewriting history.

All of the so-called climate change advocates were a bunch of hypocrites. They wanted to restore a sustainable planetary biosphere, but they didn’t want to make the sacrifices necessary. The world wanted to keep the Internet, their iPhones, their cat videos, and the rest of that crap.

You can’t have it both ways.

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Human for Sale

irish slavesMegan Kelly wept and tried to cover her nude body as best she could while on the selling block.

“She’ll fetch a fine price,” the Slave Hunter said to his V’thakian customer.

The Slave Hunter was human, a collaborator with the V’thak, a man who would hunt and sell his own kind to inhuman butchers and conquerors.

Megan was only twenty years old. Pale skin and fiery red hair matched her temperament and spirit. She thought she could push the limit and remain in the countryside outside the shelter a little while longer than the others.

Her fourteen year old brother’s broken arm was still healing and she wanted to bring home some extra roots and berries for him as a treat.

Instead she was caught by Galn, the Slave Hunter. He stripped her bare once he’d gotten her to the V’thakian compound, but he didn’t rape her. The V’thakians don’t like their slaves sullied, but neither do they tolerate them clothed.

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The Bubble

bungalow

Image: hookedonhouses.com

Friday, October 21, 2016

I might have lived alone in that 1920s bungalow that I inherited from my Grandpa for the rest of my life if I hadn’t discovered the Bubble. That’s what I call it because that’s what it looks like, a big soap-bubble suspended between the trunks of two Elm trees behind the house.

It’s mostly wooded back there, and the Bubble is almost completely transparent, so unless you’re right on top of it, you’d never see the thing.

I was walking around the property, Grandpa still owned it all when he died so I had plenty of privacy, and I only saw it at the last second (guess I was daydreaming) before I walked right into it.

I got dizzy for a few moments and then I walked out the other side. I looked back at it and my first thought was to wonder why it hadn’t popped.

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Tomb of the Pilot

glenn and friendship 7

Image: NASA

“I can’t believe we finally made it, Kent. We’ve made it to the tomb.”

“We aren’t there yet, Bethany. We still have to make it across this field.”

Kent and Bethany had been traveling by horseback for weeks, following the ancient maps and clues left by the Predecessors. They weren’t entirely sure how long ago the Predecessors lived or when the original maps had been created. Certainly it was in the time before the fall, before the plague that was rumored to have killed billions, before the return of the remnant of mankind to their simple farms and fields.

They stood a moment reviewing the scene in the mid-morning sunlight.

“There’s not much left. I mean, the reproduction of the map of this area showed more tombs and graves, many, many more.”

“Time, weather, a multitude of other factors have destroyed all this, Bethany. The Pilot’s tomb is supposed to be one of the few left.”

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Desire

the kiss“I think it’s working Gregor. I’m beginning to feel something.”

“Me, too. It’s kind of strange, embarrassing even.”

Gregor and Aabha were in bed together in a small, spartan, dimly lit room. They were sitting up, their backs resting on pillows pressed against the headboard. A blanket chastely covered them both up to their collar bones. If anyone had been watching them, it would have been clear they had never been together before.

Aabha turned toward Gregor, looked into his green eyes as if seeing him for the first time, then slowly reached out to caress his cheek.

She giggled. “You need to shave.”

He reached up and pressed her hand against his face. “I suppose I do.”

“It’s really affecting me now, Gregor…the Desire.”

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A Boy and His Dog on Mars

space hab

Image: Bryan Versteeg / spacehabs.com

Seven-year-old Timmy Robinson threw the tennis ball as hard as he could, sending it sailing over the Martian surface. Rusty, his pet terrier, scrambled after it, his paws spewing little clouds of red sand into the air behind him.

“Go get it! Go get it, boy! Timmy was screaming at the top of his lungs as the dog followed the now bouncing ball.

“I think this is the last one, Timmy. We’ve got to go down into the gravity lab now.” It was the voice of Joyce Robinson, his Mother. In all the excitement, he hadn’t heard her walk up behind him.

Rusty returned skidding to a halt at the little boy’s feet and obediently deposited the slime covered ball near his left shoe, a red high-topped Converse all-star.

“Ah, Mom. Can’t I stay out a while longer? I’m having so much fun. I never get to play with Rusty except when we’re on Mars.”

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Life in Homestead

snowy road

Image: Austria Tirol – Teton Valley News

“Shouldn’t we turn back?” Shelley was more than a little anxious. This was supposed to be a winter afternoon romp in the Jeep along the back roads of the Rockies near their home in Boulder, not the first chapter in a story about them needing a search and rescue team.

“We’re too low on gas. I’m sure I saw a town when we were at the top of the ridge. If we can just find a main road that connects to this one.” Jen was always the spontaneous adventurer who complemented Shelly’s more easy-going and homebody ways.

“This isn’t a road, it’s a snow drift.” Shelley chuckled nervously trying to make a joke out of what, from her point of view, was becoming an increasingly dire circumstance.

“It’s a road, it’s just one that hasn’t been swept of snow for a while.”

“Like forever?” Admit it. We’re lost.”

“I knew I should have taken that left-hand turn at Albuquerque.”

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Invisible

invisible man

Image: From the 1933 film The Invisible Man

When Charlie Rainier realized he could turn invisible, he was absolutely giddy. From his point of view, nothing had changed. He could still see his reflection in a mirror, he cast a shadow, he didn’t have to take his clothes off like in the old movies, and he could still see. But no one else could see him.

If invisibility worked by causing light to pass directly through a person or to curve around him, he should be blind. To see, light enters the eyes through the pupil. The iris changes the size of the pupil depending on how bright the light is. Then the lens focuses that light onto the retina at the back of the eye. Light has to stop after hitting the retina.

If light curved around the invisible person, it would never reach the eye and the invisible person would be blind. If light went right through him, it wouldn’t stop at the retina but pass right through it, and again the person would be blind.

Fortunately for Charlie, he found a way around that problem.

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