Future Jau

By Richard Straws

Set in the near-future in the wilderness of South American's spectacular Pantanal, this suspenseful short story centers on an aquatic scientist who stumbles onto a biological anomaly. Trying to unravel its secrets turns out to be a seemingly one-way gateway to peril.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Straws
• Release date: Feb 6, 2019

Book preview

Future Jaú

A short story

by Richard Straws

Copyright 2019 by Richard Straws. All rights reserved.

Future Jaú is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover artwork and design by Peter van Geldern

Published in the United States by Hudson MacArthur Publishers, Inc.

Smashwords Edition

Discover other titles by Richard Straws at

richardstraws.com or HudsonMacArthur.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Although this short story is being offered in this ebook format for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author; it may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes without permission from the author. If you enjoyed this short story, please encourage your friends to download their own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dr. Alan Butler lifted his sunglasses, used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and stared at the monitor. The dorado was still doing nothing. It had found a calm pocket near the river bank and there it stayed. It'd been four hours since Alan had slipped the sleek, meter-long fish into the crystalline waters of the Satobra River, complete with the optical nerve sensors that were sending back the images being viewed. Alan was seeing what the dorado was seeing, which, quite frankly, was very little. Some debris washing by, here and there a piranha or fingerling of this or that species, and still the dorado exerted itself only enough to stay in its calm pocket.

"Salminus maxilosus, you're a boring fish," Alan muttered, more nostalgic than agitated.

To him, the dorado represented an exciting past that was now long gone. It had been one of the all-time great sport fishing species, back when fishing had been allowed in this area of western Brazil. Colorful, with yellowish-orange fins bordered by red, and striated black lines painted horizontally on its rich golden sides, the dorado was a spectacle for any fisherman to behold. And once hooked, did they ever jump! The dorado was one of the reasons Alan used to come down from the Northern states to fish these very banks. He'd never found a fish as exciting to catch as a dorado. But as a research specimen, it was proving more than a bit dull.

Alan shifted his sitting position to get out of the hot sun and under the shadow of a tree. He was slight-framed, but wiry and well-tanned from his work as a naturalist. His short-cropped hair was graying, and the two day's growth of whiskers on his face revealed a lot of white. As he sat on the river bank,