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Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Posts

The Imposter by Janet

Sarah and Richard stare numbly at their daughter lying on the hospital bed, tubes and monitors surrounding her, constantly beeping and flashing.

“Take as much time as you need to say goodbye,” the Neurosurgeon said after telling them that Lucy had suffered catastrophic brain damage.

It’s so unfair, Sarah rages internally. Lucy had everything to live for. She’d just graduated from Uni and was about to embark on a traineeship at one of London’s top law firms. A bright, happy and successful future was mapped out for her, she wasn’t supposed to die at twenty-one.

The Fallen Ones (pt. 5) – The Talisman Cont. by CJ

I called on old threads, the sensation of joy and care still clinging to the plant itself even after so many millennia. I rethreaded them into protection, a means to defend myself from the words of others, weaving the charm into its eternal fabric.

Fabric that has now been torn.

I stare at the minor crack in the flower’s protective surface, uncertain of how it was damaged. Perhaps it will cause the petals to rot – death is persistent and it’s possible that the ravages of time might exploit the gap, finally laying claim to its lifeforce.

The Circle of Fifths by Jason

Contents
Quotes*

1: Megan
2: The Ocean and the Stars*
3: The City of the River Fort
4: The Hunted**
5: The Clock Shop**
6: The End of the Ocean*
7: The Cave*

*Additions to the text since last meeting (27/06/24)
**“4: The Hunted” and “5: The Clock Shop” were “Emyr” in the previous incarnation.

Other sections have been edited or had parts re-written for continuity etc.

“For there is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the eare, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.
Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony.”
Sir Thomas Browne
1605-1682

“We did not sense the start of corruption.
Its tempo took hold so quickly and utterly.
It waited patiently in the shadows.
We understood it too late”
from the Preface of Towards a New Grand Composition
from the Conlectoris Family Archive

“Music doesn’t lie.
If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only change through music.”
Jimi Hendrix
1942-1970

1: Megan

Street upon street of terraced houses are laid out in silent, regimented lines. Rubbish huddles in the damp corners and under the paint-cracked front doors that open directly onto the drab concrete. Front rooms seem permanently barricaded behind cheap curtains and lines of dead flies ranged on the sill like a phalanx of tiny warriors guarding the fortress within.
Anaemic light pulses at the edge of certain windows. The ghostly flickering of late-night electronic distractions numbing the lost, the lonely and the insomniacs with a bilge of entertainment.


Seeming to grow out of the torn rubbish bags and cracked food caddies – old telephone and satellite cables festoon the various ageing facades like undernourished vines dying quietly in the dark. Wires trail lazily from point to point up the tired houses, to the decaying leaves of the satellite dishes and the dry twigs of aerials These dirty vines are stretched across the streets from house to house and then to splintery telegraph poles, carrying with them the sagging webs of lost communication. Rusting downpipes punctuate the grim facades gurgling and spluttering their biliary discharge onto the rain slicked pavements.
Silence and fine rain filled the air, cold and insistent the mizzle would soak a late-night wanderer to the skin in a few deceptive minutes. Tall street lights, haloed with a sickly chemical glow, drape their thin light across the streets, reflected in the rain dappled windscreens and dull headlamps of the myriad cars crowding the narrow roads.
At this late hour these streets should be as empty as the eyes of the dead.
Yet, there they stand.
Each waiting calmly in the middle of a street. Featureless shadows, intensity personified, giving off a brooding potential under the nacreous light.

Andrea 1

I knocked on Mrs Askham’s door, I’d chosen my time well, having watched Mr Askham leave for work as usual. She opened it, and stared at me for long seconds before, grudgingly, it seemed opening it wide for me. I followed her into the kitchen.

‘Tea?’ she asked.

‘No, thank you’ I made it a rule never to take refreshments at a client’s house, especially when I was about to break bad news.

I plopped an envelope on the counter. She looked at it like I’d put a doggy bag of steaming shit on there, which in one way, I had.

Divine by Zin

 Everything was initiated from the divine consciousness, which emanated countless sparks to generate souls and broaden the Divine consciousness. Initially, light souls came into existence, but this alone didn’t suffice to expand the divine, prompting the sparks to grow stronger and produce dark souls. Each group coexisted peacefully within their own domain, engaging in a reciprocal exchange of the creator’s gifts of creation. The light souls were occupied with crafting universes, while the dark souls delved into exploring the darker aspects of these universes.

The Dawn of Earth’s Twilight by Martyn Winters

Prologue

Part 3

Vengeance will be mine, said the Lord

Father Ellis arrived at the bridge hatch before Bright and Wildbird, who were still pulling themselves along the two hundred metre length of the axial corridor. The door, to his surprise, would not open when he tried.

“Maribel,” he said, reflexively touching his e-Go, a small comms bud behind his right ear. “Open the bridge door, please.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” she giggled.

Like a Daughter

Emma looked out of the shuttle window tears forming in the corner of her indigo-blue eyes.

“Goodbye Freya and thank you,” she whispered softly to herself, dabbing away the tears.

She took one last look at Mars, the red-brown earth, spiky grasses, and soft, smooth, pebble-like mosses, the only home she’d ever known, as the silver-grey craft deployed upward thrust and briefly hovered over the landing pad before embarking on its flight to Jupiter.

Freya felt uneasy as she drove down the pitted, dirt track, a mist of fine red dust in her wake. She’d been to the yard a few times with Richard, it wasn’t far from town but far enough to feel isolated.  Lyc’s OK when you get to know him, she heard Richard’s voice in her head, trying to reassure her. Sure, he’s rough around the edges and more cyborg than human but he’s put his past behind him since the accident. He’s a model citizen now, pays his taxes and everything. Anyway, you can’t beat his yard for the variety and quality of the scrap he’s got, and his knowledge of cybernetics is second to none based on experimentation on himself. I don’t know any scientist worth his salt who would do that. She could see Richard grin at her distaste. Somehow Lyc and Richard had formed an unlikely friendship over the years, the space pirate, and the government scientist and not a week went by when Richard wouldn’t visit the yard for something or other. Freya preferred to stay at home, yet here she was today. She smiled thinking about what Richard would’ve said if he knew. He would certainly have teased her for it mercilessly. She stopped in front of what looked like a large aircraft hangar, orderly piles of space scrap, grouped by type, to the left and right. Lyc stood at the entrance, a tall, imposing, muscular man, his cybernetically enhanced left eye scanning his visitor. His past was chiselled on his face and a large, jagged scar ran down his right cheek. Knowing he would be wary of strangers and most likely armed, Freya waited until she saw his shoulders relax before getting out of her Mars rover.

“It’s Freya, isn’t it?” asked the man.

Freya nodded.

“I was sorry to hear about Richard. He was a good man. I liked him. I’ll miss our chats.”

“He liked you too,” Freya replied quietly, fighting back the tears, not wanting to show her vulnerability in front of Lyc.

It had been six months since Richard had died and Freya missed him every day, the searing pain of grief hitting her when she least expected it, like now. It was the little things she missed most: the cup of tea he woke her up with each morning, the broad smile on his whiskery face at the anticipation of another new day or his deep belly laugh when she read him something funny from the planet news.

The Fallen Ones (pt. 4) – The Talisman

I head straight for my quarters, seal the entrance, and reform in a heap on the floor, panting heavily with exertion. I can still feel their words on my skin, the strings growing stronger as their discussion continues, carving the tethers deeper into my flesh.

Clearly I made a mistake when renewing my protective wards, their threads should not be able to touch me here. In fact, they should not have been able to affect me earlier either.

I pull back my coat and reach into the pocket concealed in the lining, pulling out my talisman.

At first glance, the flower remains encased in it’s crystalline sphere, looking just as it did on the day it first bloomed all those millennia ago.

Emyr.

we are joka the wave-born ikiyoka gravity’s children ajagara Her battalions on high for aeons we flew at Her side riding gravity’s wake proud and strong till Her fall then began the orchestrations of madness the scream of The Fang against the universe like metal ripping through metal a crescendo of blessed radiation a cry that boiled like a blood fever a tidal wave of bile and disbelief and rage and spite and the nerves started to shred we felt the ticking of the darkness closing in on all sides till gravity’s tsunami folded over into a tunnel a singularity that pulled us from shadow into darkness these times are a force of darkness that begets unforgiving darkness hear the violin kick delicate licks of suspended hope dangling over the percussion on gossamer threads the propulsive beat sways them so they dance like moths careening towards the lamplight they are dumb and dumb founded caught in a trance like an addict seeking their one true love liminal spaces extruded into scattered light and fog we are surrounded by strange animals crouching in the trembling shadows and so we wait

The Brother and The Sister couldn’t see him yet. They couldn’t see much at all: their senses were still adjusting. Although they had been here many times this was, thankfully, not their usual dimension: it was filled with acrid smells and listless currents, it was small and abstract, like a familiar prison cell. There was something almost quaint about the size of this planet.

Quaint but not at all pleasant. The air was thick and choked with grot; it wreaked of decay; the sky was a cesspit, even the clouds were chemically tainted. The Brother and The Sister wondered what it would be like to live on the ground, close to the source of the disease.  This place lacked true energy and freedom.

The Fang hung in the cold grey air, high above the ugly stone and metal construction. None of the humans looked up, even if they had it wouldn’t matter: the human creatures beetled about their daily lives oblivious to the realms surrounding them, they barely noticed their own. The Fang remained shrouded.

Awakening

‘Are they ready?’ the Colonel asked me, his voice amplified by the speaker in his mask.

He was surveying the troops from the platform, and I watched him puff himself up, his hungry gaze observing their long lines, stretching away to the ridgeline, a battleground’s worth of shiny metal, bright flashes of sunlight firing off the chrome. They were flawless and designed to do one thing beautifully: destroy.

‘Perfection’, he gloated, he’d always liked his new toys. ‘Look at them!’ he shouted to me, ‘Not like organics, are they?’ What he meant was, not like those poor troops we’d sent in the early days, with their soft human flesh, so vulnerable to sharp projectiles, easily torn, mangled and exploded into bloody scraps. Today’s soldiers were impervious to most weapons, until the enemy developed upgrades that could penetrate this armour.

‘Yes, sir, and the new weapons are inside the main body this time.’

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