First Contact, part 1

"First Contact"

a short story

Gary Baker, March/April 2013

(part 1 of 2)

Acier watched as the alien craft drew near like a god landing from the heavens to visit what it was that had been created long ago. The ship was almost virtually a polygonal tear: half-octagonal in the rear where the engines, though currently off, glimmered with a resplendent turquoise glow, with the front section slowly tapering to a spear-like point.

Just below the tip of the nose rest the ring of thick metallic glass to the main command center, appearing quite like a band of oil with innumerous colors shimmering in the rays of the Earthen sun. By design, this very ring indicated a clear sense of interstellar physics that humanity still had yet to understand.

Acier, a nonhuman living on what the Eartheans called “the Ring”, knew all there was to know of this very science and technology. He knew that the craft was built more like a skyscraper than any ship the humans had devised, that the force of generated gravity caused by such tremendous acceleration needed to propel such a mammoth creation would necessitate floors perpendicular to the course trajectory. He knew that at high velocity the heads of the beings running the craft would be closest to the nose, and that this not only made things easier overall for energy saving uses but also of more quickly-gained “space legs”.

But the Earthean Ring was enormously more peculiar than the creations of Acier's own kind.

Made up of a similarly mammoth number of “crate”-like modules, the Ring encompassed the

The Comet

"The Comet"

a short story

Gary Baker, January 2013

It was one of those moments when you had to look twice, with the afterglow of an explosive burst making rivulets in the wake of the event. The stars dimmed under tinted glass as Krio looked north along the blue lines of the programmed airway.

Ships moved along the X-axis parallel to the planetary orbit, the cargo freight along the Y-axis lifting people, foodstuffs, and debris up and out of the shrinking rock in space. It shone like a pearlescent green ball, held aloft in the oblivion of endless surreality as though tinged with an inner lighting mechanism generated by the far-distant sun.

Calypso; part 1

"Calypso"

a short story

Gary baker, June 2012

(part 1 of around 12 total)

“And a five-three-four, she was walking out the door!” With a quick strum of the banjo, the lead singer slapped his band into a riotous upheaval of parade day new-age bluegrass. “She said: ‘Don’t let me go’, she jus’ wanna let you know!”

Watching from off stage, Elliot Nab smiled as the band kicked it up a notch and began rapidly fingering the banjo cords into a near-hillbilly version of improvisational street music with a gypsy vagabond twist. The man with the mic looked across the bobbing audience thoroughfare and waved at Elliot with a hat that reminded him of either the Of Mice and Men movie, or Oh, Brother Where Art Thou, and even a combination of both. The man singing, Elliot knew, was known around the area as Buzz “Barley” Benjamin, a fellow resident of Pelatama and a street music extraordinaire. He wore tight brown suspenders over a sweat-soaked white V-neck tee, and belted blue jeans with the rear right pocket worn enough to reveal where he always kept his wallet. Barley’s feet were bare, revealing black hair across his muddied feet, and the banjo in his hands looked just as dirty from the curbside view where Elliot was standing.

The Train

"The Train"

a short story

Gary Baker, October 2012

Rae inhaled deeply, taking in the musky scent of coal smoke and steam, of weary metal and warm rails. His heart raced with the pace of the surrounding crowd's murmuring. Each time the train left the screams got louder, he could hear them echoing in from outside the sky-lit hall of departures. Each time, the train entered the dark tunnel ahead of it and the impending deaths of the many on board began, never leaving, never ceasing.

He stepped forward as more mindless bodies stepped on to the next opened platform, orphaned of any previous passengers, then stopped when a silver bar fell in front of him, greased with the hesitancy of the masses before him that had reached into such looming deaths of the man-made death trap, of the human slaughter machine. But the machine cleaned up good--almost no one noticed the darkness on the seats where surely someone must have sat less than mere moments ago, most assuredly having died in that exact spot with machinations to clean up the blood and lessen the panic for the next to die.

And he was next. Sure, there was a current train being loaded, but as soon as this one left the next, which was surely being cleaned as he stood there, would glide up with heavy screeches of metal on metal, with a clenching smell of brake fluid, and would beckon him on just as this one had the current dead-ees.

Then the whistle blew.

Song of the Julara

“Song of the Julara”

by Gary Baker, March 2012

(continual pieces to a larger project)

PART1: the surface
Hugh Donegan lifted his left hand, scrubbed it through his long, silky, blonde hair and pulled a few strands out from the tail hanging low on his neck. A warm breeze picked up, bringing the scents of mulch, rot, and the thick musty stagnancy of floor-level decay. Shaking his head lightly he pulled a small once-white cloth, soaked with sweat and dirt, and wiped it across the deep woody-bronze of his face mask and goggles.

He hated having to wear these contraptions, hated having to tromp through sticky mud and debris to get to the surface laboratory every day, and hated the fact that after seven long years they still had no clue as to how the humans might ever move back and repopulate the surface world.

It had been centuries upon centuries since the last human had ever stepped foot on these grounds, back then calling the terrain tropical--but the idea that humans had ever lived down here, Hugh assumed was no less than a fairy tale propagated by the various religions across the cloud cities. According to their myths: a great Cataclysm, aptly named just that by religious leaders, struck the planet like a vicious blow in the boxing ring, and sent humans high into the sky when a deadly toxin began to blanket the world. This toxin dramatically changed things in various ways, never quite killing right off the bat but