Tag Archives: scifi

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.

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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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 Defector

wroclaw

Foggy Town © Olgierd Rudak/Flickr

“Remember, stay in the compartment under the truck’s bed until you’re past the last checkpoint and Franciszek gives you the signal. If the truck is stopped, do not make a sound or the soldiers will shoot you both.”

Dominik Zheutlin was peering up at the member of the Fighting Solidarity movement. Normally, they didn’t take these kinds of risks, but getting him out of Poland was a vital.

“Dzieki*. You don’t know what this means to me.”

” I know in the West you’ll find a way to free the world, Dr. Zheutlin. Good luck.”

The final board was placed over the defector. A nod to Franciszek told him it was time to depart for the German border. The resistance movement was counting on Zheutlin developing something that would finally defeat the Communists by changing history. Zheutlin was the only man in the world who could build a time machine.

*Thanks.

I’m writing this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. Today, Pegman takes us to Wroclaw, Poland. The idea is to use Google maps images of the location as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is exactly 149.

I’m leveraging some information from a story series I’m writing as an homage to the works of science fiction writer Andre Norton (Actually her name was Alice Mary Norton). One of my characters is a historian and linguist named Aiyana Zheutlin. In 2017, she’s in her early 30s and works for Project Retrograde, an American time travel operation attempting to find and correct the historical causes of climate change (the most recent story as of this writing is Nereid).

Her father was Polish and her mother was English. In her original timeline, the Soviet Union still existed in 2017 and her father defected from Poland a few years before 1985. He didn’t invent time travel in my actual storyline, that was another defector, but I had fun merging those two histories.

When I looked up Wroclaw, I found out an anti-Communist movement called “Fighting Solidarity” was founded there in 1982. They primarily fought the communists through disseminating information, but in this case, I gave them the opportunity to occasionally help defectors escape from behind the Iron Curtain.

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

Nereid

atlantis

Atlantis: The last sunrise by batkya

Now in this island of Atlantis, there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia…But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the substance of the island.

Plato from Timaeus 25

“You’ve done what?” Aiyana Zheutlin knew their next mission would be particularly dangerous and it would be difficult to travel back in time to an island that does not exist in the present, but what Colonel John Kelgarries was telling her sounded insane.

“Given the extraordinary situation we’re presented with, I think it’s the most reasonable solution and the Temporal Research Group, including Dr. Barnes, agrees with me.”

Ashe’s team was meeting with Kelgarries for the pre-mission briefing, however in addition to Antoine Barnes there were two other people seated around the conference table who were not normally present. The first was Thomas Lucius, now the top time gate technician at the Project and sometimes called “the Control Voice”. The second was a Naval Officer who introduced himself as Captain Owen Redfeld.

“Dr. Zheutlin, I would not have authorized this if I didn’t believe it was perfectly safe. True, it is an unorthodox application of our temporal technology, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.”

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Reggie

coffee cup goo

© artycaptures.wordpress.com

“What the hell is it, Neil?”

“I don’t know, Doctor. It was in my coffee cup when I opened the lab this morning.”

Louise Manners wrinkled her nose. “I told you never leave your dishes in the lab over the weekend. We work with biological…”

“Doctor, how could left over coffee turn into…into that?”

“We’d better not expose ourselves. Get the Hazmat gear. Let’s get it into a containment box.”

“Oh, there you are, you naughty fellow.”

Louise and Neil whirled at the sudden intrusion. Archie, the night janitor, was standing at the doorway. Ignoring them, he headed for Neil’s cup.

“That’s not your coffee.” He became aware of the two biologists staring at him.

“My pet fungus Reggie. I bring him to work with me for the company.”

Archie turned back to the cup. “You come with me now.” Walking out of the lab with the cup, Archie called over his shoulder. “I’ll bring this back tonight.”

Neil turned to Louise. “Pet fungus?”

“Neil, what if we could market it? Let’s get to work.”

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge for the Week of August 15, 2017 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as a prompt to write a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long with 150 being the ideal. My word count is 175.

To me, the image seemed hideous and humorous at the same time. I was in the midst of writing but having trouble creating the twist at the end until I considered Simon Pegg’s rather funny take on the character of “Scotty” in the “Star Trek” reboot movies (the movies themselves aren’t that great, but I like Pegg’s performance). The story then wrote itself.

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

Turn and Face the Change

alternate universes

Two days before he took his first trip through the time gate, Major John Kelgarries had a hush-hush meeting at Operation Retrograde with Antoine R. Barnes, Head of the Temporal Mechanics division, the last word in temporal field operations and perhaps the one person in the operation who actually understood the Forerunner time map.

It was late. Just about everyone was asleep at the arctic base except those personnel on night duty. They were in a small conference room. Barnes had cut the surveillance feeds. This was strictly off the record.

“That’s the long and the short of it, Major. Assuming your mission to bring back the survivors is successful, I can only predict to a 48% accuracy how our history and our present will be changed.”

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The Moaning Stone

rock

© CEAyr

“We’ve hiked three days to get here, Jason. Are you sure it’s worth it?”

“According to the old library book it should be.”

Jason and Jill climbed down the heavily wooded gully. “Should be around…there. The moaning rock.”

“Just a big rock, Jason.”

Then they heard the moan.

“I don’t like this Jason. Let’s go back.”

“Wait.”

“Alone.” The voice from the rock sounded like the wind.

“Are you the spirit?” The book was written eighty years ago by a hiker who said the rock was haunted.

“Home.” Lights started shining from deep depressions.

“No, Jason. Not spirits. A spaceship.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields Friday Fictioneers writing challenge. The idea is to craft a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long based on the photo above. My word count is exactly 100.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture of the rock is that it looked like it was somehow alive. I was torn between making it a horror story or science fiction. Jason and Jill almost had their souls eaten by spirits. Then I decided for a happier ending.

To read other stories inspired by the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Tomorrow or Yesterday?

yesterday, today, tomorrow

Found at flickr.com

Major John Kelgarres had been the military commander of Operation Retrograde for over five years but in all that time, he’d never gone through a gate. Not until today.

“Are you sure your presence is really required John. After all, we know our job.”

“It’s not you Gordon. I’m Walter Byrd’s C.O. I’m responsible for the safety of the men and women under my command. Byrd’s been out of touch for a long time. He and his people have been stuck tens of thousands of years in the past. They thought we gave up on them, they thought they were alone, cut off. If there’s any doubt he’ll order his team to come home, I’m here to see otherwise.”

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