The Future Below

By Graham Storrs

This is a collection of fifteen science fiction stories long and short, near and far future, high and low tech. A few have appeared previously in sci-fi magazines or anthologies but many have never been seen before. Some, like Skyball and Two Fools in Love, deal with people on the edge in a dystopian future. Others, like Finding the Future and Gays and Commies, deal with the way hope defines us even when things look their bleakest. Three of these stories are set in the author's Timesplash universe, the rest take place in worlds more or less plausible. All of them are about people like us, struggling to find love or salvation or even just a place to grow in a future they didn't make – just as we do now, in the future in which we find ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Storrs
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992498849

Graham Storrs

Graham Storrs is a science fiction writer who lives miles from anywhere in rural Australia with his wife and a Tonkinese cat. He has published many short stories in magazines and anthologies as well as three children's science books and a large number of academic and technical pieces in the fields of psychology, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.He has published a number of sci-fi novels, in four series; Timesplash (three books), the Rik Sylver sci-fi thriller series (three books), the Canta Libre space opera trilogy. and the Deep Fracture trilogy. He has also published an augmented reality thriller, "Heaven is a Place on Earth", a sci-fi comedy novel, "Cargo Cult", a dark comedy time travel novel, "Time and Tyde", and an urban sci-fi thriller, "Mindrider."

Book preview

The Future Below

A Short Story Collection

by

Graham Storrs

eBook Edition, Copyright © 2015, Graham Storrs

ISBN: 978-0-9924988-4-9

Book design by Graham Storrs.

Published by Canta Libre

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Dedication

My first foray into fiction was as a small child when my sister and I would make up long, fantastical tales, taking turns to tell the next chapter. So this one is for my sister, Jacqueline Johnson, in fond recollection of those happy times.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the various editors who worked on the stories in this collection, without whom this book would be full of embarrassing mistakes. Of course, any embarrassing mistakes that remain, are all my own work. I'd also like to thank the various people who read these stories and commented on earlier drafts. You all know who you are.

The title of this collection is from the poem Patterson by William Carlos Williams. The full quote is, The past above, the future below and the present pouring down.

Table of Contents

Skyball

Party Time

The Shouter and the Chanter

Signs of Life

Two Fools in Love

Special

M'Aidez

Swan Song

Gays and Commies

After the Party

Finding the Future

The City

Snowy

Too Late

Out of Time

About the Author

Skyball

(This story first appeared in Bewildering Stories, Feb. 2009.)

I threw the skyball down and staggered back from it, my head spinning. Already I despised myself. It hit the ground with a solid thud and lay still. For a moment I felt a surge of panic. What if I'd broken it? Then what would I do? But I knew it would be OK. The damned things were indestructible. And anyway, who cared?

No. That couldn't be me talking. God I loved that ball! I felt great! Everything was spinning and my head was floating, opening up to the Universe. I heard the Voices, the beautiful chanting, and joy filled my soul. I didn't want this. I didn't want the ecstasy and the glorious light but, as I drifted out of myself towards it, I opened my arms to embrace it once more.

I woke up on my office floor. My body ached and trembled. I clutched my desk and climbed to my feet. I didn't quite make it all the way and ended up slumped against the chair. Involuntarily, my eyes sought the skyball and my hand grabbed it and pulled it to me. Despite what I knew, I felt a rush of relief to have it safe again. I'd been weak again. I'd used the ball. I hated myself for that and yet I clutched the ball to my chest as if my life depended on it.

You're awake then?

It was a young woman's voice, tentative and needy. It made me jump and push back against the chair. Jesus, Lins, you scared me. How long have you been there?

Oh, you know.

I looked at her, carefully getting to my feet. She was a scrawny little thing in a short cotton dress and no shoes. She looked grimy, as if she hadn't washed for weeks. Pretty, in a gaunt, hollow-eyed kind of way. I think she'd been one of Professor Leitner's students before he Ascended but I wasn't sure. People just wandered onto the campus these days. Like people had just wandered off it.

You said not to Commune with the Gods any more. She looked at me accusingly.

Did you stop? I asked, curious.

She shook her head.

You should, I told her. I was hungry. How long was it since I'd last eaten? Come on, I need to walk this off, clear my head.

She understood and padded along after me as I walked down the empty corridors and out through the big entrance hall. As usual the campus was almost deserted. Algal scum had grown over the ornamental water features. An abandoned car was rusting among the weeds on the quad.

Is there anywhere still doing food?

She took the lead, stepping over broken paving stones, taking us out onto the streets and toward what was once a shopping mall. There, under the shelter of the mall's gigantic awning, a soup kitchen was doing a brisk trade among the quiet people who gathered around it. We joined a queue and shuffled forward.

Doctor Lyle, Lins! How are you doing? The guy doling out soup and bread looked familiar but I was having trouble putting names to faces these days. Still kicking against the world's salvation? he asked, cheerily.

What?

He turned to Lins. How come you hooked up with this joker? You know he wants us all to go back to the bad old days before the Salvator came?

Lins gave a faint, polite smile. I frowned at him. Do you know me?

Grinning, he handed me my food. Sure! I took your course in tensor calculus a few years ago. You maybe don't remember me. When the Salvator came I did the smart thing and dumped all that science stuff. I joined the Church. One of the first recruits!

Hearing the pride in his voice, anger suddenly welled up in me but I fought it down. I had questions I needed to ask. How come you Church types are not— Not what? Shambling wrecks? Spaced-out derelicts? Slowly losing their minds, their intellects rotting away, their lives ebbing, waning, fading out? How come you're not like us?

He laughed. Laughed! It was a sound I hadn't heard in ages. The Church looks after us, so we can look after you.

Yes, I can see that, but how do they look after you? You use the skyball don't you?

That took the smile off his face. 'Course I do! You think I don't accept the Salvator's Gift? You think I'm some kind of anti-salvationist like you?

I met his irritation with more of my own. Then what keeps your mind together? What stops you drifting down like all these people? I waved a hand at the crowd around us. Although I'd been holding up the queue, no-one had complained, no-one even seemed to pay it much attention. If the stall were to shut up there and then, people would just drift away, accepting their fate. I'd seen it happen.

Faith, brother, he said, smugly. Faith in the Good Gods and the Salvator who is their Messenger.

I glared into his complacent eyes for a long while then turned and left him. He didn't know anything. Nobody knew anything. It was pointless looking for answers among people. Only the Gods had the answers. Only They could tell me why They were doing this to us.

And They weren't answering my calls. Not yet anyway.

I realised Lins was following me still and I stopped to look at her. I'm going to talk to the Gods, Lins. Do you want to come? She looked up at me, a little, anxious frown on her face. Don't worry, I assured her. They never listen.

She brought her skyball out from a pocket in her dress and held it up. But I shook my head and put my hand on hers, pushing it gently down again. That's not what I meant.

They said – in the days when there were still newspapers and websites – that every person on Earth had been given their own individual skyball. They said the Salvator made them just pour out of the empty air into silos and cargo ships so we could distribute them around the world. Billions upon billions of them. By then the hysteria about our wonderful Visitor was at fever pitch and people were 'converting' to the new religion in mass rallies all around the globe. To have this god-like being among us, to have it tell us we were saved, that our sins were forgiven, that the Kingdom of Heaven really was ours for the asking, unleashed a flood of pent up need everywhere. And when people discovered that the skyballs gave them direct and irrefutable experience of the Gods themselves, there were no more questions asked, no more doubts expressed, nothing but acceptance and devotion.

Except from people like me. Anti-salvationists. Dumb jerks who could look the gift horse in the mouth and ask it for its credentials. When I got my skyball, I tried to take it apart to see how it worked but I couldn't get inside. I saw my friends, my neighbours, my own wife, Mary, taking hit after hit from the damned things, zoned out for hours while they had profound religious experiences, and every day growing more and more listless, careless, tired and vague. Their bodies grew thinner as they forgot to eat, dirtier as they neglected themselves. Their wits grew duller – to the point where colleagues whose minds I had admired and respected talked only in platitudes, accepted anything they were told without analysis, and could no longer understand half of what I said to them. Eventually, most would wander off. Just disappear.

The skyballs were addictive. That was obvious from the start. But it was years before people started dying in great numbers. People got to the point where they couldn't move, couldn't feed themselves, they just kept using the skyball to keep themselves high until they didn't have the strength to lift one any more. They'd lay where they fell and let themselves die. People called it 'Ascending'.

I wouldn't use mine. I kept it in the physics lab and worked on understanding it. No-one minded me using any equipment I liked. No-one else wanted it.

It was about a year ago that Mary ascended. For months I'd bee trying to stop her. I'd hide her skyball but she'd always find herself another. I pleaded with her and begged. She had been a psychiatrist. She knew full well what she was doing to herself – at least in the beginning – but she couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop. She told me it was something wonderful. She told me the Gods were good. She said it was all part of the plan, that she was on her way to eternal bliss. From the outside, I could only see it as the sad rationalisations of a junkie who needed her fix at all costs.

I tried locking her up but she always got out. When I tied her to the bed, trying to make her quit cold turkey, her screaming and raving went on for two weeks until she was starved and exhausted and on the point of death. So I gave her her skyball back and at least after that she would eat if I fed her and didn't look at me with hatred or horror any more.

The day she ascended, I woke to find her high and she stayed that way for eighteen hours straight. By then, I knew it was coming. I sat beside her and held her hand and wept for her until I realised her hand had grown cold.

It was sometime in the days of grief and pain that followed that I first used my own skyball. I looked deep into its pearly grey depths, they way I'd seen Mary do so many times, and asked it for relief from my suffering.

And relief came.

It was a stupid moment of weakness and every time that I picked up my ball after that, giving myself to the unutterable joy of communing with the Gods, I cursed the day I ever started. I used to think I could quit but I soon realised that I couldn't. The very thought of life without that beautiful escape made my stomach clench and my hand reach for my skyball. It was killing me, destroying my mind, but what could I do?

Well, perhaps one thing.

I approached the lab buildings from the back, taking a small detour to the generator shed. Lins hovered in the doorway as I went in and started up the generators, humming a tuneless little series of notes. The big machines growled and whined into life, drowning her out. I breathed a small sigh of relief as I always did. The city's power had gone out nearly a year ago but the labs had backup generators. I