Earth 8: A Sci Fi Short

By Tomi Kimura

Your second chance begins now.

In an alternate world where memories are saved and played on Memorama, a man cannot escape the past. An encounter with Hitmonk at a sushi train gives him the keys to another life; to find his dead daughter in a parallel universe (Earth 8). For the second chance, he must kill his double in 24 hours.

Earth 8 is an action detective-thriller with a fast-paced, volatile, and human pulse. It is cinematic, terse, and hits hard with it’s third-act reveal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tomi Kimura
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370012862

Book preview

01 Phantoms & Drones

02 Memorama & Chill

03 Sushi Train of Thought

04 Azure Blue

05 Earth 8, Unit 9/128

06 Head in the Gutter

07 Other Side of the Coin

08 Cherry Red

09 Where Are You?

10 Cowfish

11 Cherry Red Chevy

12 Breach

13 Knock…

14 Multipol

15 The Road Back

16 Elevator Music

CHAPTER 1

Phantoms & Drones

Your second chance begins now. Imagine as if you were a drone camera, flying through the sky, passing the fringes of the city from above. The streets, barely visible in the smog.

You narrow down on a small block of apartments in a sprawling inner-city suburb with an unremarkable name.

You fly through a poorly manicured garden. The main door to the block is open. You pass a horrible painting selected by strata. You climb a flight of stairs, then hover in front of a door before passing through a keyhole, trespassing down a corridor, moving quietly through a dark apartment.

One room is lit up. The light pouring beneath the door.

You enter, hidden, looking over the shoulder of a man, whose face is reflected in the mirror: smooth and glistening and full of life. The murky depths of the soul, protrude only in the eyes. He turns to a towel suddenly.

James Speer removed the face-towel from his face. His mind was always exploring the periphery of his setting from another angle.

The one bedroom apartment was frugally furnished.

There were no pictures on the walls.

There was a narrow desk with a rose gold clock which struck 14. A white throw stained with vegemite-flavoured chocolate was strewn over a lemon-pink leather couch.

Speer walked between rooms. The abrupt southerly change was refreshing through the kitchen window.

The sink was a mess. Speer’s hands trembled as he scraped uneaten egg off the plate. He was making good progress.

Speer thought he heard—

Just the chink of plates in the sink.

His senses were wound up from living alone, not including Kate.

Speer turned suddenly. Something pricked the back of his neck.

A DTC drone hovered over the dirty kitchen tiles, scanning him and indexing the encounter. Speer held his gaze on it, otherwise it would come back. He hadn’t seen this one before. It was mining for data, from his preferred choice of product to recording his blink rate and satisfaction levels. This one was graffitied like an alleyway in Arcadia, and had been collected by a baseball bat or two, the only modern day reason to own one.

The projector flickered. An ad played. It was Beth, his ex-wife, projected. Speer swelled with panic, despair, love. This must have been the new digital product that could play back footage from your eyes.

He thought her to be real. She spoke with