Aurora Wolf, A Literary Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy
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First Excerpt from “Rose-Colored Glass”:
Shelter Bay. This place used to be a resort. My parents brought me here as a child and we slept out in the open, the stars and three moons for company. Waiting for the voices, my father said. I never heard anything but the wind across the open sea.
Then two of the moons imploded and took away the tides. The powers that be made the place into an outpost that served as a rehab prison, since all the old buildings were intact in what was now a desert too dry for rot to set in. The land stretched out to the horizon without a boulder or a bit of brush to show for it. In the daytime, anyway.
Karlens came by two hours ago to report on his routine tour of the perimeter, done on his own time. It was just past midnight, the ground a dark line against the ambient light that seemed to stick around a long time after the sun went down. Sudden flashes often erupted from the region outside the fence, peculiar and intermittent. He asked me what they were.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said to him, “but look, what you’re doing is a waste of your time and my patience. We already have everything inside the barrier showing up on monitors, and all of it gets captured and sent back to base. They screen it all and that’s enough.”
“Just following orders, sir.” He left after snapping a salute at me.
“What orders?” I yelled after him. “I’m in charge here, I give the orders, and I say you don’t need to do a damn thing!” I felt a twinge of regret after that, but not for long. I was entitled. I hadn’t slept more than four hours a night for three months. The strain was beginning to tell on me. I tried lying down after he left, hoping that for once I’d be too tired to dream. It was more a nightmare that came, the same one over and over and I couldn’t seem to make it stop. The isolation was taking its toll.
None of us really looked forward to sleep on the outpost. We were all night watchmen.
Second Excerpt from “Rose-Colored Glass”:
The moon was high as it always was three hours before sunrise. I looked out and saw what was there, a million shards of glass that could have been scattered by a giant’s hand, dazzling, flickering points of light, as if the stars were reflected in an unending black pool. But that’s not what they were.
If Moore had stayed where he was supposed to, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go out there to look for him. Only I knew that was a lie. I’d have gone into the starfield anyway. It was something I couldn’t help doing just before the end of every assignment. But there was very little time. I needed to get back to camp before dawn.
Fifty yards out I stopped walking and bent down and picked up one of the shards and held it in my hand. A perfect, thin wafer of light. I saw my own reflection and then it cleared, and I saw the room in my dream again, the wind outside rushing through the grasses, and I felt the breathing pulse of the walls. I saw this clearly, and the feeling of emptiness seized me. I belonged there. Not standing on the plain in this godforsaken place. I should be in that room, I thought. In the gateway. For that was what it was. That was what haunted my dreams. The way out. The way back. My choice. But the book was closed.
Very gently I laid the glass down and picked up another. It showed the room for only a moment, and then the worlds in it raced past, too fast for me to perceive any detail. I didn’t have time to sort them out, to let the random scenes unfold. I needed to see what I wanted to see again, what I missed, wat I felt bereft without, what I could tell no one.
I picked up a third one. I pressed it at three points and closed my fist over it. When I opened my hand the room was there, waiting, the book on the table, only this time, it was open. I thought of what I wanted and watched the glass move as if water in a brook had passed over it. We, our whole unit, our setup and barriers, were in the foreground, surrounded by the emptiness of the plain. Then, somewhere in the distance, beyond and out of sight of our unit, lying on the other side of another world, I saw it. In each facet of the sliver of glass, in its diamond shape, I saw the city I remembered, a fractal impression, a collection of ions brought into more than three dimensions, all of it blinding me, nearly bringing me to tears. It hovered there and I closed my hand over it again. Yes!
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Book categories: Science Fiction