The Man in 14C: A collection of science fiction stories Read online

  The Man In 14C

  By K. J. Gillenwater

  First Kindle Edition, October 2017

  Copyright 2017 by K. J. Gillenwater

  Cover art design by K. J. Gillenwater

  Photograph by Victor Zastol’skiy/Adobe Stock

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  This book is the second in a series of science fiction short story collections. All three stories in this collection were written following guidelines for various contests, the details of which are included before each story.

  Encounter. Two crew members must deal with a hull breach on a hauling vessel bound for a distant earth colony. Alone and desperate, they make a choice that might alter their lives forever.

  Lucinda. A tv star in a dystopian America reveals her downfall from highly paid news anchor to a low-life host of a television reality show featuring everyday people being evicted from their homes during the worst financial crisis in U.S. history.

  The Man in 14C. A cancer patient on a flight back from Tokyo passes through a wormhole and experiences time travel that transports him 20 years into the future. His life destroyed, he must reconnect with family and discover how he fits into an unfamiliar world.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Encounter

  Lucinda

  The Man in 14C

  About the Author

  Encounter

  Contest: Written for @LayethTheSmackDown "Epic Tales From a Beautiful Mind" Challenge on Wattpad. It was included in the First Contact group of stories. K.J. had to write about a first encounter with an alien species and had to include certain items in the story: a reference to a fictitious brand of cigarettes, a reference to a graphic novel series, a reference to Star Wars (at least one), a picture of a dinosaur in someone’s backyard, and at least two sentences of dialogue used word for word.

  An alarm sounded on the control panel. Our water hold had sprung a leak. Must’ve been that asteroid storm we passed through when Carlos accidentally turned us off course while I was asleep.

  My training at the Academy kicked in. I flicked my fingers over the flashing alarm icon to read the rate of loss.

  Hundreds of gallons leaked into space in less than a minute.

  “Shit.”

  I ran the numbers through my head. Our next resupply station was a several light years from our location. More than two month’s travel time. We’d left Earth with plenty of water for our mission.

  I needed more hands on deck to stem the flow. A spacewalk would be in order to survey the damage, patch the hole. Hopefully, it was small enough to be patched with the meager emergency supplies we had on board or we were in serious trouble.

  I waved my hand at the comms screen. Carlos slept buried under blankets in our quarters. “Wake up. We’ve got a massive water leak. I need you out there now.”

  Carlos had dozens of hours of experience suiting up and working on the exterior hull of hauling vessels like The Gemini. His job as co-pilot was to act as relief captain, but he also pulled double-duty as the chief engineer aboard our two-person hauler. Well, two persons and a very aged ‘robotic assistant,’ as the company liked to call them.

  “Carlos.” My voice grew sharper. “Get up. Now.”

  The blankets stirred. Carlos sat up and hit his head on the upper berth – my berth – and swore.

  The camera automatically shifted its focus to his face and zoomed in for the perfect shot of his red-rimmed eyes and messed up hair. He’d only gotten off his 12-hour shift a few hours ago. I wasn’t surprised he had been difficult to wake.

  “What’s going on?” Carlos rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “Water leak. Big one. You gotta get out there. The airlock’s prepped. All you need to do is run down there and suit up.”

  The Gemini was equipped with a lot of automated systems that could be run from the main deck with the wave of a hand over the right control. The automation allowed for a skeleton crew, which made space shipments much cheaper than 20 years ago. But some of the equipment had seen better days. The risks had grown greater each year the company decided to keep the same haulers working, rather than replace them with newer, more reliable models.

  “Got it.” Carlos looked fully awake now. Aware of the seriousness of the alarm. He picked up his tool bag hanging by the berths.

  The three things you needed to have in space: air, water, food. Without them, you were screwed. Carlos didn’t need to be reminded.

  The cameras seeded throughout the ship followed his path. Out of the sleeping berths, down a stark white hallway, past the storage chambers full of equipment for Colony 427. Equipment to replace that which had been damaged by a magnetic pulse from a nearby pulsar. The colony builders had forgotten to move everything into a shielded bunker before a storm and had been laid up for months waiting for our delivery.

  Didn’t bode well for the future of this colony if they could be so easily ruined through a bit of forgetfulness. But the company had plans. Big plans. Part of those plans was to extend its reaches further and further into space. Creating new outposts. Discovering new things including sources of energy, minerals and other necessary items for the ever-hungry Earth dwellers.

  “Water stores depleting rapidly. Get out there, Carlos. Now.”

  I waved my hand over another screen to my left. I immediately adjusted the water allocated per shower to one-third and daily totals to less than a quarter of what we considered ‘normal use’ in a given space flight. The regulated plumbing system would slow down our usage, but the calculations about how far we could travel before we ran out of water was still unknown.

  Carlos would have to move quickly to keep us from ending up in a dire scenario.

  The cameras tracked Carlos’s movements. Another hundred yards and he’d arrive at the air lock. His boots clunked heavily on the corridor floor. I wished he’d move faster.

  The alarm increased its rhythm. I turned my attention back to the water levels. The pressure was looking bad. Very very bad.

  “Shit.”

  Carlos slipped into the air lock.

  A loud boom echoed through the entire ship. Louder than anything I’d heard before.

  Carlos shifted his gaze into the camera lens. “Did we lose it?”

  The fear I saw in them was palpable.

  The screen flashed at me. I read the news, “Total blow out. The hole must’ve been small. Pierced both hulls. All that pressure…”

  “Mary Mother of God.” Carlos crossed himself.

  The screens surrounding me, flashing their messages and streaming the camera signals from all parts of the vessel, disappeared. Tunnel vision set in.

  We. Were. Screwed.

  Carlos unbuttoned his chest pocket and pulled out a box of Ecrivain’s Specials. He fumbled for a lighter.

  “Hey, we can’t smoke on board. That’s a code violation.”

  He pinched a cigarette between his lips, flicked the lighter and touched the flame to it. “Screw the code.” He sucked long and deep. Smoke billowed out of his nostrils and into the closed air lock.

  ***

  The computer systems on board analyzed our situation. The blowout had also caused a suction effect on our pipe system. The only water that remained was a gallon of drinking water in the storage tank under the galley sink and the brown water used in the shower system. Our filters would burn out before we’d get to Colony 427. I set aside my fear and waved my hand over the star map, touched our location – a flashing blue blip – and exp
anded the view so that I could see the possibilities that surrounded us.

  Carlos entered the piloting deck. It had been built for one person to operate, so it was cramped. Screens surrounded me. Each one allowed a view of a different system: the cargo hold, the video projection, the map, the ship’s systems, the space view. I spun in my seat to face my partner.

  Carlos had the cigarette between his lips. “You can rat me out if you want to, Lissa, but I’m not signing my own death warrant.”

  “You mean the asteroid storm?” Carlos hadn’t been my best partner, but I’d never divulge to the company that his sloppy piloting may have doomed us. “We gotta find some water first before I worry about what the company thinks about the damage to the ship.”

  He puffed on his banned cigarette, “As Han Solo said to Chewbacca, ‘it’s not my fault.’ Something went wrong with the display. I was given the all clear. You think I’d pilot us through an asteroid storm on purpose?”

  I wanted to tell him no, but I knew better. A man didn’t choose this kind of job. He took it because he was desperate. I knew Carlos’s situation better than he realized. I’d heard scuttlebutt back at the launch zone. Other hauler pilots black balled him, didn’t want to work with him. He had a reputation for looking out only for himself, and on a long haul like this one, with only 2 crew members, you had to rely on each other, trust each other.

  I thought about the picture my sister, Zara, had handed to me before I’d left on this trip. It was a silly thing, a drawing of a dinosaur standing in a 20th century neighborhood. So out of place. So ridiculous. She knew it made me laugh. And this was the kind of job where you needed to find moments to laugh. I had pasted it next to my berth.

  I felt just like the dinosaur at that moment, as if I were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could’ve chosen a different route. I could’ve been millions of miles away from this situation. But I’d selected the job for the money. I wasn’t planning on doing another long haul. I’d promised Aaron that much. He hadn’t been happy when I’d given him the flight plan details. I’d be gone for almost a year.

  I was the dinosaur who’d found himself sandwiched between a neat row of houses and a backyard fence in old-fashioned suburbia. But instead of a neighborhood, I was stranded in an unfamiliar solar system that had nothing in common with the world I’d come from.

  No point in arguing with Carlos about how the damage had occurred. We were in the situation, and we had to deal with it. I turned back to my screens and focused on the star map once more. “We’ve got to be able to find somewhere that has potable water, even ice.” I selected in the resource we needed. Every company ship was outfitted with an emergency resource locator. Didn’t always help, but it came standard ever since the Nexus accident decades ago. “And put out that cigarette, I don’t want to get docked any pay for breaking the rules.”

  Carlos sniffed. “If we even make it back for our pay.”

  Clearly a pessimist. Just my luck.

  A flashing green light appeared on the star map. “Here.” I waved my hand over the light to expand the view and get more detail about what the computer had found. “Only a day or two away. Looks like a decent-sized moon around one of the Super-Earths in this system. Says it’s likely to have a large amount of ice, possibly some running water depending on where we land.”

  Relief coursed through me in a cool wave. This would work. If we sealed off the hole in the double hull, we could replenish our water resources. The lander could be used as a scouting vehicle and was equipped for a certain amount of storage.

  “I’ll work the helm.” Carlos assigned himself the less risky duty.

  One of us would have to stay behind on the ship to control the departure and reentry of the lander from the docking bay. Although the ship was mostly automated when it came to handling cargo and working the basic life support systems, the emergency workings generally were controlled by the human components, just in case there was a breakdown of the automation.

  I nodded.

  He must’ve felt a curtness in that nod. “You’re a better pilot.”

  I wasn’t surprised Carlos wanted to remain on board. There would be a lot of unknowns with this mission. Although the moon contained what we needed, it didn’t mean I could just land, suck up some water and zip back to the ship in an hour or two. We could encounter any number of problems ranging from atmospheric dangers, gravity problems, unstable topography. But at least the computer assured us no life existed on this moon, so the possibly of First Contact was crossed of the list of dangers.

  It had been known to happen – First Contact. And mostly not with good results. The Earth Government had cobbled together a protocol plan after the first encounter with alien life more than fifty years ago. The attitude the company had about First Contact was: not our problem, not our mission. In other words, avoid putting yourself into a position where the First Contact Protocol may come into play. Not only was it dangerous for the crew, it was costly for the company.

  “That’s fine. One of us has to go. Might as well be me.” I waved my hand over the monitor that displayed the moon to drill down further into the information available. “Looks like temperatures are within a decent range: -30 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius. Depending on the position in the system.”

  “Lemme get some sleep. Can we discuss this at the next shift? I’m beat.”

  I’d forgotten that Carlos had been dead asleep when the emergency had occurred. I nodded. “We can figure out a repair plan for the water hold and I’ll give you the lowdown on the approach for water recovery.”

  “Sounds good.” Carlos turned to leave the cramped space. “Oh, hey, do you have Fray #7? I left it in the bathroom a couple of days ago. Haven’t seen it since.”

  Carlos’s dopey vampire comic. Did he really think I went for that kind of reading? “No, I never touched your comic book.” I remembered the cover – a huge snake-like monster, its mouth full of teeth, on the verge of chomping down on some futuristic character. Why Carlos insisted on packing a stack of these comics in his gear for the trip was beyond me. We had everything available in the electronic library at the swipe of a hand. “Not my kind of stuff.”

  “Well, let me know if you see it. I could’ve sworn I left it in there.”

  By the look in his dark gaze, I knew he didn’t believe me. The last thing I needed was Carlos going nuts over a comic book right before I hopped in the lander for our mission. We needed to trust each other not get distracted by petty problems. “I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for it when I do my rounds.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. Treat the comic book as a serious problem, and he was happy. Treat it like the dumb piece of trashy writing that it was, get retribution. I was not in the mood, nor could I risk retribution.

  He nodded, gave a grim smile and left the piloting deck. “See you at 1800 hours.”

  I glanced at the clock to my right. Eight hours from now. I had a lot of research to work on in the meantime.

  ***

  The flight suit restricted my movements more than I liked. It was pressurized to mimic the Earth’s atmosphere, but the odd feeling of floating inside the slightly-loose fitting suit was unnerving. I’d never gotten used to it. When I moved my hand forward, instead of feeling the end of my suit mitts, my hand sort of floated inside the suit. A constant pressure of air kept my body from touching any part of the suit. This also kept me protected from extreme temperatures when on the surface. The suit could withstand a certain level of temperatures without affecting the wearer.

  I ignored the sensation as best I could and reached out to manipulate the landing controls. The lander didn’t have the same swipe screens as the cargo ship. With a hand encased in triple thick fabric and shielding, the swiping didn’t work. When on a mission such as this, the pilot had to go back to old fashioned buttons and levers to operate the lander.

  “You are within range of the landing zone.” Carlos’s voice came through my headset as a tinny distant noise.
The suits were built for surviving unknown conditions, not for perfect sound quality. The video image of Carlos projected on my helmet face shield was clear, however. “You should be able to see the sharp ridge on one side of you and the pools on the other.”

  The lander came down out of thick layer of ice clouds, and the ridge appeared right in front of me. The pools of still, clear water stretched out in the distance. Plenty to fill our tanks. “Roger. I see the zone. All clear.” I conducted the landing sequence and slowed my approach. Dust kicked up from the flat spot we’d selected from the computer’s rudimentary map on board the ship.

  “I’m receiving the lander’s scans now. Looks like we can recover 2,000 gallons without a problem. That should be more than enough.”

  “Agreed.” I set the lander down softly on the hard soil of the mystery moon. My lander’s tank could hold 500 gallons, so I’d have to make several trips to fill up our on-board tank. It would put us a few days’ behind schedule, which the company wouldn’t like, but it couldn’t be helped. “Headed out now to hook up the pump.”

  “Lissa,” Carlos’s voice crackled in my headset. “Be careful.”

  “You got it.” I waited for the lander to equalize with the moon’s atmosphere. I knew Carlos cared more about the water than my safe return, but I appreciated the sentiment. I pulled the lever to open the door and let the steps down. Although protected in my flight suit, I could sense the heat emanating off of the yellow surface beneath my feet.

  I looked at the readout on my wrist. 129 degrees.

  Hot.

  Thank god my suit shielded me from the worst of it. As I looked out at the pools of still water several dozen feet in front of me, I marveled that they had not evaporated under the intense heat. However, after the research I’d done about this moon, I knew the hottest part of the day lasted only a few hours, at night, the cold swept in and froze most everything in its path. It took most of the daytime hours to thaw out the water. Underneath the surface the computer had detected a subterranean ocean of fresh water. Salinity levels could be detected through density scans.