Chance Encounters: Three Short Stories

By Thomas Watson

A time-shared mind, a hunt for something that isn't what it seems, and an unfortunate stumble down memory lane. Three tales from sometime beyond the day after tomorrow.

"Swept Away" – All Richard wanted to do was relax and read a book. Unfortunately, Avi is out and on his own on this dark and stormy day, and his response to a sudden crisis will change Richard's life forever.

"Second Chance" – The warship Richmond has accidentally released a new life form into Jan Costa's space station. Costa must find the creature, and do so quickly, but as he and his crew search, it becomes clear to them that they have not been told all of the truth. What they seek is not what they were told to find.

"Long Time Passing" – The Commonwealth's grand star liner Edwin Teale has entered Leyra'an space on a mission of cultural exchange. Among the ship's passengers is Martin Russman, a man scarred by memories he has tried very hard to erase. But can he hide from his own past if history repeats itself?

Please note: "Second Chance" and "Long Time Passing" were previously published separately. Please check your library before downloading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Watson
• Release date: Dec 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386995180

Thomas Watson

I am a writer, amateur astronomer, and long-time fan of science fiction living in Tucson, AZ. I'm a transplanted desert rat, having come to the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest many years ago from my childhood home in Illinois. I have a B.S. in plant biology from the University of Arizona, and have in the past worked as a laboratory technician for that institution. Among many other things, I am also a student of history, natural history, and backyard horticulture.  I also cook a pretty good green chili pork stew. But most of all, I'm a writer. The art of writing is one of those matters that I find difficult to trace to a single source of inspiration in my life. Instead of an "Aha! This is it!" moment, I would say my desire to write is the cumulative effect of my life-long print addiction. My parents once teased me by claiming I learned to read before I could tie my own shoelaces. Whether or not that's true, I learned to read very early in life, and have as a reader always cast a very wide net. My bookshelves are crowded and eclectic, with fiction by C.J. Cherryh, Isaac Asimov, and Tony Hillerman, and nonfiction by Annie Dillard, Stephen Jay Gould, and Ron Chernow, among many others. It's no doubt due to my eclectic reading habits that I have an equal interest in writing both fiction and nonfiction. The experience of reading, of feeling what a writer could do to my head and my heart with their words, eventually moved me to see if I could do the same thing for others. I'm still trying to answer that question.

Book preview

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SWEPT AWAY

FINALLY, A CHANCE TO relax, to just sit back and get a little reading done, comfortably ensconced in a room of my own. I could give the book my full attention. Avi was out handling things for the day.

I sat in an old-fashioned wing chair, upholstered in slightly worn, dark brown fabric, feet on a matching, and equally old-fashioned, hassock. Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico played in the background. The book of the moment, pulled from a nearby shelf that always held just what I wanted, rested easily in my hands. I'd wanted to read this one for years, and now that Avi had done so, I could do it in this place and time, a place that was as well-suited to me as could be imagined.

It wasn't all that long ago that letting Avi out to take charge made me dreadfully nervous. Such a strange fate I’ve suffered, if suffered is the right word. In the beginning there was nothing about Avi that didn't scare the hell out of me! But Avi was persuasive, and a fast learner, which follows, since I've always been a quick study. Avi does more than merely take after me, of course; he has unique abilities of his own. As he learned and grew, my fear passed quickly into curiosity, then to something more like a paternal relationship. Well, maybe not paternal, exactly. Whatever word might best describe it, and I haven’t quite found one yet, we both found something in the relationship that made it work for us. Eventually we passed through fear, beyond mentoring, and found trust.

So Avi was out, and I had the day to myself. I was reading, and the words on the pages I turned seemed to flow into my thoughts. I’ve always been an avid reader, and reading was an activity I first learned to appreciate in a place this room duplicated as clearly as my memories allowed. Like that other place and time, this one contained antique furnishings of dark wood, bookcases filled to capacity, and a landscape of the Front Range of the Rockies identical to the one that once adorned the wall of my grandfather's library. It was that library I recalled, down to the old wing chairs and the small round tables with their tall, slender lamps.

The reproduction wasn’t quite perfect. The windows in the outside wall of granddad’s library had been tall and narrow, with pale curtains dressing them. The wall opposite me was dominated by a heavily curtained picture window. Blackout curtains, I believe they once called them, although these had an elegance to them you wouldn’t expect from such a term. The window was a necessary addition to the design. So was the door.

That door was as solid as a door of old, well-seasoned oak could be, with polished brass hardware. Avi could open it from the outside, and I could do so from within, though I shuddered to think what circumstances would compel me to do such a thing while Avi was out. Better for the both of us that such never became necessary. I never went to the window, either. Oh, I could part those elegant curtains and gaze out on the world beyond, but that would imply a lack of trust on my part, possibly undermining Avi's growing confidence. That simply would not do. So I left the curtains closed, stayed safely behind the door, and kept most of my mind on the book.

I was so engrossed in the book, that I didn’t notice at first that the music had changed. Vivaldi was no longer filling the room from all sides, as if from hidden speakers. It was spilling from the single speaker of an old-style radio, in a tall, peaked wooden cabinet, with big, knobby dials and a front that had that coarsely woven fabric look of ancient speaker coverings. It distracted me from the book, which was of course the intent, for all that it fit into the arrangement of the room as if it had been there all along. After a moment I recognized it. This was my grandmother's old radio, a prized possession during the Great Depression, which amazingly enough had still functioned when I was a small child. I couldn’t remember ever seeing the thing in Granddad’s library.

I set the book on the table beside the chair, and leaned forward attentively. Last time, Avi just used a telephone. This was a bit more creative and indirect, but Avi generally had good reasons for what he did. He clearly wanted me to be aware of something, without the distraction of a conversation or a peek out the window. Vivaldi was suddenly gone, replaced by the odd crackling hiss that one would expect when turning the dial of such a radio to a new station. There followed a strange hum, and the voice of a present-day, local radio personality, whom I would not have recognized if he had not, after the habit of his kind, announced first and foremost his identity.

"Wayne Bish here to bring you an update on the weather situation. The summer rainy season is off to a late start, and seems to be trying to make up for lost time! Lots of wind and rain, hey, sounds like it's pretty ugly out there! People are calling into the station talking about two inches of rain and small hail, with plenty of lightning and thunder to go around. Got a call from a listener saying the power's out on the east side. And according to the Tucson Police Department, the traffic lights are out along Speedway Boulevard. Man, if you don't have to go out, don't go out! All the major washes and drainages are running, and we've already got a potential 'stupid motorist' scenario playing out. That’s according to my colleague Jenna Paley, who is stuck out there and leaving me to put in a little