First and Third

By Vaughan Stanger

First and Third is a rollicking SF romp featuring hijacked robots, uploaded personalities, a digital afterlife and nuclear-powered motorbikes--set on a partially terraformed Mars. All this in a short story of 7000 words.

This is what Sam Tomaino has to say about it in his review of Postscripts 26/27 "Unfit for Eden" at SF Revu (26 March 2012): "'First and Third' by Vaughan Stanger – Joe loves Maisie, even though she's dead. He keeps her mind alive, downloaded on some sort of server. He wants to keep her going until she achieves something called Rapture. It would take too long to explain the intricacies of all this. He makes a living on Mars repairing robots, but he's on the run from the law. Things get more complicated after that. Joe and Maisie are characters you'll like and that's enough for any story."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vaughan Stanger
• Release date: Jun 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301451838

Vaughan Stanger

Until recently, Vaughan Stanger worked as a research manager at a British engineering company. From 1997 to 2011, he wrote science fiction and fantasy stories in his spare time, effectively setting himself homework. The results of this head-scratching were published in Nature Futures, Interzone, Postscripts, Daily Science Fiction and Music for Another World, to name but a few. Translations of his stories have appeared in nine languages.In January 2012 Vaughan became a full-time writer. Currently he's busy writing an SF novel. The head-scratching has got worse if anything. There are also some new stories in the works, plus further e-book compilations of his previously published stories to come.

Book preview

Introduction

The idea for this story came to me in 2005, while I was vacationing with friends just outside Tucson, Arizona. We were driving back from the day's wanderings in the desert when I noticed a billboard that displayed a memorial to someone’s dearly beloved. For some reason I found that a bit odd, which is always a good sign for a writer. So I relocated the Arizona setting to a place with rather more science fictional potential, but fewer cacti. Joe and Masie sneaked up on me while I was pondering what to do with the raw material. I guess they knew it was their kind of story.

If you enjoy reading First and Third, you'll hopefully be pleased to know that I'm currently working on a sequel.

First and Third

The Martian twilight had deepened to the point where Joe Engels no longer trusted himself to keep his Norton Warmonger on the blacktop. Just a little further, he told himself. And sure enough, two kliks down the road, the bike's headlight beam picked out a billboard. As he eased the fat-tyred, nuclear-powered machine to a halt, he thanked the gods of corporate irrationality for installing a public portal in the middle of nowhere. Three years into her post-life, Masie still insisted on a view of the physical world, not merely his ugly face. Calling her from a hacked motel vidphone was a no-no, even at night.

After unpacking the Norton's panniers, Joe set his camping dome to inflate and then switched the bike's stealth field generator to wide-area mode. Can't be too careful, he told himself, even though the risk of being spied on by a satellite was minimal.

While gazing at the purpling sky, Joe noticed a speck of light moving so fast it couldn't be Deimos. Suddenly it flared like a nova: so bright and Look at that! and gone on the count of ten. Despite having retired from the 'jacking game, Joe continued to count seconds like they meant the difference between life and death.

Possibly one of Masie's fellow post-lifers had just made the grade, although why anyone wanted to pilot a robotic spacecraft on a mission lasting millennia baffled him. Masie herself stood no chance of graduating from Ad Astra, but that wasn't why he'd placed her there.

Joe shivered inside his