Conversations at the Dynamo

By JP Lantern

Pollux is an engineer at the dynamo, the terraforming center of Mars. Completely alone in the mountain engine and stuck well past the standard length of duty of three months, strange visions begin presenting to him.

First they are simply images, but soon they transform into what seem as living apparitions of workers from the past and the future. In a series of letters to his estranged sister, he tries to lay out the case for these visions being part of reality, and not his own manifesting insanity. But could all these visions be sparked from his traumatic experiences fighting in the frontier against a band of raiders?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JP Lantern
• Release date: Nov 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310994807

JP Lantern

J.P. Lantern lives in the Midwestern US, though his heart and probably some essential parts of his liver and pancreas and whatnot live metaphorically in Texas. He writes speculative science fiction short stories, novellas, and novels which he has deemed "rugged," though he would also be fine with "roughhewn" because that is a terrific and wonderfully apt word.Full of adventure and discovery, these stories examine complex people in situations fraught with conflict as they search for truth in increasingly violent and complicated worlds.

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Conversations at the Dynamo

by J.P. Lantern

Copyright © 2013 by J.P. Lantern

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the author.

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There is a man studying letters and documents on a desk in a small office. The walls are made of stone, the broken and gutted innards of a mountain. There is what appears to be a sort of spectrograph spinning on his table, powered by a small ball of lightning caught in a vase. It is by this light that he works. He appears interested, excited or perhaps scared, as he moves from one document to the next. He is matching names, comparing handwriting, finding the chain through the documents he has found.

My dearest sister,

Buried so deep in this mountain, I am certain that I am safe, but even so I fear for my sanity.

Last night, I awoke from my sleep to see a carousel of lights rotating in the darkness. It was crafted from the dark, but not, like a shadow holding congress with itself, corralling tendrils into shapes. I am disturbed.

I walked inside its spinning motion, thinking to disturb the apparition, the hallucination, the whatever-it-was, but it remained. Its sparkling lights shifted and melded over my fingers in syrupy trails. I do not know what to make of this. Inside of it, I saw that it was not a carousel, but a type of gear for some machination that I was unaware of ever existing in this place.

Is it a vision I am receiving? It is an actual appearance of something otherworldly? Is it madness?

My own fears are not the reason for this letter. From what I have