Real Life Fiction And Other Stories

By Jon Christopher

This volume contains three short stories of speculative fiction - "Press The Record Button," "In The Heavens As On Earth" and "Real Life Fiction."

Each story explores possibilities at the end of our known world. Time travel, manipulation of reality, nuclear war, reincarnation, chance, and a host of other ideas are woven through these various stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365478062

Book preview

Real Life Fiction And Other Stories

REAL LIFE FICTION AND OTHER STORIES

By Jon Christopher

Copyright © 2016 by Jon Christopher

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-365-47806-2

TRAVELING SHOES PRESS

PO BOX 332

Pioneertown,  California 92268

www.travelingshoespress.com

PRESS THE RECORD BUTTON

Jonathan rapidly turned the knob on the bulky shortwave radio sitting on the desk in front of him. He was scanning the AM band, moving from one top 40 radio station to another, trying to find his song. At the moment that song was Meco's No.1 hit—Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band.

It was the fall of 1977. Jonathan had just entered eighth grade, but Star Wars was what was really on his mind. The movie had come out in May and had changed everything for him. Jonathan had been a childhood Trekkie, but that was nothing compared to the impact Star Wars had on him. He had seen it over twenty times by the time summer ended, and it was just about all he thought about, all the time.

And now there was a song out on the radio (yeah it was disco, and disco sucked, but this was Star Wars) with the theme song from Star Wars that included really cool laser sounds, and R2-D2 beeping, lightsaber swooshes and other sound effects from the movie.

Jonathan was hunting for the song with a tape recorder. He had been doing it all Saturday afternoon—tuning from station to station trying to catch the song from the beginning so he could get a really good recording. He was sitting at his desk in his room. Most of the desk surface was taken over by the large, post-World War II era shortwave radio. His dad had bought the radio at a garage sale, but Jonathan had convinced his dad to let him keep it on his desk in his room.

Jonathan had constructed a spiderweb-like antenna array that he had tacked up on the wall behind his desk. He was sure this helped him get better reception. He also kept his parent's tape recorder next to the speaker on the side of the shortwave radio to record things he heard. Often times he recorded the various foreign voices that came through the static, just because they sounded so strange. Today he was using the tape recorder for a more basic need—capturing a pop music song.

So far he had recorded the song twice, but not completely. One time he had captured the end of the song, and once he got it about halfway through. He had been at it for several hours and his mind was starting to play games with him, offering suggestions like, If you take a break for exactly five minutes then all the radio stations will reset and you’ll get your song and First tune to 10-Q and then over the KHJ, then quickly to the Spanish language station on the right end of the dial, then back to 10-Q and so on.

After awhile of this, Jonathan decided to take a short, five-minute break and cruise the shortwave bands. The radio had three different shortwave bands that Jonathan would slowly scan from one end to the other, using the fine-tuning knob when he found something interesting to bring the signal in even better. The eclectic mix of sounds and static as