Rules Concerning Earthlight and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

By Dale Ivan Smith and K.C. Ball

Stories of the fantastic, stories of the science fictional:

• A young man lives alone on the far side of the moon, an artificial intelligence his only friend and companion.
• A hex-slinger encounters his dead wife, sword in hand, standing at a twilight crossroads.
• A young woman in prison for having superpowers is tested.
• A former Martian marine and her brilliant husband, investigate troubles on a colossal space station orbiting Saturn.
• A traveling medicine show where real magic happens faces evil in a frontier boomtown in 1901.

Plus five more.

 

This story collection is a tribute to a friendship, and the influences writers can have on one another.

 

Dale Ivan Smith met K.C. Ball in 2009, when she was an editor guest at an online writing school. That led to Dale's first sales to K.C.'s online magazine 10Flash Quarterly, a lasting friendship, and a writing partnership. They co-wrote three stories, all of which are included in this collection, including the novella "Silver City," published here for the first time. Four of the other stories, written by Dale, were published by K.C. in 10Flash, while K.C. read and influenced "Persisting" and "Nullified."

 

Dale Ivan Smith is the author of The Empowered series, the urban fantasy Gremlin Night, and the space opera Spice Crimes. His stories have appeared in the High Noon, Street Spells and Underground anthologies.

 

K.C. Ball was the author of the novel Lifting Up Veronica and Snapshots From a Blackhole and Other Oddities. She passed away in 2018.

 

Rules Concerning Earthlight and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes introductions to each story, and additional bonus material.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dale Ivan Smith
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215833438

Dale Ivan Smith

A life-long resident of the beautiful Pacific Northwest, Dale Ivan Smith has his mother to thank for his love of science fiction and fantasy. When he was five, he glimpsed the cover of a paperback sci-fi novel she was reading and was immediately interested. (It had a giant radioactive spider on the cover.) When he was fifteen, she loaned him her collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels and he devoured them in short order. He got into trouble in grade school for sneaking off to the library during class, so naturally he wound up working as a librarian for the Multnomah County Library system in Portland, Oregon. He's been writing fiction since he was a kid. He's had stories published in Perihelion Science Fiction, Everyday Fiction, 10Flash Quarterly, and on the Toasted Cake podcast. The Empowered is his first novel series, beginning with Empowered: Agent. When he isn't writing or reading fantasy and science fiction, he's playing board games, practicing yoga, and obeying his feline overlords. Show More

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INTRODUCTION

I first met K.C. Ball when she was a visiting editor guest at the online Long Ridge Writers Academy. I was taking a one-on-one course from my friend, Mary Rosenblum. Mary mentioned that K.C. would be in the forum that September, available to answer questions and talk about the editing process.

K.C. patiently answered student questions, talked about what she did as an editor and what she valued in stories. She mentioned her flash fiction magazine, 10Flash Quarterly, telling us each issue had a theme, and encouraged us to submit stories for the January 2010 issue.

In mid-October I submitted a thousand-word flash fiction, which K.C. bought after I made two minor changes. Just like that, after years spent submitting stories to magazines and only getting rejections, I had made a sale.

That November K.C. came down for Orycon, the annual Portland science fiction convention, and took me to dinner at the bar along with another writer who had also made her first sale to 10Flash.

From the moment we met in person, we were friends.

We both loved to write fiction, but K.C. just plain loved to tell stories. She had a wonderful laugh that always made you smile and laugh, if you weren’t laughing already. She knew how to size up a room before a reading and draw the audience into her story.

Having worked as a journalist, K.C. had an eye for detail and for quickly crafting a sentence. She also possessed a keen editorial eye. Collaborating with her was a joy.

We loved to brainstorm ideas together. If we were at a science fiction convention, we would meet for a lunch or dinner during the weekend. Inevitably, we would bounce story ideas off each other. But usually, because we lived in different cities, we brainstormed via a video call.

Later, I would come up with a simple outline which we’d discuss in another call. I would write the first scene and email it to her. She would revise it and send back. We would write-revise in that fashion through the story. Then rewrite it again.

K.C. reached for the stars with her own fiction, and our own collaborations were no different. She put a lot of time and effort into revising fiction. She was fearless in her willingness to rearrange and reimagine a story. Our first collaboration, the novella Silver City, published in this collection for the first time, saw us write and revise several radically different versions of that story.

The last few years of her life, K.C. made more story sales and had a novel serialized at Every Day Novels, while I was busy writing and publishing my Empowered series. In late July 2018 we talked about collaborating on another story, a sequel to Silver City. No rush, she said, knowing I was working on my urban fantasy Gremlin Night and getting set to republish my Kindle Worlds novel Spice Crimes. I told her I was really looking forward to our collaborating again.

It turned out we didn’t have the time we thought we had.

She passed away on August 25 from a heart attack.

Revisiting these stories has been an emotional experience. K.C. had a gift for making the reader feel an emotion when she told a story, be it writing or out loud. I have included a few words of commentary before each story in this collection, reflecting on how each came to be. I wrote these stories between 2009 and 2015. The title story, Rules Concerning Earthlight, written in 2013, leads off the collection. The rest are in chronological order, with one more exception: the last story, the novella Silver City. Thus, the first story we co-wrote is also the only story in this collection which has not appeared elsewhere.

I hope you enjoy these tales.

Dale Ivan Smith

September 2022

Portland, Oregon

1

RULES CONCERNING EARTHLIGHT

Dale Ivan Smith and K.C. Ball

This came about because K.C. and I were in a session on brainstorming a story at the 2013 Cascade Writers Workshop, given by our friend, author Ken Scholes. There were about forty of us there that evening in a big hotel conference room, split up into six or seven groups.

Naturally, K.C. and I ended up in the same group. Ken began the brainstorming session with practiced ease, and soon the groups began throwing out words to be used as story prompts. Infectious laughter filled the room as Ken wrote the words moon, werewolf, journey, and lifeboat on the whiteboard that stood on an easel beside him.

The various groups then came up with storylines inspired by those prompts, often hilarious.

A few weeks later, K.C. and I brainstormed our own story on Skype, inspired by that seed we had created during Ken’s mini workshop. Our co-writing process had me draft scenes and K.C. revise each one as I finished them. It worked well for us.

Rules Concerning Earthlight found a home at Perihelion Science Fiction, appearing in the July 2014 issue. It wasn’t our first collaboration, but it was our first co-written sale.

It’s a story of stepping outside of the familiar and the safe, and what those who love you will do to help you take that step.

When Poly called, Sheen stood shoulder-deep in a half-scale blue-light projection of the rover schematic, tracing a wiring diagram with his fingertip. Steps away, the real rover sat on its big wire-basket wheels; naked, access skirts removed and innards spread out on the bare-stone floor.

I need you in command. We’ve got company. Poly’s normally well-modulated voice pierced the chilly quiet of the maintenance work bay, distorted by a systems glitch in the intercom Sheen hadn’t been able to correct.

If it wasn’t the rover’s power coupling or the volume control on the intercom, something else reared an ugly head. Like a hydra, every time Sheen solved one problem, Home presented two more.  

Nothing lasts forever, son, Father’s remembered voice whispered in Sheen’s head.

Home, the self-sustaining research facility his parents had built on the Moon’s farside, was over eighty years old. It had needed a major overhaul thirty-five years ago, just before the war. It hadn’t happened then, and it wouldn’t happen now.

Sheen stepped to the projector and touched the flat-screen. Nothing happened.

Damn, he muttered, hearing Mother’s voice whisper in his mind even as the word slipped out. Profanity is the mark of a small mind, boy.

Poly’s voice blared. Did you hear me, Sheen? I said we have company.

He touched the screen once more. This time the schematic faded. Explain ‘company’, he said.

Come take a look yourself. Her voice - one second too loud, the next a whisper - echoed off the work bay’s high ceiling and its sealed basalt walls.

Is there heat and air in the access tubes? Sheen asked.

You said you’d be in maintenance for at least four hours, so there’s no heat in the tubes and ventilation’s at half-speed. I can start pushing more air now, but I can’t do a thing about the heat in the time it will take you to get to the elevator.

Poly sounded petulant. That wouldn’t do. Sheen could deal with malfunctioning projectors and faulty power couplings, but he couldn’t stay alive at Home without her.

No oxygen plus no heat equals no life, son, Father whispered.

Sheen wiped his hands on his coveralls, adding another layer of grime.

When was the last time you changed them? Mother asked.

Sheen ignored her voice. Give me a few minutes to button the rover back up, Poly. And I’ll take the stairs down. I don’t trust the elevator.

"Your call, little brother. Hurry and you won’t get too cold."

Eight minutes later, Sheen slipped into the command center on Home’s bottom level, one-hundred meters below the lunar surface. Command was warm, but the access tubes and stairwell had been frigid.

He rubbed his hands to rid them of the chill. The fine hairs in his nostrils felt stiff as wire. The tips of his ears and edges of his lips tingled with the change in temperature.

He made a joke of it. It’s so cold up on the higher levels, I could have chewed the air, if it hadn’t been so thin.

Poly didn’t even chuckle. You fuss and whine more than Mother and Father ever did.

Sheen flopped into the worn leather chair set in front of the full-wall monitor. It wobbled under him. Loose bolts; another fix. You took better care of Home when they were still alive.

Did not. She sounded hurt by his remark. Sheen hoped it was just a part of their normal bickering.

Did, too. Now what was it you wanted me to see?

The big screen shifted from the standard image - the stretch of cleared regolith leading to the vehicle airlock - to a rubble-strewn and pockmarked expanse of Moonscape even more desolate. 

Sheen made out an isolated shape set against the thin bright edge of Earthlight.

This is a live broadcast from remote number four, Poly said. One hundred klicks north-northwest of Home. Very near the edge.

That’s not a natural formation. Sheen refocused his eyes to take in the infrared and ultraviolet light collected by the camera. It’s got a heat register. It’s man-made, isn’t it?

Yes. A work shuttle, broadcasting a message on all bands.

Let me hear it.

There was electronic crackle to the signal, but its words were sharp and clear. "Mayday, Mayday. Shuttle Varnana down. Repeat: Shuttle down."

Mayday, Sheen muttered. Shuttle down.

Do you have any idea how annoying it is when you babble to yourself?

Bullshit, Sheen said. You can’t be annoyed. It’s nothing but a phrase Father programmed you to say.

Bullshit right back at you, Poly retorted. It’s still annoying, and you do it because Father programmed you, too.

"He taught me."

Same thing.

It’s not.

Who are you talking to? Sheen would always ask, when he caught Father talking to himself.

Me. The standard answer.

But why not just think it?

Because sounds change words. Words come from sounds.

Are you saying the sound shapes the word?

Father would smile then. More than that. Sound shapes the words and in return words shape our thoughts.

Sheen hadn't understood that, not until after Father had died. And it wasn’t until even later that he understood why Father had programmed Poly – Sheen’s cybernetic sister and the artificial intelligence that managed Home -– for spoken and keyboard input, rather than a neural interface.

There was times Sheen was glad he had someone to talk to, even if Poly wasn’t human, but sometimes he liked being able to keep his thoughts to himself.

Father had been a cybernetics genius, and the gentler and more caring of Sheen’s parents. Mother had been a geneticist and surgeon, a genius in her own right who had blessed Sheen with so many physical and mental alterations it would take a good-sized manual to list them all.

His wider range of vision was one such blessing. A reaction time just this side of superman was another, as was an endocrine system that allowed him to age at a slower rate than normal and recover quickly from injuries.

You’re almost invulnerable, you know, Mother had told him on his eighth birthday.

Explain that word, Mother, he had said.

It means that you’re not like other little boys.

But what’s the definition?

She had smiled. Impossible to damage, injure, or wound.

That’s not what you told me on my birthday last year.

She had smiled again. It isn’t but almost doesn’t cover what you tried to do last year.

Almost invulnerable. Mother and Father hadn’t been so well made. They had lived a good long time but had died together in a rockslide, outside on the surface, four years after the war began. Sheen had been nine then; now he was almost forty. And for all those years, it had been just he and Poly.

I don’t see markings, Poly, he said. Which side does it belong to?

Data flowed across the screen. Lunar transport vehicle Varnana: rated for two occupants and 800 kilograms of cargo maximum. Launch date: 3 Aug 2087, New Jiangnan Shipyards, Nearside.

It’s an old Sino/Indonesian Bloc shuttle, Poly said.

Sheen tapped his knuckle at the bare spot of the command chair’s left arm where the leather covering had long ago worn away. Then it’s the enemy, he said.

It would appear so, Poly said. Come on; let’s do some digging.

Thirty minutes later, they had more information but not as much as Poly had promised, even though she had combed the shuttle’s memory for every little bit of odd data she could find.

The shuttle was even older than Home. It had been built at the corporate shipyards in New Jiangnan; rated for independent transit within lunar space only. Originally designed for survey and rescue work, and as a cargo hauler, the shuttle had been refitted as a scout ship at the onset of the war and it had carried light armor and arms. If any of that armament remained, Sheen doubted it was usable now that the shuttle had crashed. Life support was still intact, though.

It’s been rated for two people, Poly said. There’s only life signs for one.

Male or female? Sheen asked.

My guess is that it’s a woman. I can’t be sure; I haven’t been able to do a full hack into the telemetric data.

Even so, they had more real-time information on the shuttle than anyone who might still exist nearside. It had crashed just this side of the Earthlight line, so most likely no one over there even knew the shuttle was down. The satellite network that allowed global communications on the Moon had been knocked down at the beginning of the war.

They’re not moving, Poly said. So they might be injured, unconscious, or asleep. Whichever it is, the survivor is alone. Just like you.

I’m not alone, Sheen said. I have you.

The telemetric data stopped. Sheen’s own heart skipped a beat. What happened? he asked.

The transmission has ceased.

Explain, Sheen said.

High probability of system failure.

Shuttle systems or transmission system?

I can’t tell.

Well, that’s that, I guess. Sheen stood to go back up to the maintenance bay.

Do you think we should leave them there? Poly asked. Not knowing if they’re alive or not.

It’s an enemy ship, Poly. Mother and Father would have been upset that we poked at it as much as we did. Leave it be.

The war may be over. But whether or not it is, we’ll still be able to see that ship.

Sheen shook his head. You can alter the data flow, so we won’t even have to look at it.

We’ll still know it’s out there.

I don’t care, Sheen said.

Father would have cared.

And Mother would have told him he should keep his nose out of other people’s business! Sheen felt his face go hot.

Calm down. I was only presenting options.

"I am calm!"

Are not. Your heart rate and respiration have increased.

I’m fine!

This time it was Father’s voice whispering. A human being could be dying out there, son. All alone.

We should do something, Poly said.

There’s nothing to be done.

You’re wrong. Father’s voice was louder now. There’s something you can do.

Sheen’s mouth suddenly felt dry as the dust outside.

Sheen, your vital signs are still climbing. Poly’s voice had taken on her big-sister, no-nonsense-you-must-act-now tone. Take a breath and relax.

He sucked in a lungful of air, conditioned to listen to her but struggling to be his own man. Maybe I can do something.

Oh?

I can go out there.

Sheen, that’s crazy talk. It’s too dangerous. You know the rules.

Never let yourself be seen, Sheen recited, just above a whisper. Never step over into Earthlight.

Poly paused; listening to something else. Little brother, your vital are still climbing.

I’m fine.

You’re not, Mother said, calling from his memories.

Mother