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NO PLACE TO HIDE

 

Heat.  

A burst of radiation, actually, signaling the beginning phase of what would grow into a stellar flare, but that’s what my sensors translated it as.  A warning that the sector my ship had just passed through was becoming dangerous for both ships and life forms.  

A token in memory of what I’d once been.

Other memories:  A different heat.  Laser heat, aimed at my one-man scout by a Spican corsair.  Memories of the civil conflict, before all grievances were forgotten in the face of the alien challenge — the new war, against a non-human invader.  Except I was no longer human either.

I’d been killed in the Spican’s ambush and, despite our worlds being allied now, that was a memory I’d never lose.     The heat dissipated — all at once — as if it had been something only imagined.  The last time I’d been a lot less lucky.  I’d been killed in action, but my scout had held together just long enough to be recovered by one of my own side’s battle cruisers.  The rest had been nightmare.

That heat had remained.

I checked my scanners, fore and aft.  The mid-ship visuals.  The infra-redders.  Loosed the sono-robs from their booms.  I even smelled the space ahead of me and was rewarded.  The trail I picked up was faint, but, to me, could not be mistaken.  Goranhauf’s spoor.

My hunch had paid off.  For nearly five years since my recommissioning, I’d cruised the sectors that life-manned ships preferred to avoid.  The dangerous sectors, that robo-merchants would sometimes sneak through, or occasional privateers like mine, whether manned or unmanned.  But I’d had a mission beyond the one that FleetCen gave me, ever since I’d scanned the roster of similar semi-independents and learned that Goranhauf had been classed as a privateer too.

I’d wondered why.  He hadn’t volunteered — none of us had, even back during the civil wars.  Even before the colonial navies had reformed under FleetCen’s umbrella, the general idea was that those without money or social connections — in other words, ninety percent of those who did the actual fighting — were simply “classed” into whatever part of the fleet the admirals felt needed help most.  Goranhauf, at the time we first met, had been classed as a picket by his own side.  He’d been given a single-manned ship, one better gunned as it turned out than mine, and then set to ambush scouts like me.

The visi-comp pinged.  The trail was fresher.  I took a sonic reading over a wedge of space off my starboard bow, then ordered a full-power magnification of what the visual computer had seen.  

A sickle-winged shape, its velvet black finish blending smoothly into the darkness that lay around it.  Goranhauf’s corsair — then picket, now privateer — in any guise, a shape I’d first seen only when it flashed out at me, guns blazing death, giving me scarcely a chance to  return fire before my shattered scout was sent spinning back to my own side.

“Identify!”  

Goranhauf’s challenge.  Again he’d seen me first, reacted first.  But we, allegedly, fought for the same cause in this new war.

“FleetCen XX-2,” I answered.  “Armed and on patrol under letters of marque.  Identify back — visual ID.  Is that you, Goranhauf?”

Minutes passed.  We were that far apart, even as our ships were closing.  “Identify — visual,” I repeated, knowing he had probably already sent his compliance.  “I’ve trailed you, Goranhauf, and, if it’s you, there’s nothing that you can do to hide.”  As I finished the words, my internal screen flashed into an image of a heavy-faced, black-bearded man.  

“This is Goranhauf” — we were still closing — “I . . . geeze, are you really an early double-X?  I’d heard that most of them had been destroyed.”

“My name is Metler,” I replied.  “Alan Metler.  Perhaps you remember, when you fought for Spica. . . .”

The time lag that separated our messages and replies was getting shorter.  Nevertheless, there was still a delay.

“I . . . why would I hide?”

Why would he hide from me?  For the same reason that most of the early XX conversions had been destroyed.  Pain was the reason, when it came down to it.  Searing pain.

I switched on my own visual ID transmitter, knowing that all he’d see was a network of wires and tubing.  The pain hadn’t stopped when my ship had been rescued, but only started.  My combat record had been good enough for me to be given a second chance, so, just as my nerves were flayed from what was left of my body, my brain was revived.

“Because I intend to kill you, Goranhauf, just like you killed me.”

“But you survived, Metler.  The process worked for you. You’re one of the few. . . .”

The memory of survival was agony, without cessation.  This was survival:  Nerves cut from flesh, then spliced into circuits; eyes, ears, tongue, skin, every external part fused with sensors; spinal ganglia, locked in tungsten, laid as vertebrae into a new keel.  And, after, the testing in which lay the real pain as we became one, my scout ship and I, in movement and will, while most of the others did not survive.  The others, who underwent the conversion, as Goranhauf said, had been destroyed — as an act of mercy.  But, even with the worst of the failures, mercy came only after they’d been kept and tested long enough for FleetCen to learn how to make today’s man-ship conversions easy.

“Yes, Goranhauf,” I said.  “I survived.”

This time I fired first, in the moment he waited to hear my reply.  Heat beams and words struck his ship together.  

“Metler, for Christ’s sake!  We’re on the same side.  We could be partners.  We could forget what happened before and work together.”

I fired again as our ships flashed by.  “You were the one who did this to me, Goranhauf.  Made me survive on hatred alone — on what I would do when I finally tracked you.  When I was recommissioned, they made me a privateer because they didn’t know whether a ship like me could operate in concert with others. They may have been wise.  In any event, they did me a favor by giving me the freedom to search. . . .”

He checked speed and circled — instead of running, he intended to meet my challenge.  There wasn’t time for talk after that, or even for thinking.  I’d managed to damage his ship on that first pass, but only lightly, and now he came back with his forward lasers crackling on tight beam.

I fired again — didn’t know if I hit him — felt the pain as his first blast struck me.  Screamed with the agony, shrieking, silently, out to the stars as I disengaged.  This time the holes were burned in my own skin.  

“Surrender, Metler,” my com-circuits screamed back.  Goranhauf’s ship turned, as if the battle were over already, to finish me off.  “I’m a better gunner than you are — even if you’re joined with your ship, I always will be.  But we should be partners.  Metler, listen, I wish you would at least consider. . . .”

I switched my voice receiver off.  I thought of the stars.  I thought of one star in particular, one that I knew was about to flare.  I watched as Goranhauf’s ship fired again, but this time I took evasive action.  

I made him chase me.

I kept him busy, turning, evading, scoring an occasional hit as I drew him with me, doubling back on my earlier course.  I began to feel a warmth from the star, then a streak of searing heat arcing out toward our path.  I took hits as well — it wouldn’t be long until I was crippled.  Nevertheless, in spite of the pain, I made sure I kept him busy enough that, with his reliance on his ship’s separate warning circuits, he wouldn’t guess where the real danger lay until I was ready.

I flew with pain, but I’d felt it before, and enough that was worse that I’d long ago realized that permanent death was something I wanted more than life.  Permanent death, but a death with completion — I wanted a death, if it had to come now, that took Goranhauf with me.

I made a last distance and course calculation, then hit my retros, sliding into a spiraling turn that took me below him.  I watched as he flashed past — even when he’d killed me before, had it not been for the speed of his ambush, I would have proven the better pilot.  I listened — tasted the chemical flame — as he tried to brake into his own sliding turn, then desperately fired his stern blister cannon as soon as he realized I’d switched back to full forward thrusting power.

All he could do was to fire and fire again, riddling my body, helpless to stop me . . .

#

. . . to take the blow as my torn ship rammed . . .

#

. . . to accept my embrace as, together, we swept into agonized brightness.  Brightness and darkness.  Into the flare. . . .

#

And then brightness again.  

My ocular sensors felt different this time — the fixed scanners covered a wider angle.  I tested my nerve circuits, flexed my thrusters, realized that the conversion process was easier now.

They’d done it again — FleetCen had built me into a larger, newer vessel, without my even realizing they’d done so.  I tried to change course, this time to seek out not just a stellar flare, but a star’s center to drive myself into.  I felt resistance.  I struggled against it.  I felt an opening.

My mind fell through.

Goranhauf!  I didn’t have voice circuits.  Yet, at the same time, I didn’t need them.

You killed me, Metler.  You got what you wanted.  But FleetCen found us, just like your side’s navy found you the last time.

I tried to close my ears to what he said, but couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a sound.  Then leave me, Goranhauf, I tried to scream — it wasn’t a sound, but something I heard within my own mind.  Even if you’ve been converted as well.  I’ll accept that, if you’ll accept that I got what I wanted and leave me alone.

I wish I could, Metler.  But you were killed too.  FleetCen has our records, the transcripts detailing your skills as a pilot and mine as a gunner, and, when they found our ships crushed together, it gave them an idea.  We’ve both been rebuilt . . .

I heard Goranhauf’s laughter — it wasn’t a sound, but something a lot worse — then heard the laughter rise up to a scream.  I joined it with mine as, a moment later, his words continued.

. . . rebuilt, Alan Metler, into the same ship.  Welcome aboard what, once it’s passed testing, is going to be FleetCen’s newest weapon — the first double-X-class two-man destroyer.

END.

By James Dorr

James Dorr’s latest book is a novel-in-stories published by Elder Signs Press in June 2017, TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, while his THE TEARS OF ISIS was a 2014 Bram Stoker Award® nominee for Fiction Collection.  Other books include STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE, DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, and his all-poetry VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE).  A mostly short fiction writer and poet working mainly in dark fantasy and horror with some excursions into mystery and science fiction, Dorr invites readers to visit his blog at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com.

 

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HellBound Express Chapter 2

Hellbound Express
By Mel Odom

Did you love chapter one of HellBound Express? Get ready for the second installment. If you haven’t read chapter one click the link here to read it first.

 

 

Home was the Peress Express. The train was pulled by a 1952 Baldwin Locomotive steam engine that Peress, Senior, had purchased during his mid-life crisis in Middletown, Iowa, ten years ago. He’d made a fortune in designer medicine, which was ironic considering the virus that had all but destroyed the world. He’d even toyed with working on a cure for the virus, but it had been beyond him. Whoever the North Koreans had hired to design the virus had done their work well.

During Peress’s mid-life crisis, the man had also built a track around his considerable estates to drive the train on. He’d told anyone who rode the train that the locomotive had been a hit at parties, and signed photographs of movie and television stars who had represented some of the “miracle” drugs he’d created hung in the pulling engine.

Peress sat in the narrow seat on the right side of the engine’s control station and gazed out the narrow window at his side. In the original Baldwin Locomotives, the seat had been metal and wood and uncomfortable. Peress’s seat was custom-fitted and padded to the point of luxury.

In his early sixties, Peress had iron-gray hair that hung over his ears and over his collar in the back, and was vain enough to have it cut every two weeks so that it looked like it never grew. He wore tailored gray striped bib overalls, a gray striped engineer hat, and a red scarf. The overalls hung a little loose these days because Peress had lost weight since the virus event. A lot of people had.

“Good morning, Peter.” Peress adjusted the regulator, the engine noises changed, and the train careened a little faster across the tracks as it gained speed. “We’re starting up that last grade before the stop outside Winslow. I want us at the top of that grade so continuing in either direction will be easier.”

Still carrying his helmet by its chinstrap, Gant nodded and glanced at the gauges and valves that took up most of the headspace in the engine cockpit. Over the last year, he’d learned what they were and how they operated. Gant made it a habit never to be too dependent on anyone else. The days of having a team that watched his back had disappeared back in Afghanistan.

“Coffee?” Peress offered. His blue eyes looked inflamed from the wind and the smoke that drifted up from the fire box below the gauges. The heavy steel door was eighteen inches wide and twelve inches tall. The fireman who handled the firewood in the coalporter car running behind the engine fed split logs into the fire box as needed to keep the boiler stoked.

Gant took the covered cup Peress handed him. Gingerly, Gant sniffed the contents and thought it smelled okay. He’d gotten unpleasantly surprised a few times by Peress’s concoctions over the months spent on the train.

Although Peress had been a stickler for authenticity when it came to the steam engine, he’d wired in a Keurig coffeemaker as his one concession. K-Cups were always at the top of the salvage lists when the teams traveled out from the train.
“That’s just Folgers.” Peress grinned and sipped from his cup. “Now this, this is hazelnut. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Smells like that elephant dung coffee you tried to get me to drink.”

Although Junior was a proper ass, Gant liked Peress, Senior. The man knew how to get along with others and work within a team. He was pleasant and hopeful even though he had no reason to be in the world they’d inherited.

A smile split Peress’s round face. In the early dawn light, he looked older and a little grayer. The miles were wearing on him. “No, that’s Black Ivory Coffee. That’s pure nectar and it’s hard to come by. I save it for special occasions. And it’s on the salvage list.”

Gant tapped his pocket under his Kevlar vest, letting Peress know he had the list because the man would ask.

“Winslow was known for its artistic flair before the Event,” Peress said, “so if you get a spare moment to be particular about what you grab for salvage…”
Spare moments were hard to come by on a salvage run. The living dead still shambled around, and there were other salvagers who were out for whatever they could get too.

“I’ll keep an eye out for it,” Gant said.

“I’d be most grateful, Mr. Gant. Not that I’m not already grateful for all that you do. All of us are.”

Gant ignored that. He still wasn’t comfortable around Peress’s operation. With everything that had happened in the world, small numbers would have fared better. But Peress was determined to build a city out of the rubble.

To Gant’s mind, the risk of being around a large population was too great. If people got packed in tight, they couldn’t live off the land and it got harder to feed them. It also marked them for stronger predator groups that waited until the hunter/gatherers among them were off getting goods.

And all it would take to destroy everything was one Yeomra Outbreak in the midst of them. One unattended death and dozens would follow like falling dominoes.

Every day Gant spent there, he knew the risk was greater, and he thought often of leaving before he had to watch it all come apart. Still, he stayed, and in staying, his service there answered some unexplainable need within him.

Peress reached into his bib pocket and took out his Waltham Railroad Pocket Watch and flipped the lid open. The device sat like a small, golden onion in the palm of Peress’s soft palm. The large, Arabic numbers and the minute lines between stood out in black against the white face.

“We’re twenty-three minutes out from our scheduled stop, Peter.” Peress flicked the watch closed and put it away. “Time to get your troops rallied.”

Gant nodded, finished the dregs of his coffee, and handed the cup back to Peress. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Be careful out there,” Peress admonished.

Turning from the engine, Gant hauled himself up into the coalporter car and passed Adriana Rose, the train’s fireman, who was sitting on a high seat built into the car’s wall. Her booted feet rested on a neatly stacked rick cord of split oak that had yellowed after drying.

Gaunt almost to the point of emaciation and always taciturn, Rose had served as Peress’s chief finance officer in the pharmaceutical business. Her scraggly shoulder-length hair held splinters from the firewood and soot from the fire box left stains in it and around the goggles that protected her eyes. A red scarf hung around her neck. Like her boss, Rose also wore traditional engineer overalls.

“Good luck,” Rose said. “Bring back some chocolate if you can. It might not be high on Mr. Peress’s list, but I like it.”

“I will, Ms. Rose.” Gant gently squeezed the older woman’s thin shoulder as he stepped up onto a rick of wood and walked to the rear of the coalporter. He adjusted to the train’s sway automatically after all this time, and his footing was sure. Once he was clear of the coalporter, the wind caught him and shoved him back along the train.

Peress’s rolling stock consisted of the engine, the coalporter, two railcars that served as bunkhouses for the teams, six railcars for storing salvaged goods when they were on a long haul as they were now, a railcar that housed a machinist’s shop, a caboose that was a fort on iron wheels, and the final railcar that contained the salvage crew’s vehicles.

Sunlight splintered from the long, rectangular solar panels on both sides of the railcars. They charged batteries on the train that the crew used to run security equipment, drones, and comms at night.

As Gant made his way along the narrow path between the solar panel, he made an inventory of the three that weren’t working. Witt, the train’s electrical engineer, would probably catch them on his rounds, but the military had made redundancy part of Gant’s life. An extra pair of eyes always helped. He noted the cars/units on the small notepad he carried.

The final railcar was a covered autorack, designed and built to carry vehicles.
Gant peered over the caboose and called down to the man standing guard there with an M4A1 assault rifle. “Hey, Ponce.”

Manuel Ponce de Leon, once a border patrol agent between California and Mexico, looked up at Gant. In his late thirties, Ponce had weathered the cartel storms as a DEA agent. He was dark and swarthy and wore a long-billed California Angels ball cap that was frayed and stained. His grizzled jowls split in a smile.
“Hey, Peter.”

Gant clambered down the ladder, bumped fists with Ponce for good luck, and opened the door to the autorack.

 

Come Back Next Sunday for Chapter Three of HELLBOUND EXPRESS.

“Coffee?” Peress offered. His blue eyes looked inflamed from the wind and the smoke that drifted up from the fire box below the gauges. The heavy steel door was eighteen inches wide and twelve inches tall. The fireman who handled the firewood in the coalporter car running behind the engine fed split logs into the fire box as needed to keep the boiler stoked.

Gant took the covered cup Peress handed him. Gingerly, Gant sniffed the contents and thought it smelled okay. He’d gotten unpleasantly surprised a few times by Peress’s concoctions over the months spent on the train.

Although Peress had been a stickler for authenticity when it came to the steam engine, he’d wired in a Keurig coffeemaker as his one concession. K-Cups were always at the top of the salvage lists when the teams traveled out from the train.
“That’s just Folgers.” Peress grinned and sipped from his cup. “Now this, this is hazelnut. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Smells like that elephant dung coffee you tried to get me to drink.”

Although Junior was a proper ass, Gant liked Peress, Senior. The man knew how to get along with others and work within a team. He was pleasant and hopeful even though he had no reason to be in the world they’d inherited.

A smile split Peress’s round face. In the early dawn light, he looked older and a little grayer. The miles were wearing on him. “No, that’s Black Ivory Coffee. That’s pure nectar and it’s hard to come by. I save it for special occasions. And it’s on the salvage list.”

Gant tapped his pocket under his Kevlar vest, letting Peress know he had the list because the man would ask.

“Winslow was known for its artistic flair before the Event,” Peress said, “so if you get a spare moment to be particular about what you grab for salvage…”
Spare moments were hard to come by on a salvage run. The living dead still shambled around, and there were other salvagers who were out for whatever they could get too.

“I’ll keep an eye out for it,” Gant said.

“I’d be most grateful, Mr. Gant. Not that I’m not already grateful for all that you do. All of us are.”

Gant ignored that. He still wasn’t comfortable around Peress’s operation. With everything that had happened in the world, small numbers would have fared better. But Peress was determined to build a city out of the rubble.

To Gant’s mind, the risk of being around a large population was too great. If people got packed in tight, they couldn’t live off the land and it got harder to feed them. It also marked them for stronger predator groups that waited until the hunter/gatherers among them were off getting goods.

And all it would take to destroy everything was one Yeomra Outbreak in the midst of them. One unattended death and dozens would follow like falling dominoes.

Every day Gant spent there, he knew the risk was greater, and he thought often of leaving before he had to watch it all come apart. Still, he stayed, and in staying, his service there answered some unexplainable need within him.

Peress reached into his bib pocket and took out his Waltham Railroad Pocket Watch and flipped the lid open. The device sat like a small, golden onion in the palm of Peress’s soft palm. The large, Arabic numbers and the minute lines between stood out in black against the white face.

“We’re twenty-three minutes out from our scheduled stop, Peter.” Peress flicked the watch closed and put it away. “Time to get your troops rallied.”

Gant nodded, finished the dregs of his coffee, and handed the cup back to Peress. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Be careful out there,” Peress admonished.

Turning from the engine, Gant hauled himself up into the coalporter car and passed Adriana Rose, the train’s fireman, who was sitting on a high seat built into the car’s wall. Her booted feet rested on a neatly stacked rick cord of split oak that had yellowed after drying.

Gaunt almost to the point of emaciation and always taciturn, Rose had served as Peress’s chief finance officer in the pharmaceutical business. Her scraggly shoulder-length hair held splinters from the firewood and soot from the fire box left stains in it and around the goggles that protected her eyes. A red scarf hung around her neck. Like her boss, Rose also wore traditional engineer overalls.

“Good luck,” Rose said. “Bring back some chocolate if you can. It might not be high on Mr. Peress’s list, but I like it.”

“I will, Ms. Rose.” Gant gently squeezed the older woman’s thin shoulder as he stepped up onto a rick of wood and walked to the rear of the coalporter. He adjusted to the train’s sway automatically after all this time, and his footing was sure. Once he was clear of the coalporter, the wind caught him and shoved him back along the train.

Peress’s rolling stock consisted of the engine, the coalporter, two railcars that served as bunkhouses for the teams, six railcars for storing salvaged goods when they were on a long haul as they were now, a railcar that housed a machinist’s shop, a caboose that was a fort on iron wheels, and the final railcar that contained the salvage crew’s vehicles.

Sunlight splintered from the long, rectangular solar panels on both sides of the railcars. They charged batteries on the train that the crew used to run security equipment, drones, and comms at night.

As Gant made his way along the narrow path between the solar panel, he made an inventory of the three that weren’t working. Witt, the train’s electrical engineer, would probably catch them on his rounds, but the military had made redundancy part of Gant’s life. An extra pair of eyes always helped. He noted the cars/units on the small notepad he carried.

The final railcar was a covered autorack, designed and built to carry vehicles.
Gant peered over the caboose and called down to the man standing guard there with an M4A1 assault rifle. “Hey, Ponce.”

Manuel Ponce de Leon, once a border patrol agent between California and Mexico, looked up at Gant. In his late thirties, Ponce had weathered the cartel storms as a DEA agent. He was dark and swarthy and wore a long-billed California Angels ball cap that was frayed and stained. His grizzled jowls split in a smile.
“Hey, Peter.”

Gant clambered down the ladder, bumped fists with Ponce for good luck, and opened the door to the autorack.

Come Back Next Sunday for Chapter Three of HELLBOUND EXPRESS.

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Friday Night Freak Show Cosmos War of the planets

is a 1977 Italian film directed by Alfonso Brescia and starring John Richardson. It is considered a remake of the 1965 film Planet of the Vampires. It was also released as War of the Planets (not to be confused with the 1965 Antonio Margheriti film of that name), and also as Cosmo 2000, as well as Cosmo: Planet Without a Name.

The 4 films in Alfonso Brescia’s 1978 sci-fi series are

Cosmos: War of the Planets (1978, a.k.a. Year Zero War in Space)

Battle of the Stars (1978, a.k.a. Battle in Interstellar Space), War of the Robots (1978, a.k.a. Reactor) and Star Odyssey (1979, a.k.a. Seven Gold Men in Space)

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Infinity is a Function of This Universe

One more day. Just one more day, and I’ll be out of here.
Lisa stepped into the relative warmth of the entry room and shed her jacket. SueAnn called out to her, “New one just in. Your turn.”
One more day. Let this be the last!
Lisa acknowledged with a nod and reached up, almost out of habit, and pushed the happy button on the side of her head.
HAP-py. HAP-py. I could do this forever!
Lisa entered the search cubicle. The prisoner was a big, sweaty, sneering woman, and none too clean.
Happy. Happy. Happy? Hap? Too soon, too soon, why is the high getting shorter every time I do it?
Lisa strip-searched the prisoner and handed her a grey prison uniform. She left the search cubicle already forgetting her.
SueAnn, blonde and owlish, leaned over the white-painted metal counter and blinked her ice-blue eyes. “So. You decided what you’re going to do yet?”
“No.” Lisa poured herself a cup of Instant Wakeup. It steamed, proof against the lingering cold of Lisa’s daily trudge from the guard barracks, through the bitter wind, past the hump of snow by the crevasse that the guards told newbies was an abandoned igloo, and which was really snow-plough droppings.
“Same old story, huh?” Asked SueAnn. “You had enough credits accumulated two blocks ago for a very nice set-up.”
“I know. But this time I’m really getting out. I’ve been here too long.”
“Same here. Well, I better be on about business.” SueAnn put on her outside jacket and said, “Bundle me up in a rabbit skin.” SueAnn always said that. It was a private joke between SueAnn and SueAnn.
SueAnn read a list of empty bunks on a clipboard, said, “Hut 16,” and prodded the new prisoner outside.
Lisa sat down and watched the monitors, or pretended to watch the monitors. There was never anything on them but snow. The kind that fell from the sky and got all over everything.
SueAnn came back in, stamping her feet and rubbing her nose. Fresh snow crystals gleaming on her parka fell wetly to the floor as she hung up her guard jacket next to Lisa’s.
Lisa announced, “I’ve got it narrowed down to two. The problem is, they’re so dissimilar, I can’t decide.”
“Same old story, cupcake. You want to be an artist, or a whatever. What’s the whatever this time?”
Lisa sighed. “You know, I made an artwork once. Without official approval, I just went out in the woods and gathered some staining berries and painted a rock.”
SueAnn shook her head. “So go be an artist. You’re always talking about it. You’ve got enough credits.”
“I know. But something always holds me back. I want to rent an occupation this time that’s really wildly intellectual.”
“And?”
Lisa looked at her reflection in the glass of the security monitor screen. She still had the vague outlines of a pretty woman. In the imperfect reflecting medium, she couldn’t see the cracks at the corners of her chapped lips.
“I’ve got enough credits to rent Theoretical Mathematician for one block and still have enough left over for one of the middle occupations.”
“So do it. I’m tired of seeing you come back here block after block looking sorry for yourself. You need a change.”
“Yeah,” Lisa sighed.
The next day, Lisa checked into a hotel in the city of Bay Valley. She took a really hot shower. Through her implant, she scrolled through the menu of post-shower scent treatments, and selected Wild Roses in the Woods. The perfumes, carried on a puff of pure oxygen, filled the narrow shower stall as Lisa turned for the dry cycle, running her hands through her hair and lifting her arms for the hot air jets.
Lisa made sure the mass of buttons, plugs, inlets, outlets, lights, and black squares of indeterminate use that lived on her right temple were completely dry, although all implants were rated waterproof. Then she got out of the stall and dressed in a perky red and yellow floral print, the opposite of her dull guard uniform.
The day was hazy, partly cloudy, with a chance of rain by mid-afternoon, according to the news feed on her implant. The first day after coming back to a city after the prison outpost always surprised her with the level of automated info coming through her implants all the time. She knew she would get used to it again in a couple of days, though.
The Bay Valley library did not contain books, nor did it contain the electronic equivalent of books. Those she could get through her implant. The library contained things that could not, by government mandate, be copied or sold: occupation disks. Lisa stood for a long time in the preview area, weighing on the one hand, Artist, official this time, with a government-provided studio, government-provided materials, perhaps even a few government-provided assistants, able to exhibit her work in government-provided galleries, and on the other hand, Theoretical Mathematician, an occupation so far beyond her experience she could barely imagine what kind of work space one might need.
What does a Theoretical Mathematician do, anyway? Invent new imaginary numbers?
Her curiosity won out. She selected the Theoretical Mathematician disk and went into a reading slot. She backed into the slot and put the disk in the appropriate place on the wall, and plugged herself into the library with the port next to her happy button. The library computer identified her and confirmed that she had accumulated enough credits from taking blocks in the very undesirable occupation of prison guard to take one block in a very desirable plus one in a middle; or six in a middle; or twelve in a lower-middle; or forty-eight in a lower. She did not have enough credits for an extremely desirable occupation, like movie star. The library confirmed that the one she had selected was designated very desirable.
The library computer began its sequence. First came the ordinary information: where her house would be, how to get there, what kinds of services and assistance would be available to her, the names and contact information of other Theoretical Mathematicians, etc. Then the occupational skills sequence began. For the past twelve blocks that part had been on prison guard skills, like how to use a gun, a radio, a tracked snow vehicle, and so forth. This time her mind opened onto new vistas so vast and intricate her human mind squirmed under the onslaught. The memories were stored in her implant, of course, so that at the end of the block they would automatically wipe themselves; Lisa would remember what she had done, but would not remember how she had done it. But she had to comprehend the new information in her implant with the wetware nature gave her, and it was a lot to process.
Then it was complete. Lisa unplugged and stepped out of the slot, and returned the disk. The other people in the library were a mass of the year’s most fashionable colors, but she had no names for the different shades, for she had not selected Artist and had not received that teaching.
She went outside, and the sun came out from behind a cloud. She found that she knew how far away it was, and why the Earth rotated around it, and how long it took for its light to reach her.
On her way back to the hotel, she passed a bum begging for food. Bums no longer begged for money because there wasn’t any. Lisa didn’t give him a second glance. She had no patience for those who lacked the self-discipline to take the undesirable occupations for long enough to fund their preferred lifestyles.
Lisa gathered her things and set off in a helitaxi for her new home. She enjoyed the way her hair blew around, and how the pilot’s headgear made him look like a great big bug. She measured distances in an eyeblink, judged the helitaxi’s speed and altitude without trying, counted the number of people she saw below her. She liked the sound of the motor, and she found she knew its basic operating principles, too. Her head was full of equations, numerous ideas sorting themselves into usable organization.
Her new house was everything she could have asked for. It was filled with modern conveniences, fully automated, beautifully designed and decorated. Of course, most occupations came with houses like this, even the undesirable ones. Hers had just been out in the wilderness.
Days passed into weeks. Lisa had lively debates in cyberspace with various brands of mathematicians and scientists. She reviewed all the most recent work in her field and gloated over her understanding. She published papers, took long, hot showers, doodled on rocks in her rock garden, and forgot to count the days.
Lisa was out in her rock garden, watching the clouds go sailing by, and during a pause in the conversation in cyberspace, she idly developed a model of planetary weather systems.
Her implant told her she had a letter from her mother. Lisa responded to the inquiry that yes, she was happy. And she was. And she had not used her happy button since she left the prison outpost. Lisa calculated her chances for losing happy tolerance, and concluded that they were good, as long as she did not use her button during the rest of her block. Addiction was a known quantity in her time, the only tricky variable being genetic.
Lisa went back inside, sat at her real wood desk, rested her feet on the cream carpet, and gazed at “Festival in Fairyland.” It was a painting by her mother. Lisa had carted it around to every job she had ever had. Lisa smiled, and there was no pain; her lips had healed completely.
An aerospace engineer contacted her with the little “Exciting!” tag that manifested through her implants as a yellow bipedal dog with wide eyes and a long pink tongue jumping up and down excitedly. Lisa went to the discussion. Her colleagues were threading up cyberspace with the revolutionary idea that an object that crossed over into another universe where the speed of light was greater than it is in ours could travel at FTL from the perspective of our universe. Thus, the invention of hyperdrive.
Lisa went to sleep in her cozy, warm house, dreaming of the multiverse equations. She awoke in the middle of the night and grabbed the notebook she kept by her bed, and scribbled in the darkness.

Where U= the universe as we know it
And S=speed
And O= an object
(infinity symbol)=(f)U
U(to the n) yields (infinity symbol)(to the n)
(infinity symbol)(to the n) > (infinity symbol)
S (to the infinity symbol) = (f)U
S(to the infinity symbol)(to the n) > S (to the infinity symbol)
O[(f)U(to the n)]=O(S(to the infinity symbol (to the n)))
An object which crosses into another universe can possess greater than infinite speed from the perspective of our universe. Greater than infinite speed translates back to our universe as arriving before it left.
Lisa whispered to herself, “I just invented time travel.” Then she fell back to sleep.
In the morning, Lisa woke up, checked her notebook, and thought, What is this chicken scratch?

END.
By Erin Lale

Erin Lale is the author of Planet of the Magi and other books. She is the originator and curator of the Time Yarns Universe. She owned The Science Fiction Store in Las Vegas, published Berserkrgangr Magazine, and was the Acquisitions Editor at Eternal Press. She reviews books for Eternal Haunted Summer Magazine.