Snippets IX - The Custodians

Snippets are small pieces I am considering expanding into larger works.

The click-clack-click click-clack-click of rail car passing over tracks fades into the background score even as it remains ever present, permeated into every element of the car. Every few minutes a sliding crescendo of sharper sound, the outside air rushing past unmuffled by walls, signals the occasional opening and closing of the doors to either end of the car.

Through the windows, countryside slides by peaceful and undisturbed. There is a faint rocking back and forth on the tracks, like the swell and crest of a ship at sea but left and right instead of up and down. Today the country is green, rolling hills covered in evergreens, rusty hills in the far distance, dim and out of focus. A stream just shy of being a river flirts with the rails on the left side.

There is no one else in the car.

There never is.

The swooshing sound of the rear door does not care, however. No one comes in or out but the sound goes off at least once every seven minutes.

Sigh. I guess they had to miss something.

A tone sounds, soft on the edges but unmistakeably not the sort of sound expected in an antique rail car.

"Program ending in thirty seconds. Program ending in thirty seconds."

"Already?" I checked my chronometer. Spot on, as always. I am not sure why I have been spending my sim-time on the train. It always speeds by.

The sim decouples with a fade to gray followed immediately by soft lights coming up in the sim room. The couch releases and retreats.

"Agenda." A tone acknowledges receipt of the instruction.

"Today's agenda:" The polite but impersonal female voice spells out my fate for the day.

"Ship time oh nine hundred, observational maintenance, stasis wing seven. Ship time eleven hundred, observational maintenance, stasis wing eight. Ship time thirteen hundred, meal, commissary. Ship time thirteen thirty, observational main.."

"Stop," I say with exasperation. "Why don't you just tell me the only thing I am doing today is checking popsicles for nonexistent temperature fluctuations and give me ten more minutes with the rail car?"

"Query error. Daily simulation time has been expended. Agenda is not monolithic."

"Not monolithic? It's a pile of two hour shifts looking at stasis readouts!" I groan and rub my eyes.

"Ship time thirteen hundred, meal, commissary," the voice replies.

"Oh, right. I forgot. I get to eat lunch." I grumble to myself and start heading for Wing Seven.


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And that is it for Snippets.  Hopefully there was something in the lot you enjoyed.  A few of these are stabs at some story working its way through my head (all that ice - ghoul - northwest passage stuff).  I have a full length novel of The Custodians that is in deperate need of a complete rewrite.  "Pearson Was A Fool" is a kick off for the prequel to my first novel "Means to an End" which is undergoing editing at the moment.  In fact, I am going to go back to that post and put the original opening in the comments.  The working title of that novel is "The Fools".  At the moment Fools is trapped somewhere between my ears.

November is going to be exciting and adventurous for me.  I am going to serialize the full length story "The Necropolis of Alkhezzar".  I have been finishing it up this week and will have a special treat going up on Friday the 30th in celebration.

Thanks for reading!
-np

Snippets I - Pearson Was A Fool

Snippets are small pieces I am considering expanding into larger works.


Where to begin?  Pearson was a fool; brash, arrogant and filled with the unyielding conviction of his own mortality.  That we followed him, that we ourselves were filled with the same, well...we should have seen the hypocrisy sooner.  The fact remains - Pearson was a fool and too few of us survived that discovery...


Beyond the white-stone wonders of the capitol the loyal state of Virginia stretches to the west and the south.  The touch of man fades as a late summer sun dwindling slowly through the evening without care or worry.  Suddenly discovering the lateness of the hour, it hastens through its final arc and beyond to plunge all in ever deepening dark.  Buildings fade from monumental to stately and from stately to service, service to functional, then homes, then farms, until even the farms are swallowed by the forest.  The forests of Virginia are alive.  They breathe and swell with the wind and water poured over them by low clouds tripped on fog and pierced by ancient mountains toppled low.

It is into this rolling verdant maelstrom of nature that I find myself, riding out the last moments of wind and rain as the steam engine relentlessly pulls its train of rusting cars into station.  With a slow grating screech and a final light lurch, the cars settle into hissing stillness.  The locks are thrown.  In minutes my companion and I find ourselves on the platform - the only passengers to step off.  The brakeman are already making to continue their westward voyage.  The station is so small that I doubt it would have seen a stop was it not our specific destination.

We are not alone on the tracks, but the group waiting has made no move toward the slumbering metal beast.  There is a tense moment.  I am mentally combing through my possessions.  Is the pistol in the coat I am wearing or is that reassuring weight some other similarly bulky trinket?  The group moves toward us.

"Smith?  Is one of you Smith?" one of them calls.  There is a small click from the man at my right.  The whereabouts of his pistol, at least, is not a subject of debate.

"And if I am?" my companion calls back.  It is an interesting tactic as, truth be told, I am Smith.  His name, through some curious twist of fate and dark humor, is Merlin.  And Merlin is an extraordinarily dangerous man.

There are three of them, all long coats and hats pulled low.  We are, both groups that is, cagey to a fault.  Ours is not a mild profession of simple service for meager fare.

"That will do," Merlin instructs the three.  Something in his voice signals to them that the business end of something is likely pointed in their direction.

"We...we are not your enemies, Smith."  The man in the lead whispers something else caught only by his companions.  "I...we...are taking our hands out of our pockets.  Empty save for the paper in my left, a timepiece, and slowly on all counts."

And they do - in an eerie unison, not in to any form of submission or admission of fear, merely cautious as one would show a great cat caged at meat time.

"My name is Heinrich.  I was instructed to meet a misters Smith and Merlin out from the capitol on a matter of urgency."  Heinrich hesitates and then continues, "and some delicacy which is at risk the longer these introductions take.  By your watch what is the hour?"

For the first time I speak up.  "By my watch I make it twelve minutes before the hour of ten.  And by yours?"

The man turns to me after clicking closed a small pocket clock.  "Nearly a full eighteen before the bells."

I think for a moment, juggling codes and numbers in my head.  "Then we shall have but the bells to decide who is right."  I reply.  All parties relax.  "I am Smith.  This is Merlin.  Perhaps we should adjourn to somewhere more discreet?"

"Indeed." says Heinrich. "We have a car waiting.  Right this way."