Words to Music

By Michael Wells

Short story anthology written by 40 authors from 12 countries. Authors from Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Lebanon, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom and United States collaborated with the common goal to entertain readers around the globe. The authors have chosen to give their royalties from this book to several deserving charities. The stories in this book run the gamut of fiction genres. The fiction genres include: Crime, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction and Westerns. There are also non-fiction stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Wells
• Release date: Jun 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458159250

Michael Wells

Michael Wells is an award-winning newspaper journalist and photographer living in the Pacific Northwest. He is from Kentucky, near Kentucky Lake. He is a graduate of Murray State University. Now a resident of the Pacific Northwest he likes to explore the vast wilderness and untamed rivers of the region with his camera.

Book preview

Introduction

By Michael Wells

Words to Music Anthology Director

This ebook anthology represents the work of 40 authors from 12 countries around the world. You may not know any of these authors or their work now, but I know someday you will, and will want to read all their work.

This anthology was hatched on the Harper Collins website for aspiring authors called authonomy.com. It was a simple idea based on inspiration. I have been inspired to write stories by many things. Photos have inspired me. Dreams have inspired me to wake up in the middle of the night and write stories. Music can also be a powerfully inspirational tool in our lives and I wanted to see what inspirations for stories a bunch of randomly selected songs would yield if I gave them to authors around the world. Authonomy is a perfect website to accomplish such a goal.

I placed the idea in front of them at Authonomy and it took off with more interest than I had previously envisioned. I ended up with more than 40 authors, but as things go, some of the authors would drop out for various reasons.

I subjected them to my rather eclectic music tastes, but for the most part I stayed with Rock n Roll music from the 1950s through today with the occasional Country song thrown in for good measure.

Ultimately, 40 authors with ties to 12 different countries around the world stayed with the project to its end. They wrote more than 40 stories and I have kept some of the additional stories in this anthology, but several good stories had to be cut.

I made this an opportunity for the authors to showcase their talents in short story writing, which seems to take a backseat in the world of publishing in recent years.

My hope is the authors in this book will be recognized for their talents, and their careers in writing will bloom.

I think the talented authors who are in this anthology could have just as well produced an anthology of short stories without the song device as inspiration. However, the inclusion of the song as inspiration for a story did entice many authors into taking a shot at being a part of this anthology, which might have been passed up without it.

What you will see on display in this book are authors of varying experience, but all with talent for storytelling that needs to be exposed.

It was a challenging task that I hope is seen as a success by those who read this anthology.

I would also like to thank author Bradley Wind for donating his time and incredible talent toward the creation of this book’s cover.

For my part, it was a rewarding experience. The ability to work with people I have never met from around the globe and the friendships that have been forged are what I think about the most when I think of the reward. I believe the contributing authors feel the same.

We have decided to donate all our royalties for this work to nine different charities. As the royalty payments come month by month, those charities will receive the entire payment on a rotating basis after some minimal expenses are paid for publishing the book.

While we know some people will buy the book simply to help out charitable causes, we really want people to buy the book because they want to read our stories. In the end, that is why writers write, so they can share their stories with readers like you.

So get out your music player, go out and buy the songs these stories were inspired by, dive in and enjoy yourself. Thank you for allowing us to share our stories with you.

Forward

Closed Up The Honky Tonk

by J.D. Revene

Australia

We’re sitting round a table. There are five of us. Moments ago we were all huddled round a flickering PC screen in another room, sound turned up, tinny speakers struggling to cope.

So? I say. Lord knows, I have no inspiration. Write a short about a song the guy said. Sounded easy enough—then I got my song choice.

That’s it? says the wife—she who is adored and obeyed.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Ideas?

Never heard of it, says the eldest son, all denims and leather. Pretty obscure.

Didn’t that country and western band play it? The boss sees the puzzlement on my face. You know, the one we heard at the Horden, supporting the Waifs.

Must have been one of your other boyfriends.

She doesn’t laugh. She used to laugh at my jokes.

Hell, even the kids don’t laugh at my jokes anymore. Is it any wonder I don’t write comedy when even family don’t laugh at my bon mots?

What’s a Honky Tonk, anyway?

She’s ignoring my joke—okay it wasn’t very funny, but ignoring it completely, what’s that about?

Southern US bars, with music and drinking, jazz and blues, and rock ‘n’ roll. Honky tonk piano, where they took the felts off the keys. And there’s the Rolling Stone’s song Honky Tonk Woman, now that would have been a good choice. With eldest son around there’s rarely any call for Google.

So what’s a woman doing in a place like that? asks my daughter, my Princess.

Huh. Eldest son reverts to teen type. Amazing how he switches from one extreme to the other: lecturing or grunting.

No, that’s a good question.

Princess beams at her mum, wrinkling her nose in that delightful way she has.

Yeah, Mum continues. You should write about that, the—what do you call it?—back-story.

I wasn’t thinking of including much exposition.

What’s exposition? Another wrinkle of the nose, different flavour this time. Quizzical.

That’s where writers set out all the background, it’s how stories used to start. Eldest son’s back in lecture mode. Remember Catcher in the Rye? All that stuff he talks about on the first page, that he’s not going to mention, that’s exposition.

Like in Jane Eyre, where there’s pages describing the wallpaper? Princess rolls her eyes.

That’s different, but there won’t be any of that either, I say.

I don’t think they have wall paper in honky tonks, says the eldest son, occasionally practical, always knowing.

How about boy meets girl, a romance, says Princess. The first practical suggestion, though I don’t do romance. No comedy; no romance.

He should be called Bob, says the youngest—let’s call him Hairball—perched on a chair at the end of the small, battered table. His chair doesn’t even match: an office chair, the orange seat wobbling on its pedestal. The boy should be called Bob.

In his world, everyone should be called Bob.

Bit clichéd isn’t it. Eldest son flicks his long locks—both boys have long hair—and pauses, hand in chin, stroking wispy hairs. Almost an archetype, a meme even, Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story. I think you need something more original, at least some post-modern twist. You know, ignore the fourth wall.

I was thinking of something plotless, I say.

There should be juggling. Hairball adds another twist to the mix. Actually, if anyone in the family could write comedy, it would be him.

Just try not to make it rude, for once, will you, says the boss.

I still want to know why she’s there, adds Princess.

Okay, I say. Let’s see what I can do with that.

A romantic comedy, where a juggler, named Bob, meets a girl who has some mysterious—but important—reason for being in a sparsely decorated Southern bar, all with a Country and Western sound-track.

I don’t think so.

* * *

Country and Western played that night. Unusual perhaps for a jazz club, but the Basement had a reputation in Sydney for good live music of all genre, not just jazz. Steel-pedal guitar dominated the mix.

A man stood at the threshold, eyes narrowed in the half-light. He scanned the room, his gaze pausing on each single woman. The first he spotted was too young—the young ones always think they can do better. The next was older and a little over weight. Promising, but then he noticed a beer on the table next to her G&T; no doubt her partner had gone to the bar, or the gents. The man took a few steps into the club before looking again. Didn’t want to be too obvious.

Then he saw her.

She sat at the bar, diaphanous in blue, drinking something that might be bourbon and coke. He joined her. A slim gold band winked on her finger. If you looked closely enough, his own finger bore the shadow of a ring, but the lights were down.

Can I get you a drink, he said, without preamble.

Sure.

The barman poured her another. Yes, it was bourbon and coke. They sat near a blackboard menu, but the man hadn’t come to eat and didn’t pay it much attention. This wasn’t one of his regular haunts. The hunting was better at the Ivy or the Establishment, but tonight he’d fancied a change; bored of familiar routines and familiar women. He ordered a Glenfiddich, straight up, no ice, and a bottle of Perrier, discarding the straw.

So, what’s the worst pick-up line you’ve heard?

This was his favourite opening gambit: obvious, but veiled in humour and, so, low risk.

Why, you trying to chat me up?

A response, any response, was a good sign.

Just asking.

She turned away, but he knew her eyes were still on him, in the mottled mirror behind the bar, gold-tinged backing showing in the worn corners. He peeled the label from the squat green bottle before him, ripping it into tiny pieces he piled on his coaster. He’s patient. The band began another song, more up-beat this time, and he tapped his foot on the rung of the bar. Her foot began to move too, just inches away from his. Another good sign.

Fancy a root? She was looking directly at him now.

He raised an eyebrow and waited, playing along.

That was it. The worst chat up line.

Hardly a chat up line is it? Direct, but not very effective, I’d imagine. Though he’d tried it himself.

He left with someone.

Wow.

Yeah. She raised her lip-stick rimmed glass to her mouth, downing more than a sip. The music was getting louder and as the bar filled the background chatter rose to a din. He moved his stool closer to hers. Not too close, a natural enough move.

Country fan? she asked.

Christ, no. Just happened in. He raised his glass, sniffed the peaty whisky and took a sip. You?

I like all sorts of music.

So, this lot any good? Asking their opinion, another tried and tested technique.

I’m no expert, but I know what I like. And she ran her eyes over him; she couldn’t have been more obvious. Time to give the line some slack. Never seem too eager.

Well, look don’t let me disturb you, enjoy the band. He swiveled towards the stage and began tapping his foot again. Once more her foot began to move with his. Closer now.

Another guy squeezed up to the bar between the woman and the blackboard menu. Pattern baldness, a shiny scalp and straining to hold his gut in. No competition. Fatman pulled a fifty out of his wallet and held it up.

Get you something, sweetheart? he asked.

I’m good. She gestured at the glass before her.

Let me get you another, you’ll finish that soon enough. He squeezed closer, wiggling his eyebrows.

Really, I’m right. She turned away, rolled her eyes.

The man smiled back. Winked.

Fatman shoved his change into his pocket, his hand brushing against her leg as he did so. An amateur’s move, too soon and too obvious. This could work in the man’s favour.

The woman sidled further away from fatman, her face colouring.

The man took another sip of Perrier. She moved almost on his lap, perfume tickling the back of his throat, too much perfume. She gestured at the cramped dance floor.

Come on.

A bite. Now to reel her in.

They joined the heaving mass, well not mass exactly, but the space was so cramped that just a handful of dancers seemed a mass. This wasn’t in his plans. He doesn’t dance. But sometimes you just have to go with it. Sometimes you can’t call all the plays.

The song playing had something of a rock ‘n’ roll beat and he tried to channel John Travolta—Pulp Fiction, not Saturday Night Fever—grinding out an imaginary cigarette butt, more or less in time with the music. But there’s no room and he has no talent.

She moved easily like someone making love. She has something of Uma Thurman about her: not the looks; not the moves—just something. Something is all it takes these days. Anything. The high notes of the pedal-steel guitar keened like a banshee. Paneled walls dulled the bass, but the man’s ears rang. The song ended and she moved away from the dance floor.

He followed, smoothing sweat slicked hair away from his face. She reached into her bag and pulled out a battered packet of smokes, Marlboro Light, women’s cigarettes, the cigarettes of a social smoker. She nodded towards the door. Wordlessly he agreed—it was too loud for conversation, without getting closer and he didn’t want to do that, not yet. That had been fatman’s mistake, trying too hard.

A Maori bouncer, with a smile as big as his biceps, stamped their wrists at the door so they could get back in: smoking had become such a hassle. There was a constant stream of smokers up and down the narrow steps, no doubt the pavement was crowded, just like outside every other pub and club in the city.

A heavy rain fell, though the night was hot, and the two of them huddled under the awning of a discount electronics shop a few yards down the street, away from the overly sociable throng outside the door. Girls rushed by, handbags held high in a futile attempt to keep hair dry. Boys drove by in pimped cars with hi-fis blasting. Friday night in the city, a million people all doing their own thing. A million stories waiting to be told, retold, edited and revised. A million glimpses of the truth. The woman attacked her cigarette, drawing down as if her life depended on it. Enough to make a man’s eyes water.

Doing anything later? She looked down and away as she asked.

No, you?

A late night bus rolled by, throwing up spray.

Maybe, if I get a decent offer. She tossed her dog-end into the gutter and nodded. Come on.

He looked at his own cigarette, not even half-smoked, shrugged and followed.

High heels clattered on warped wooden treads. There are advantages to being behind a woman on stairs—more so going up than down—but he made sure to catch-up before the bottom, putting his hand on her arm, guiding her. Their places at the bar had long gone and they found a spot at the back of the club, pushed up against cork boards overloaded with tattered posters for long forgotten star attractions. Her hip touched his. Hair brushed his shoulder.

All that was left was to wait. Waiting was something he was good at. Side by side, they sipped fresh drinks. The music droned on, every song a variation on a theme; the usual trite sadnesses and clichéd situations—like a man picking up an anonymous woman in a bar. Oh well, they’re only clichés because they’re true. Cold sweat clammed his brow. She was within reach; there’d been no struggle—all he had to do was net her. He placed his arm around her waist and she leaned into him, a smile flickering across her face, lip-stick on her teeth.

Tungsten lights came on, one by one, in a ragged salvo assaulting his eyes. Metal shutters rattled down over the bar. Security came down from the street, hurrying up the stragglers. He pushed off the wall and discarded his empty glass on a nearby table. She took his arm and they headed up the stairs and out. Someone locked the doors behind them.

* * *

We sit around the table again, six pages of off-white A4, double-spaced, corners dog-eared, lie on the table before us. They’ve all read it. I’m eager for feedback, but nervous too. It’s always that way—at least for me—when first sharing work.

No one’s saying anything. The kids all look at their Mum. Not at me.

That’s it? she says.

I flip through the pages, confirming they’re all there. Yep, six pages, present and correct, though someone’s doodled on one of them. I have my suspicions as to who that would’ve been, but I keep them to myself.

Yeah, that’s it."

Nothing happens, says Hairball. Seems now the floodgates are open and I’m getting feedback, whether I like it or not.

It’s post-modernist, isn’t it? says eldest son. No exposition, no inciting incident, no climax or falling action, no dénouement, just the rising action. He’s been reading my books again.

I don’t get it, says Princess. Another one unsatisfied.

It’s like ‘Seinfeld’, isn’t it. The eldest continues. A story about nothing.

Oh. Princess still isn’t convinced. I can tell—not that I need to be super-intuitive.

No Bob, says Hairball.

Are you sure? I smile and clumsily raise my eyebrows (I can’t see this, but I know from years of experience that this is not something I do well).

Yeah. He knits his brows and fixes me with a stare.

Of course he’s sure: he’s a teenager.

What about the man with no name? I pause, waiting till I have everyone’s attention. What was his name?

Huh? (I just told you he was a teenager, didn’t I?)

His name could be Bob. Eldest son comes to my rescue—someone gets it. The story’s whatever you make it.

I guess it’s at least boy meets girl. Mum smiles at Princess. Like you suggested.

But I still don’t know why she’s there. Princess wrinkles her nose, the quizzical wrinkle, not the approving one. And it’s not exactly a love story.

And there’s no juggling. Hairball pushes his chair away from the table —he’s on the orange one again—gets up and leaves. Unless the stupid man with no name was juggling on the dance floor, but you forgot to tell us.

I guess he doesn’t like it either—and he has a point with the juggling, but seriously how am I supposed to fit that into a story?

I look around. "So, thoughts?

Silence.

Shrugging, I stand and head to the study; time to hit ‘submit’ and post my story for the world to see. Remember, as eldest son said: it’s whatever you make of it.

J.D. Revene

JD Revene is a forty something year old ex-philosopy student who still hasn't found the meaning of life (answers on a postcard please).  Born in the British midlands, he lives south of Sydney with his lovely wife and three wonderful children. You can read an excerpt from this novel on his website www.jdrevene.weebly.com

By My Side

by J.D. Revene

Australia

I lie flat, flatter than I’ve ever lain before. Cold wind burns my cheeks. I’m a shag on a rock, with nowhere to dig in. Surely they’ll see me.

An hour to sunset, or thereabouts.

My watch ticks, the loudest sound on the mountain side, but I daren’t turn my head to look. Instead I gaze down on the valley and the carnage below. That view’s going to get tired awfully quick. I fear the shooting and fighting’s not over yet. I wish that it were. I’m tired.

In an effort to stay awake, I talk to myself. Whisper to myself—though I want to scream.

My name, well that doesn’t matter. I come from Blayney—the Central West—the middle of nowhere. I’m a good man. I’m good at my job and I’m going to get off this fucking mountain. I am.

Christ, my mouth’s as dry as a nun’s—no, not that—a Methodist’s bar-fridge. The dust gets everywhere. Even with a scarf wrapped around my face, I’ve a mouthful of dirt and grit. My arm throbs, blood seeps through the sleeve of my jacket—sown in Victoria, from good Aussie cotton. It’s just a girlie scratch. Can’t complain, no one listens.

Shit, I survived Blindoon and selection, I can survive this. Character building, they call it. I’ve gone longer without sleep or food and I know I can do this. Christ, I’ve tabbed fucking desert, with nothing to eat but bush tucker and precious little of that. I need to focus, get back in the zone, before I fuck up. No second chances.

Pixie eyes.

Across the gorge, knife-edged ridges are haloed orange. But the moon’s pearl-full and there’s altogether too much light. Shadows flit in cave mouths. Dogs howl. My fingers tense on the butt of my rifle. The pattern of the grip scores diamonds on my palm.

Take a deep breath, trooper. Stay calm, come morning the boys will be here. They won’t leave you alone, all you have to do is make it through the night. Piece of piss.

Millimeter by painful millimeter, I turn the gun until the sight meets my eye line. The illuminated reticule brings up the contrast and I sweep the floor, mentally dividing it into grids. Christ, there are kids, women too, crumpled in the shadows of the valley. The night’s bitter, cold enough to make my eyes water.

And on the other side, there’s movement, a figure here and a figure there. I don’t need a night-sight to know they’re not friendly. My fingers seek out the reassuring marks on the side of the scope’s aluminum housing. Good gear, made in the US of A by God fearing folk.

Why the fuck am I here?

Will I make it home? I have to ask. Will I see you again? You know what comes to mind at a time like this? I picture you and the kids getting out of the car, the driveway slick with rain. You’re opening an umbrella. The three of you arriving home alone. My princess, our little girl, peers through a rain stained window, her angelic face querulous. That’s what I picture. What the fuck’s that about?

I’m thousands of miles away in a place they call Helmand, a pimple on the arse-end of the world. We call it Hell. It’s been fought over for millennia. God knows why. The main crop is opium. Poppies everywhere, like Belgium and Northern France. Blood red. Ancient Greeks, Brits, Russians and now the world, all have come here. All have left defeated. Except us. We haven’t left yet.

I scan the floor again, paying particular attention to the bodies. Did one move? I can make out faces. Ordinary folk, torn apart. I dwell—Christ knows why—on the faces. Round brown faces with slanted eyes. Others hook-nosed and dark. One blonde and blue eyed, like a cherub. That was a shock: the first time I saw a raghead who could’ve been one of us. I turn away from those eyes, wishing I’d not seen them.

Women wail and ululate. I try to shut out the sounds, but they are too many. I pick out their figures in the darkness, moving steadily towards the dead, filling my sight-picture. They spread their arms and bend their backs, knowing no comfort.

Alone, a crumpled picture of you against my heart, I long to hear your voice, one more time.

Blue, is it you? you’d say, surprise on your face and a smile bigger than Uluru. You are groin achingly beautiful. Here I am, in a war-zone surrounded by hostiles, with a hard-on. You’ve always done that to me.

Do you remember the kiss in the mountain garden? You know the one. I’m sure you do. Here, in the gloom, I’m trying to recall that kiss. There the grass was dew dappled and the ground soft. But here the dust is dry and the shale sharp. I want to say your name so you’ll know I’m thinking of you. I want to shout it out loud.

I should try the radio, but the fucking fancy Frog shit’s dead. In theory, you can do a million things with this piece of kit, but right now it’s as useful as tits on a bull.

And I wish I wasn’t alone on this fucking pile of dirt, but I’m the last. The others, warriors all, lie on the slopes around me. Joker not ten yards away, white-faced now. Pete broken on the rocks—he had a little girl. Josh spread-eagled, where he fell between two Muj. His old man, Joe, was a hero. Maybe, one day Joe sat Josh down in their big house and said:

Son, do me proud, stand by our flag, and you’ll be right.

Maybe, he set Josh on this glorious road. Now Josh has given his all for the cause.

I’m tired. Sleep beckons seductively. But I can’t surrender to its advances, not yet. I’ve battles still to fight.

Who cares who wins?

I don’t, not anymore—if I ever did. But I’ll do what I have to do and do it the best I can. I owe that to myself.

Gravel crunches. Won’t be long now.

I still my breathing, but the night’s no longer silent. They’re coming, bringing the good news.

I sense a presence by my side; daren’t look away, but swear I see a flicker of a figure, bearded like one of the boys, leaning on a staff—fuck, I’d rather see a 204—he’s walking towards me in grace.

Get down, you crazy motherfucker.

Him and you, and me, that’s three; there’s magic and comfort in that number. I’m no angel, but I have wings tattooed on my breast.

I’m not afraid.

The Muj spread out, leap-frogging forward, using the cover and taking their time. Guns bark sporadically, keeping my head down. Good tactics, I can’t fault their fire and manoeuvre, probably American trained. Where’s air support when you need it? What I’d give to hear the whump, whump of rotor blades. Instead rain falls. A cold, hard rain numbing pain and muffling the sound of my enemy’s approach.

La Elah ila Allah.Guttural cries mark the final charge. Allahu akbar!

Bring it on, ragheads. I’ll go like a soldier.

Rock ‘n’ roll.

There’s a crowd around me now. It’s fireworks night, and—for me, at least—the war will be over before Christmas. The stars flicker out.

And I can’t breathe.

Even now, with blood in my mouth—sweet, like chocolate—and dust turning to mud, I can’t shake the memory of the faces. Walls close in and it’s dark. I’m no devil, but I have fallen.

Geoffrey Thorne

Geoffrey Thorne is a writer living and working in Los Angeles, California. His works include the novels, STAR TREK: TITAN: SWORD OF DAMOCLES and WINTER OF THE WILD HUNT as well as multiple short works for multiple publishers (including this one), comics and television. Thorne is the co-founder and writing partner in GENRE 19, a studio he formed with artist Todd Harris in 2008. He is also a founding member of THE WINTERMAN PROJECT, a small press devoted to producing eBooks of genre fiction for modern audiences. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. He likes candy but prefers cake.

Thanks to Captain Go

by Geoffrey Thorne

United States of America

I noticed her as soon as the transport docked and I knew, right away, she would give me trouble. Don’t ask me why I picked her out of the crowd. It’s not like she was unique, at least not then. She was just a face, one of a thousand gray, wide-eyed, empty faces, pressed against the plexi, peering out through the steam and laser guides, trying to get a sense of what to expect. It’s understandable; everybody wants to know what’s around the corner, catch a little glimpse of their own future if they can manage.

The thing is, if you’ve never been to Nadir, there’s no way you’re going to be prepared, Not for the sky filled with what looks like billions of bits of mica and stone flowing around the planet like unbound rivers. Not for the landscape that’s like an endless sheet of bubbling liquid slate, dotted with our lifedomes on the planet’s heatside.

There’s no way in hell they can picture the sun. But they always try and they always fail. You can see the disappointment in their giant bottomless eyes and in the way the corners of their mouths don’t quite curve down.

This is not what I expected, the faces say. This is not what I wanted.

We see thousands of transports every year, streaming in like pods of metallic whales, belching their grey eyed, slack-bodied cargo into our midst. We see them all so we know. We know and, after a time, we stop caring about them. Not in the way that is dismissive of them or the pain that brought them here. No one could be that heartless. But there are so many of them, coming in constantly with the one goal in mind, you have to get steely about it. You have remember that this is their choice and whatever happened that led them to Nadir, however tragic it might have been for them, is done. It’s just the catalyst. Once they get here they are, basically, sheep.

Oh, we don’t kill them. We don’t hurt them at all. Once someone comes to Nadir they are past all that. After the thin and icy non-sleep of their ride to this place, you might even say we treat them kindly.

I’ve been in cold sleep a few times in my life, each time worse than the last. They call it that because, for short distances, say, like hopping between Sol and Centauri Cygnus, it’s a lot like sleep. You slide into the travel couch; the gate comes down; the place floods with E2; your conscious mind disappears. You wake up with a little tingle in the skin, a bit of a tickle in the throat and, inside an hour, you’ve forgotten the whole thing.

You can get away with calling that cold sleep when the effect is so small. But, when you’re pushing the rim, when you’re making jumps so big you need Breach technology to thin down the parsecs, you don’t call it sleep, cold or otherwise. You don’t give it a name at all.

It’s not sleep, for one thing, which you’ll know if you’ve done it. It’s like being dead. It’s like being dead and aware of it but only from a distance. It’s like being dead and watching yourself dead and not caring and hating yourself for not.

Nadir is right on the Rim. It takes three hops to get here. Three hops with just enough time out of the sleep couches to dread being sent back in. People go mad from it sometimes. I’ve seen it. They fight like rabid animals not to be put back in and have to be tranqued or worse to make them settle. But you have to because, as gut-wrenchingly awful the Sleep is, staying awake in the Breach is worse. No one who’s seen that will talk about it and I, for one, don’t need to hear it.

I’ve done three rotations to Nadir. That means fifteen times in and out of Sleep so far and another three waiting when my remaining months here are done.

There are two sorts of people who come here. There’s the ones like me, who need the cash this sort of duty generates and have the kind of mind that doesn’t break on distance and loneliness and have no ties at home. Since the war with the Mercanti you’d be surprised how many of us there are, willing to do just about anything to keep body and soul together. The other kind are those who come to stay.

The war did ugly things to all of us. Everybody lost someone. Too many of us lost everything. You could say I’m in that last group.

Both my brothers died when the Epoch was lost, fighting a Mercanti seedship. Both my folks went not long after. Pop contracted Beck’s Palsy and quickly withered to nothing the way leaves do in the autumn. Mom took a walk into the Pacific and never came back. I guess one son left wasn’t good enough.

The other kind of person who comes to Nadir is what we call a Diver.

Transport in dock, solid, said the overcom. Ushers stand to, prepare for disembark.

The ground rumbled underneath my boots and I could barely feel it through the thick treads. I watched the massive ramp doors fold down to the gangway, pushing the steam ahead of them like the unclasping hands of one of those ancient gods. Zeus, maybe.

I couldn’t hear the noise, of course. When we’re outside the domes, our protective gear insulates us against, well, pretty much everything you’d think. We can move around okay, do the little bit of work it takes to open a few doors and get the slidewalks going for the new arrivals. We can see what’s directly in front of us through the slit they machined into the helmet but that’s it. We don’t spend much time outside.

Nadir isn’t a friendly place, in case you haven’t guessed. Oh, it’s not like it’s trying to kill us, not on purpose. It’s just a hunk of rock doing the same dance the planets at Sol do. It’s about ninety million miles out, like Earth. Like Mercury it shows one face to the stars and one to, well, what would be a sun if we had one. It’s got enough mass left for just under Earth-normal g and spews just enough of itself up on a constant enough basis in those big bubbling eruptions to create atmo. Don’t think about breathing it. It’s mostly ethane, they say, nothing our lungs can process, or our skin for that matter, but you need the pressure pushing down just as much as you need the gravity so the techs score it a win.

They say Nadir might have been the core of a Jupiter-sized gas giant once-upon-a-time. Now it’s heatside and darkside and it looks like a half-eaten snow cone. Technically Earth has terraformed worse places than this but they all have something Nadir doesn’t.

Ushers, stand to, said the overcom. Alphanumeric groups to disembark in primary arrival pattern. Take all precautions.

They call us Ushers. I don’t think it’s meant to be ironic. Certainly it’s not jokey. There’s not much smiling on Nadir. Not much to smile about.

We get outfitted with the protection suits, assigned a bunk, a cubby and our list of duties and safety precautions; the rest is pretty much clockwork. The transports come at their assigned times; we stand by until the doors open, wait until the border walls rise up to keep the worst of the wind at bay and then, when they come down the planks, we take charge of our specific clusters.

There’s no difference between them. They’re broken into groups of fifty, one Usher per, then herded like the cattle they are into the processing node.

Whatever they were back on Earth or whatever colony world spawned them, by the time they find Nadir, they are just remnants. Not really human anymore aside from their basic physical resemblance to their old species, they’re really just the implications of people, the last whispered memory.

The girl I’d noticed ended up in my group, still nothing special to her beyond the caprice in my own mind that drew me to her in the first place. Closer now, I could pull out a few more things, minimum clues to her past that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have bothered to catalogue.

She’d been youngish, maybe as young as twenty-nine. Someone had molded her long hanks of black hair into the regulation bun on the back of her head. Her skin was chalky gray behind the plexi bag that made up her hood, giving her the appearance of having been sculpted. Her coversuit, so much less protection against Nadir than my own bulky construction, seemed to hang on her skeletal body like a shroud. The codes on her ident badge said she was from Europa. Maybe she was somebody’s mom. Maybe she was a sister. She was definitely a daughter and that was the gist.

Now, remember, please, that none of this was remotely unique. She was, despite my singling her out, nearly identical to the other forty-nine empty vessels in her cluster. Even their genders and original ethnicities had been subsumed into the uniform not-black-not-white pallor shared by their fellows.

Why don’t they wear the same protective gear that we Ushers do? That would be the question most prominent in most minds seeing us first, standing like little siege towers, our bulky metallic armor proof against the elements and then seeing them, an army of ghosts, shambling forward in their cloaks of plastic. You’d think they were statutes or mannequins except they each wore a simple rebreather to prevent asphyxiation.

They don’t wear protection because they don’t need it. The will never leave Nadir. Their bodies still have to eat and breathe for a little longer and their skin can’t take the acid content of the winds so we give them just enough to keep them all in one piece before Diving. After? Well.

None of them looked up. None of them looked at any of us or at each other. They stood at something like a slouching form of attention, neither anticipating nor dreading the words that would put them in motion again.

Welcome to Nadir, I said. My voice always sounded as though it were being pulled through a sieve when the communications filter got hold of it. Follow me and we’ll get you processed.

I didn’t have to look to see if they would.

Processing takes less time now than it did when Nadir was first colonized. There are more Ushers now, for one thing, and the number of Divers topped out at a half a million a year long before I signed on.

The place works like a machine, ticking them in and out like a clockwork toy. The weirdest thing is that no one predicted how many people would opt for the Dive once the opportunity presented. There are just so many of us now. Human beings, I mean. Hundreds of trillions.

We’ve terraformed and colonized all of the Sol system. Hell, the Jovians spent thirty odd years claiming they were their own separate nation due to all the people living on those damned moons.

Proxima Centauri is ours. The Numeric systems, Aleph through Nod. Yeah, there are a lot of us spread out across the galaxy and that’s not even counting the various asteroid confederacies and corporate station-states.

With all that forging outward and happy breeding going on it stands to reason that there would be a few who wanted something different. Even if only one percent of one percent of us wanted out of the normal flow, you’re still talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe even millions.

There was a wonk out here a couple years back, a poly-psych guy doing some university study. He had this theory that the people who take the Dive are sort of a safety valve for the rest of us. They opt out of the normal flow so that we can all dig in that much deeper. When I asked him how the Ushers fit in to his model he went all quiet and folded up inside himself. Barry. His name was Barry.

The point is, once travel to Nadir hit peak capacity back in the ‘50s, it’s held steady and so has the army of Ushers it takes to get the Divers where they’re going.

There’s another reason processing doesn’t take long. Most of the work is done back home, long before the Divers set foot on their transports, much less Nadir. They leave most of themselves behind with only the final formalities falling to us.

We take and erase their names from the System. We take and erase their biometrics.