On to the Beginning, Back to the End

By R. S. W. Bates

Voyages to the end of space place pressures on all involved. Even worse if deep space is actually the here and now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. M. Kreg Publishing
• Release date: Apr 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386581260

R. S. W. Bates

Rebecca S.W. Bates writes speculative fiction. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she raised three daughters and taught Spanish.  Now she writes full time in a variety of genres and enjoys traveling as much as possible.  She has published several science fiction and fantasy short stories, most recently in the Fiction River anthologies Universe Between and Fantasy Adrift. In addition, she was featured in the Colorado Book Award nominated Broken Links, Mended Lives.  Her novels The Signal (2013), Prelude to Proxima (2015) and Sphinx of Centaurus (2017) were all published by D.M. Kreg Publishing. Sample first chapters and her collections of short stories can be viewed at www.dmkregpublishing.com. 

Book preview

On to the Beginning,

Back to the End

––––––––

Three Stories

By

Rebecca S. W. Bates

Table of Contents

The Sun Dial Trail:  Joy riding in Daddy’s little space ship is such a blast until it goes through a wormhole.

Keep on Walking:  When in exile, sometimes even ending it all is hard to do.

The Salt, the Roasted and the Blue:  Somebody has to do the dirty jobs in the far ends of the universe.

The Sun Dial Trail

(published originally in Fiction River, vol. 8, Universe Between)

Mila hadn’t screwed up.  She would never do that.  Even if there were some who thought she might have, and even if that person happened to be sitting next to her in the cockpit of Daddy’s sleek little starhopper—Daddy’s brand new little starhopper—she’d never admit it.  Never in a hundred million years.  Never ever. 

At least she hadn’t intentionally screwed up.  She was two parts human to three parts alien.  Her little secret. 

Oh shit, Gregor said from the passenger seat beside her. 

What was supposed to have been a day trip today, a quick little lark of a trip, meant only for her to add a personal footnote to her resume, seemed to be turning into something much larger.  She’d struck a deal with PAM, Daddy’s personal AI manager (a computer, really, with a sultry female program), to fly Mila and Gregor down to the surface to check out the remains of Chaco Canyon.  A day trip, nothing more, and now, somehow, they’d ended up freefalling into a wormhole. 

PAM?  Hello? 

Not that Mila knew what a wormhole was really like.  She’d never been in one before.  But if she had, this was exactly how she would’ve imagined one to be. 

Mila was on her own, because PAM wasn’t talking. 

The back of her head plastered against the faux leather cushions, which crinkled with each bounce and roll and thunder of the little craft that encased her and Gregor in luxury and style.  But luxury was lost when she felt as if her teeth were being shoved down the back of her throat.  The floating sensation of weightlessness dropped away beneath her knees, and she was crashing down...  Sliding down a bottomless pit...down... 

Wheeeee! 

Even if Mila had wanted to screw up, she couldn’t.  Not with PAM running things.  But why was Daddy’s computer taking them through a wormhole?  And why didn’t she explain to Mila about this little detour? 

Beside her, Gregor dug in.  He jiggled, squirming deeper into the cushions.  His eyes rolled to the back of his head, exposing the whites.  He always reacted overly dramatically, but then again, he was a theater student.  A frivolous course of study, unlike Mila’s.  She was taking a graduate degree in native Terran cultures, the first