The Outpost

"The Outpost"

a short story

Gary Baker, August 2013

Ship Captain: Farah, to the bridge,” came the light, airy female voice over intercom speakers. “Attention Vassals: would Captain Farah please return to the bridge?”

It wasn’t a question; but then again it never was. Not with her.

With a heavy sigh, Ship Captain Julian Farah thrust himself the rest of the way up the corridor ladder and into a long, open passageway. He stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips, letting the gritty scales of the powersuit bore holes in his palms while basking in the blue-green glow of ever-present LED lighting.

“Ship Captain: Farah, to the bridge.”

Memory

"Memory"

a short story

Gary Baker, August 2013

We thank you all for coming, and assure you that you have had the best of times tonight.” The primly dressed woman in pale khaki trousers and skin-tone stockings gave a curt nod, then proceeded off the stage and back to her end of show routine.

Ghera stared at the empty stage, barely two feet deep before a massive white cloth backdrop rose up like the face of a cliff. Murmurs rose from the audience as they shifted and set about leaving, though Ghera couldn’t understand why.

They just got here, not ten minutes ago according to the hard drive in his temporal reactor chip.

“Hey,” he leaned toward the cute grandma-like woman sitting next to him with large pearls around her neck and turquoise teardrop stones hanging from her ears. “Why is everyone leaving?”

She smiled as though he’d fallen asleep. “Why, because it’s over, of course.” She shrugged and settled into her coat with a sigh, “and it was such a ‘best of time’ sort of occasion, wasn't it?”

Ghera blinked. “So... I slept through it?”

Tablets, part 2

"Tablets"

a short story

Gary Baker, July 2013

(part 2 of 2)

It was near-instantaneous after that, as his reality twisted in an unexpected direction. He felt annoyance boil up at how the streets had been abandoned, yet people lived on them nonetheless. The city didn’t care for them, which was hilarious, but maddening in that they left the poor to their own devices only to crumble and burn out like lichen in the pyres of a long-since-used hearth.

He felt the thrill of rising anger as these annoyances drove him into red-faced mumbling about each thing that caught his attention.

He watched flies flit about, wanting to stop them from buzzing, their incessant noise grinding, berating, drilling deep into his head. Sure he didn’t have any headache just then, but did that give the pests an excuse to make all that racket? People walking the streets at near-midnight beyond the alley passed by without even noticing, but why didn’t they come down this way? Were they avoiding him? Were they too good to come down this way? Did they think they were too prim and proper to venture down here and risk what only they could assume would be a mugging? Did they not believe that he, a businessman from the upper reaches of society, deserved to be down here with the scum of the earth?

Well fuck them. Fuck them all. What good are those that are too afraid to do anything of worth or risk? Sissies, every last one of them. Fucking pansies. Piece-of-shit pussies, too good for this alleyway.

The End of an Age

"The End of an Age"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, July 2013

The dance went on for ages, a time that lapsed into the subconscious mind where it was quickly forgotten and barely noticed. Tips of steel and violent edges of hardened wood traced hornet trails in the air, leaving dark crimson mist in their wake.

Yet still Lithomir moved like a god at the heart of making the sun and moon and planets work, orbiting and lifting and launching here and there under cosmic certainty that nothing too horrible could happen to him so long as he kept his pace with the rhythm dwelling deep down. All he had to do was simply keep moving, to continue swinging and arcing and shifting the extensions of his hands, two lengths of folded iron with a taste and hunger for human flesh.

One good thing for the ever-unsatisfied blades was that soldiers swarmed the scene around the Dragon King like a nest of wasps turned over in midsummer when the insects were more apt to be driven to fury. Half of the sightless human forms in the midst of battling chaos seemed to intend almost utter silence as they fought, a choice completely and unintentionally unwise, as the other half “hum-bumbumbum”ed and thus avoided the sharp agony of an encounter with Lithomir’s blades.