Possible Futures

By Leigh Saunders

A collection of science fiction short stories
Includes:

• RUMORS OF MY DEATH - Kim Taylor never expected to read his own obituary in the newspaper - or that he would have trouble proving he was still very much alive.
• FIRSTDAWN - The discovery of Misha Kif's real identity as the Synth, Brianna Rei, puts a longstanding friendship to the test.
• TENDRILS - Oma knows the humans on the space freighter will kill her if they catch her. But when an engine malfunction puts them all at risk, she must make more than one difficult choice.
• THE NIGHT OF BRAHMA - Historical predictions of the end of the world vary widely across cultures and beliefs. But what if they're all correct?
• BURNING BRIGHT - Tala and her grandson travel to a dead post-apocalyptic city in search of supplies for a metalworking project, only to find that the city isn't so dead after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lyn Worthen
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393166986

Book preview

Possible Futures

a short story collection

by

Leigh Saunders

A picture containing drawing Description automatically generated

Camden Park Press

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Rumors of My Death

Firstdawn

Tendrils

The Night of Brahma

Burning Bright

About the Author

Also by Leigh Saunders

Copyrights

Author’s Note

WHERE IS MY FLYING car?

Science fiction has always (or at least often) been filled with predictions of possible futures. From flip-phones to flying cars, space travel to the apocalypse, science fiction writers can’t seem to resist the impulse to speculate about what the future might look like.

I’ll admit to having done my share of speculation, and the results of a few of those wild guesses are in these pages.

Some futures are barely beyond the horizon, so close it seems we can reach out and touch them.

Others venture into the category of a galaxy far, far away, with visions of interstellar travel and interaction with people who bear no resemblance to our physical form, and who have customs and cultures very different from our own.

There are also possible futures that are not so bright. As a species, we’re easily led to war, and the possibility of total annihilation is not that far outside the realm of our self-destructive natures. On the opposite side of that coin, we are incredibly resilient, and if we decide to survive apocalyptic events, I like to think we’ll do it with some style.

This book, then, is a glimpse into just a handful of possible futures. Like predictions from a medium’s crystal ball, they’re presented for entertainment only, but who’s to say that the flying car we’ve been waiting for isn’t parked just around some future corner?

I’m eager to take it for a spin – and I’m glad you’ve decided to come along for the ride.

– Leigh Saunders

Sandy, Utah

March 1, 2021

Rumors of My Death

A FEW DAYS AFTER MY youngest child was born, I got a call from friend and editor M. Shayne Bell. .It seemed that an anthology he was putting together was going to have a few blank pages in it if they didn’t find a story to complete the signature (a bundle of book pages inserted against the spine when a print book is bound).

Shayne asked if I could write something short to fill the space.

Oh, and could I have it to him by the end of the weekend?

And it should probably be light in tone, to help balance out some of the heavier stories in the anthology...

When the reviews for the anthology, Washed by a Wave of Wind, came back some time later, one of the reviewers happened to mention Rumors of My Death, using the words short and fluffy.

Mission accomplished!

⬧

Rumors of My Death

⬧

I was sitting in my usual booth at my favorite diner, casually reading the Deseret News – an actual print version, mind you – and sipping at my sugar-free, imitation orange-flavored breakfast drink when I spied a picture of myself on page B-5.

Not the kind of guy to look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to free publicity, I decided to see what the News had to say about me this time.

They said I was dead.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me, so I read on to see just how my demise had occurred.

According to the obituary, popular columnist Kim Taylor – that’s me – died in an aircar accident on the Bonneville Salt Flats two days before. I was survived by my wife, Chris Taylor, who was currently out of the country, and my urn could be visited at the Little Cottonwood Crematorium for the next three days before being shipped to the grieving widow. And apparently in my Instant Will I had bequeathed all my assets and properties to Deseret Industries, thus neatly avoiding the death taxes.

Well, aside from the most obvious fact that I was sitting there, very much alive, reading all of this, it was perfectly clear to me that someone had really screwed up this time.

Not only had I not been to the Flats in at least a month, maybe two, I have an excellent record and have never, ever wrecked my aircar.

Well, not seriously.

OK, not seriously enough to have killed me.

Yet.

Also, Chris wasn’t out of the country. She was simply on the other side of it, visiting relatives in Nantucket. Indefinitely. I don’t think she would have appreciated being billed as my grieving widow either. Things weren’t that great between us just now.

The third tip-off that this was somebody’s idea of a joke was the whole idea of the crematorium. My religious feelings about being scattered to the four winds aside, they had been promising us for years that the technology was almost to the point where someone who was near death could be frozen and later repaired and revived.

I had signed up to be frozen two years ago, not because I have any particular fear of death, but because I figured they’d have to practice on somebody and it might as well be somebody who didn’t care instead of somebody who had a real reason to want to come back from the dead.

So I wouldn’t have had myself cremated.

I did like the touch about having left everything to Deseret Industries, though.

While I hadn’t thought of that one myself, I wished I had. Those people distribute things within their multistate thrift-shop network so efficiently that Chris wouldn’t be able to recover a fraction of her belongings by the time she flew back from Nantucket.

Assuming I was really dead, which, of course, I wasn’t.

Well, I had enjoyed the practical joke, but it was time to find out who the perpetrator was so I could start planning my revenge.

I popped out my cell phone to call the News, but there was no dial tone, only a mechanical voice repeating This number has been disconnected and instructing me to call the Cellular business office with any inquiries I might have.

Fine, that would be my second call.

In the meantime I was forced to go over to the pay phone and slide my Call-Anywhere card through the reader to make what should have been a simple call. The pay phone vid-screen blinked through a series of messages about card privileges having been revoked and if I still wanted to make a call would I please insert the proper change into the machine?

I never carry cash.

I don’t know many people who do.

Since I’m a regular customer, I was able to talk the waitress out of enough change to call the newspaper where I was given some song-and-dance about them not being able to give out the information I was requesting over the telephone and if I would like to come to their offices in person, with proper identification as a relative of the deceased, who I was claiming to be, and fill out the necessary paperwork, then perhaps my question could be addressed.

Good God!

I put breakfast on my account (I guess no one at the diner knew I was dead yet), and headed out to my aircar, both impressed with my tormentor’s skill at pulling off this joke and determined to do him one better, once I found him.

Or her. Whichever.

But first I could see that I was going to have to determine the extent of the joke. I didn’t think the Deseret News would print an obituary without some verification that the deceased in question was actually dead, so I headed over to their business office to pull a few strings and find out who had submitted the obit.

⬧

As a syndicated columnist, I don’t really work for the News and therefore don’t rate a parking space. But I do have friends, and one of those friends owed me a favor once upon a time, a long time ago, and I’ve been one of the privileged few who doesn’t have to fight for parking in metropolitan Salt Lake City ever since.

Until today.

When I arrived at the garage, I found my usual parking spot all right, but there was some guy there putting somebody else’s name on it. Even as I sat there and watched him do it, another aircar pulled up, took my space, and settled down for its long winter’s nap, the owner strolling off to the elevators as though he owned the place.

I was speechless, struck completely dumb for perhaps the second time in my entire life.

Not one to let minor inconveniences slow me down, however,