After: The Anthology

By Shane Brown

AFTER

A collection of Shane M Brown's award-winning short stories, including:

'LUCY LUCY' - An interesting world in which female clones ("Lucys") have replaced women who have apparently been killed off or made infertile by a virus.

'LATE RETURNS' - A very odd world in which access to books and reading itself is heavily regulated by the government, creating a new type of addiction in the process.

'CATCHPHRASE' - Imagine a world in which a government agency regulates product advertising down to the word with the power to shut down a product line or business at its whim.

'IN STORE' - A futuristic look at eco-radicals.

'GARDEN LIGHT' - A science fiction story of a man who picks up projected images broadcast to his home from a nearby building.

'THE FUTURE GUN' - A different type of alien story in which the initial contact changes the main character's life forever. But perhaps there's a purpose for his suffering?

'LIVE' - Reminiscent of The Running Man or The Hunger Games. Why are people running for their lives? How were they chosen? Is there a way out alive?

'THE EARTH EQUATION' - A futuristic murder mystery/love story in which people can survive for a few months at a time only by remaining in suspended animation for the rest of the year.

Amazon reviews for AFTER-

A great story collection
This is the first collection of stories that I felt compelled to write a review about. The author did an incredible job of presenting different scenarios where the world will be drastically changed and humans forced to adapt. - Steve Wilson

An impressive anthology
This is the third Shane M Brown book that I have purchased and I was not disappointed. - Amazon Customer

Great collection!
I don't usually read short stories, and much prefer novels. Shane Brown's writing style and development of characters kept my interest through the widely-varied collection. - Margaret D. Brown

Another awesome read
What a great collection of short stories. Each one has a subtle twist and shows the world form different perspectives and possible futures. - Steve Owen

Great speculative fiction
I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. I found each extremely gripping and memorable. Excellent writing. - Marietta

Worth every penny!
Group of eclectic short stories. Loved them all! - robynleah

About the Author:

Hi there!

If you haven't landed on this page by accident, then you're one of those curious people, like me, who likes to know a bit more about the authors we read. My life is much less exciting than my writing (thank goodness, because I put my characters through hell!)

I married my university sweetheart (not sure how she still puts up with me) and I’m the lucky father of three young children (Cassandra, Luca and Nicholas). We live in Brisbane, Australia. I met my wife at James Cook University, where I completed a Bachelor of Biological Science with duel majors in Zoology and Archaeology, a First Class Honors Degree in Underwater Archaeology, and a Masters Degree in Environmental Management. My writing draws on these disciplines, but while researching for books I try to never stop learning.

To date, I have completed five novels and an anthology of shorter stories. Right now I’m working hard on my sixth novel, and very much enjoying my role in assisting with the development of a feature film based on one of my short stories.

I love hearing from people, and I reply to all my emails. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you like, or what you think I could do better. Like I said, I’m always trying to learn.

Have a great week,

Shane M Brown

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane Brown
• Release date: Nov 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463553114

Shane Brown

Hi there! If you haven't landed on this page by accident, then you're one of those curious people, like me, who likes to know a bit more about the authors we read. My life is much less exciting than my writing (thank goodness, because I put my characters through hell!) I married my university sweetheart (not sure how she still puts up with me) and I’m the lucky father of three young children (Cassandra, Luca and Nicholas). We live in Brisbane, Australia. I met my wife at James Cook University, where I completed a Bachelor of Biological Science with duel majors in Zoology and Archaeology, a First Class Honors Degree in Underwater Archaeology, and a Masters Degree in Environmental Management. My writing draws on these disciplines, but while researching for books I try to never stop learning. To date, I have completed five novels and an anthology of shorter stories. Right now I’m working hard on my sixth novel, and very much enjoying my role in assisting with the development of a feature film based on one of my short stories. I love hearing from people. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you like, or what you think I could do better. Like I said, I’m always trying to learn. Have a great week, Shane M Brown

Book preview

Other titles by Shane M Brown:

© Shane M Brown 2012

All rights reserved

Table of Contents

Lucy Lucy

Late Returns

Catchphrase

In Store

Garden light

The Future Gun

Live

The Earth Equation

Free sample chapters

MELT — A psychological thriller

Chapters 1, 2 & 3

PLAZA – An archaeological thriller

Chapters 1 & 2

FAST – A military thriller

Chapters 1 & 2

Lucy Lucy

Lucy spent the morning rearranging the dead women crowding her bedroom wall.

She needed the space. She started by arranging them according to hair color, then eye color, then complexion, refastening them into the plaster wall with thumbtacks until after an hour she had made enough space for the new ones she hoped to find that afternoon. She stood back from her bed to admire her collection. So many women. All different.

At 10:30 she rushed downstairs when she heard her neighbor leaving.

In the hallway beside her bicycle, her bag was already packed with her blue raincoat, her flashlight, and an old street directory. She liked the big map she kept tacked up in the hallway better, but it was too difficult to keep refolding whenever she got lost. Besides, she liked to mark off the areas on the big map as soon as she came home through the front door.

Wheeling her bicycle down the hallway, she noticed her mail slot was jammed open again. If you pushed something through, the shutter stuck open, but there was no mail on the floor. She knelt to check under the mat and suddenly, from the edge of her vision, sensed someone spying through her mail slot. She snapped her head up, lurching from the door and awkwardly catching her bicycle. She craned her neck to peer at all angles back through the slot. There was no one there now. She opened the door and looked around. Nobody. She added her imagination to the list of genetically inherited traits she wasn’t enjoying.

As she leant out the doorway to have a better look, her shoe crunched on a fine layer of soil across her doorstep. When she followed the trail of soil she saw someone had been interfering with her potted plants. One pot had fallen and been righted in the wrong spot, and it looked like someone had been digging through the soil in the others.

Wondering what anyone could hope to find in her pot plants, her bicycle was halfway out the door when the phone rang and startled her. She never got phone calls on the weekend. Who could that be? She had important things to do today. She deliberated about answering it, hoping it would stop by itself as she lowered the bicycle’s stand and meandered into the kitchen, finally answering the phone on what she guessed was the fifteenth ring.

‘Hello? Hello, yes?’

‘Oh, good. It’s Counselor Herbert here. I was worried I’d missed you. Tell me, dear, could you come to my office right away? It’s very important.’

‘I was just on my way out.’

‘Good, you can stop in for a visit then.’

‘Today’s not good. I have…plans. Perhaps Monday….’

‘Sorry, dear, but it has to be today. It’s urgent. An extremely personal matter. Can you be here in half an hour? I really must insist.’

Lucy conceded, not bothering to hide the annoyance in her voice. She shouldn’t have answered the phone.

She set off on her bicycle in the opposite direction she had planned, seeing all the things she had planned to avoid. The houses on Lucy’s street were all the same, an entire street of narrow two-story affairs with common walls and paved paths leading to solid oak doors. They were cloning houses long before they were cloning women. But there was no shortage of houses. Empty houses were everywhere. Lucy lived on the end of one huddle.

Hoping the visit to the counselor wouldn’t consume too much of her day, she pedaled faster and wondered if the bus would have been quicker. She usually avoided buses. On the bus she might be forced to talk to someone, forced to endure a stranger acting familiarly because ‘they knew all about Lucys, had been close friends with Lucys before, never met a Lucy they didn’t like. Lucys had a lot of good qualities, too.’ And then Lucy would have to smile and chat, or show the cold indifference that inevitably left the person brooding as though ignored by an old friend.

Cycling a shortcut through one of the town’s sprawling graveyards, Lucy avoided reading or even looking at the women’s headstones. She had walked through the graveyard once, but there was nothing personal about the graves, not in the way that she liked.

She kept her eyes on the well-tended path and wondered why the counselor needed to see her so urgently. She was certain it wasn’t a medical problem. What could he possibly need to know outside of their usual appointments? Everyone knew everything about Lucys. She could walk into the library and find books dedicated to her psycho-analysis, or journal articles on every illness she was predisposed to, or fashion tips on what shade of eye-makeup most suited her coloring.

She only had to walk down the street to see herself in one year’s time at eighteen, then nineteen, and if she looked long enough she would find older clones, right up to twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. There were no mysteries left. She knew how she would look with certain hair, with certain clothes. Whatever. She had seen it all without even trying, and they were making more every day.

As a little girl Lucy had thought that before the fem-plague every woman with curly blond hair and freckles was called Lucy. Later she had learned that it was the only woman surviving after the fem-plague with those characteristics that was called Lucy. And every one since. They had different names, but nobody but friends ever used them.

Lucy detoured through the alley behind the Italian restaurant and the shoe shop where she worked. At least the trip wasn’t a complete waste, she thought, avoiding the shop’s entrance in case Mr. Fentriss wanted a chat. She didn’t much like working in the shop. Didn't much like the way people looked at her and thought of some other Lucy they had met. Even worse, she hated when people approached her expecting to continue a friendship they had started with another Lucy. She would have avoided the street altogether only she needed something for her outing.

Behind the store she leant her bicycle against the industrial bin and heaved open its metal lid. Inside were the plain white shoeboxes she had stacked to one side on Friday afternoon while cleaning Mr. Fentriss’ storeroom. She picked out the two cleanest for her backpack.

The clone counselor’s office was only three blocks away, and across the road from the building she lifted her bicycle onto the footpath and looked through the window of a cake shop. She didn’t want to be here. The weekends were supposed to be her time, not spent at places where she didn’t want to be. She had a dreadful suspicion that her counselor wanted to discuss her fecundity again. Her reproductive responsibility. Or lack of.

The counselor had a database of the best partners with whom she was supposed to have babies, but Lucy couldn’t stand the idea of losing all her girl babies to further the understanding of the fem-plague, or the odd chance that her son might cross with another clone to produce viable offspring. She hated that term: viable offspring. It hadn’t worked so far, and there were enough Lucys trying.

Across the street, another Lucy, probably the counselor’s last appointment, stepped from the pastel doorway of the glass-fronted building. Lucy stepped closer to the cake shop window, pretending she hadn’t noticed. She followed her clone’s progression in the reflection on the glass, tensing when the other Lucy stopped behind her. Her clone looked at Lucy’s back for a moment, as though about to speak, then changed direction and hurried away.

Lucy released a deep breath.

People said their voices all sounded the same, but Lucy didn’t think so, even though she sometimes recognized her own voice over the radio, sometimes speaking other languages. She was pleased she had the potential to learn another language until she realized her clone was speaking their native tongue.

Lucy wheeled her bicycle past the counselor’s building, pretending to be a passerby and glancing sideways to see if any more Lucys were inside. The waiting room was clone free. She looked around and pretended she had missed the door by accident.

‘Please, go right through,’ said the secretary. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

Lucy asked him to watch her bicycle.

The counselor couldn’t force her to do anything, she told herself, but then halted in alarm in the doorway. Their sessions were supposed to be private. Private! How dare he invite someone else? Counselor Herbert sat stroking his gray sideburns and speaking to a man in the chair Lucy normally used. The second man, whom Lucy had never met, wore a gray suit and was lounging in his seat rotating a silver pen across his fingertips. He reminded Lucy of the type of men she saw in the old movies, the type who made an effort to dress smartly and keep their hair nicely combed. He watched Lucy intently, expressionless, silently rotating his silver pen.

‘Ah, Lucy,’ said Herbert when he noticed his companion’s distraction. ‘Thanks for coming in so quickly. Please, have a seat, yes, just there will be fine. I just have a few questions. It won’t take long.’

Herbert didn’t introduce the second man. Lucy suspected he wanted their introduction to be far more intimate. Viable offspring.

‘You probably know why I called you down here,’ said Herbert, shuffling through a pile of notes then handing several to the man. ‘Tell me, dear, are you still single? I mean, do you have anyone new in your life?’

She’d been right! This was about pressuring her to reproduce again. ‘I don’t know who the hell you think you are, Herbert!’ demanded Lucy. ‘This is too much! I am not obliged to do anything!’ She pointed to the man, calmly sitting, his silver pen never slowing. ‘I can’t believe you’d pressure me like this! You can’t treat me like some kind of breeding stock!’

The counselor blinked between Lucy and the man, his hands raised in supplication. ‘That’s not it at all, Lucy. Wait! Wait! Haven’t you read the papers, been watching the television?’

Lucy sat down again, slowly. ‘I watch every night. Why?’

‘It’s been in the news for days. This is Police Officer Holden. He’s a special investigator for clone-related crimes. It’s about the three Lucys who have gone missing. He needs to speak with all the single Lucys your age in the area. I can’t believe you haven’t heard about it.’

Lucy was stunned. Three Lucys missing? She always changed the television channel or turned the page in the newspaper if she saw something about herself. It was no wonder she missed the reports. Now she was even more eager to leave. ‘Sorry. I haven’t met anyone new.’

Officer Holden’s silver pen stopped when he heard Lucy was unaware of the incidents.

‘We’re asking if you’ve met anyone new because the disappearances are so strange,’ Holden said. ‘They were all living alone, like you, so it’s taken some time to realize they were missing. They disappeared without a sign. No struggle. So it might be someone the women trusted, someone they knew. It looks like they just locked up their houses and never came back.’

He opened a small notepad. ‘Have you encountered anyone acting strangely? Anything out of the ordinary?’

Out-of-the-ordinary was on every street corner, but Lucy knew what he meant. ‘No. Not that I can think of. Sorry I can’t be more help.’

‘Have your friends mentioned someone asking questions about you?’

‘No.’ Lucy didn’t have any friends.

Holden relaxed back and closed his notepad. ‘What do you like to do on your weekends, Lucy?’

The question was unrelated, but as loaded with undercurrents as the type Counselor Herbert had been unsuccessfully delivering for the last eight years. Holden’s delivery was far more subtle, and if Lucy wasn’t so used to her Counselor’s attempts at gaining spontaneous responses through casual, seemingly innocent inquiry, she might have missed the technique altogether. Closing the notepad was good. A nice diversion. A fake transition between the serious and the casual.

‘The usual, I suppose. Relax at home. Go to the markets. Herbert can tell you how Lucys spend their weekends.’

Holden’s smile knew her well. Lucy suspected Officer Holden was either a specialist in Lucys or had spent a lot of time with them. She asked, ‘What do you think has happened to the women?’

‘I think they’ve all been murdered by the same person.’

‘You don’t seem surprised.’

Holden waved his pad to indicate the world outside. ‘The cloning program affects people in different ways. For some of the population it brings out traits that wouldn’t emerge otherwise. Many of the social problems were never anticipated. This isn’t the first time a killer has targeted a particular clone type.’ Holden pocketed his notepad. ‘It’s one of the prices we pay for cloning. We can hardly stop the cloning program now, can we?’

‘Are there any suspects? Are you close to catching someone?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. We have a reliable profile of the culprit. You might say it’s just a matter of narrowing down the usual suspects.’

‘I know you were in a hurry,’ interrupted Herbert, checking his watch then herding Lucy from the office. ‘That’s all the questions we have. We won’t bother with the questionnaire today. We’ll leave it to the end of the month.’

When they were away from Officer Holden, Herbert said, ‘This could be nothing to worry about. The girls could have just left town. Without bodies there really is no evidence of wrongdoing. But just to be sure, I’d like you to be especially careful.’ Herbert recited the advice as though for the hundredth time that day.

‘Is Holden a specialist in Lucys?’ Lucy asked. ‘Like you?’

‘He’s a specialist in crimes involving Lucys. Holden has a special insight into some of more extreme social reactions to the cloning program. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. It sounds like the police are close to catching someone anyway.’

‘I believe so. Thanks for coming in, Lucy.’ Herbert looked tired as he closed the door.

Outside the office, Lucy was distracted when a bus stopped down the street. Exiting the bus was the thinnest Lucy she had ever seen. Her clone was wearing a short gray skirt, tight mauve blouse, and fashionably square, but purely unnecessary, reading glasses. Lucy was fascinated by how she looked in such a thin body, how she would move, seeing that her face looked older and that the muscles in her arms and legs stood out well-defined. She was probably the counselor’s next appointment, the reason he had rushed Lucy out so quickly. The other Lucy smiled. Lucy nodded, politely, but was sure to quickly pedal away before her clone got too close. In theory it was only one in twenty-three women who were her clone, but some days it felt more like one in three.

Lucy took the shortest route from the town’s inhabited section. As the streets became deserted she felt her week’s accumulated tension and anxiety disappearing with the people. She was finally doing what she liked, and in less than half an hour she was cycling past dilapidated buildings with overgrown yards and abandoned toys poking from weed-choked footpaths. She maneuvered her bicycle around the expanding potholes, deserted cars, or the odd piece of furniture that littered the road. Less and less lately was she using street signs, more often navigating by features such as the upside-down desk on the corner of Albert Street, or the doorless refrigerator leaning against the tree on Mallory Road.

She knew she was heading in the right direction when she passed the suburbs of charred houses burned during the first hours of the plague. Some thought fire would contain the sickness. Lucy had visited the burned out husks and crumbling black ruins, but there was nothing to see. She much preferred the abandoned uptown district with its old movie theaters, forgotten houses, and silent overgrown parks. She never walked through the parks, but she often stopped on her bicycle and imagined the parks without tree branches drooping to the ground and creepers encrusting the swings. And with children running and playing.

Before long she was walking her bicycle as often as riding it, lifting it over fallen tree branches and around crumbling piles of brick. She checked her map under a street sign.

Whenever possible she avoided the abandoned industrial sections of the town where most of the creepers hung out. That's what she called them: creepers, although there were lots of other words for them: squatters, loners, hermits and whatever else. Sometimes they would walk by in groups of three or four, going wherever they were going. Lucy didn't much care, as long as they weren't coming to where she was exploring.

From the direction she had just travelled she heard a clinking shuffle of sliding bricks or roof tiles. She folded her map; she was only a short distance from her goal now.

The row of houses she finally stopped at looked promising. Most of the windows were intact, and Lucy judged there was no one inside. She could normally tell. Humans had a way of leaving things.

The first two houses were disappointing, with what little furniture remained containing nothing interesting. In the third house she climbed a narrow internal staircase and scanned the upstairs living room. In the middle of the room was an empty bookcase. There was also a rotting chipboard TV cabinet, a tipped over minibar, and a cheap lounge with the cushion covers gone.

Crossing to the other side of the room, Lucy looked through a rear doorway and saw narrow steps to an alley behind the houses.

Satisfied she had located two potential exits, she turned to the house. Two bedrooms led from the living room, and seeing a child’s picture of rabbits having a tea-party hanging in one room, Lucy checked the other, elated to find a bed, cupboard, chest of drawers, and a woman’s vanity table intact. She went straight to the vanity table. Photos were her favorite find. The photos of women who looked least like herself she kept tacked up in her bedroom. She was content during the week watching the old television shows, mentally cataloguing all the different womens’ faces like the pictures on her walls, but nothing compared to finding evidence of their lives. No two were the same. When she had first heard that, she had been mystified. No two were the same? But how? And then she had learned. She had learned it all.

It didn’t feel like stealing, and she imagined the women would appreciate being remembered. She could spend a whole day sorting and cataloguing the abandoned belongings, piecing together the life of the women who lived in the house. She had once found a house almost untouched, and had visited it every weekend for a month, learning about the woman who used to live there, reading the letters her daughter had sent from overseas, peeling the pictures from her photo album. The last letter had been postmarked eight days before the fem-plague.

Lucy methodically searched each drawer, and then the chest of drawers and the cupboard, arranging their contents in ordered rows on the carpet. She was discarding anything vaguely male when two pictures slipped from the cover of a paperback novel. In one, a young man was sitting on a motorcycle, and in the other on the steps of what Lucy guessed was the house she was exploring. The man looked about her age, but Lucy found it hard to tell. There were no young men now. Just older men and little boys. No chance of meeting and marrying someone her own age was a depressing thought best avoided. In the photo’s background Lucy saw a woman with red hair looking through the screen door.

She checked the hair curlers and brush on the floor, but there were no red hairs. Scanning her ordered arrangement of the room’s contents, she was disappointed to find nothing truly personal, nothing that motivated her curiosity. To Lucy, personal meant names, personal meant hand writing, personal meant letters. After half an hour of searching and sorting, she placed the items she was keeping in one white shoebox.

She was securing its lid when she heard music coming from the living room.

Lucy panicked quietly. She had no idea what the music could mean. When the little electronic tune continued playing, she crept to the doorway, gripping her flashlight like a club. There was no one in the living room. The music sounded like it was coming from the empty bookcase, and as she tried to see how, the tune stopped and started again from the beginning. It was a very familiar tune.

Lucy crept into the lounge, tensed to run for either exit if she wasn’t alone. She approached the bookcase and saw the music was coming from a greeting card lying on the carpet. It hadn’t been there before. Perhaps a gust of wind had blown it from the bookshelf.

When she picked up the card the music stopped. When she opened the card the tune began again. The faded green cardboard had printed on the front, ‘YOU’RE ONE IN A MILLION’. It was in better condition than the rest of the house. Inside, a message in smudged blue ink read, ‘Happy Birthday, Sandra. Thinking of you on your special day. Love forever, Keith.’ One corner of the card was glued where the battery had been replaced.

Lucy read the card over and over, wondering if Sandra was the red-headed woman in the photo. There was more writing on the back. An address! And it wasn’t the house she was in! She was in Corbett Lane, and the card’s address was 24 Firth Avenue. Surely there would be more things like the card at the address. Lucy pulled out her map, finding Firth Avenue. She couldn’t get there before dark.