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Jan 10, 2023 10:20
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Into The West Wordcount: 1410 Words Opening Line: It began with the forging of the Great Rings. (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) Theme: Murder Mystery Setting: Dystopia It began with the forging of the Great Rings. It all sort of ended there, too. What's the point in saving the planet, they said, when you can just go off world? Plenty of space in space! The tech billionaire — well, these days he was the first-ever trillionaire — that bankrolled the first wave of orbital habitats thought he was being very clever with a reference to a 150 year book everyone in the world had heard of, but the name stuck despite it. So first everyone who could afford it, and then everyone who couldn’t but didn’t want to burn, freeze, or drown, packed up their lives and took a space elevator to one of the 21 criss-crossing habitats which now ringed the charred and bubbling corpse of the Earth. Addie was entering hour 11 of their 14-hour-long shift, and they hadn’t seen another human since about hour three — not even on the vast bank of screens they were being paid to stare at to make sure nothing was happening on any of the thirty or so floors in this particular ring segment. This section was mostly warehouses and offices, and it was in the middle of what passed as night on the ring, so they were pretty confident that, no, nothing was happening. They hadn’t really wanted to take the job, but they’d been out of work for long enough that they were starting to worry about being able to afford their weekly oxygen chit, and any job is better than running out of gas when you’re passionate about breathing. Just as they were beginning to wonder whether contemplating a fractured view of more than a hundred unoccupied rooms and corridors was actually preferable to slow asphyxiation, they heard the elevator in the lobby announce its arrival with a little “ding”. This was reasonably unexpected, especially since none of their screens had shown anyone getting into an elevator, though it was possible they’d just missed it. They stuck their head out of the booth. What they saw was somehow even more unexpected. Jutting out into the lobby was a body, as the elevator doors gently bumped into its ribcage as they made an angry buzzing sound and repeatedly tried to close. Addie rushed over, desperately hoping their initial assessment was wrong. Unfortunately, they weren’t wrong. This was definitely a corpse, and it was definitely their problem. The body was completely hairless, despite not looking much over 20, and almost completely nude. Even more alarming than the nudity was the blood seeping from what looked like a dozen pinpricks scattered across the corpse’s skin. Addie weighed their options. On the one hand, yes, technically they were being paid to be security. But on the other, they weren’t really security. Proper security got uniforms, weapons, backup, and sick leave. Addie had none of that. And if they called an ambulance, they’d probably be liable for the bill if the hospital couldn’t track down the dead guy’s family. Well, they could at least report it to their supervisor. They tapped their earpiece twice. “Hey, Maia, it’s Addie. I’ve got something to report.” “Please continue.” The AI’s cool voice washed over Addie. While it might have been cheaper to hire humans to monitor the cameras than it was to maintain a surveillance AI, Addie’s bosses were willing to spend serious money on keeping an eye on their meat-based workforce. “I’ve found a body. I don’t know where it came from, the lift just opened and a dead guy flopped out. I didn’t see anyone get into a lift on-screen, either.” “Noted. Thank you for your report.” Addie waited for the AI to continue speaking. It didn’t. “So, should I…?” They trailed off. “Thank you for your report. It has been noted.” Addie didn’t say anything. They wanted to swear, but they weren’t convinced that Maia wasn’t listening to everything they said, whether they’d called or not, so they kept their cursing restricted to the inside of their head. They’d lost jobs with too many companies to think that “no instructions” was the same as “instructions to do nothing”, and they were convinced that if the end of their shift rolled around with a mysterious corpse still being gently-but-insistently pulverised by an elevator door, they’d be looking for a new job by the next day shift. gently caress. There wasn’t really a good option, but at least if they figured out what had happened to this guy then at least they could deflect some of the blame. They dragged the body out of the lift, set it down against the wall, and got to work. It wasn’t immediately clear what floor he’d come from. There had been absolutely no movement on any of the screens, and given how unfocused their eyes had been at the time, there’s no way they could have missed it. So either this guy had climbed in through the roof of the elevator, or he’d come from a floor that wasn’t monitored. A quick check of the hatch in the roof showed that it was still locked and entirely free of bloody handprints. So that left a mysterious floor. OK, they could work with that. They fished around their pockets for a moment and pulled out a small torch. Eying up the panel below the floor select screen, they found a likely spot and smacked it with the torch. The panel popped open, revealing a small screen nestled in a mess of cables. They tapped away at the screen for a moment, until they found the trip log for the elevator. A few more taps and they were on their way to wherever the elevator had last departed from. The doors opened with their customary “ding”, and revealed a long, dim corridor with a trail of blood leading towards the doors. Jackpot. Other than the blood, it was cleaner than any of the other corridors they’d seen in the segment, and there was a quiet hum coming from somewhere, but otherwise it was unobtrusive. “What is going on?” they wondered to themselves, then cringed when they realised they’d spoken aloud. They inched down the corridor, following the blood trail but taking care to not step in it. The trail led into what looked like some kind of cleanroom, though the open door and splotches of blood turned the clean part of the name into a lie. Addie looked around, perplexed. There wasn’t meant to be any labs in this part of the ring. They were all up in the more secure parts of the habitat, where scientists weren’t afraid to visit. They kept going, pushing past the dangling translucent plastic (also bloodstained) that separated the cleanroom from what was beyond. The next room was bathed in a warm light, was filled with lab equipment, erratic beeping, and an ever-more insistent hum. Addie looked at the labels on the equipment, momentarily distracted from the bloody trail they were following. Most of it was in an industrial code they didn’t understand, but they could pick out a few words here and there — “telomeres” and “type O negative” and “Project Valinor” — but it had been a long time since they left school, and even longer since they’d really paid attention, and this went way over their head. Whatever it was, though, they didn’t like it. They heard a ding from somewhere, probably some piece of equipment, and shook their head. “Gotta stop wasting time,” Addie thought. “Focus. Do your… well, it’s not your job, but you’ll do it anyway.” They picked up the trail again, following it through an open doorway. They stepped over the threshold and saw rows and rows of tanks. In each tank was a nearly-nude figure suspended in some kind of fluid, multiple IV lines piercing their flesh, filled with a crimson fluid that had to be blood. Determinedly suppressing the urge to vomit, Addie noticed that one of the tanks was empty, smashed from the inside, with the trail of blood leading towards it. They approached the tank, and carefully touched the broken pane of glass. They nodded to themselves with satisfaction. This was what they’d come to find. Now, if they could just— The door slid shut with a crash, and Addie felt movement behind them. There was a short and violent burst of noise. Then what sounded like a muffled cough. And then nothing but the quiet hum of the tanks.
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Jan 16, 2023 09:31
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In, double flash me!
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Jan 17, 2023 23:11
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The Last Trumpet 790 words. Gift: A compass that points toward danger Tax: Food. It's extremely scarce out there. “Hey, anyone want the last trumpet?” Rose gestured at the nearly empty chilly bin. They’d been camping at Ruahine for the last week and, privately, she was pretty impressed that the box of ice creams had lasted so long. She looked closer. Oh, right, they were the vegan ones. That made more sense. Everything else had been eaten, the tents were packed down, and they were all ready for the long hike back to the carpark. Though the weather had been mixed, to say the least, at least things were looking good for today. “All good?” she yelled out to her friends. “I wanna get going before the sun gets much higher.” Sophie and James looked at her, looked at their tent — scattered around them in untidy piles of poles and fabric — and started packing faster. Rose sighed, and unwrapped the trumpet wolfing down the cold ice cream while she waited for the others to finish packing down. It was actually quite good, she thought to herself, even if it wasn’t actually what she’d been after. *** They’d been walking for hours now, following downhill the track they’d hiked in reverse a week ago. The weather, as predicted, was holding out nicely, dappled sunlight filtering through the dense layers of trees and ferns giving the world a cool green tinge. This was all you could ask for, really. Get out of Wellington for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, go for a hike with a couple of mates, crack out the walk shorts that you definitely only bought ironically, drink some beer, eat a surprisingly good vegan trumpet. The compass star that she had tattooed just below her wrist started to itch. She glanced down. The arrow was pointing straight ahead, due north. That was… unusual. It had always pointed east, hadn’t it? She knew the tattoo like, well, the back of her hand, and she’d swear it pointed east. Was getting heat stroke? She rubbed her eyes, and then her tattoo for good measure, but it was definitely still pointing straight ahead. Maybe this was — what do you call it — reverse déjà vu, something that should be familiar made suddenly unrecognisable. A noise distracted her, though she was still worrying about her tattoo. They’d just rounded a little crick in the track, and she found herself staring at — and listening to — a creek she didn’t recognise running alongside the track. Jamais vu, that’s what they called it. The creek was choked with some kind of algal bloom and didn’t look healthy. Her water bottle was starting to feel a little light, but she didn’t think she was desperate enough to fill it up here. She wondered what was ahead of them downstream, peering through the bush trying to get a glimpse further down the mountain. Before she could tell Sophie not to drink from the creek, she saw her friend filling her bottle then swigging deeply from it. “Soph, are you sure that’s safe?” “Why wouldn’t it be?” replied her friend. Rose shrugged and kept on walking and rubbing her hand. It looked like the needle was pointing at Sophie. Movement caught Rose’s eye. A bird perched on a tree and furled all of its wings. A really hosed up bird. It opened its mouth and shrieked at her. It almost sounded like it was telling her to not be afraid. Yeah, no worries, mate. She turned to Sophie and James, but they weren’t there anymore. That was probably for the best. She was increasingly sure that they hadn’t actually come down the mountain with her, that her two friends had been replaced while she wasn’t watching — maybe while she’d been eating the trumpet? She wanted to give up, sink to the ground and sleep. She’d been walking for hours. Days? Nothing was really making sense. There was a bitter taste in her mouth, but she was unspeakably hungry, and she thought she could see stars through the trees above her and around her. Maybe there were glow worms here. She staggered onwards, one foot in front of the other as she trudged towards the car park that was surely nearby. Her compass needle spun aimlessly whenever she looked down at it. Almost without warning, the trees broke, and she found herself in the carpark. Rose felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, buzzing again and again as message after message poured in now she apparently was back in cell reception. Text messages, Google alerts. Then the horrible high-pitched wail of the emergency warning notification. The cars were covered in ash. She heard an immense noise, like someone blowing a horn the size of a while, and gates of white fire opened across the sky to welcome her back.
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Jan 23, 2023 06:58
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