Contents
Stasis Part 1.1 Beta
Author's note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Author's Note
Part 1.1 : Beta
This book is work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book contains explicit material and is intended for readers 18 years or older.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademarked owners of any wordmarks mentioned in the following fiction.
Copyright © 2017 by E.W. Osborne
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
All requests should be forwarded to: [email protected]
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San Francisco, CA
May 1st
Sloane stared at a splash of orange sunlight on the ceiling, his fingers interlaced behind his head. The light flickered with passing shadows. He watched as intently as if it were a film. With one window and an almost completely obscured view, light of any sort was rare in his small room. The rare reflection gave him joy.
He was prone to long bouts of introspection and mindfulness, traits the others misconstrued as depression. Although he was the youngest in the family, and therefore had lived in the unit the longest, he was the most anti-social.
But it was the rare moment like this that he felt most alive. Alone, the din of the unit waking up and preparing for the day around him, at peace. Living with forty people didn’t allow much space for an introvert to recharge, so he took his space wherever and whenever he could get it.
The light was a sign. Today was the day. Sloane felt it deep in his bones.
With a quiet groan, he stretched out his long limbs, joints cracking and settling into place. He scratched his chest before sliding a hand below the sheet, giving himself a quick squeeze. Maybe if I’m quick, he thought glancing at the time. He also figured a little release might make him more relaxed when asked out Claire.
Today really was the day. It had to be. His eyes fluttered shut and like an image painted on the inside of his eyes, he could see her. Straight raven hair, pale skin, a figure their school uniforms couldn’t hide. But she was more than that, so much more. He’d watched her for months but it was last week they finally talked. It’d been better than anything he could’ve imagined. She was funny, a little nerdy, and had this self-conscious twitch that drove him insane. They’d only gotten to hang out for a few minutes, but he’d felt something. Of that he was positive.
A hard fist on his door shattered the fantasy.
“You’ve got ten minutes to shower. Don’t forget, you’re on breakfast duty this week,” his father called out.
Sloane squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to cling to the fleeting image of Claire’s smile as it slipped away.
His father waited two seconds before knocking again. “Are you up?”
“Yes!” Sloane groaned.
The orange light was gone, either stolen by Earth’s rotation or the fateful car that’d parked below. But the promise it’d given him remained.
Today is the day.
A thick cloud hung heavy in the air of the shower room. Four of the seven shower heads were on, each misting down on members of the family unit. Mr. Henry, the old janitor whose wife died last spring, nodded to Sloane as he hung up his towel. Mr. Gonzalez and his son had nabbed the good ones in the corner. It didn’t matter. Today was a good day. He switched on the shower, leaving a space between him and his brother Jackson.
Of all the siblings, Sloane and Jackson got along the best. Five years between them and on opposite sides of the social spectrum, there wasn’t a lot for them to find in common, but somehow it worked.
“What are you grinning about?” Jackson asked, looking from the corner of his eye.
Sloane shrugged, closing his eyes and tilting his face to the mist.
“I know what it is.”
“Doubt it,” Sloane replied, wiping the water away and wetting his back.
“It was your dreamscape, wasn’t it? You up to something nasty, I can tell.” Jackson dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I did one a few months ago where I was a pimp.”
Sloane shook his head, hardly surprised. “You get caught with one of those mods and—”
“Yeah, yeah. Mom,” he replied with a glint of mischief in his eye. “They’re only illegal if you get caught.”
Working the soap into a lather, Sloane sighed. “That’s not exactly how the law works.”
His brother grunted, a sign he was bored with the conversation.
“I know what it is!” Jackson laughed and leaned over to give him a slap on the shoulder. “You’re on breakfast duty with that girl. Sandy, Cindy,” he searched, rolling his wrist as he hunted for the right name.
“Simone?”
His victorious clap echoed loudly through the shower room. “That’s it! Sloane and Simone. Got a nice ring to it.”
“You’re way off,” Sloane chuckled. As close as they were, he couldn’t talk to Jackson about Claire. He wouldn’t get it.
His brother had never had a problem finding girls. In fact, they threw themselves at him before he realized that facet of life was even an option to him. Once he did, it’d been a steady blur of faces and names ever since. Once that stream started, he did everything he could to divert some of the flow to his youngest brother. A generous, albeit unwanted gesture.
Claire was the first girl who’d ever caught his eye. Smart, witty, hot. He never understood the obsession with girls until her. Every moment he spent around her was achingly perfect. Every moment they were apart, he wanted nothing more than to see her again. The thought of her with another guy physically hurt, like a knife to the gut. He had to move fast, to tell her how he felt. Today was the day.
“Look at ya! Staring off like you’re in love or something.” Jackson turned off the shower and threw a parting warning over his shoulder as he left. “You better hurry or Dad’s gonna be pissed.”
Sloane knew he was right. The last one left in the shower room, he couldn’t seem to pull himself away. He stared at the beads of water pooling, dancing, running off his tanned skin. For a split second, he could almost see a pattern to it. It wasn’t that the water was trying to speak to him. It was like hearing a foreign language. There was meaning in it, if momentar
ily concealed. Sloane was lost in the daydream, looking through the water to see the greater message.
Jackson’s wet hand slapped against the tile, startling him. “Now! I’ll whoop ya too if I don’t get my eggs.”
Sloane was born at an odd point in history. An economic downturn coupled with a population boom had returned many parts of society to a village-like existence. In order to make ends meet, families pooled their resources and lived in units. Ranging from ten people up to sixty, entire city blocks and communities has been repurposed to accommodate the change. He wished for the lives his grandparents talked about; privacy, space. Those things still existed, but only for those who could afford it. Instead, his life was communal in every way. From bathing to cooking to babysitting, everyone in the unit pulled their weight. After his morning chores were finished, he was on his way to school with only one thing on his mind; Claire.
Although he’d never used it to his advantage, he knew her schedule. From a distance, he’d spent weeks noting her habits. She wasn’t the most popular girl in school, but had a close group of friends who rarely left her side. The only time he had a chance of catching her alone was right at the start of school. As luck would have it, Claire’s locker was at the end of the hall, perpendicular with his. Even though he’d rushed to get in early, she was already standing with one of her friends by the time he rounded the corner to his locker.
Claire’s surprisingly deep laugh stuttered his step, causing his shoe to squeak on the floor. Without waiting to see if she’d look in his direction, he quickly swung open the door and stuck his head inside. When his heart dislodged itself from his throat, he took a deep, calming breath. Using the door as a shield, he watched her while pretending to collect his morning books. She was still only with one of her friends, but the hallway was filling up fast. Every passing second was another missed opportunity.
Sloane summoned up the energy and slammed the locker shut. Hooked in his hand, heavy textbooks swung at his side. Casually yet purposefully, he walked straight down the center of the hall. Half way there, Claire happened to scan her surroundings and met his eye. The connection lasted for only a fraction of a second before she looked away, but it was enough. An unnatural calm settled Sloane’s stomach, carrying him the rest of the way.
Shouldering his way through the growing foot traffic, Sloane didn’t wait for Claire to finish her sentence before he spoke up.
“Hey,” he said with a half-smile.
Claire gave him a slow blink before looking back to her friend. “Okay,” she drawled. “I guess we’re done talking now.” Holding her books up to her chest defensively, she pressed her back to the wall and gave Sloane a wan smile. “Hello to you too, man of many words.”
To him, nothing in the world existed except that smile. “It’s Friday.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and nodded. “Observant, too. Your point?”
Claire’s friend linked elbows with her and tried to pull her away. “I think the bell is gonna ring.” Sloane paid no attention to her. Claire didn’t want to be pulled away. He could tell and it gave him the confidence he needed. She gracefully slipped from her friend’s grip without breaking eye contact.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Sloane added.
Her friend huffed. “Come on, let’s go. He’s obviously stupid or on something.”
“No, you go.” Claire was into him. She was hooked. Today was the day. “So what happens Saturday?” she asked, stepping closer with a coy look.
“I suppose that depends on your answer my next question.”
“Then you should know I say yes to just about everything,” Claire giggled, touching his arm. He slapped it away, hard. Her beautiful eyes grew wide with surprise, a curl forming at the corner of her mouth like he was playing some joke. It was one of the last things Sloane vividly remembered. The rest was a blur. The rest was pure mechanical instinct.
He’d watched variations of this scene play out over a dozen times before. As the spine of the textbook in his looping swing made contact with Claire’s chin, he had a distant thought. This doesn’t feel real.
Even in the din of the hallway, her heard her jaw crack. Her cute smile shifted grotesquely to the left. Thrown off balance, Claire rocked back against the lockers with a loud thud but remained on her feet.
Sloane had already lifted the book above his head, gripped between both hands. She had just enough time to see the incoming blow but not enough to stop it. Like driving a stake into the ground, he pummeled her from above. Once, twice, until she fell.
“Hey!” A shout rang out. The crowd separated, giving him enough space to deliver an unobstructed kick to her throat.
Like a pair of hunting pack animals, two brave boys emerged from the crowd at the same time. Something in Sloane’s eye made them think twice about diving in to stop him.
Barely conscious and slick with blood, Claire tried to crawl away.
Deciding the others were no threat, Sloane looked back to the floor. Without a seconds’ hesitation, he delivered the final blow. Claire’s head rebounded off the floor with a sickening crunch.
Sucking deep breaths into his burning lungs, Sloane slid down to the floor, his knees rising to his chest as he fell. The hallway emptied in a matter of seconds, terrified screams slipping into the distance. Claire gurgled beside him, but all that felt a million miles away. As his vision tunneled, he rested his head back and stared at an arc of red splashed across the foam tiled ceiling.
When the teachers broke free of their horrified stupor, he didn’t resist. When the emergency services arrived, he didn’t move. When they pulled the sheet over Claire’s head to shield her battered face from view, he didn’t react.
After that moment, Sloane was utterly unresponsive and expressionless.
***
The hum of the road lulled Caroline into a a near-meditative state. Many times she’d jerk awake as her chin rocked to her chest, but this was something different. This wasn’t exhaustion. She realized it was happening as if she were an outside observer looking in. Carefully, softly, she acknowledged the sensation, afraid too much attention would scare it off like a skittish animal.
With hooded eyes, she watched the traffic gracefully maneuver and shift. At the front of the bus, she had the best view, not that anyone cared to look anymore. The congested system of automated vehicles moved around them like faster leaves on the surface of a stream. The bus followed a set route while the private transports could change course any time they liked. This left them coasting along on the side, stopping and starting at set intervals.
Caroline shifted in her seat, tailbone aching from stillness. Many times she considered herself just like the human tailbone. A hold-over from a long ago time, once useful and now mostly decorative. The transition to automated transport had been a slow one. For whatever reason, people didn’t mind giving over control to personal vehicles, but felt unsafe in larger, mass transit. So there she sat, at the front of the bus with nothing to do but watch. Hours a day sucked up just in case of a catastrophic computer failure.
The bus slowed to a stop. The doors opened. Passengers filed off and on, soft beeps from the doorways acknowledging their accounts were charged for the ride. Caroline checked over her shoulder and counted roughly ten people downstairs. A quick scan of the upstairs camera added another dozen. The bus pulled off, seamlessly folding into the traffic. If she had a favorite part of the twenty mile loop, it was the next section.
They slipped from the slow but steady residential streets onto the highway. The five lanes surged at higher speeds and greater volume. No more than a cars’ length of space existed between each vehicle, widening or shrinking as the computers communicated with one another. Years ago, Caroline had found an old driver’s education booklet and was fascinated by the idea of stopping distance. Nowadays, if anything unexpected happened on the road, all vehicles came to controlled stops as one. It was all so regulated.
On the best days, her job felt like a noble civil serv
ice. She was a kind face that people could choose to greet or ignore as they carried on with their busy days. On the worst days, the job was thankless, pointless. For all the nostalgia her position provided, she got as much thanks as a robot for doing her job. It was the very definition of redundant.
She never told anyone, but some of her favorite dreamscapes were of actually driving the bus, like they used to. The skill it takes to navigate a cumbersome bus through the busy city streets was beyond impressive. Memorizing routes, talking to people, remembering faces and names… she loved it. She loved it so much it made her daily job feel like a pale shadow.
Caroline stared into the traffic as the bus picked up speed, slipping into a gap in the third lane. She unfocused her gaze and stared through the cars ahead. The road noise, the murmur of conversation behind, the organic yet mechanical flow all around her. Before she knew it, she’d dipped into that meditative state once more. The hum spoke, the patterns communicated. It’d whispered to her before but always in bursts she couldn’t quite understand. Today was different. Today the message was coming in loud and clear. Carline had seen variations of this moment before in her dreamscapes.
As casually as brushing an insect from her arm, Caroline reached under the dash and activated the manual driving mode. An alarm sounded, alerting the passengers that the bus was no longer under computer control. Most of them had no idea what the alarm meant specifically, only knew something was going on.
Using the controls, she forced the bus to veer violently to the left. Like a flock of birds moving as one, the vehicles in her direct path instantly shifted to avoid collision. Caroline urged the heavy bus to accelerate, trying this time to plow through the traffic ahead. The dense sea of metal parted wide. Without so much as a scratch, the bus surged ahead infliction only confusion and fear, but no lasting damage.
Caroline grunted in frustration as she released the manual controls, leaving the bus horizontal across the middle of the highway. Only then did she register the customer’s shrieks from behind. A well-fed man charged to the front demanding an explanation. When she met his gaze with a heavy-lidded stare, he shrank back, retracting his outrage.
Stasis (Book 1.1): Beta Page 1