Tales of Science Fiction: Short Stories, #3

By Cindy Tomamichel

Explore the strange journeys of human and not so human in this collection. An eclectic mix of time travel, apocalyptic futures, alien contact, poems, and sentience outside the human bandwidth.

 

The second meteor. A future soldier reminisces. The perils of robotic guardianship. Encountering a plague planet. Cryogenics ain't all it's cracked up to be. Alien encounter. Deep space skating. Recovering with some help from Star Trek. A portal guardian's earthly desires. A mission gone wrong. Time travel can fix anything. Rats are people too. For the love of cats. Universal music. Martian exploration. Against the Bugs, Earth needed a hero. What was Vessel 8 incubating? Future soldier muses. Deep space writing burnout. What are the marks in the sand? A scarf of truth.

 

Escape the everyday with twenty one short stories, flash fictions and poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troglodyte Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215135549

Cindy Tomamichel

Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer. Escape the everyday with the time travel action adventure series Druid’s Portal, or science fiction and fantasy stories. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way. She is also the fiendish mind behind the empire of The Organized Author. She is bent on world domination ... hmm, sorry, did I say that out loud?  ... making life easier for authors by sharing tips that can streamline their author platform. Are you a writer? Grab my free NaNoWriMo guide: NaNoWriMo Ready. Sign up to my newsletter via my website and receive a free short read. While there, check out my blog on world building for scifi, fantasy, and romance writers.

Book preview

Foreword from the author

Science fiction is a genre that holds the future in its words – will it be a better one, or far worse than our present? Perhaps from creating future worlds, a writer might inspire a reader to take a step towards a better, fairer world. Maybe – or maybe a reader gets taken away for a brief time, exploring the stars, meeting new species, and having an adventure.

For me, that is what reading can do – give you an adventure. A journey into the mind of another.

This collection has short stories, flash fiction and a poem or two that meander around, swapping jokes with speculative fiction, and rubbing shoulders with the dystopian. But there is hope, and there is humour amongst it as well.

I’d like to thank the writing groups over the years for providing random words that exploded into stories. The Facebook group ScifiRoundTable have provided quite a few interesting prompts that have made it into this collection.

For readers – never forget the power of a kind word to the ones who dream of impossible yet extraordinary other worlds.

Cindy Tomamichel  

The Face of God 

The day the meteorite fell to earth was a big day for the little furry mammal. Whilst scurrying away from dinosaur feet, it paused and looked up briefly. That was a mistake, for it got captured. Chewing, the Tyrannosaurus Rex watched the sky as the giant ball of fire fell, and braced itself as the earth shook under its feet.

But another little mammal in the tree saw the whole thing. Clinging to the branches, it and its mate, and their brood of tiny furry creatures saw the great splash as the meteorite landed in the wide blue water. Noses twitching, they waited while the water swirled around their branch nest and jumped to safety from their tree. For days they feasted on the carcass of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Many small bands of creatures floated around with the ocean currents on the bloated corpses of the dinosaurs and were content. Safety and food in abundance was theirs.

For a long time, the sky was dark. The furred creatures were almost too fat to move. But as the waters subsided, they leapt off the gnawed bones of the Tyrannosaurus rex. They found the large fern trees homes had died, but in amongst them were many dinosaur carcasses. They and many other bands of mammals fought with the fast-moving insects for the remains, but there was plenty for all.

The mammals eventually ate their way through the dinosaur larder and peered into the sky hoping for more. For the mammals, the glowing thing in the sky was forever linked with the feasting. With few predators, the small furry mammals thrived, and bands set off exploring into the new lands, seeking out new sources of food. Into every niche did they explore, some returning to the water, some taking to the plants which grew fast on the debris of the old. Some sought insect food deep underground, while others roamed and fed within the smaller plants, learning that some tasted good.

But others remembered the taste of meat and feasted on their fellows. Growing strong and big on a diet of bone marrow and protein, they prowled, becoming as feared as the dinosaurs of old. With claws, nails, teeth, and fur did they mimic and improve on the dinosaurs.

Still others became scavengers, learning to fight and thieve, stealing the harvestings of others, be it plant or carcass. Planning, scheming, and adapting, this band of creatures became dominant. Able to live on any type of food, and adapt to any environment, the chameleon type mammal changed more than any others. They first changed themselves, and then changed the land on which they walked. From four legs to two, they were endowed with a brain that saw the world as an endless opportunity. The world would henceforth change and adapt around them.

Yet down in the dark depths of the mammal subconscious lay the memory of the thing that appeared in the sky, and the safety and food that followed.

Crack went the whip, and Namrut flinched. The rawhide ripped another piece of flesh from his torn back, and he felt the warm blood trickle down, soaking into his loincloth. Soon the biting flies would come, to feast and fight each other over his blood and sweat. With a weary sigh he placed his hands flat on the stone block. Nodding to Teni, they kicked the blocks out from the rolling logs, and pushed the block of stone up the long platform around the pyramid.

Namrut sneaked a glance up at the top of the pyramid. He didn’t know why he bothered, he knew he would die building this tomb, as surely as the pharaoh would be interred. Each day was like the last since he had been sold by his parents. Teni grunted at him, and they resumed pushing. Finally, they reached the end of the ramp, the current top of the pyramid. In his lifetime it had advanced three levels, each getting smaller. The capping stone was waiting placement far down below. The priests had already finished inside, and stored within the precious things needed by the pharaoh on his journey to the sun god Ra.

They walked slowly down the ramp, dodging other slaves with carts, and the whip bearing slave masters. The sun was hot, but it was so every day that he had known. For a moment Namrut glanced up, and sighed. Pharaoh is not long for this world. He gestured at the top of the pyramid. This month will see the end of building. Already they have finished the inside, I have heard.

We will be moved to another one. His son is drawing up plans for new type of pyramid, replied Teni, or so I have heard. He had half turned to smile at Namrut, and in doing so, failed to step aside for the slave master coming up the ramp.

You will never see it, snarled the slave driver. He smashed his whip into Teni, and before Namrut could grab him, Teni plummeted off the side of the ramp, tumbling, his body crashing and bouncing off the ramps on the way down.

No, Namrut yelled, He was my friend. Hands outstretched like claws, he jumped on the slave master, grasping his throat, and tearing at the man’s skin with fingers toughened by years of hauling stone. Other slave masters arrived, cracking their whip ends across his head. As Namrut lost consciousness, he saw the first of the carrion birds flying down from the sky towards Teni. His heart lightened. His friend would soon be entering the eternal feasting of the afterlife.

This one just volunteered to help the Pharaoh in the next world, snarled one slave master. Take him down below.

One less statue to carve as servant, said another. The priests will be pleased. Pharaoh died earlier than they calculated.

Waking up in the darkness, at first, Namrut could see nothing. The floor was cool stone beneath him, and there were so many odd smells. But one smell was an old friend, that of death. He shared the darkness with something rotten. Or someone. Sitting up, he saw a faint light, and he groped his way towards it. A small oil lamp, left behind on the pharaoh’s tomb. He picked it up, shivering. There was