Category Archives: science fiction

The Lost and the Found

man of the hole

The only known images of The Man in the Hole were captured in the film Corumbiara – Photo credit: Vincent Carelli

“Now we wait.”

Historian and linguist Aiyana Zheutlin sat down on the ground in front of the rough-hewn hut in the Amazon rain forest.

“Wait for what?” Her companion, engineer Lynn Huỳnh quickly sat down beside her, putting her tablet in her lap.

“Him. I told you. We brought the food and water as a gift. This is his land. We are intruders but we hope he’ll accept us as guests. So we wait for him to respond.”

“How long, Aiyana?”

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When Adam Awoke

hand

© artycaptures.wordpress.com

The light was too bright at first but then his eyes adjusted. He took a deep breath and exhaled feeling pleasure at the rise and fall of his chest. He looked at the clacking sound above him. Something turning around and around. A cool breeze came from it. It felt nice.

He sat up and realized this thing in front of him was his. He lifted it up. Moved the digits, Turned it back and forth. It did everything he thought about. He giggled. It was fun.

Another sound to his left. Something opened. Adam was scared. He tried to speak but it came out as a moan. Who’s that?

“There, there, dear boy. Don’t be afraid. I’m your doctor. I’m here to help. My staff and I will take care of you.”

He walked closer. He seemed friendly but Adam was nervous.

“You’re name is Adam. I told you that before when you woke up after the operation. My name is Dr. Frankenstein, Victor Von Frankenstein. I think we’re going to become good friends.

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge-Week of September 5, 2017 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for writing a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Restoration

mosasaurus

A mosasaurus as seen in the 2015 film “Jurassic World”.

“So you’re saying that as a direct result of our time incursion preventing the experimental Forerunner time-spaceship from causing the Tunguska blast and subsequent runaway global warming, we caused this massive change in history. A history where Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus never visited the New World. A world where Europe never colonized the Americas and the native population was free to develop their own culture into the 21st century. Now, I’ve got a base in Southern Nevada surrounded by a foreign and potentially hostile military force and I can’t find any way to defend them.”

Colonel John Kelgarries, responding to Dr. Antoine Barnes, Project Retrograde’s Chief Temporal Scientist, had been listening to a briefing about his latest analysis of the changes in the timeline. Kelgarries and the rest of the Project were racing against the clock. Their facility at Basecamp was under siege by the military forces of the Southern Palutes State, part of the Hokan-Penutian nation which encompassed all of what used to be California and parts of Oregon, Nevada, and the Baja Peninsula.

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Incident on the Dover Bridge

tank

© A Mixed Bag 2013

President Trump declared a state of Martial Law for the affected areas of the Eastern Seaboard, including New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, for lack of any better idea. The impossible was happening. Groups of Native Americans, along with their houses and towns were appearing at random in different geographic areas, replacing whatever and whoever had been there before.

The President’s interim Science Advisor Michael Kratsios checked and found there was a small group at MIT experimenting with cross-dimensional fields which possibly caused these phenomena.

Captain Roberts had directed his tank over the Dover Bridge crossing the Choptank River about five miles from Easton, Maryland. Halfway across the span, the bridge changed and in the middle of the bridge was a military troop armed with rocket launchers.

“Franklin, get us stopped in a hurry.”

“Yes sir.” Sgt Caroline Franklin brought the tank to an abrupt halt. Roberts popped the turret hatch hoping he could talk his way out if this mess, whatever it was. The leader of the group called up to him.

“I’m First Warrior Achak Running Bear of the Lenni Lenape Militia. I understand you think you own this land. We’re here to take back what is ours.”

I wrote this for the Sunday Photo Fiction challenge of September 3rd, 2017. The idea is to use the photo above as the inspiration for writing a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 199.

I tried to find the actual location where this photo was taken, which isn’t likely to be where I’ve set my wee tale, but I failed miserably. However one of the references for “dover bridge” Google pointed me to was the bridge and river I used for my story. I’ve leveraged some plot points from a series of time travel stories I’m currently writing based on the works of the late Andre Norton (whose real name was Alice Mary Norton), particularly a chapter I published yesterday called Incursion. What would happen if a scientific experiment went wrong and started replacing parts of our world with an alternate reality, one in which Europe had never colonized the Americas? Today’s piece of short fiction gives us a taste of the answer.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Incursion

ice station zebra

From the 1968 film “Ice Station Zebra”.

Kelgarries wanted the job done in a month, but he was a soldier, not an engineer. The construction and precision placement of twin temporal gates, one at the highest point on Vila do Porto, one of the smaller islands of the Azores, and the other at the epicenter of the Tunguska Event, some 65 kilometers north-northwest of the town of Vanavara, could not be rushed, particularly at the stage of configuring the fusion generator for each and then applying power to the gates.

Both gates had to be absolutely synchronized in power output and frequency for their plan to work.

The plan? To intercept an experimental alien space and time craft that launched nearly 4,000 years ago from what used to be the main island in the Atlantis chain, where now remains only the tiny islands of the Azores, and due to explode in the atmosphere above a remote portion of Siberia on June 30, 1908. The field the gates would generate between the launch and crash points would create a nexus in the time stream intersecting with the ship and sending it off source to another place in the far distant past.

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Threshold

storm

© WeatherStudios

True to his word, Major Vasnev Romanovich of the Russian Ground Forces did not get drunk until well after the debriefing of the Atlantis mission at Project Retrograde’s Arctic base. When Romanovich had been assigned to Retrograde, it had been called an “Operation” and he had been a Major of the Soviet Armed Forces. However, when reality was changed after an unfortunate Time Storm, initiated when Time Gate Technician Louis Aramazd and his team activated the gate in close proximity to a live Forerunner power source, the world he returned to was not the same as the one he left.

U.S. Army Lieutenant Walter Byrd was in operational command of the Folsom time base in Arizona when the Time Storm hit, and all of his people were instantly transported back over 14,000 years in time. Ashe and his team, of which Vasnev was now a member, rescued them, but in returning the survivors and their children to the present after ten years in exile, they created a new timeline, one in which the Soviet Union fell in the late 1980s.

Either way, Romanovich was the Russian liaison to the Retrograde Project and worked as an equal member of Dr. Gordon Ashe’s team of time agents attempting to minimize or eliminate the results of the Time Storm and most importantly, to prevent or reverse the effects of climate change that will likely cause human extinction in a mere half century.

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Prologue: Key Out of Time

comet impact

Found at The Verge

From space, the Earth looked very different from what modern humans would expect today. For one thing, the Panama isthmus did not connect North and South America, allowing direct low-latitude circulation between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There was no Drake Passage separating South America from Antarctica and the Arctic was also more restricted.

It came from space. The object, impacting on or near the coast of what is now called New Jersey. There was an abrupt release of carbon into the atmosphere causing global climate warming at an accelerated rate. It took decades or centuries, not thousands or tens of thousands of years for the planetary temperature to rise 5 to 9 degrees Centigrade or about 9 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit.

Numerous single-celled ocean bottom organisms became extinct while other surface species moved to the poles in order to survive.

Overall, the climate became wetter, Arctic freshwater concentrations increased, and although there was a general lack of global ice, sea levels still rose due to thermal expansion.

“Dr. Barnes, you’re not saying that this impact over 55 million years ago caused modern climate change. That’s not what you explained to me before.”

“Of course not, Colonel. However it is necessary to…”

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Interlude: What Lies in the Deep?

lief erikson

Public Domain – Carl Rasmussen – Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 28 November 2011, lot 200 via ARCADJA auction results

Lief Erikson was only a child when his renowned sire Erik the Red had disappeared at sea. Before him, legends tell of Gunnbjörn Ulf-Krakuson being bold enough to drive his ship into the icy waters west of their homeland.

“For Erik,” he muttered under his breath. He was determined not to have he and his men suffer the fate of those who came before them. The sea was rough but his men were bold, courageous, warriors to the last. Loyal to the oar, to the sail, and to Lief.

“Land!”

“Are you sure, lookout?” Lief cried out to the man roped halfway up the mast.

There had been three false sightings before. Brave though they were, the Viking crew had been out of sight of land for many weeks. Provisions were sufficient, but there were legends of beasts so large and fierce that they could swallow a Nordic longboat whole.

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Atlantis Descending

atlantis sinking

Found at ssqq.com

“That’s right. This isn’t the first time Atlantis has been rocked by quakes, there have been three other events in the past two months, but the innkeeper says this series is the most severe.”

Gordon Ashe was reporting to both Captain Owen Redfeld and Lynn Huỳnh aboard the nuclear submarine Nereid and to the extraction team, now on the top of the cliffs near the city of Meropis, Travis Fox and Vasnev Romanovich. It had been four days since Ross Murdock went missing inside the city’s central tower, but intermittent contact with his implanted communicator indicated continued life signs.

Owen here, Gordon. We’ve been seeing heavy shipping traffic here, all outgoing. Every available sailing ship and galley has been packed to overflowing with people leaving the island.”

“Airborne drones report similar activity on the other three islands as well, Gordon.”

“Thanks, Lynn.”

“Gordon, I don’t see why you won’t let Travis and me enter the city, find Murdock, and get you all out of there.”

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The Tower at Meropis

shark

Photo: Discovery Channel

The Megalodon was swimming straight for the Nereid. Avoiding a collision seemed impossible so Captain Owen Redfeld did the only thing he could think of. He ramped up the engines to full and accelerated toward the (supposedly) extinct shark.

“Everybody in your seats. Strap in. Brace for impact.”

The six time travelers obeyed out of a sense of discipline and self-preservation, but Travis yelled up at the submariner, “Have you lost your damn mind?”

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