A Collection of Science Fiction Gems

by David Scholes

  “You shouldn’t really be here,” he said not long before we turned in for the night “here where you are isolated from the change field.”

  I asked him what a change field was but he didn’t reply. At least not then. I didn’t entirely like the sound of it.

  Before I could press him on the matter the weirdest storm appeared on the horizon. I’d seen many an earthly storm and also both the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis but this went far beyond anything I’d seen in sheer magnificence. There were colours here that I didn’t even know existed. Colours and a level of violence that I could not even have imagined. It was both magnificent and terrifying at the same time.

  “Ignore it,” he said confidently “it will not affect us here.” Then without my prodding he added ”it’s associated with the change field – an alien storm reacting to it – be grateful that the storm is not one employed by the Storm Lords.”

  Whomever the Storm Lords might be I thought. Though I didn’t like the sound of them.

  I had heard of the occasional extra-dimensional alien storm reaching Earth though I’d never seen one. I understood they were usually short lived. A force largely spent by the time it reached us. Drained in some way by the extra-dimensional journey. This particular storm looked anything but drained. Then the alien storm ceased and I knew without a doubt who was responsible for it ceasing.

  “You are not from around here are you?” I asked him, stating the obvious just before nodding off to sleep. He started to give me an honest reply something about him being an extra-dimensional elemental but despite my intense interest I nodded off to sleep from sheer exhaustion before he finished.

  I dreamt of many things that night. All of them very pleasant. From happy early childhood days to more recent times with my now deceased wife.

  I asked him about the dreams in the morning. “They felt real and still do, much more real than past dreams,” I said “but of course they’re not real. They’re only dreams,” I sighed.

  “The level of reality all depends on your point of view,” he replied enigmatically before waving away further discussion. Though not in any imperious way.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked realising I had intended to ask that question last night but still surprised by my temerity.

  I’m resting in between major, ahh, major engagements,” he replied smiling and knowing just how enigmatic a statement that was. “This is as good a place as any in which to do that. But I’ll be moving on quite soon.”

  “You did something to me during the night,” I said accusingly as the realisation dawned on me that I felt better than I had in many years.

  “Your spinal problems have been corrected,” he replied “they will not bother you again.”

  “There are a lot of other people hereabouts that could use your help,” I said “before you go that is.” I don’t know why I said that but it seemed to me that this was an entity that could maybe help a lot of people.

  “They’ve already had it,” he replied smiling “all of them that required it. That’s what the change field is about.”

  What exactly did he mean by that? Just how many people had he helped?

  “Let me show you now the way back to civilization, your civilization that is,” he corrected himself. We walked for a while. With whatever he’d done to my spine I felt great. He had also repaired my exo-skeleton and transport frame during the night. Yet I felt that good that I decided not to use either of them. At least not to start with.

  We reached a hilltop which gave a commanding view such that I could see the distant mobile township of Abbott Gillard below. Even from a distance it looked different than I remembered it. “They are not due to move for several months, so that you should be able to reach them quite easily,” he said. I realised that he had cracked a joke – of sorts.

  “Were they also outside the change field?” I asked innocently.

  “Ohh everyone was inside the change field, except for you,” he replied. “Unless someone of your world was briefly off planet or in another dimension and I think not. The world you go back to, after you leave here, may be different to what you remember,” he continued. “I really have made quite a lot of changes. You’ll see.” He sounded almost apologetic. Almost.

  A part of me was utterly fascinated to go and see what changes he had wrought upon our world.

  I still had the same name and still had my job. I was grateful for that I suppose.

  Yet a lot of things were very different. Mainly for the best – I guess – but sometimes with unusual consequences that I wonder if even he had fully thought through. It seemed to me that the operation of the change field had a lot of winners but there were losers too. Except of course none of these people knew they were losers. Especially the unknown number of people who no longer existed. Had never existed as far as any contemporary records were concerned. I twigged to this in two ways. The estimated world population had dropped slightly since I’d been gone and also a number of people that I knew of just weren’t around any more. With no record at all that they had ever existed.

  “Why? Why so many changes?” my mind screamed out days later. It was a purely rhetorical question. I hadn’t expected any reply.

  “Because they were needed,” he telepathed back from somewhere “because one thing leads to another and because that’s what I do.”

  From somewhere he was still keeping tabs on things here. For the moment at least but I sensed that wouldn’t last. He who had changed our world so dramatically was going to move on and possibly forget all about us. I didn’t know that for sure but something told me that’s what he did.

  There are times I wish I had been inside the change field when the near omnipotent made his changes on Earth. Ignorance can be bliss. While there remained some form of telepathic link between us I asked him to give me this release. To make things as if I had been inside the change field. He wouldn’t or couldn’t do it. He maintained protocol demanded that someone from each world affected remain outside the change field. One lone indigenous person a witness, albeit temporary, to how things had once been. I was just unlucky enough to stumble across him before he had selected a witness. Saving him the bother as it were.

  I thought about telling people what had happened but could I get anyone to listen? Why should I even bother? Other than what is contained in my mind there appears to be no record anywhere on Earth of the way things were before the change field.

  I kept my job just barely and spent a lot of time recording how things used to be. Researching how they were now and documenting all the changes. Including details of all the people I knew to have been eliminated.

  It nearly drove me insane.

  Sometimes I hoped for the impossible. Someone who might have been off planet or ex dimension and just now returning. If there was such a person I never came across them.

  There never was and never would be anyone of Earth that I could discuss the matter with. When that realisation finally came I was grateful for my own mortality.

  Inevitably I became more reclusive realising my secret, the Earth that existed before the change field, would die with me. Did the Earth that once was even mean anything anymore if no one but me could remember it?

  I wondered if at some future time, perhaps far beyond my own lifetime, that advanced technology such as the mooted alternate reality dissection, might enable historians to perceive what had been done to us. It seemed unlikely.

  Yet fate gave me one last throw of the dice with the visit to Earth of the Trorne an advanced race that sought me out and sympathetically introduced me to the Universe record. Before I died they helped in ensuring that the results of my decades of work – all my knowledge of pre change field Earth – was located in the eternal repository that is the Universe record.

  I hoped that some historians from some worlds might access my work.

  The Trorne told me that eventually, in a millennia or two, Earth would have access to the Universe record.

 
I died happy.

  End

  All in a day’s work

  Canberra

  Australia 2045

  “Just another illegal,” said Bill our immsuper “on the north side, at Ngunnawal.”

  It only took our electro-magnetic heavy vehicle minutes to get there yet a crowd had already gathered. Some of them starting to do our job for us.

  It never ceased to amaze me how people would do this. Using crude techniques when our “official” technology was much quicker.

  They got off on it. Knowing the job was going to be done anyway and they probably wouldn’t be prosecuted for making an informal start. “Informal start” now the euphemism for that type of over zealous interference. .

  “Glad you could join us,” offered one slavering youth enthusiastically wielding an energy sheathed rod like instrument that I didn’t immediately recognise.

  “Back away, all of you,” I said “back to the designated safe area and leave this to the professionals.” My boosted verbal announcement backed by a telepathic mind imprint. At the same time I threateningly shook but didn’t activate my neural disabler. This being our preferred option for crowd control.

  Any initial dissent quickly gave way to fascination as our team started to go about its business.

  People couldn’t help themselves. It was not every day that they got to see a huge high powered contracting force field envelope in operation. There were gasps and some cried out as the contracting field started to encounter and inevitably crushed all resistance. So much more effectively than any heavy metal machinery. Such as the ancient car crushers.

  As our work drew towards a close I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Something huge yet back behind the crowd of onlookers and partially obscured by a nearby building. It just sat there menacingly.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I enquired of Bill.

  “You bet,” he replied “a genuine one – an absolute museum piece.”

  They had used these for years before the invention of the contracting force field had made them and other things them obsolete.

  Meanwhile the force field envelope continued to collapse and what had once been an illegally constructed non government residence had been reduced to the size of a large garbage bin.

  I looked again at the museum piece partially hidden from us. The bulldozer was totally illegal for any type of demolition work nowadays. Yet someone had been planning to use it here. As part of the informal start. Thank goodness we got here first. Who knows how many people might have been injured.

  Before we took off the owner of the illegal residence remonstrated with us. Not about our demolition but about the earlier informal start. He got little sympathy from us. Yet the potential profits from these cheap, unsafe, unregulated, quickly erected, privately built residences meant that they would continue to be built. Also they were getting harder to spot as the builders made them look convincingly like public constructions. More and more we relied on the general public to report them.

  Then another complaint came in. “Another illegal,” yelled Bill, on the south side at the newer suburb of Turnbull.”

  A government demolisher’s work was never done I sighed.

  End

  Wild Ride

  Canberra

  Australia 2065

  Our electro magnetic cruiser took a near direct energy canon hit. Despite its powerful protective shields the cruiser veered off into the huge ferro-concrete end stop. The massive buffer that marked the ultimate end of the planetary highway and the beginning of the no go zone.

  Thankfully the same cushion impact fields designed to protect us against illegal “ramming” protected us here at least to some extent.

  We got out of the cruiser and ruefully noted the extent of the damage. It was a slightly older cruiser and unfortunately not one of the self repairing models.

  I took stock of my molecular re-arranger gun. It was handy for repairing modest uncomplicated items but the cruiser was far too large and complicated a piece of electronics and machinery for it to be of any use.

  Joy and had no choice but to abandon the cruiser here. We both put on our ultra light exo-skeleton assisted force field protected armour and took out our thankfully undamaged electro-magnetic transporter frames. These were very basic, very skeletal but they should do the trick.

  We took off into the no go zone. It might have been comfortable in the em cruiser but in just the light armour and transport frames it was going to be a bumpy ride. Especially with us under attack.

  Again we came under fire from our attackers. This time a high pitched noise attack which we successfully dispelled with our noise nullifiers. It was followed by a pinpoint laser attack which damaged our transport frames to the point that my molecular re-arranger gun could not repair them.

  The attack stopped for a while. During the break we took booster medication and continued on in just our exo-skeleton assisted force field protected light armour. Both suits were 10 x10 models giving us ten times our already medication boosted speed and strength.

  Though not enough, as it turned out, to ward off other attacks. Our attackers still in stealth mode and attacking from over the horizon. Even in the em cruiser we would have had difficulty with such an attack.

  Increasingly they seemed to be just toying with us. Pinpoint over the horizon laser fire eroding our force field protection then damaging our armour and exo-skeletons.

  Finally, when they thought we were nearly finished, our tormentors appeared before us. Young, tall, powerful and unisex looking. On weird hybrid em transport platforms. Though they didn’t appear to have exo-skeleton assists. They seemed full of confidence and totally disdainful of us in our weakened condition. Perhaps they were too confident.

  I didn’t hesitate and neither did Joy. Our temporary yet totally disabling weapons permanently calibrated at the under 50 level erupted.

  We disabled several of them before they came in close and we got entangled with several more. Our 10 x medically boosted speed and strength giving us only a slight advantage over what may have been just their natural speed and strength. I don’t know, maybe they were boosted in some way.

  Then they cut and ran. It was strange really. Cowardly I suppose. From the safety of being over the horizon and in stealth mode they had been happy to torment us. They came in close when they thought we were finished and then met unexpected resistance.

  Afterwards we hobbled on. Our exo –skeletons down to only 3 x our normal speed and strength and the medical boosting starting to weaken. The force field/light armour protection effectively down to zero.

  Our attackers didn’t bother us again but we were nonetheless still in the no go zone. Where anything could happen and usually did.

  After what seemed like an eternity, we finally made it back home to the village.

  It would be quite a while before we went out anywhere near the no go zone even in an em cruiser. Even if it was a “group” exercise. It was simply getting too dangerous.

  As I reclined on my energy couch and read a copy of the Pensioners Weekly on my 3D tablet my mind drifted back. To the days when an elderly couple like Joy and myself could go out on a Sunday afternoon drive without fear of harassment from the local feral youth packs.

  Those days seemed so long ago now.

  End

  Images

  “This suspect, I’m not sure he even exists Bill,” said my detective sergeant.

  “How come Jen?” I asked.

  “Well there are no images of him anywhere on the internet. Not even on the dark web or the interplanetary link. Even when I used the Einstein/Newton search engine he doesn’t show up.”

  “What about his fame score?” I enquired.

  “Nothing, zero, zilch, just not registering. Even the lowliest hermits would score a 0.001 on the index. Just as proof of their basic existence,” responded Jen. “Even hermits have images on the net,” she added “you remember that compulsory imaging program which swept up everyb
ody not imaged on the net.” I nodded. I was tempted to conclude that he didn’t exist but in my game you can’t take anything for granted. There were people who could conceivably avoid the compulsory imaging.

  The image, such as it was, of our suspect had been constructed from the memory of someone who thought they saw him at the murder crime scene. A mind stamp image. Much better than the now ancient identi-kit approach. Yet mind stamp images could be unreliable. Some in the past had ended up being constructed from mere dreams. Dreams confused with reality.

  Of course it wasn’t just the mind stamp image. A very similar physical image, I believe they used to be called photographs, had been found inadvertently in an unrelated search. In an abandoned physical building. Where they used to sell various things physically over the counter before it became illegal to sell anything except over the internet. Jen had queried this and I had a little chuckle to myself. “I think they used to call them shops,” I told her.

  At that moment Jen and I were both looking on the premier internet site “Images” the largest site on the net that purportedly captured one single copy of every image of a natural person, clone or AI person ever displayed anywhere on the net including the deep web and the Earth end of the interplanetary link. The fact that there was no image of “him” here was at least persuasive though not conclusive that he didn’t exist.

  We came to an older part of the Images site that neither of us had been to before. It hadn’t been updated in a while. “What is that interspersed between the images? It looks like a series of image captions all strung together, one after another,” asked Jen innocently enough.