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

  I dragged the heavy suction hose to the closest pond and switched on the power. The drone of the pump soothed me. The water would quickly fill the holding tank, and I could return to our vessel. The quicker we finished this refill, the better. I shivered at the view in front of me. Beyond the pools rose a stark, dry mountain. Although it was daylight, the star that provided heat in this system penetrated easily through the thin atmosphere. The emptiness of space hovered above me. A dark weight.

  I’d never felt this way about outer space before. I’d been all over the traveled parts of space in my job from colony to colony, moon to moon, from distant and near planets and back to Earth again. I enjoyed the feeling of soaring through space and the amazing beauty to be found beyond the obscuring skies at home. I had seen the glow of other galaxies, distant collapsing and birthing stars in all of their colors and wonder, and the vast black between that I could never describe to my sister when I returned home.

  But here on this moon, the darkness terrified me. I felt isolated, alone, distant and lost. I wanted to leave this place. This desolate moon saved us and scared me all at the same time. Life-giving water on a dead planet. It saddened me.

  The pump cut off.

  The tank was full.

  I trudged back to the lander and took my booty back to the ship. One trip complete. Three more to go.

  ***

  My eyes were tired and dry. It had been a long shift of multiple trips back and forth from the moon. I was on my final trip.

  Carlos’s voice crackled in my helmet, and the video kicked on. “Bet you could use some more coffee.” Carlos held up a steaming mug to the camera.

  We’d been refraining from using the water to save what little we’d had left. But with our tanks almost refilled with fresh water from the moon, we’d made a pot of celebratory coffee after my last docking.

  “Ah, now that’s good stuff.” Carlos took a gulp. “Better hurry back, Lissa, the pot’ll be empty soon.” He flashed a smile.

  I quoted General Puckett’s famous lines from the last World War, “’Retreat. Regroup. Return. Revenge.’ You’d better make a second pot. I expect a hot mug in my hand the minute I dock.” If he could’ve seen me, I would’ve shaken my fist in fury, just like the General had, to emphasize my threat.

  The water we’d picked up tasted 100 times better than what we’d been drinking from our closed water loop system on The Gemini. The coffee I’d had when I returned to the ship had been divine.

  “Gotcha. Cream, right?”

  “Right. And none of that manufactured stuff from the rations.” I dragged the hose back out to the clear, quiet pool. “Break out the real thing.”

  Carlos gave me a salute and then cut out.

  I set the hose deep into the pool. The deep blue color mesmerized me. Reflecting some of the thin atmosphere, but also picking up the dark of space beyond. Tired, I took a seat on a boulder near the edge and waited for the tank to fill.

  After 30 minutes or so my mind felt hazy. I had a headache. I needed to sleep. How many hours had I been awake?

  A ripple echoed across the water’s surface. Concentric circles from a center point about 5 yards out. Not lunar winds.

  My heart leaped in my chest.

  The scans of the moon had shown no life. My eyes must be playing tricks on me. The ripple died.

  “Carlos.” I pressed the communication button on my wrist with a clumsy, padded finger.

  A pencil-thin, snake-like creature skated across the water’s surface toward me.

  I focused my gaze on it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “Carlos.” I could hear my voice grow reedy.

  The video inside my helmet switched on.

  The alien creature swirled and dipped in the water, keeping its distance. Its white body lithe in the clear water.

  “Did you run the water through the filtration system?” Fear coursed through me. We’d done the scans. We’d followed the protocol. The computer had detected nothing. The moon was supposed to be devoid of life. The water pristine and uncontaminated.

  Carlos sat in the command chair, expressionless.

  “Can you hear me?”

  The alien danced across the surface, swirling closer to my position at the pool’s edge, then twisting away. It had no eyes, no visible mouth. No identifiable features.

  Carlos stared into the camera. His mouth slack.

  “Carlos! Talk to me. There’s alien life down here.” The slender, white thing twisted into a ball and then flung itself backward, diving deep into the pool. I switched off the pump, yanked the hose out of the pool, and scrambled backward with the heavy hose in my hands. “Tell me you sent the water through the filtration unit. Please.”

  My partner wouldn’t respond. His body jerked.

  The headache that had been a dull pain when I arrived earlier, grew into something much worse. My legs grew weak. I fell to the moon’s surface. “Carlos!”

  My partner’s face grew pale, as white as the alien swirling in the water. He gurgled. Blood dripped from his nose.

  The pain in my head exploded.

  I thought of my sister back on Earth. When she’d handed me that silly picture of the dinosaur in someone’s backyard. A creature out of place. A creature in a world where he didn’t belong.

  My eyesight faded. I stared up at the emptiness of space and marveled at the innumerable dots of light and wondered which one was Earth. My home.

  Lucinda

  Contest prompt: This is K.J.’s entry for the #HeartGoesLastFic contest on Wattpad. She had to create a backstory for a secondary character in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Heart Goes Last." She chose Lucinda Quant as her character: A reality TV star who interviews people being evicted from their homes in the near-future after a societal collapse. What led to her dismissal as a big TV news anchor?

  Lucinda Quantillo-Hermosa knew she’d have to change her name. No one in the TV business had any interest in hiring a news anchor with such a name. News anchors needed to be stereotypes – blonde and ballsy. She might not be blonde, but she sure had balls.

  Lucinda had fought her way out of the poor and dumpy neighborhood she’d been born into on the outskirts of the city. Always within eyesight of the more glamorous life of the rich and powerful. They passed by her apartment block in their Town Cars and limousines as they made their way from the airport to their penthouses tucked safely inside the high rent district.

  Their kids went to the ‘good’ schools. Not the public schools that doled out education like castor oil—only one small spoonful a day. No, the rich and famous would never subject their precious progeny to likes of P.S. Number 155 – Lucinda’s alma mater.

  Lucinda knew from an early age that she didn’t belong with the poor and downtrodden. The slack-jawed, glassy-eyed children of drug users and alcoholics surrounded her with their pathetic life goals. Demonte wanted to be the first in his family to graduate from high school. Teresa wanted to make it to eighteen without getting pregnant like her three older sisters.

  Lucinda had much bigger goals.

  In high school, she’d muscled her way into the role of Student Editor for their pathetic school paper. A four-page, stapled-together crapfest that most students dumped into the trash on their way out of English class. Since the advisor for the paper had no interest in guiding a bunch of losers on the finer points of journalism, Lucinda had her run of the place. She’d reassigned student reporters to stories she knew would grab the attention of P.S. Number 155. No longer did they cover the Friday night football games and the weekly cafeteria menu. Instead, under her direction, students followed stories about widespread cheating on the annual state exam, rumors of an affair between the principal and the janitor, and drug busts off-campus that involved anyone with a connection to their school.

  In one year’s time the student paper went from being an automatic dump in the recycle bin to the hottest thing since a transgendered girl joined the cheerleading squad.

  Lucinda knew
that journalism and manipulating the feckless reader was her talent in life. As one of the few who’d paid attention in English class, she learned the value of vocabulary and used it to her advantage. She took this knowledge to secure herself a college scholarship. Her passionate essay and accompanying awards for her work on the school paper, plus her absent father’s Hispanic heritage made her a shoe-in for financial aid.

  Although her father’s family had emigrated a century earlier, she spoke of a Quinceañera celebration that never happened, the traditional Mexican dishes her German-Irish mother never made, and her hopes for uplifting the Hispanic community which she’d never embraced.

  She received numerous full-ride scholarships and accepted one at the best university in the country for journalism. The day she left for college she shook off the dirt of her inner-city upbringing and never looked back. She spent the next four years honing her skills and dreaming big. She’d lost interest in newspaper journalism and latched onto the glamour and recognition only a career in television news could bring.

  By the time she started interviewing for jobs her senior year, she’d molded herself into the perfect TV news anchor. She shortened her too-Hispanic last name from “Quantillo-Hermosa” to “Quant.” Her long, dark locks were dyed and primped into a stiff, blonde coif that mimicked every successful female news anchor Lucinda had studied. Her accent grew clipped and non-regional with rounded vowels and distinct consonants at the end of every word. Any trace of Lucinda Quantillo-Hermosa was erased and replaced with a molded, perfected, new-and-improved version.

  National News Today, the leading morning news program on television, won her over with their generous offer: early morning co-lead anchor with shared dressing room. From 5 am to 7 am Lucinda would be front and center, reading the news of the day, interviewing guests, and chatting it up with Gil Gilderson.

  Gil Gilderson had been on National News Today for decades. He’d anchored the evening news on the most popular program in the country. He had been bumped down to early morning co-lead anchor five years ago when his personal life spilled over into the news. A cheating husband with a secret love child could not be a serious news anchor. He’d lost his trustworthiness. Women were switching the channel to watch Jane Allred on their competitor’s channel.

  Although Gil had lost his shine with the general public, he still drew viewers during the early morning hours. Lucinda knew this was a huge opportunity for her. Who wouldn’t like a perky, young, adorable co-anchor from fly-over territory (or so her official bio read for her page on the channel’s website)?

  Lucinda leapt into her role with gusto. She gritted her teeth every morning, rising at 3 am to find time for a workout, a carbohydrate-free, organic, anti-GMO breakfast and two glasses of pristine bottled water from the south of France, and still made it to the studio by 4:35 for her hair and makeup. On the air by 5, non-stop smiling and pleasantness for two hours until 7 o’clock rolled around and the ‘main’ news team took over.

  Lucinda knew, at first, her audience was small. Not many movers and shakers watched her during the early morning hours. But the opportunities were there. She’d grown up with the dirt, the scum of the earth. Her former classmates had turned into junkies, whores and prison inmates. But not Lucinda. She would never be one of them. Those days were long past her. The blonde hair, the heavy tv makeup, the designer wardrobe…even if she’d run into one of her former classmates on the streets, they never would’ve recognized her.

  Lucinda who? They’d say. We didn’t have any Lucinda Quant at our high school. No way would P.S. Number 155 produce someone as pretty and polished as she.

  Lucinda never visited home. Never wrote her mother. Once she’d left for college, she pretended she’d sprung from the fields. A mysterious girl from nowhere. And when she’d gotten her six-figure job on National News Today, she’d made a point of cutting all ties. After college she’d left no forwarding address, no phone number, no way to contact her. Her mother and younger siblings would only siphon off her hard-gained wealth. They didn’t earn it. They didn’t help her. They’d actually dragged her down all these years with their low ways and appalling lack of intellect.

  Lucinda had achieved everything on her own by sheer force of will, through determination and effort. She’d climbed hurdles and broken through walls all on her own, and she was dead set on enjoying her success alone. Without interference. Without guilt.

  In five years she’d clawed her way onto the main news program – 7 to 9. Morning prime time. They’d booted Missy Blaise from the top spot and ‘transitioned’ her into a mid-day snoozefest talk show for women with midlife crises called “Ladies Lunch.” Lucinda knew the truth – aging, blonde, female reporters did not last long at the news desk, and Missy’s stiff, blonde bob had faded from vibrant yellow to curdled cream.

  Jim Dasher, Lucinda’s new partner from 7 to 9, had been on the program as many years as Missy, but his gray sideburns and faded blue eyes made him more likeable in the eyes of the audience. Lucinda and the other women on TV knew the game. Men had a much longer career in news than women.

  For thirteen years Lucinda ruled the morning news desk at National News Today. She interviewed heads of state, business tycoons and entertainment icons. The ruthlessness she’d honed during her turbulent high school days and competitive college years had kept her firmly entrenched in her job. Younger, prettier reporters had tried their best to loosen her grip, but none had succeeded--until Lucinda hit forty.

  The economy had the worst timing ever. The same day as her fortieth birthday, Lucinda’s boss, Cranston Ford, had called her into his office. She thought he was going to take her out to lunch. He’d taken her out for lunch every single one of her birthdays since her first day on the job with National News Today. She’d even already picked out her favorite Japanese-Italian fusion place downtown. Not cheap. But Cranston Ford could afford it. Television news mogul. Billionaire. Laying out two hundred bucks on lunch was chump change for someone like him.

  Instead of offering her lunch, however, he fired her. It hit like a punch to her gut. Eighteen years of loyalty gone in a split second. Ford had claimed the economic crash had forced them to tighten their belts. Advertisers were barely spending any more. The morning news desk was top heavy and cuts needed to be made. Jim Dasher, of course, pushing sixty, would stay. The country trusted him and trust was most needed in such uncertain times.

  When Lucinda had asked about the weather girl, Susie, a straight-from-university amateur who could barely read much less understand a meteorological report, Ford informed Lucinda that Susie would be taking over at the news desk. They had two women on the morning show and only could afford one. Lucinda wasn’t surprised that she, the senior of the two, would be leaving.

  If she were in Ford’s shoes, she probably would’ve done the same. But she wasn’t going to break down in front of her boss. No, she was tougher than that. She’d learned over the years that tears only meant weakness.

  After Ford had fired her and had security escort her out of the building, Lucinda Quant kept her chin high and her face blank of any emotion. She wasn’t going to give up on her career so easily. Who cared what the news world thought? She’d persevere. She’d find a way. She’d made a name for herself in news and wasn’t about to let that slip away.

  Six months later, she knew this was no ordinary economic crash. She’d sent a video of her work to every news station in the city. Not a peep. Some of the stations went belly-up. Their news trucks and camera equipment sold off to the highest bidder. She’d even heard her old boss, Cranston Ford, had fallen on hard times when most of his investments went sour.

  Lucinda hoarded her savings as best she could, but her penthouse wasn’t cheap. She slowly sold off her jewelry, designer clothes, expensive collectibles. To give up her penthouse meant she was no better than Lucinda Quantillo-Hermosa who grew up on the other side of the tracks. She wasn’t going back there. No way. No way in hell. She’d fight until she couldn’t fight anymore.
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br />   After a year of looking for work and trying to keep her head above water, she’d gotten a call from a reality tv producer. He’d asked her a few questions. How did she feel about live, on-camera interviews? What did she think about expose journalism? Did she have a problem with asking difficult questions? How well did she handle emotional topics?

  The producer had no idea how desperate Lucinda’s situation had become. Her power had been shut off weeks ago. She showered under cold water in her travertine tile shower, kept her naturally dark hair as blonde as possible using cheap peroxide, and ate Ramen noodles heated up on a propane camping stove in her kitchen. The owner of her building had gone bankrupt, so luckily she didn’t have to pay rent anymore, but scavengers had started to take over some of the abandoned apartments on the lower floors. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was better than most.

  The only connection she had to her old life was her cell phone. She kept it charged using a solar charger she’d bought for emergency purposes years ago. On a good day she could get a full charge with eight hours of sunlight. Without that phone, she might never have connected with the producer. She thanked God she’d kept it.

  She didn’t hesitate when the reality TV producer asked his questions. She answered all of them in the affirmative and spoke of her commitment to ‘gritty’ journalism.

  The producer must have liked her answers, not only did she get the job, but he wanted to add her name to the title: The Home Front with Lucinda Quant. She thought it had a nice ring to it. Some of her old fans might actually tune in to watch, which is probably what the producer had been banking on. In this day and age, TV shows were difficult to produce. Advertisers were slim. Dollars were tight. She wondered if she were the first out-of-work reporter he’d called.