A series of totally unexpected tales: fifteen furtive steps into unexplored perpectives

By Luca Rettore

Fifteen short stories with an unexpected ending, eight of which illustrated by young artists, ranging over three different genres: drama, thriller and humor. Past, present and future provide the background for men, women, murderers, drug addicts, mad scientists, aliens and tamed or very dangerous animals. The author, with his dry style that cuts the superfluous, is inspired by the writer Fredric Brown's "short stories" and the TV series "The Twilight Zone" screenwriter and director Rod Serling, by letting the reader's attention to focus on how thin is that ice layer on which our daily life rests, more or less safe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luca Rettore
• Release date: Oct 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9791220213875

Book preview

LUCA RETTORE

A SERIES

OF TOTALLY

UNEXPECTED

TALES

FIFTEEN FURTIVE STEPS

INTO UNEXPLORED PERSPECTIVES

«Time is a field. This machine I have made

can manipulate, even reverse, that field»

Pushing a button as he spoke, he said:

«This should make time run

backward

run time make should This» :

:said he, spoke he as button a Pushing

«field that, reverse even, manipulate can

made have I machine This. field a is Time»

Fredric Brown

«Better a coffee bean than a cup of dirty water»

Brother Mauro

(my Virgil who, still ideally today, corrects me

with his stern red pen)

Introduction

What do antiparasitic shampoo, a killer husband, antimatter and smoking addiction have in common?

The unexpected.

How much does an imaginary planet of liquid mercury reflect and what moves at 30 km per second?

Scroll through the pages and you will know.

Can artificial intelligence cure drug addiction?

Maybe.

Why is Avondale a good place to nest?

Listen to me: better not to find out.

However, I give you some advice: turn on the light before touching the bedside table when you wake up, you never know what you might find there!

With this very original and totally unexpected collection of short stories, a fleeting glimpse of realities opens, so close to us yet so different, describing them using unusual perspectives. Another point of view is sometimes essential to better understand who we are and what we do in this world. Or even in others.

Stay alert, play table tennis and leave the chocolate ice creams to the scientists.

It always pays off.

I. Kcuf!

It was incredible.

I was gobsmacked while the picture on the pixelated boundaries screen became cleaner and more and more unbelievable. A phenomenon of such significance could make the mind waver at the only thought. The most distant bright object ever observed, the galaxy Abell 1835 IR1916 at 13.23 billions light years from Earth and with a redshift of 10, didn’t exist any more. Something had pulverized it, and at its place there was an enormous gamma ray burst, a frightful chasm in continuous turmoil, like a crimson whirl with a diameter of 250’000 light years.

A dazzling white thunderbolt in its core, piercing it from side to side.

There, in that very point of space something had happened, something absurd and inexplicable. In all those years as assistant of the most famous astrophysicist in the world I had seen things at the limit of understanding, but this now…

At the end, after pulling myself back together, I lifted the eyes from the screen and inspected that large bearded face in its now so familiar worn-out lab coat, the breast pocket filled of colourful pens.

He was crossing his hands, nervously tapping with his thumbs.

«Doctor, how is it possible?», I asked excitedly, «where did the whole galaxy go?»

«Antimatter, my dear ol’ carbon conglomerate (he used to call me in this way, funny wasn’t he?), it’s reaching us!», the doctor said, looking down and staring still at his unlaced shoes. The impassive look on his face suggested that between his mind and his body there was a distance of many parsec.

«Doctor Draper, what are you saying? Antimatter? How come? How is it possible?»

I don’t know whether it was his seraphic composure or my guts gripped by dismay, but something in me was starting to steam and I was near to have a meltdown. What the heck! A whole galaxy had disappeared, to begin with!

Nonchalantly Doctor Draper went on: «Here there is the supersymmetry clear evidence. There exists a universe made of antimatter, let’s call it antiuniverse, that is in continuous expansion like ours. The antiuniverse quasars, galaxies and nebulae are made of antiatoms, and when they unfortunately find themselves in the same space-time position – although to be honest for the time dimension I have some doubts – they annihilate producing energy».

He lifted his eyes and pierced me with his sly gaze: «The antiuniverse is approaching touching the first stellar outposts, the most ancient ones. Soon it will be our turn!»

«Soon… ?», I looked him up and down.

«Exactly! In a few billion years… at the latest.»

«Right around the corner», was my comment.

The doctor lifted his index finger, seemed to be about to say something but he didn’t, he pivoted on his heel and almost tripped upon his shoe laces, then headed to a wing of the laboratory and gestured to me to follow him.

We went down to the second lower ground floor, where larger devices were currently located such as the portable synchrotron (never completed), the graviton plasma generator (in phase of completion, or that’s what he said), a chair for the detection of imaginary mass cerebral neutrinos (faulty firmware) and the famous – and working – molecular reproducer of aromatic effervescent magnesium (just a digression, but as he suffered from an ulcer that was a very healthy digression).

At the bottom, in the darkened corner next to a vending machine that had been converted into a jukebox, there was an imposing structure hidden by a grey cloth.

«I would swear that until yesterday this… thing was not here. Doctor, when… how…», he didn’t reply, put himself to the side of the machine, grabbed with both hands an edge of the cloth, lifted his chin, cleared his throat and announced to a completely imaginary audience with the exception of myself: «It is due to such pressing need that is the salvation of our known and unknown Universe that I invented and built the antimatter dislocator!».

Et voilà. He removed the cloth, which was stained with some unidentified jelly substance, and two machines appeared looking exactly like two perfectly normal ‘80s telephone boxes.

The day was expected to be fantastic.

Giving a better look, corrugated cables could be seen coming out from behind the two boxes and, climbing up the wall, they ended a few metres away behind big toroidal coils and superconductive magnets of the kind that is usually employed for CAT, but bigger and more threatening. On the side, two polished black racks, two metres tall, with the sign: IBM Remote Deep Blue. One of the two had a monitor turned on and a keyboard.

«I see that you are interested in the details, my clever conglomerate!», the doctor approached the two black monoliths.

«Tell me that you remember it», he said, pointing at the writing.

«Truly not, Doctor Draper, maybe the old university server?»

«Doesn’t the name Kasparov suggest anything?»

«Yes, of course, chess! The IBM computer that defeated the world chess Russian champion!»

«What you see is the true size of the 1997 Deep Blue, but actually this is only the remote unit, the remainder is in Pasadena in a server farm. What interested me was to develop the massive parallel computational capability of the original machine to use it for my purpose.»

«Which is?», I asked, beginning to worry.

«Dislocate the antimatter, therefore shifting it from where it is located putting it to the box on the right.»

«Ah, obviously. And this would happen because?»

Doctor Draper arranged the pens inside his breast pocket, then continued: «Following a brilliant theory the supermassive black holes are connected to quasars through space-time tunnels, therefore huge masses are swallowed by the formers and expelled by the latters, even though the two objects are very far away from each other. Do you follow me?»

«Do you mean that if I get sucked up by a black hole I might get out from a quasar on the other side of the universe? Is this what you mean?»

«Exactly. No more alive and reduced to an endless train of supercompressed neutrons, however that’s the idea. Now, by reason of such conjecture, I am persuaded that matter and antimatter are, at a quantic level, connected too with each other.»

«I understand...», I couldn’t remember what was the phone number of the Mental Hospital at a few blocks away, maybe a Google search would have helped me.

I took a step back, but Draper had already gained the upper hand.

«Carbon conglomerate! Where do you think you are going? I need your presence in this historic moment, I can’t make it