The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | July 17, 2015 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

God’s purposes could be mysterious, he thought, gazing at the photo of his hand in his mother’s as she passed from the trauma of bringing him into the world.
When old enough to understand, he sardonically thought it a reverse abortion.
He’d fallen in love rapidly with his darkly beautiful wife, Zorha. Their passion was intense, but mirrored by her rejection of him. In a weeping phone call, she’d confessed soul-deep guilt over an old, dark deed.
He realized the symmetry with his birth situation. He offered her forgiveness, if she could forgive him.
Elsewhere, mother’s fingers curled.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

Comments

4 Responses to “Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge”

  1. JeffWeimer
    July 18th, 2015 @ 12:12 am

    Very nice.

  2. Southern Air Pirate
    July 18th, 2015 @ 11:03 am

    As their hands touched, the rest of the crew ignored the bonding of the mother and child. Instead, the crew were busy taking notes and preparing the now official report. We can have children in space
    and they won’t be deformed horrible mutants like those wackos from the IFLS sect believe and been telling folks. Therefore,
    that means we can build the generational ships to leave here and reach planet SR388, also known as Zebes all so we can leave this dying planet behind. The hope of leaving this place brightened everyone’s mind, that we can keep humanity alive.

  3. Eric Ashley
    July 20th, 2015 @ 12:43 am

    Chall-z detected tachyon decay, and scrambled over broken ceramcrete piles, setting his pit bulldozer to work when he came to a new Coke bottle. Recklessly enthusiastic, the dogbrain shoved aside piles of carbon fiber reinforced plaswall, and took the explosion of an old Jihadi walking bomb on its front plate with only a whimper until it came to blue-tinted stabilon in a large mass.

    Wildly enthused, his mouth watering for good things like canned corned beef, and spaminacan, while the more cautious other side tried to figure out how much gold denarii he’d get, he pulled out a drainer wand. The bit of alientech, bought from smugglers, drew out the tachyons, and collapsed the stabilon chunks into normal matter, just a century younger than everything in the rest of the Universe.

    And as it did, the Images floated through Chall-z’s mind, and he knew what this place was. So, he looked down and saw a small hand in a larger hand, not connected to anything else. And he saw the woman’s body in ‘scrubs’, with the ‘zip-loc’ bag of ‘sellableparts’ in another chunk. And her head, in another chunk.

    Quickly, before brain death occurred, he attached her head to her body with expensive nanites. The hand, he left it off. In seconds, she woke, screaming, and he gave her something for the pain with a small, encouraging smile on her face.

    She looked up, and saw a skinny man, with a thrice broken nose, and a cybernetic eye, and a rifle on his back almost as tall as he was, which was not very large.

    “Hard to grow to six feet when you have to scramble for rats to eat.” He said with a flicker of a smile to her as she lay among the remnants of the ‘Reproductive Clinic’.

    “Ah, what?”

    “See…ah, what’s your name?”

    “Sally.” She said frightened, with a head looking about in perplexed small jerks, butnever taking her eyes far from him as he leaned over her.

    “Yes, Sally. Well, when the aliens came…”

    “Aliens. Yes. ET’s, from near the Galactic Center. They represented The Concord of Obviousness.”

    “Whaaat?”

    “You were expecting the Federation? Or the Tomulan Empire or something? Hard to run an empire over interstellar space. And they, well, they agreed on certain things that were obvious to all. Insectoid and nebular gas clouds; carnivores, herbivores; group minds and isolates. We’re Quasi-Mammalian, Isolate, Omnivore, Planet-Bound….that’s us….Humanity.”

    “Why are you dressed so strange?”

    “Well, its been a century or so since the aliens came. No giant stores. Most of my clothing I get from the hunters or the weavers, in trade for salvaging. That’s what I do, Sally. I salvage. See, a Demi-stable Flux Field, will at its edges, and in certain currents through the midst of it, create ‘Stabilon’ or stasis blocks. So I can find food that just got bought that morning. I’ve drank century old coffee that was still hot. Its hard work, and sometimes dangerous, but I have my gauss rifle that can shoot shells at escape velocity if I need too, and a dogbrain running a mini- bulldozer for help.”

    She looked over to her left at a toy sized bulldozer. It barked at her.

    “Well, I guess maybe I can get a job…”

    “I don’t think you understand, Sally.”

    She stared.

    “You see, the Concord, well, they agree Life is precious. Their are things more precious at times, but they revere Life.”

    “So, do I.”

    “Really, Sally, you’re going to go there?”

    “I…” She closed her mouth at his open skepticism.

    “Take me to your leader, or….”

    He unshipped his rifle.

    “See, Sally, the aliens when they came, saw your ‘clinic’. They saw, all the ‘clinics’, and they dropped a Flux on each and every one of them. Took out most of the rest of the city at the same time.”

    He flicked a button, and the rifle began humming in an increasingly high pitch.

    “So, for finding one of you, I get a nice reward. Two rewards.”

    “Wh-what are those?”

    “Well, five pounds of gold, and…” He smiled, and levelled the gauss rifle at her head. “I think you can guess what the other reward is.”

    “I-I needed the money.”

    “So do I.”

    And the rifle spat four one gram ‘bullets’ at fifteen thousand miles per hour into her skull, evaporating it in an instant. And then he went on, draining as he went, looking for babies he could save that had not been too hacked apart, and criminals he could execute.

  4. Alvindawes
    July 21st, 2015 @ 4:03 am

    Feel Free Freedom gheothermcca ……… Keep Reading