The Villain & The Golden Apple

By Ken Doggett

A story collection: one novette, a short story, and a satirical short-short.

 

In "THE VILLAIN," the Enclave of the Villainy has few rules, but Marcus Legend manages to break one, putting his life at risk. At first, using his power for just the "party displays" let his practice his skill in creating Illusions.  Eventually he violates the rules of society itself, and after years on the run, he must finally use his illusions and all of his skill to defend himself against its power.

"THE SECRET OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING" is a short-short that explains pretty much all of it, our whole existence.  But don't take it too seriously.

"THE GOLDEN APPLE" is a prize asteroid fought over by both Earth and its former colony, Mars. But it appears that the squabbling factions have crossed paths with the wrong man. After he loses everything to the war, he finds a drastic way to end it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutledge House
• Release date: Nov 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781386357018

Ken Doggett

Science Fiction author Ken Doggett has been writing for many years, beginning with short stories published in prominent and not-so-prominent Science Fiction magazines: Space & Time and Shayol, among others. Now, like many modern writers, he has chosen to directly publish his novels and short-story collections.  He was born in Atlanta in 1945, grew up in next-door DeKalb County, and developed a love for reading right after he discovered the school library. He read almost everything, but was especially fascinated by the fantastic tales of spaceships, space exploration, and conflict among the stars. He soon became familiar with the writers who would influence his own work: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, John W. Campbell, and later, Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison. He graduated from Avondale High School just outside Atlanta, and after a stint in the U.S. Army assigned as a radio mechanic to the 2nd Armored Division at Ft. Hood, Texas, he worked in the field of electronics and electronic technology. After many years of reading all of those great Science Fiction stories, he decided, "I can do that," and wrote some of his own. In July 1981 he sold his first published story, Timestopper, to Amazing Stories. Eventually, with more of his stories reaching publication, he became a veteran writer in the Science Fiction genre.  But he has done more in the arts than write a few stories. He once thought he could draw and paint pictures, and he created and sold a few landscape paintings, both oil and acrylic. You can view some of these on his website. He currently lives in a rural farming community in Morgan County, Georgia, where he writes full time. 

Book preview

THE VILLAIN

& THE GOLDEN APPLE

KEN DOGGETT

Copyright information

Stories and cover art Copyright © 2022 by Ken Doggett

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in these stories are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.  All rights reserved

http://www.kendoggett.weebly.com

Table of Contents

THE VILLAIN

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

THE SECRET OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING

THE GOLDEN APPLE

About the author

THE VILLAIN

Originally published in Space & Time Magazine, Copyright © 1987 by Ken Doggett

Revised © 2022 by Ken Doggett

CHAPTER 1

The gathering was small, and yet the bigroom, traditional in all communes, seemed barely big enough to hold it.  Five-year-old Marcus could see only a bit of it through the partly open door because he had been restricted to the kitchen area; the communers didn’t want children running around and spoiling things.

Or even one child, and Marcus was that child, the only one in the entire commune.

But he had been here many times with his mother, and it was all familiar to him.  Most of the attendees were elderly, the rest past middle age, and all were shabbily dressed even in their finery.  Yet, draped as he was across the big chair, Marcus seemed by far the most jaded of all in spite of his youth.  He was lazing in the huge upholstered chair he had fallen into because he had nothing else to do, his legs going like pendulums as they slapped against the front of it.  But he was wondering what the new thing was going to be.  He had heard the adults talking about it, and it sounded complicated, so he didn’t understand it.  But he couldn’t stop thinking about it as he slouched against an arm of the chair while his mother loaded up a serving tray.  New things were rare in his life.

Suddenly weary, even of doing nothing, he ran his small hand back and forth over the rough-textured arm of the chair, pausing at the familiar spots of faded color and the finger-sized hole near the end where the white stuffing was visible.  Then he pounded the ragged edges of the hole flat with his tiny fist.

Be still, his mother said.  It's late.  We'll be going home soon.

She always worked hardest during the evening gatherings, but she was never a real participant, keeping mainly to herself in the small kitchen.  Her reward for this service was an unspoken agreement that she could take home a bit of the leftover food to supplement the meager supplies she was allotted.

After his mother’s admonishment Marcus resettled quietly into the chair, and gazed through the half-open door into the bigroom.  He wished to himself that he knew more about what the new thing was going to be, but his mother had said only that it was going to be in the bigroom tomorrow—

A sudden noise, like a thunderclap, startled him.  It had come from the bigroom, near the entrance door, where a thick cloud of white smoke boiled furiously.  Marcus was up instantly, and stood just inside the kitchen, watching through the door.  The smoke boiled for a moment longer, and then a dark cape became visible, swirling within an impossible wind.  Then a face—but not a face; a grayish band of dark across the front of a shiny black helmet.

Even the room had changed.  Its appearance, its mood.  The ceiling was hidden in vague darkness, foreboding, a hint of lightning in its corners.  From within the center of the whirlwind the figure muttered incantations until someone tossed him a button, which he examined and then discarded.  The incantations stopped; the smoke suddenly thickened.

The figure vanished, seemingly into the walls, and was gone.

He won't be back, the boy's mother said.  She had walked up behind him, and when he looked up at her he saw her face returning to its habitual hardness.  Slim pickings here, she added as she stepped past Marcus with the serving tray and went into the bigroom.

Even so, the crowd in the bigroom seemed excited, spoke in hushed voices.  Marcus thought for a moment that this might be the new thing his mother had told him about.  Something new for the bigroom.  But, no, that was tomorrow.  He had a thousand questions about what had just happened and she paused just long enough to answer the first.

It was a 'Villain,' she said.  But that didn't explain it.  Not nearly.  He had never heard that word before.  And his mother was too busy to answer the rest of his questions.

Eventually, though, the gathering dispersed, and she answered as many as she could while she cleaned up the kitchen and the bigroom, and all during the walk back in the warm evening air as they returned to their small dwelling at the end of the southernmost row.  Even after she had told him everything she knew about the subject he still understood very little of it—

Except the way the others had watched the Villain.

THE NEXT DAY WAS BRIGHT and sunny, and Marcus and his mother went to see the new thing in the bigroom.  His arm was stretched way up to hers as he stumbled along beside her, wanting her to carry him.  You're too old for that now, she said.

The new thing was a different wall in the bigroom.  The wall showed pictures, just like the other thing had, but the other thing was much smaller, and it was now pushed to one side, dark and discarded.  He wanted to stay and watch the big pictures, but almost everybody was looking at him—and at his mother, too.  And their faces were full of frowns—those who were looking—and when she spoke to him her voice sounded funny—Let's go home—and out they went, back into the sun.

This time he didn't ask to be carried.  And his mother didn't want to talk.  As they walked, Marcus looked up at her a few times, trying to figure out what was wrong, but neither of them spoke a word on the way back to the dwelling.  There she simply sat and stared out of the window, looking toward the dense woods beyond the commune grounds.  In one instant he thought that he understood why, but in the next he wasn't sure, and he only wanted to have her back the way she was before, even though he knew that these moods of hers would return again and again, as they always had, always suddenly, and seemingly without reason.  Maybe this time it was the frowns.  They had made him feel bad, too.

He wanted her to talk and take the mood away, so he asked her to say his name for him.  To say it out loud.

You know your name, she said finally.

I mean my whole name, he said.  It was a complicated name, and he was never able to remember all of it.  Besides, he liked to hear it spoken.  It made him feel important.

Marcus Ramsey-Legend, she told him.  And then she wouldn't talk any more.

HE COULD GET IN ALMOST whenever he wanted and watch the new thing show pictures.  Usually it was when everyone else was working—out in the fields or down at the craft shops.  He didn't know what they called the other thing, the discarded one, but he had never had much interest in watching pictures anyway.  This one was called videcom.  Now he watched everything it wanted to show him, even though he understood very little of it at first.  Some of it was in black and white—old movies, they said; very old—which made things look wonderfully different, and there were good guys and bad guys, and guys who didn't matter, and he was eventually able to distinguish almost immediately which categories each fell into.

It had to be that way.  A person who mattered was either good or evil, but he couldn't be both.  That wouldn't make any sense at all.

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY others like me? he asked.  His mother was sitting on the edge of the bed next to the window and looking out at the small patch of greenery outside.

You've been watching the videcom too much, she answered.

But why?  I don't have anybody to play with.

People live longer now, and many of them don't have children.  More children mean more mouths to feed.

Is that why don’t they like me?

She glanced at him, but turned back to the window and said nothing.  Then, after a moment, she  spoke.  "Before I got you I was supposed to get something they call permission—from the government—and I didn't.  Her voice had risen a little, then quieted.  But it's not a law, she said, even though people around here act like it is."

He understood almost none of that, so he moved on with another question.  When's my father coming back?

You don't even remember your father.

He had gray eyes, like me.

She glanced at him again, this time with a funny look, as