Other Worlds Other Wonders

By Teri J. Babcock

Welcome to five original genre-spanning short stories by author Teri J. Babcock.

 

The Right Wishes: A dark alley. A black site. And a wooden box that gives the owner anything they ask – once.

 

A Small Detour: Nevada, 1954. Pedal-pushers and poodle-skirts packed, the Johnson family is enroute to Las Vegas for a blow-out party and a once-in-a-lifetime special event. But a side-trip to goes sideways when their daughter encounters something strange in an old mine.

 

The Bee Wife: Annie, a bee-keeper in the Alberta foothills, gets more than she bargained for when she accepts an unusual hive from a retiring apiarist.

                               

The Adolf  I Remember: Gratz, Austria, 1836. On a mission to change history, Brandt and Kepler meet resistance from their target and ultimately face the question: what if the most terrible events of our history are someone else's better future?

 

The Water Clock of Yoshiwara: In 1700's Edo, geisha entertain the wealthy and influential in the tea-houses of Yoshiwara. Trapped with the walled borders of the Floating World, where a lover's affections are changeable as water and time is a friend of no one, one geisha considers her life and loyalties. Would she change any of it if she could?

 

About the Author

Teri J. Babcock has been publishing fiction since 2013. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Pulphouse Fiction Magazine and the anthologies Coffee and Lazarus Rising.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teri Babcock
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201888374

Teri J. Babcock

Teri J. Babcock lives in the big city in a small apartment. She has no cats, dogs, or children, saving her a great deal of money which she spends mostly on books, exotic chocolates, and new plants that she absolutely has to have, but really don't fit in her community garden plot. She lives, writes and is rained on in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Book preview

Introduction

I HAVE A CONFESSION to make.

I don’t actually read introductions.

Sometimes I skim them – out of a vaguely guilty, obligatory sense that I should, out of courtesy, see if the author whose stories I am about to enjoy has something important to say in them.

While in university, out of academic curiosity, I once read the introduction to a Collected Works of Shakespeare and learned something which—never mentioned in class over the course of a year—  came in very useful during the final exam. Despite feeling a flare of delight that my virtue had been rewarded, it did not inspire me to change my ways.

On my desk is a library copy of Ursula K. LeGuin's Planet of Exile. With, the cover says, A New Introduction by the Author. The publisher apparently considered this a selling feature, but as you have probably deduced, it was not the reason I picked up the book. 

Inside, in a slow, early version of social media commentary, someone has penciled with an elegant hand, Don't read introductions, ever. Beside, someone else has added, in penmanship less graceful but just as opinionated, Rubbish!

It's surprising to me that anything as simple, or frankly, banal as the topic of book introductions could stimulate enough emotion to cause controversy, but there it is, in pen and graphite.

Evidently, introductions are important after all.

And so here I am, like an old sinner on their knees in church, writing an introduction.This book is a collection of original stories about portals.

Portals are strange chimera-like things, big as a planet and small as your hand, or without any dimension at all. They transport you – across space, time, alternate realities.

They may be subtle as a change in atmosphere, dramatic as a plunge from a sun-filled meadow to the underworld.

They make take you somewhere – or somewhen – you have never been, or to the same day in your life, over and over. They may gift you with strange new powers, or strip you of everything but your most essential self.

The only constant of portals is change.

Within these pages are five different explorations of portals, of doorways to other possibilities. These stories are set in the world we know, with a present or a past that is familiar – or at least known to us by reputation—but that brushes up against strangeness.

This volume is more aligned with magical realism than science fiction, but there are both types of stories here, even one that straddles both.

Really, though, these stories are about choices. Choices that are made – as they always must be – without complete information, and without knowing exactly what the consequences will be.

Even when – or especially when – you're from the future.

Teri J Babcock. June 20, 2021

A Small Detour

THE JOHNSON FAMILY had been looking forward to the atomic bomb all month.

As soon as school was over the Johnsons were going to take the family’s brand new Ford Country Squire station wagon, all the way down Highway 95 from Moscow, Idaho to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a weekend conference.

There Mr. Johnson's company had booked them a hotel room with a fancy bed, and ice-machines, and a pool, and a special party with hors d'oeuvres and special drinks with names like 'The Megaton' and the 'Vegas Glow' where you could watch the bomb go off. They would see genuine atoms split to smithereens. They would even feel the earth shake.

This, the flyer had promised.

Susie couldn't wait.

Young Susie, the most junior member of the Johnson family, had been saving her pennies for two months – not just her allowance but the pennies she found on the street, pennies and nickels too that had rolled out of someone's pants pocket or change purse, that other people didn't pick up.

It was a wonder to Susie that anyone would walk past money on the ground, even if it wasn't very much, even – as one woman in a nice coat and hat had cautioned her – the coins were dirty. The coins washed off just fine, and with far less trouble than her face.

Her brother John was saving too – ten whole dollars from his paper route. He was going to buy a model, a real metal model of the A-bomb.

Susie had her heart set on postcards. She had almost the biggest collection of any girl in her class, only Norma Meyers had more and her Daddy was a travelling salesman and sent her one from every place he stopped.

Because of Norma's conscientious Daddy, no other child was ever going to topple Norma from her position as postcard queen of Latah Elementary, but Norma was so nice about it, it didn't matter. Norma had postcards from Las Vegas – lots of them – but she didn't have any Atomic Vegas postcards.

Susie knew that because Norma had allowed her to see every last card in her collection, not just the ones on her walls but the ones mounted on special paper and stored in binders.

When the Johnsons got to Vegas they were going to stop at Lake Mead and the Hoover dam too. It was the farthest away from home that any of them had ever been, except for Dad, who had been to France, which was really far and would take a lot longer to save up for.  

Overnight, they stopped at a motel by the side of the highway in the desert, a little nothing of a place surrounded by rocky desert and scrub brush, the Sierra mountains purple in the distance. There was a hawk, high up on the thermals, but it was too far away to see well.

The motel ice-machine didn't work, but Susie didn't mind because she knew everything was going to be perfect once they got to Vegas.

They started off from the hotel early, and had breakfast about an hour down the road in a brand-new diner shaped like a train car with a rotating silver arrow on top. They had eggs and bacon and pancakes and a funny waitress who made their parents laugh.  So everyone was in a good mood when they got back in the car.

But it was a long drive to Vegas and as the sun rose in the unrelentingly blue sky, the air in the car got hotter and smelled like Naugahyde, gasoline and desert dust. The landscape on either side of the highway was the same, broken yellow rock and coarse earth with clumps of sage and creosote, and red rock mountains in the distance that slowly got closer.

The children slept intermittently, lulled by the heat and the steady drone of the Ford's engine. When they hit some rough pavement, asphalt cracked by an old flash flood, both Susie and John were shaken awake.

Hey kids. You guys want to keep an eye out for an ice-cream place? Her father drummed the steering wheel.

I could go for a strawberry swirl right about now.

Susie rubbed her eyes and looked out the window, but it was the same boring rock and stumpy plants as when she fell asleep.

Her brother John stared into space, his eyes vacant as if he wasn't fully awake. He spoke in a low voice, muttering.

What's that, buddy? Susie's Dad adjusted the mirror; Susie's eyes met his and he smiled.

John raised his voice so they could all hear him clearly. And they said to the mountains, fall on us. And to the hills, cover us.

There was silence in the car.

Definitely time for ice-cream, Dad said, too cheerfully.

IT HAD BEEN HALF AN hour since they'd woken up, and apart from an occasional distant outbuilding for someone's desert homestead, there was nothing of interest.

What'cha doing, John? Susie had given up looking for ice-cream in the desert, and she had already read all the comic books John had brought for the drive, Black Rider and the Apache Kid and Strange Tales.

John was whispering to himself as he stared out the window.

Counting rocks, he said.

That's a lot of rocks, his father said.

Susie watched her brother, something unreadable in her gaze.

You'll never count them all, she said, no matter how many times you try.

Susie's mother Alice turned to look behind her. Susie didn't sound like she was trying to provoke her brother – rather, weary and sad. The girl was sweaty, tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead, and too pale. She didn't remember Susan looking so damp a minute ago. It was hot in the car, too hot.

Drink your pop, Susan, she said. It'll help.

Susie looked at the can of pop beside her with distaste. I just want water, she said. Do we have water?

Alice mother was slimming, and had brought a round leather canteen full of water for herself. She