Aliens Part 1

A Lecture from The Institute for Scientific Fictions.

“Back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s Science Fiction authors and screenwriters (and here I am generalising for brevity) were worried about bases and leaders. Where did this concern come from? The obvious answer is the Cold War, and the use of Aliens as an analogue for the Soviets; however, I feel it was a result of an over-active paranoia, linked to a subconscious petrified of the unknown, hidden behind the gulf of space (aka the Iron Curtain). Aliens capable of travelling between stars in a reasonable time frame would presumably have their own leader, and there is a maximum number of leaders any invasion needs per group of beings—even if they were socialist. Nor are bases likely to be required. These Aliens can travel through space, between stars. I suspect that our bases would cause very little trouble to these aliens: between teleporters, interplanetary nuclear weapons and lasers of a cataclysmic scale, I foresee very little use to these technically advanced invaders for our bases. Furthermore, their Materials Science would be far in advance of our own, allowing for, at least pseudo-theoretically, the mass production of incredibly complex and programmable pocket-sized folding bases, usable in any condition and fully furnished and supplied for years of fully supported warfare.

King Ethelred IV

He’d made a mistake. King Ethelred IV admitted that now. His court had told him as much the week before when the discovery had been made. The whole mountain had gone missing. How was that even possible? The merchants with whom he had traded mining rights hadn’t seemed so numerous as to need to take the whole thing. But then the deal had been pretty good: magic transfer of supplies from the plains below to the mountain fastness, in exchange for one unremarkable peak within the boundaries of the kingdom. Now, of course, Mt Ethelred II was very remarkable, in that it was a rather large hole. He’d lost a great deal of honor in the past few days, enough that he might even have to concede to a parliament. He decided to remind them of how awful restocking the keep had been. Yes, tomorrow, the court would lead a train of wagons up to the keep. And no one would be allowed to use the magic artifact.

He sighed, and said to the hall full of nobles, “I agree, the artifact was certainly not a good exchange. As such, we will not be using it for this summer’s journey to the Summer Keep. Therefore, we must depart at the earliest date, in order to arrive on time for the summer festival.”

From the various knights, lords and ladies, and courtiers there was stunned silence. At last, after several tense moments of silence, the Chancellor, Sir Lenard asked, “And when is it that we shall depart?”

“Tomorrow, shortly after breaking our fast, and we shall all travel together.”

“Surely, m’Lord, the ladies should precede the royal party via magic to prepare the keep for your arrival?” the Chancellor continued.

“Nay, Chancellor, for if we are to no longer use this contrivance then why pray tell should we continue to use it?”

A Ship Cursed Part 1

La Joya Del Sol was a three mast monstrosity, the pride of the Queen of Spain for over fifty years, then the unthinkable happened: the crew mutinied. As the harbour master for the only pirate haven in the Caribbean, the sight of a Spanish Galleon sent shivers down my spine, I was sure I would die. It was not until they weighed anchor that I began to suspect that something was different about this ship. Its colours were not those of the Spainish Kingdom, they were bones of white on a black field. But, what I felt was that it was not that the crew was lucky to be free of the yoke of military service, but that the ship was cursed. My son, Sam, was fifteen and had always dreamt of following me to the sea. He joined on with the new pirates as a deckhand. I had taught him all I knew of ship craft, and the crew was glad to have him. They set sail shortly afterwards, my son and 200 others aboard, hunting for treasure.

* * *

When next the La Joya Del Sol sailed into the harbour of Tortuga in front of a dark storm with every sheet of canvas stretched taught before the wind. It was months late, there was no one on deck, except for the lone man at the helm. The ship was moving too fast for the harbour, at least 10 knots; it was going to strike the docks. There was no way of stopping it.

The ship bore down on the docks, which it would smash through and in to my office. Needless to say I was frozen with fear. This was the second time it had hove to in Tortuga’s harbour, and it was, again, looking as though it would end in my death.

Dusk, Part 1

A quarter of an hour before dusk, Francis was startled by a crow swooping low over her head as she walked home. It flew to a tree a few hundred meters on, and joined its brethren there. Though there were no leaves--spring not yet having come--the sky behind was totally obscured by wings and feathers, as over a thousand birds competed for space on the branches. Something that Francis could not put her finger on was deeply disturbing about the scene. As she stood and watched the crows jostling for position on the tree, she glance upward at motion in the corner of her field of vision.

The sky was full of crows. There was a word for a group of crows, she struggled to recall what it was. She walked past the first tree and saw that most were filled near to bursting with crows. All of them were so full that the crows were shoulder to shoulder. A solid mass of black, a silent mass of black: not a single bird cawed, crooned, or clicked. Francis shivered. There must have been a hundred thousand crows, and not one made a noise.

"Murder" she muttered, "a murder of crows. But how many crows is that? Surely a single mob of crows flying together would be one murder?" As Francis looked around, she could distinguish tens of groups of crows, each technically their own murder by her rubric. “Tens of murders, then. Unless the collective noun for crows is recursive. Which gives ‘a murder of murders.’” Francis felt a chill down her spine, despite feeling warm in her coat.

George: The Columbia, Part 1

George sat for a moment, pausing in his search for a way down to the Columbia. He watched the wind turbines spin. There were several hundreds of them, and someone had to maintain them, so that Seattle could have light and heat. He wondered who still lived out here, on the blasted plains. The blades swung, glinting in the sun, still bright white over fifty years after the last had been built. He found their presence reassuring, guardians over his, and everyone else’s future.

He began to walk along the edge of the gorge again, half his attention on where he was walking, and half on the turbines. It was odd, George felt, that he should think of them as guardians. They had been too little too late. The wasteland that was Washington, a vast desert, dotted with abandoned towns and farms, was only a small corner of the totality of the world, but there was no part of it that had not been affected by the environmental collapse. The guardians had failed, economies had followed the collapse, and humanity had retreated to live in sustainable enclaves.

A fissure opened before him, taking his attention from the turbines spinning across the gorge. It was formed from pillars of dark stone that had detached from the plain he had been walking on. Far below were the remains of thousands more of the same formations. There was a trail, narrow and sandy that ran into it; George hoped that it would take him to the valley bottom, where the river ran, and he could fill his water bottles and wash his feet.

His boots had been chaffing for the past month during which he had walked from Old Seattle. His boots were done, but he was not. His journey had taken him from that city on the West Coast and would end on the desolate east coast, ravaged by the effects of the Expulsion, amidst the ghostly towers of Manhattan. That was one of the greater disasters of the 20’s, a huge Carbon Capture project had ruptured, releasing hundreds of thousands of metric tones of carbon monoxide and dioxide. It caused the death of millions on the eastern sea board before dissipating into the ocean and atmosphere, triggering the collapse of dozens of species.

His would be the first traverse of North American by foot since the Melt. George would be the first to see the Columbia Icefields—though it felt wrong to call it such anymore—since the last snow had disappeared.

He stumbled, and ran a few steps, hopped over a stone, and came up short of a large hole. "Remember George, pay attention," he told himself, "it would be pretty poor form to die here, before even leaving Washington." George needed to cross the Columbia before he could follow it to its source. With the glaciers gone, all the rivers relied on rain to feed them; they were all seasonal, and George needed to be finished this leg of his journey, all the way to the Rockies before summer set in and he was left without a source of water for four months.

Alice's Part 1

This is part 1 of a longer story that will last about 5 weeks. Its dedicated to Arlo Guthrie.

Ray was crying. He’d been crying all night. He had started the second he was off the base; he couldn’t remember when he had last cried so hard. Sure he’d had a few tears here and there, but in the ’hood, where he had grown up, crying could get you killed. He was confused, unsure; he was too busy crying to think.

He had grown up in the rough part of the city. The streets were dirty, as were the bums, junkies, and renters of the area. Crime and prostitution ran rampant. The law was the local bike gang, a violent bunch of drug pushers. They only spoke to make clear that bones could and would be broken, if their rules weren’t followed. Ray had spent his adolescence floating in and out of gangs, but he had always dreamed of leaving the ghetto.

The only way out of that hole was the Army. That was fine with Ray. He’d been in love with the idea of dying for his country, in the line of duty. From the time he was old enough to be mistaken for being of age, he’d been talking with recruitment officers. He had been impressed with their medals, and he knew the promises and bonuses off by heart. He wanted to protect his family and friends from anyone who might hurt them. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to be honoured for bravery, he’d wanted to be given medals, and he’d wanted to be a hero. It was the only thing he could look forward to in the ghetto.

Ray still wanted to die a hero. There was a problem, though: the Army didn’t want him to be a hero. They wanted him to kill, burn women, children, and villages. In the name of what? Ray didn’t know anymore; he had thought he had, but he wasn’t so sure of anything any longer. He didn’t know what to believe. He’d been lied to by the only people he thought he could still trust. Ray had stopped trusting his family a few years before, during what he had begun to refer to as Flickergate.

The old townhouse’s lights had had the tendency to flicker. Not the type of flicker that was regular--once every few seconds--like the florescent tubes at Ray’s school. No, this type of flicker was best described as nefarious. It was like an arrhythmic heart that only acted up at the worst moments. The flicker would go away for whole minutes at a time, only to start again, with a seemingly random vengeance.

His father had once called an electrician. The man had come into the house, dragging mud all the way, looked at the lights, then at the fuse box, and said, ‘I’ll ‘ave to rewire te w’ole ‘ouse. Tat will be a couple tousand bucks.’ Ray’s father had shown him the door, and never commented on it again.

When Ray had asked him about the lights, his father had replied, ‘What flicker?’ After that, his father hadn’t talked to him for three months, and when he finally did, it was because Ray was complaining about a migraine. Ray had thought that it was the result of the lights.

‘Out! Get out!’ his father bellowed. ‘Unless you are going to shut up about those lights, or you pay for them to get fixed, I don’t want you in my house!’ The next several months were hard for everyone, and Ray couldn’t wait for his birthday, when he could finally leave.