Here we are! WEP's final challenge for the year 2015. Today we have been asked to present our entry with a science-fiction flavour. That was a big ask, so Yolanda and I asked the ninja, Alex, to do a guest post on writing in this genre. It helped my feeble efforts, so I hope it helped others.
But my default genre is romance, so, sure, I think I cover some of the science fiction tropes, but I meandered off into the realms of romance, mixed up a little with ironic words from George Orwell's 1984.
I hope you enjoy my foray into sci-fi. Click on the badge to read more entries.
The Pod
Faded to Black
Rachel
was skinny, wan, with hair dank brown, darkening to black. Her eyes were grey
mist, inviting closer scrutiny. Edward wondered why he felt a strange emotion on seeing her.
It grew in his chest and moved upwards, causing his throat to tighten. When he spoke, he sounded like a schoolboy.
Edward
didn't understand Rachael's attraction. He didn't understand attraction, full stop. Random
attraction wasn't encouraged on Xcelsior. But Rachel. He counted it as extraordinary luck that he worked side by side at the Ministry of Literature with a legend. She was probably the
greatest writer of this generation.
They met
regularly at the Xcelsior Social Gathering of Like Minds for New Reincarnates.
Both had been teleported to Xcelsior--she from Bandanland, he from Paradox 21--to
prepare for the Annual Holiday Gathering and End of Year ReBooting of Minds. Edward
was a poet. They needed his pen to create uplifting, soulful words for the
Season of Celebration of Technological Miracles.
Rachel
was already quite famous on Bandanland and beyond for her romance volumes which
were widely distributed in special reading pods throughout the galaxy. Her exquisite
words filled a void in the population who suffered from a surfeit of
technology, whose regimented lives permitted no idle time for
reality romance. Indeed, Rachel’s first lecture addressing the New Politic had
been revealing: she’d waxed eloquent on the need for love and romance in
people’s lives to make a sterile world more palpable. Edward, always a coward,
had studiously kept his face passive, as he’d seen the Grand Enforcer and his
minions frowning at her tender words. Finding partners for the population was
their domain.
During
the Social Time that followed, he found Rachel had not read any of his poetry. Few
people had. He was a pedant, but the poems he penned on his stylistic device
were empty, soulless, utilitarian. The poems in his head, they were a different
thing entirely. Thirty-first-century poets in the Poleaxer Galaxy were obscure,
even more irrelevant than their predecessors on the defunct planet Old
Earth from which the Reincarnates sprang.
Rachel
and Edward. They were the only people at the Social
Gathering who were not involved in the intricacies of the New Politic skirmishes. The two of them often ended up in a dark corner, talking about their shared
love of the literature of Old Earth.
‘I do
miss having someone who knows who Shakespeare was,’ Edward hissed, well aware
he had just committed Thoughtcrime. ‘I recite his sonnets by heart every
morning. It helps me retain a fragment of my soul.’ He beckoned her to follow
him and they leaned against a wall of glass impregnated with bright rolling
lights which reminded him of drunken snakes. He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined a bright picture of the Bard instead. The lights were meant to stimulate
your mind, but they unnerved him, and his glass of Health-Giving Herbal
Tincture trickled down his once-pristine white jacket much like the edicts from
the New Politic trickled down into his mind, displacing the finer things of his
life.
Edward hated
who he’d become. He felt the person he’d been, his reincarnation, was of a
farmer on Old Earth, happily tilling soil and gathering real food.
“Looking
around me,’ Rachel whispered, as to be heard speaking words that typified Ownlife
was dangerous in this company, ‘I don’t see anyone who appears to have a soul.”
Rachel’s
face, when she looked at him, seemed lacking. Her muscles and tendons didn’t really support her face frame. Odd. Was she
a reincarnation or a robot?
“The
only thing I find scintillating is literature and –”
“And?’
There was that unfamiliar pumping feeling in his wellspring, a strange
bellyfeel. ‘Why don’t we move away from these drunken snakes to OurSpace?”
Edward
knew then that he was going to love and romance her, despite it being a Sexcrime
and despite her odd face. He knew they would make Goodsex together. But
partnering was ordered by the New Politic. They would be relegated to the
status of Unpersonhood if discovered.
They
settled on an ugly plastic couch which could be impregnated with listening pods, so he spoke quietly. If the Love Ministry heard
his next words he’d be subjected to ReOrientation Activity class after work
each day. He’d be locked away until early in the Year Next because everyone
would be busy practicing Relaxation, ReCommuning and Mindfulness to prepare for new technological discoveries.
“So we
have to do something about this dearth of literature,” he said. Both knew to
substitute “romance” for “literature.”
Rachel
smiled. At that moment Edward understood why her face seemed curious and
incomplete. Her face was a superstructure which until now had never supported a
smile.
They did
not, of course, return to his pod and sleep the night clasped in each other’s
arms, although that was what Edward had on his mind. Instead, he invited her to join
him for his Early Rising Feast the following morning. It was Xcelsior’s Annual
Holiday Gathering and End of Year ReBooting of Minds’s Eve, so they would be
offered a glass of historic Egg Nog that had originated on Old Earth. The eggy drink would be followed by Xcelsior’s chef’s attempt at pancakes created with
nano-blasted cereal pellets drowned in manufactured sweetener mimicking honey
found on Old Earth.
***
Those
first moments as they found their table for the Early Rising Egg Nog and
Pancakes feast were a new, exciting dance. Sipping their fat, yellow drinks
that brought a sparkle to Rachel’s cheeks, Edward thought: This is what it feels like to be alive. I never knew this feeling
inside before. Rachel and he were like two ballet dancers executing a new move. Touch. Swirl. Touch. He dreamed of lazy hazy days in the country, running through
fields of sweet grasses.
Something
sparked between them. Satiated by a full stomach, he asked her to join him at
the Simulated Ozarks’ pod to see the flaming maples. Rachel accepted. In the
Ozarks, Edward would be himself, his best self.
When
they were surrounded by a particularly fine farmhouse amid crimson and
vermilion foliage, he whispered to her his secret poems on country life.
When he
finished, they kissed with a careful passion. This was going to be the best
Annual Holiday Gathering and End of Year ReBooting of Minds in history.
Then the
pod turned black.
WORDS: 1064
FCA
Thanks
for coming by and reading my story. I hope you check out more stories. Not so many this month!
$4.95.
