Sci-Fi Flash: Jaxon

Just clench your jaw and bear it. It will be over soon. Jaxon had no idea how many times he’d told himself that in the past hour or so, but it appeared his descent to his new home was going to take the rest of his life. In both the ‘it’s taking forever’ and ‘my life is going to be considerably shorter than I’d hoped’ ways.  For an advanced coalition of alien species that could take over Earth in the course of a few hours, he sure wasn’t impressed with the discomfort he was encountering on his way down to their homeworld. None of them looked particularly concerned, though.

The Gax, as always, seemed unperturbed by anything, mainly because they didn’t have facial expressions he could read. The one closest to him just sat in its jump seat, strapped in awkwardly with the one-size-fits-none belts. The only clue that the thing was even alive was a wiggle of a green antenna and the rhythmic clench of its mandibles. Even its beady, black eyes gave nothing away.

On his right, sat one of the Irikol. From what he understood, the species was completely covered in brightly-colored fur, but they partially shaved when on missions with oxygen-breathing species to make living in their space suits more bearable.  Aboard the carrier that had brought the drop ship, the Irikol had their own wing with atmospheric accommodations for them and they had been living there.  What he saw through the glass, now, reminded him of a pug. The nose was squat and the eyes overly-large. If he looked closely, he could see that there was a stubble coming in on the Irikol’s face, especially along the jaw line. The hair was fuschia. Hm. Pink or not, he wasn’t going to be pissing the guy off anytime soon.  The Irikol were big, strong, and nasty. They fact that they sit itching in space suits for most of their journey didn’t help and Earth had, apparently, been annexed for their use, since they breathe nitrogen and could easily sustain themselves there. How nice for them.

The third species he’d encountered definitely seemed to be the ring-leader of the three, but the slight and tiny Chexoli in the command center were not to be trifled with.  They only stood to about his hip and couldn’t weigh more than toddlers, but they were fiercely intelligent and deceptively strong, despite their small size. They had the strangest skin he’d ever seen, a mixture of scales and feathers that looked like a paleontologist’s perfect prize specimen of evolutionary proof that scaled creatures could produce feathers. The result was a sort of dandelion looking thing, but the feathers tended to be multicolored and their skin was a dark brown. Bizarre as they were, they weren’t a laughing matter. They ruled over the other species he’d encountered and, now, he guessed they ruled him, too. They didn’t seem to have any sensory organs, but he suspected that was what the feathers were for. They had mouths to eat and even speak; one of the Chexol had managed to grind out a bit of English for his benefit on the way here. He? was still on the main ship, though. Not on the drop, sadly. He hadn’t even gotten his name. Not that it mattered much, with what lay ahead.

The drop ship cleared from the higher clouds of the atmosphere and he was able to get a glimpse of what would, for now, be home. The planet had quite a bit of water, much like Earth, but the land masses were smaller and there were more of them.  The continent they seemed to be headed for was around half the size of the United States and, even from this distance, he could see that there was quite a bit of urban development present. Tall buildings, roads, the whole deal. The ride, from this point, was smoother and he had more time to actually contemplate his fate.

Since Earth had been invaded by this trio of species, nothing had been clear about what would be done with the human captives.  His Chexol “friend” had used words that indicated work, so he assumed that he and his people would be used as slaves. In what industry, he had no idea. He knew he ought to be more concerned about his fate as a slave to an alien species, but he’d spent a few months on this vessel and he’d learned that his place in the Universe wasn’t half so bad as it could be.  Arguing or fighting with their captors did no good and those who thought to protest by refusal were corrected or eliminated swiftly. These guys seemed to have enough experience with enslaving other species to have honed it to a fine-tuned art.

More of his fellow cabin-mates were beginning to notice that they could now view the settlement from the windows. All heads turned to get a glimpse of the tall towers as they descended into what looked much like an airport, with other craft docking to a large main building with landing spires.  Some of the craft looked similar enough to the one he now occupied, but a few of them were outlandish and strange. One even looked like a large sea urchin, with spikes jutting out from its exterior and a bright pink and orange hull.  Just as he began to wonder how people got in and out of it, it passed out of sight as his ship landed with a small thud.

[To Be Continued]

Sci-Fi Flash: Reese

I have a feeling I’m going to be continuing this one, but I just wanted to put out the beginning and see what I thought. We’ll see. This is the result of another of the Elementals writing prompts. This week has been sci-fi and paranormal. I’ve been trying to get caught up, since there are so many lovely prompts out there, but I’ve been sick, so we will see what happens.

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Reese looked around, though the movement sent spikes of pain traveling down his neck and through his left shoulder. Shit. He must have pulled something in the crash.  The smoke in the air hit his lungs, greasy, hot, and impossibly thick.  He coughed as he felt the acrid chemicals in the air burn his airways and knew he didn’t have much time.  The emergency environmental suits were only a few feet away, but he couldn’t see through the smoke to confirm whether they were still there or not.

He shook his legs in his seat, testing them. Not bad.  They moved, seemed uninjured and unhindered, so he may as well go for the envirosuit before he suffocated to death in the polluted air of the ship.  The straps holding him in to his seat were, miraculously, undamaged.  The only injury he could sense, thus far, had something to do with his left shoulder, possibly his neck.  Without waiting any longer, he unstrapped himself and got to his feet, steadying himself as lack of oxygen and a possible concussion  sent the world spinning. He covered his face with his left arm, though it hurt like hell, to staunch the assault of the smoke on his lungs and clear his head.

Focusing on putting one foot ahead of another in a shuffling gait to avoid tripping over something he couldn’t see on the floor, he headed toward the storage locker and made it in a timely enough manner, though it seemed he’d traveled oceans to get there.  He didn’t waste any time in getting the suit on, bummed shoulder or not, and the moment the helmet slid over his face and formed the pressurized seal, he swore he could faint on the spot just from the welcome relief of clean air hitting his lungs and his eyes, both of which stung with irritation at the chemical onslaught they’d just experienced. Thus better equipped, he looked around his surroundings once more, left shoulder still crying out in pain as he did so. The lights on the suit weren’t so bad, but he still couldn’t see through the smoke too well. He had to assume his pod had landed and stayed, for the most part, intact, since he’d otherwise have been having other breathing issues instead of just the smoke.

He headed toward the hatch, again just a few feet away in the single-person jettison pod. The gray steel of the vessel wall came up from the depths of the smoke suddenly, but he quickly redirected himself and moved a bit to the left to find the door. The controls on the stupid thing were busted, so it wasn’t going to open of its own accord, but special equipment was stashed in a case attached to the wall next to it. Within a few moments, he’d cut out the door and pushed on it, careful to focus with his right side more to avoid screwing up his left any further. It popped out and landed with a large tremor and the outside world was bleak and grim. Still surrounded by smoke, he could see a reddish landscape with sharp cliffs on the horizon. His envirosuit analyzed the outside air and determined it was actually breathable, but he kept the suit on for now. He took a few steps out of the pod, tentatively, and looked around. He was surrounded by other landing pods. Apparently, they hadn’t segmented as they had been intended to and landed in one long strip, still attached to one another.

There were others getting out alive, so at least he wasn’t the only one, so he bravely marched up to the first person he could find to ask how he could help.

Sci-fi Flash: Lyza

This is another one of our flash prompts from the Elements of Genre Writing group on Facebook. If you like what you see here, please stop on by and check it out. It’s a very fun, honest, helpful group!

From www.http://thespiritscience.net/

The temperature in the lab was set to 55° Farenheit, but Lyza was used to the austere work environment and walked around in her blue jeans and t-shirt under her lab coat. The need to keep her research facility old came from the time-honored tradition of equipment easily overheating and leading to things like radiation leakage or the unfortunate exposure of easily-combustible materials.  Luckily, technology had evolved to the point that such measures became virtually unnecessary and, on top of which, she was a very thorough woman and had painstakingly introduced temperature-control fail-safes and cooling methods throughout the machine.  She sighed, softly, rejoicing in the tightness that crept through her chest as her lungs gleefully expanded to take in the air.  She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath as she looked at the timer on her vidscreen wall.

She looked up to the viewing area, protected by radiation and blast-proofed glass and containing all of the world’s most important individuals. For a fleeting moment, she felt a bit ashamed at her casual attire. Screw it, she thought, I’ve been down in this lab working too hard to go buy a ridiculous dress and no one is here to see me, anyway, much less the way I’m dressed. They’re here to behold the machine and witness the birth of a revolution in human space travel. At that, she turned to look at the machine, itself.  In all honesty, it was just as ugly as her scuffed and wrinkled outfit, but it did have its own charm.  It was her baby, after all, and rumor had it all women thought their children unconditionally beautiful.  It was, basically, a large ring set into a platform, large enough for a small vehicle to pass through without hitting the edges with a fair margin. Behind the ring were many different devices: small nuclear fission reactors, computers, and energy conduits to power it, mostly.  The main computer that directed the energy in the ring was situated off to the left, in its own protective bubble room of high-grade glass, so that it would stand a chance if things went sideways and everything exploded.  The test runs for the reactors and conduits had gone exceedingly well, and she was fairly confident in her programming, but this was the very first time turning the entire system on at once.

She glanced at the timer on the wall again. A minute and a half until she powered on her greatest creation to open a wormhole.  There was a twin machine to her own on the only other human-inhabited planet in their galaxy, absurdly named Titannia for its extended springtime seasons.  The purpose was to create a gateway between the worlds for easy delivery of supplies and, eventually, people on either side.  Up until now, all safe means of travel took a few years between the planets, depending on the weight of the haul and whether the movement of the planets in the solar systems in between were auspicious or if detours were required.  Even communication signals between them took too long to be of any real use.  A few years ago, they had installed communication relay buoys, which had helped some, but it still wasn’t enough.  The planning of the simultaneous powering on of the machines had taken months, and both sides had technically been ready for a test-run for over a year.

Slightly nervous, Lyza shook herself and made her way to the main computer and got into her little bubble, closing the door behind her for the first time since the power generators had been cleared as perfectly functional.  She ensured the program was ready to run and that energy outputs on the screens were optimal, then waited.

10…

9…

8…

She shivered in anticipation.

7…

6…

Her hand trembled as it hovered above the final keystroke that would change the world…

5…

4…

3…

2..

She stared hard at the screen, not daring to look at the machine as she lowered her fingers…

1…

She pressed it and melted into her chair as the pent-up energy flooded into the ring, turning it a dark blue and then, suddenly, she could see something on the other side and her eyes lit up in hope as she tried to process what she could see through the portal.

The room on the other side of the portal was dark, but it could have been a lab. Probably was a lab of some kind.  Instruments were scattered everywhere and she dared, for a moment, to hope her hypotheses had been correct and she’d been able to make contact with her other team. But it couldn’t be Titannia. For however much it looked similar to her own lab, it couldn’t be the other human-occupied planet. There was a man standing on the other side of the portal and he… wasn’t human.

To be continued? I hope. It’s way past my bedtime!

Horror Flash: Me!

So, these things tend to go around on Facebook a lot, but it happened to match up with the prompt we have in the Elementals group, now, so I decided to use it as a prompt.

I have to add, now, that I have no disrespect for Miley Cyrus or any other real person mentioned in this writing.  It’s purely fictional and satirical and meant for amusement purposes only.

Far away, in an unimaginable parallel dimension in which I would be remotely curious about Miley Cyrus in any way, shape, or form…

I was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to talk about my stellar success with my new novel, ninth in the ever-acclaimed series about a young half-elf working in a tavern named Betti with a no-nonsense attitude and passable magical skillset. I’d showed up wearing, not designer clothing, but my pajamas. I went to all of my novel-related events in such attire because I’d always assumed it couldn’t possibly be inappropriate, as that’s what I’d been wearing when I wrote the books, anyway. Miley Cyrus was also to be a guest on the show and we sat on the couch together, acting like we knew one another and cared about each others’ mutual existences as we laughed amiably at Jimmy Fallon’s terrible jokes and tried not to laugh hysterically about the fact he reminds everyone on the planet of a neckless turkey.

During some sort of playful banter I didn’t really care enough about to pay much attention to, Miley Cyrus dared me to meet her for a haunted-house-with-an-abandoned-mineshaft-attached pajama party for Halloween. Somewhat startled that such a specific type of party existed, I agreed. I was on tv, after all, and it wouldn’t do to appear to be a giant grouch and she would likely forget all about it by the time dawn happened, anyway.

The rest of the Jimmy Fallon experience went well. I played a silly game that didn’t make much sense to anyone, laughed, talked about my book a little, and then went home to write my tenth book in yet another pair of pajamas. I didn’t think about the promise to Miley Cyrus and was, to be quite honest, revving up for NaNoWriMo on October 30th when my agent, Angus, called to ask me about whether I was still planning on going.

“It’s still a pajama party, correct?” I asked, really wishing it was an awful costume party I could excuse myself from simply because my husbeast hated it when we didn’t do couples costumes. Last year’s had been characters from my book and, this year, we were pesudo-planning going as a fork and spoon with outrageous hair arrangements used to depict the eating utensil. I was to be the spoon, if anyone would wonder. Changing those plans last-minute to accommodate a media nightmare would make me even grumpier.

“Yep!” said Angus, adding “Perhaps Husbeast will not want to go to such a party, if there will be undue loud noise. Perhaps you can tell him about this party and he can torture one of the cats with hair gel to be his costume companion for the evening, instead?” Unsure of whether I should be smiling at his genius or furious with his suggestion of discomfort to my multifarious felines, I told him that he had an excellent head on his shoulders and to text me the details.

Upon receiving the address for this shindig, I was immediately relieved to learn that it was within driving range. Since my flight from San Antonio to Bastrop to escape my mother’s endless nagging about producing grandchildren for her to coddle, I was not accustomed to far travel for any reason and getting a flight on short notice would be a nightmare. The event was in some abandoned haunted house with an abandoned mine shaft, as promised, but it was in the Texas hill country, only about a two hour drive from my current location. Thus armed, I approached Husbeast about the party. To be sure, he was devastated, but it isn’t as if we’d gone anywhere on Halloweens previous and we’d watched almost every B horror film in existence in previous years, he agreed I should go to this party and packed me a rather large bag of nothing but Almond Joys for the trip.

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The drive was uneventful, even with all of the crazy hills to get lost in and I made it to the party in record time, wearing my very favorite pajamas. Star Wars pants and a Star Trek themed t-shirt. I am, and ever shall be, a rebellious nerd, after all.

The house itself was unremarkable, of the typical German immigrant make for older houses in this area. I’d brought my laptop, just in case I happened to encounter any ghosts of decent age and could get some good information from them for use in memoirs or historical fiction. There were vehicles, most of them limos or excruciatingly expensive, parked all over the place, haphazardly in the lawn as there wasn’t a designated parking area built in. I parked my small, functional Kia in an unassuming space, slung my bag over my shoulder, and walked into the building.

It must have been incredibly sound proof, because the blast of riotous pop music as I opened the door was sweltering and I devoutly wished I had brought some ear plugs along. Husbeast was right about loud noises, for the most part. There were celebrities strewn about the place, discussing who they were wearing. Designer pajamas. Who’d ever heard of such an outrageous thing? At any rate, I managed to slip past them and go upstairs to encounter some ghosts. That could be interesting.

When I reached the second story landing and the rows of closed doors, I noticed it was delightfully people-free and began trying doors. I opened the first on the left from the stairway and encountered a plain-looking bedroom with a colorful, hand-made quilt as a bedspread. I sat on the bed to admire it more closely when the temperature in the room went down a few degrees. I saw out of the corner of my eye, the specter of a young girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, wearing clothing I suppose my mother must have worn in her childhood during the 60’s and early 70’s. I waved at her and she came to sit next to me on the bed, looking clearly sad.

“What’s wrong, little ghost?” I asked, genuinely curious at her sulking appearance.

She sighed a little sigh, though the air didn’t move, and looked up at me with large, sweet eyes. “Well, we are all hiding in the abandoned mine shaft to get away from the silly party downstairs. Well, everyone except me. I’m staying right here because Halloween is our holiday and we should celebrate it, too. I keep looking for opportunities to go scare people, but they don’t seem to be able to hear me. I mean, a ghost’s best friend is stealth, but not to the point that no one can hear you yell ‘Boo!’, you know?”

I nodded, solemnly, realizing it was a sad state of affairs to be in. If you’re a ghost and all you’ve got is scaring people, it’s somewhat cruel to have it taken away from you. My brain ticked a little and I came up with a plan, “Okay. What we will do is this: I’ll go downstairs, and lure some unsuspecting model up here or something to look at the historical wonders and you can pop up behind them and scare them. Rinse and repeat until they’ve cottoned on to the plan. Yeah?”

She beamed and grinned at me. “You got it. I’ll lurk and wait. If it’s successful the first time or two, I’ll find the others and we can keep doing it!”

Though I wasn’t too pleased at the prospect of initiating a conversation with anyone downstairs, I was bolstered by her obvious excitement and left to hurry downstairs to hunt down an easy target. As I came down the stairs, though, Miley was lying in wait.

“Well! Where have you been, writer lady?” she demanded loudly, though I couldn’t tell if the volume was a result of necessity with the music or just her personality.

“Oh…” I pushed my glasses up on my nose as a stalling tactic, “I was just exploring upstairs, trying to get my bearings and all of that.” I smiled, showing my anxiety and hoped it showed.

“Oh! Well, it’s good you came down, then, because we are going to have the main event soon! Come into the main room with me!” The unusually chipper woman grabbed a hold of my wrist and dragged me into the main room, where a stage was set up. She let me go when we reached the gaggle of people and headed toward the stage to begin some kind of performance, singing I presume. As the noise level in the room increased by several degrees of magnitude, I backed away from the main crowd of people, toward the left side of the room, and tried to get some air. As the performance continued, I tried desperately hard not to look too bored, but I eventually spaced out and stopped paying attention. The next thing I knew, there was a loud crash behind me and I turned to see Miley on a huge wrecking ball coming right at me.

The next thing I knew, I was back up in the bedroom with the ghost girl. She looked mournfully at me and said, “I guess models and such really hate to be pulled away from their parties if they kill you for trying.”

Fantasy Flash: Berilia

Check here for the original photo prompt in the Elements of Genre Writing group on Facebook.

Berilia hated her master. He was old school, grumpy, and sexist. The boys in his Summoning school were the majority of the population and were significantly better treated than Ananaf and herself, the only two females who had bothered to try to get into the school and hadn’t washed out due to the rigorous curriculum. Much as she would complain, Beri would never say that Master Malcolm was not the best-qualified to teach his craft, but his methods, especially toward the female students, were absolutely complaint-worthy.

That was how she’d ended up here… sort of. In a round-about way. See, the robes she and Naffy wore as uniforms were ridiculous. Master Malcolm actually had them color-coded. Male students wore blue, the shade and depth of the dye deepening as they progressed in level. The same principle applied to female uniforms, except theirs was pink. It wasn’t too bad for Naffy, as she was a much more accomplished summoner than Beri had trained to be and wore an almost tolerable magenta. As Beri was only a First Level Apprentice, her robes were light baby pink. Or, were supposed to be, anyway. She had argued until out of breath with Master Malcolm at how ridiculous her outfit was. She wasn’t one to care, but pastel pink day in and day out was driving her insane. He was, as usual, completely decided on the matter and would not hear any complaint. So, that afternoon, Beri had kindly offered to do one of the other apprentice’s laundry and, lo and behold, the colors had mixed in the hot water and her robes had come up a lovely shade of lavender! Not quite the color she had been going for, but it was so much better than the banality of the baby pink that she hardly cared.

Master Malcolm was a spiteful individual and, so, here she was: the waterfall. It was a lovely place to come and meditate and she didn’t really mind the environment, as it was, but the purpose was much more sinister. In her training, she had done quite well with Earth elementals and had been looking forward to moving up to the next level with the Fire elementals, as all of the other students had progressed. However, the day after he’d caught on to her wardrobe change, he’d sent her to work with the most stubborn and distasteful elemental he used for training purposes. Water elementals were, by and large, quite a difficult to work with. Whereas the Earth elementals she had been working with were mellow and pretty easy to bargain with, water elemntals ruled the world and they knew it.

This one, Zanir, was particularly powerful, which meant it was vicious and cruel as they came. One of the higher echelon of students at the academy, Valartas, had been found drowned in the dormitory showers when the water lily seeds he’d procured for Zanir were not up to snuff. That wasn’t the only student he had killed, either. Rumor had it another student beginning his final level of training had failed to please had died due to exsanguination after getting a paper cut for failing to please. There’s no way to know how Malcolm kept the beast in check to work with the Ninth Level apprentices with relative safety, but it had to be something huge.

So, here she’d been, trying to summon an elemental so far out of her league it probably couldn’t even hear her. She’d been sitting here every day for a month to try to summon it successfully. Master had told her that she was free to come to him to wash out at any time, but she was free to have as much time it took to complete her special assignment. The worst part? The stupid blue dye had mostly washed out of her robes and she was back to a dull bluish-pink. It really hadn’t been worth it.

Deciding she’d sat here long enough, moping and miserable, she set out her equipment to begin the summoning ritual. One blue candle, a few white lilies she’d gathered on the way, and a bit of chalk. She set up the candle with the lilies laid out nicely in the front, then drew a circle around them. Around the circle, she began to draw the arcane symbols for summoning water and the specific symbol for Zanir, specifically. Inhaling a deep breath, she read the words scrawled out around the circle, “Earth, Air, Fire, Water. I am in need of you. I, your humble servant, Berilia Amynitha Bowenlark, hereby call you here for an audience, O Zanir the Powerful of this Momentous Waterfall.” Then, she pulled up all of her will, the stubbornness of her nature, the strength and courage of her heart, and lit the candle with her intent and held her breath.

A long moment passed and, just as she was about to give up or pass out due to asphyxiation, the water in the fall transformed into an incredible dragon’s head and rose to reveal a huge, serpentine body with scales glittering every color of the rainbow in the bright morning sunlight. Letting out a loud gasp and a little bit of urine, she just stared up at Zanir, beautiful, dangerous, and looking right back.

“Quite a persistent little one, aren’t you?” he said with a voice made of the roar of the rapids and the waterfall, yet as echoing and clear as the sound of a drop hitting water in a bucket.

She swallowed, and responded, “Oh, wonderful Zanir, I am quite fortunate to have obtained your magnificent attention. I have brought for you fresh-cut lilies from the gardens at the school for the honor to be in your illustrious presence.” She grabbed the lilies from the bench before her and held them out to the water elemental as gracefully as she could.

“Ah, yes. My favorite. Malcolm told me of the situation between you and, I must say, you are quite bold to have envoked his wrath. I thought about making you wait for an entire year, if you could manage to summon me daily for such a time. After a fashion, that is in my nature, as a water elemental. I could kill the likes of you in a moment, but it takes centuries for me to eat through a single stone. Is there any bargain you wish to make?” His eyes whirled greens, blues, and lavenders; breathtaking in their beauty and terrifying in their coldness.

“No, O Great One. Just the truth of our meeting, should Malcolm ask it. I sincerely hope to meet with you again, when I am more adept and skilled than at present. I should like to present a gift to you after Malcolm has resumed my training, Magnificent Zanir.”

The water elemental chuckled, and in a huge crashing wave, was gone. The water in the falls no less tranquil than usual. Picking up her drenched and extinguished candle and wiping out the chalk marks, Beri stood and prepared to leave. As she gathered her robe up about her, she noticed it was a deep, dark purple everywhere it was wet and laughed as she trudged home, even though her return meant dealing with an afternoon of smug argument with Master Malcolm about her Zanir-approved wardrobe alteration.