A Speculation of Hope: Science Fiction Short Stories, #2

By T. Thorn Coyle

The scent of revolution. The push toward liberation. A hope for the future. The sadness amidst the stars…

These stories stalk the spaces in between all of these worlds and emotions. They ask what our future can be if we don't give up on hope.

Here are five tales filled with revolutionary supercats, desperate angels, space ships, and worlds beyond what we currently know.

To build a future, we have to wish for it.

Close your eyes, and jump.

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The stories in this volume are:
Revolution Rise
The Liberators
An Acolyte Between the Stars
The Long Hello
Aisle Nine

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Thorn Coyle
• Release date: Jun 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201101725

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle worked in many strange and diverse occupations before settling in to write novels. Buy them a cup of tea and perhaps they’ll tell you about it. Author of the Seashell Cove Paranormal Mystery series, The Steel Clan Saga, The Witches of Portland, and The Panther Chronicles, Thorn’s multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft. Thorn's work also appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections.  An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn pays proper tribute to all the neighborhood cats, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.

Book preview

A Brief Introduction from the Author

The scent of revolution. The push toward liberation. A hope for the future. The sadness amidst the stars…

These stories stalk the spaces in between all of these worlds and emotions. They ask what our future can be if we don’t give up on hope.

Here are five tales, most written with the support of my amazing Patreon friends. Some of these short stories have appeared in other collections, some not, but nonetheless these five stories all wanted to live together beneath one cover.

So here they are: revolutionary supercats, desperate angels, space ships, and worlds beyond what we currently know.

To build a future, we have to wish for it.

Close your eyes, and jump.

---

T. Thorn Coyle

Portland, Oregon

2021

1

Revolution Rise

Revolution Rise cover. City tenement buildings. Angel wing in background.

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Sunspots winked in and out from the corners of her eyes. Liza Beth had wanted the blue, and got blinding gold instead. It wasn’t peaceful. She wanted it to be peaceful. She needed it to feel peaceful.

This just wasn’t working anymore. There didn’t seem to be any escape.

She saw her body down below, dark and small, wavering in and out of sight.

She was sitting upright on a stuffed, faded burgundy cushion, in front of the gleaming wooden altar that held her most precious objects. The photo of her daughter. The worn stone from a beachside walk last fall. A resin statue of Quan Yin, rising from a dragon, narrow and serene.

The view outside the window next to the altar was filled with smoke.

The fires still burned, smaller than before, but dotting the neighborhoods that spread out in a grid until they hit the walls.

Her crew waited for her in the kitchen, drinking cup after cup of tongue-curling tea. They’d learned to wait it out, these journeys of hers, knowing that she came back refreshed, ready, and often with information that was uncanny.

At least, Liza Beth used to return that way. It just kept getting harder.

She’d gone to see Doc last week. Doc had made her stick out her tongue. Taken her pulses. Looked at the whites of her eyes. Doc had trained before the Fall. She’d studied for years, the only Black woman in her class, until Roger Gutierrez took over as admin, and Black and Latino students had swelled the previously white and Asian ranks.

You need more sleep, Liza. More sleep. More clean water and less gin. Less stress. And you need to stop relying on meditation to give you everything you need. You have to get the crew to leave you in peace some of the time.

Doc tapped a stylus on the battered tablet, frown creasing the skin above the teal titanium-framed glasses she always wore.

Yeah, Doc. Like any of that’s gonna happen. Like peace is gonna come through that door.

Well, try anyway, Liza. There’s no revolution if you’re dead. She broke into a smile. Besides, I’d miss you.

Thanks Doc.

Liza Beth loped out of the clinic, door snicking shut behind her canvas duffle coat. A quiet wind blew across the bare skin where parts dissected the Bantu knots on her head. Her boot soles compressed and released on the cracked concrete.

She needed that sleep Doc was talking about, but what she wanted was that last birthday party, more than a year ago now. Dez and Aggie dancing in the living room of her second floor apartment. Goldenrod spinning and spinning around them, head back, laughing with all the force her six-year-old body could manage.

Goldenrod. Liza stopped in front of a barbershop. Men were getting their hair clippered. Women getting braids put in or taken out. Used to be you’d never see that in the same place. These days, people had to consolidate to survive. First, the oligarchs in the Green Land past the walls, and then the angels, bringing fire.

After Goldenrod died, Liza hadn’t consolidated. Part of her had splintered off.

Life these days just felt like one huge misunderstanding. A huge misunderstanding that was leaving people dead. She’d never meant for it to be this way.

Liza navigated spirit back into body, feeling slightly queasy as she slid into the top of her head, body warming as she flowed past nasal passages, sternum, and shoulder blades, down arms, through heart, lungs, belly, and sex, down to her toes.

She’d learned to control the descent. In her early days, she would jolt all the way back in, unbalancing her body, and would be laid up with a massive headache for hours afterward.

She could hear Aggie’s voice in the kitchen, challenging Dez. And the low rumble of Jackson’s voice joining in. They were messing around, trying not to start the meeting until she returned. She knew they were all anxious, though, and hated waiting around to begin.

Taking a deep breath, she stretched. The ashy tang of smoke pricked at her nose even through the shut and sealed windows. Liza Beth couldn’t wait for it to clear, for the wind off the bay to sweep