Welcome to the Future

By Christina Escamilla

What will the future hold?

Sometimes bleak, sometimes inspiring, these twenty tales seek to answer the very question that civilization has pondered for centuries. From a world where specialized eyes shape the way reality is perceived to fabricated simulations that are designed to allow full control over an augmented reality.
This book takes you to the far reaches of the universe to the remnants of a forgotten Earth.

In short, these twenty tales boldly answer the question of "what if" with a simple:

Welcome to the Future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christina Escamilla
• Release date: Apr 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991529353

Christina Escamilla

Christina Escamilla is a horror author that loves diving straight into psychologically haunting themes. When she isn’t disturbing the masses, she can be seen exploring obscure local spots, communing with nature, or adding more strangeness to her ever growing oddity collection.Christina is enrolled in the Creative Writing program at the University of Houston where she is hard at work on her senior honors thesis, “Exploring Horror Narratives in Contemporary Literature.”To learn more about her visit: www.horrorqueen.net

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Christina Escamilla Publishing

Cover design Copyright © 2014 Mallory Rock

All rights reserved.

Print Edition ISBN: 0-9915293-5-9

Print Edition ISBN-13: 978-0-9915293-5-3

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyrights:

A Western Wind Blows © 2012 J.D. Petersen

Only a Crack in a Black Glass Wall © 2014 Rachael Acks

Simulated Perfection © 2014 Kimberly Sams

Patient 703 is Showing Signs of Agitation © 2014 R.M. Phyllis

Waterproof © 2014 Sabrina Amaya Hoke

Daylight’s End © 2014 Bob Brown

Lost in Translation © Lynette Mejía

In Line at the DMYV © 2014 Bria Burton

Seeing the Future © 2014 Hunter Liguore

Retirement of Captain Archibald Moore © 2014 Wendy Nikel

Sail © 2013 Natalya Bakay

Customer Issue © Sylvia Anna Hivén

The Breath of Life © 2014 Christina Escamilla

Morning Didn’t Come © E.I. Simbaya

Zombi 6: Salvation © 2014 James Park

No Home but War: © Pedro Iniguez

Rudy’s Arm © 2014 Stephanie E. De Haven

Blood Blooms © 2014 Nicole Tanquary

Divorced from Reality © 2014 Robert Bagnall

Beyond © Marc Sorondo

DEDICATION

For my father, who taught me that life is built in exploration

|| ---CONTENTS____ ||||

A Western Wind Blows

Only a Crack in a Black Glass Wall

Simulated Perfection

Patient 703 is Showing Signs of Agitation

WaterProof

Daylight’s End

Lost in Translation

In Line at the DMYV

Seeing the Future

Retirement of Captain Archibald Moore

Sail

Customer Issue

The Breath of Life

Morning Didn’t Come

Zombi 6: Salvation

No Home But War

Rudy’s Arm

Blood Blooms

Divorced From Reality

Beyond

About the Authors

|| ---A Western Wind Blows____ ||

- J.D. PetersEn -

They waited quietly in the living room for death to roll in. There would be nothing much to see. No galloping horsemen or fiery serpents, no parting clouds or heavenly choirs, nothing biblical at all, not even trumpets. Borne by the wind, it would arrive like a last fell season, silent and inevitable. Still, they wanted to mark the occasion.

Neville’s calculations showed death would arrive around 6.30pm, and they had spent the day in preparation. Margrethe had decorated the living room with a mixture of Christmas tack and New Year streamers - nothing too fancy, but enough to indicate an effort. Without electrical power, an old hand-cranked gramophone provided their only entertainment. They had only one worn record that played over and over again: La Marseillaise.

Neville looked at his watch. It’s just about time, Margrethe.

Oh dear, how it flies. She rose and hurried to the kitchen. Moments later she returned with a bottle of Bollinger, a never-opened anniversary gift to mark their fifty years of marriage.

I thought this would be appropriate. She handed him the bottle.

Splendid idea, Margrethe.

Should we move to the balcony?

Yes, why don’t we.

From their sixth floor apartment they could almost see the ocean far to the west. Below them, the estate sprawled dull and lifeless, but above, the setting sun turned the autumn sky beautifully crimson. A few gulls soared lazily on the thermal updrafts between the concrete high-risers. Besides the gulls they had seen no life for days. People had long since left the western shores, hoping vainly to cheat death for another week or two.

Here we go, my dear. Neville popped the champagne and poured two flutes to the rim.

What a wonderful evening.

A pity the children couldn’t be here, said Neville.

Well, they have their own families now, best they spend it with them.

Indeed.

They sipped the champagne in silence as La Marseillaise flowed from the living room and death passed unnoticeable from east. Not a sudden warlike death, but a slow lingering decline that began that day shortly after 6:30pm. How long it would take was anyone’s guess, but in most cases less than a week. Death had already cleared the Pacific and most of Eastern Asia, now it was North America’s turn.

Should we go back inside? She rubbed her bare arms. I’m getting a chill.

I can get your cardigan.

No thanks, I’d rather go inside.

They returned to the living room and Margrethe lit a few candles to ward off the evening dim. Sitting next to each other on the couch, they finished the Bollinger while dusk turned to darkness. La Marseillaise stuck in a scratch: gloire est arrivé. gloire est arrivé. gloire est arrive. Neville got up, reset the needle and gave the gramophone a few cranks. He returned to the couch and pulled out the revolver.

It is time Margrethe.

Oh dear, how it flies.

|| ---Only a Crack in a Black Glass Wall____ ||

- Rachael Acks -

When my grandfather died, tumors ringed his throat in a purple, bulging necklace strung together with spidery veins. His breath was faint, no more than a whisper of air able to squeeze through his throat, but he crooked his finger to draw me closer. His right eye opened and still glittered with life and intelligence even as the left sagged shut.

I leaned in so close my ear touched his lips. He could only move half his mouth, slurring the words out in a bare whisper. I had to plug my other ear with one finger just to hear him over the wind battering at our house's sheet metal roof.

The Idea, he whispered, swallowing painfully every few words. It's yours... now Shiloh... you have to... take care. Of the family.

I will, I promise. Just like you did. My throat felt tight, but it wasn't cancer for me. At least not yet.

He tried to laugh, a horrible, painful sound. Not like me. Better. So much.

Other people might have protested, might have pretended that there was some chance he'd last another day. I didn't want to wish that on him. This day had been a long time coming, since he'd lost the feeling in the left side of his body, since he'd lost the ability to swallow. I told myself I'd done all my crying then, watching thin soup dribble from his mouth as he choked.

But I still felt like I had plenty of tears left. Don't worry, Grandpa. Rest easy.

Go today.

I reached over the bed and twitched the corner of the curtain aside. It was dark out, the blasted landscape softened by moonlight into a rolling, frozen ocean, but false dawn already washed out the stars in the east. Not today. It's already too late. But tonight, soon as the sun starts going down, I'll go. I promise.

He didn't answer, and I leaned in close, pressing my ear against his lips. He didn't breathe, either. I took care to pull his blanket up to his chin, even though he wasn't going to catch a chill, not now. Then I turned off the small LED that filled the room with thin, bluish light, and shut the door behind me.

If I wanted to make good on my promise, I needed to sleep. Sleep, and not cry into my pillow. But first, I needed to let Mama know that Grandpa had passed.

The wind blew strongly from the south, across the barren, muddy flat I've been told was once a harbor. Now it was silted in and filled with the rusting skeletons of ships long since stripped of their useful fixtures. The unhealthy mustard yellow soil dried inland, becoming soft drifts filled with chemical stink.

The sun was sullen and red on the horizon, and I trudged with my head bowed toward it. The winter wind was punishing. I was covered head to toe with every piece of spare clothing in the house and the cold still gnawed. I could barely see through my scratched goggles, barely breathe through my filter mask with its filters jerry-rigged with layers of paper.

Ten miles inland, matte black walls topped with a dome thrust up from the barren ground. The walls were a ring, bigger than the biggest town I've ever been to; I'd tried circling it once and barely gotten a quarter way around before I had to turn back. The walls were smooth as glass. Grandpa had told me that once upon a time they were even mirrored, but the scouring wind took all the polish off and left them frosted with tiny scratches. He'd been a boy when the walls were built, and a young man not even my age when the dome was completed. He was also one of the few that had ever known its name, and I remembered it for him now: Hyperion Data Link Site.

Everyone just called it the Dalsi now. I guess because it took too much effort to say the full name. Or maybe most didn't know what the hell it even meant.

Grandpa's family had lived all right for a while from the construction money, but after that ran out there was nothing to do but scramble for junk and work cleanup sites like everyone else, until he had his Idea. That's how I always thought of it, Idea-with-a-capital-I, like it was holy inspiration.

I had the Idea wrapped in a ragged square of cloth that had once been a blanket, tucked between my shirts so it pressed against my chest. It was tiny, just a flat little box, but the more powerful a thing is, the more innocent it often seems at first glance.

I found the stone cairn that Grandpa had built half a mile from Hyperion's walls under the shelter of a stringy, diseased tree, and gave the sky a quick look to make sure there were no flyers. Nothing but walls, barely distinguishable from the black sky, and bare drifts of dirt. I sprinted across the open plain, kicking up puffs of dust for the wind to rip away, and scrambled up to the wall, plastering myself against it.

My fingers shook as I felt the wall for the little crack that was our lifeline, as if Grandpa's fading life had been the only thing keeping it hidden. My gloves caught the edge of it, and my sigh of relief was an engine's roar in my ears.

The important thing to understand was that the black walls weren't meant to keep us and the poisonous air out, though they did that well enough. No, they were there to keep data in, because Crawlers like me and Grandpa couldn't even pay off our inherited debts, let alone come up with the money for the sheer luxury as having the network at our fingertips. The network was all translated by satellite tight beams, and the walls prevented all unauthorized transmissions.

That crack was our secret way in, our back door. And Grandpa's Idea was our ears, to listen and remember everything that went on inside, all that beautiful information. Information could tell us where the next jobs might show up. Information was food, money, and survival. Everything.

I carefully unspooled the thin wire that served as an antenna and eased it into the crack, then pulled the box of the Idea out of my shirt and plugged it in. I pressed the power button, waited for the little LED to glow orange, showing the machine was alive. The drives in the box spun up, vibrating unevenly in my hands. I hunkered down, let my eyes drift half shut. Staying in one place all night made my legs and back ache, but I could do it, hold still and barely breathing until the box ran out of memory and its drives spun down.

When Grandpa was healthier, we used to press our foreheads together, whisper back and forth. He loved riddles and word games and puns. I sang songs for him, since I had an ear for music and he didn't.

Now it was just me. I pressed my forehead against the cold, unyielding wall and sang Grandpa's favorite songs to his Idea as it softly whirred in my hands.

The Dalsi's network must have been having a busy night; Grandpa's Idea went silent after only five hours. Gave me plenty of time to scurry back home, brushing my footsteps away with a dead branch as I went.

My home town of Nantucket was a cluster of rusted-out metal shacks and ancient equipment; once upon a time, well over a century ago, there'd been farmers. But poisoned fields yielded only poisoned food, and you couldn't grow anything edible outside any more. Nantucket became just another depot for sorting rubbish, recycling, toxic cleanup, the same as everywhere Crawlers lived.

My house was empty except for Auntie. Her left leg got chewed off by one of the shredders at the recycling plant before I was born, but she still got around okay using a crutch Grandpa made for her out of pipes and wiring. She kept things clean and did all the cooking. She came out of the house before I even finished knocking on the little metal plate by the door, and used a broom to sweep the stinking dirt off of me before handing me a bag for my clothes.

The breeze made needles that cut through my gray, shapeless long underwear as I stripped down. There wasn't anyone outside to spy on me, and I was too tired to care. It wasn't all that warm inside, but it was a big enough difference that I felt a light headed, almost feverish.

Auntie, tiny, sturdy, and nut brown, enveloped me in a hug, pressed her dry lips to my cheek. I'm always so afraid when you go out. I was praying for you, the whole time.

I laughed. It's safer than being in the middens, I hear.

Auntie laughed as well. After this many years, she had a sense of humor about it. Maybe, but there's nothing out there that wishes a body harm. It's all accidents, nothing malicious. Not like the Dalsi.

I pulled my hood off and began working my fingers through hair gone crackling with static. Think I'm going to need you to trim this mop again soon.

That's a real shame, to be sure. You've got such pretty hair. Your mama and I used to braid it when you were a baby.

I shrugged. My hair is curly, and so dark brown it's almost black. It's also a damn inconvenience. Don't really see the light of day often enough to matter. You pray for Grandpa?

'Course I did. But I saved my better prayers for you, Shiloh. Your Grandpa doesn't need them anymore.

They bury him yet?

Last night, after you left. Auntie offered me the heel of a bread loaf smothered in jam. We thought you wouldn't mind.

We said our goodbyes when he could still say 'em. Tears prickled at my eyes all the same. I told myself it was just the dry from wearing a filter mask all night.

I headed to the little closet that served as my work space and my sleep space, but paused in the door. And I don't think the Dalsi is malicious, Auntie. I think... I just think no one cares.

That's worse.

Yeah. It is. I shut the door behind me.

Bread in hand, I powered up the two ancient computers Grandpa had salvaged and beaten into something that sort of worked. My contribution to the mess was a small, flat display that only had one crack in it. It was a major improvement over the old TV that Grandpa used before. I plugged the Idea into the computers and carefully pecked out two commands on the wobbly keyboard.

Everything was already set up, with code written by Grandpa; that code had been my version of story books, growing up. The Idea listened to all of the network traffic, but it only recorded things tied to our local area. It didn’t have the processing power to do anything more sophisticated than that. Then the old computers searched through everything on the Idea’s drives, looking for words and phrases that could lead us to better jobs, one of the increasingly rare aide shipments, things like that. Once the computers were done grinding their way through the data, it was my job to see if any of it was actually useful, making me the final filter.

Most everything would be porn, I already knew that. Maybe when you had enough food and a good roof over your head, there wasn't much else to think about.

I nibbled on the bread carefully, trying to avoid the tooth I had just going loose, and paged through the results as they came up. The Iron Works showed up a lot, though I didn't see any rhyme or reason to it. It might be nothing, or it could mean new orders were being put in, and a place where work was urgent would pay a little better.

I sucked a little jam off my thumb and pulled a piece of slate from under the desk, found a stub of chalk, and wrote down Iron Works in wobbly chicken scratch.

I left that slate hanging outside my door when all the data finished processing, with two other places added to the list. The cracked alarm clock I kept in the closet said I had maybe six hours before it was time to go back to the Dalsi and do it all over again. I turned off the computers and stretched out on the floor, my feet only inches away from the silent boxes to take advantage of the warmth they radiated.

My first day of being in charge of the Idea, of helping us all survive. It was big, too big to sleep on right away, and I couldn't help but think of Grandpa, his funeral. I tried to imagine them all, standing around the mound of contaminated dirty they'd covered Grandpa with, tried to think of Mama's face or the little scar that puckered the skin next to my brother Mika's eye. But all I could really imagine were five filter masks, the lenses fogged with scratches.

It was just me and Auntie again when I crawled out of my closet, back aching and neck kinked because I'd slept strange. It was always going to be just me and Auntie now, because I slept when the rest of the family was working, did my own work while they slept. It was lonely, but Grandpa had done it and never complained. I wasn't going to either.

Auntie offered me a cup of soup that smelled of onions. I didn't really like onions, but I liked a snarling stomach and a headache less. Make sure Mama sees the board before they go to bed, alright?

I will. Auntie smiled. And I'll pray for you. There's a storm blowing in, so you be careful.

If it's anything like last night, I won't have to be out too long. So pray for that. I gulped the rest of the soup into a burning line down my throat.

If anything, the drives in the Idea filled up even faster than they had the night before. There wasn't even false dawn in the sky when I got home; just inky black with a few stars wavering in the smoggy air, the streaks of satellites. Auntie was still asleep, which meant the time wasn't so much ridiculous early as stupid early. Teeth chattering, I undressed outside and bagged my gear alone.

I huddled as close to the computers as I could, sucking up every scrap of heat they gave off as they did their slow churn. Even more about the Iron Works today, column after column of hits. I scrawled those two words on the slate again, and put a star next to it for good measure. There wouldn't be so many talking about it if there weren't some big project about to come up, and most of the mentions seemed to be in private