A Collection of Science Fiction Gems

by David Scholes

  I chuckled quietly to myself. “I think they used to be called words,” I replied clearly showing my age. “If you get enough of them strung together I believe they formed what they used to call a sentence. Or even more of them and they could form a paragraph.” I deliberately didn’t say any more. The concept of having enough captions to fill a page or more might be altogether too much for Jen’s graphical/image based approach to things. Efficient though she was in her own particular way.

  Of course we are all familiar with words that we speak and as part of our thought processes. Yet in our modern image and graphic based world long dissertations of captions/words on the net are becoming increasingly rare. Discouraged in fact.

  “Here’s the rub,” said Jen. “What being, what individual, still living, rather than someone long dead in history, would not have done a “selfie” and put it on the net or at least been captured in someone else’s selfie? What individual scores 0.000 on the fame index?”

  I had to agree that she had a point. If it had just been the mind stamp image only we might not have taken it further but the very similar physical image in the form of the old photograph, that was found, gave me pause. Not an exact match mind you but a 98% match. Too high for a family member and too low for a clone.

  Suddenly on the “Images” website we came to a very long string of captions/words. Several pages worth. Jen excused herself for the moment. She seemed a little freaked out. I stayed and diligently read the several pages of “words.” Basically explanatory notes and qualifications at the very end of the image library.

  Two small headings caught my attention.

  “I think we should just take another look at the net’s interplanetary link,” I told Jen when she returned.

  “Why?’ asked Jen

  “Just call it a hunch,” I replied adding “and maybe something I read.”

  We didn’t find them first time, as if they weren’t meant to be found, but third time around there they were. Two listings. One of a small group of imperfect clones that had been shipped off planet to cover up the mistake and a very small listing of entities (read natural persons, clones, and AI’s) thought to be suffering from the incredibly rare Image Aversion Disease (IAD).

  Nonetheless everyone on each of the two lists had an image somewhere on the internet. Mostly on the dark web.

  With one exception. A “man” mentioned on both lists but without any proper image. Just what they call in the trade a “skeletal sketch” attached to both lists. We used the latest enhancement techniques on the crude sketches and came up with a near perfect match to our suspect.

  It turned out, according to the records, that he was the first of the imperfect clones and was really now quite old relatively speaking. Which explained why he had showed up in the old photograph.

  “That’s it then!” I said “that’s our man or our clone,” I corrected myself.

  “When did it show him being shipped off planet?” asked Jen.

  “Just a few days after he was at the crime scene,” I replied “he was shipped to Gloldansk.” I continued smiling.

  “Neat,” said Jen “that place is basically a very tolerant holiday destination. He’s done well. Left Earth under near perfect cover and ended up in a little slice of heaven. Where they don’t care, or even know, about imperfect clones.”

  ‘We better get packed then Jen,” I said “I’ve always wanted an excuse to go to Gloldansk.”

  End

  Rescue Service

  From the slightly elevated highway we looked out across the vastness of the sand ocean. Close to the horizon we saw another elevated highway angled slightly to the one we were on. An Over the Horizon (OTH) scan showed the two highways intersecting at a nexus point in the great sand ocean. A nexus point containing a peculiar building. Then each highway went on its separate way across the vastness.

  “Teeming with life,” said Janelle looking down at the sand ocean. “All manner of creatures. Like an Earth ocean but sand instead of water.”

  “Dangerous?” I enquired.

  “Not enough information,” replied Janelle cautiously.

  “Let’s do a good preliminary scan of this world, as well as get a reliable fix on our objective,” I said. “Before we move off in the land wagon. Let’s get some idea of what we may be up against here.”

  “Miniature low orbit probe as well Michael?” asked Janelle.

  I nodded, “everything we can reasonably do.”

  Before moving off in our specially designed land wagon we wanted at least a partial picture of the world we had crossed to via the temporary gateway.

  Satellite imagery from the mini satellite indicated the sand oceans were even more extensive than we first thought. Also that much of the non sand ocean surface consisted of rocky terrain. Terrain that gradually rose, eventually to mountains, the further one got away from the sand oceans.

  “The scan results shouldn’t give us any false sense of confidence Michael,” said Janelle unnecessarily. “There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about this place. Our scan has barely scratched the surface.”

  “What about the inhabitants of the sand oceans?” I asked.

  “Our land sonar equipment on a preliminary scan categorised at least 100 distinctly different species,” responded Janelle. “Not a one of them even vaguely resembling anything we’ve ever seen before.”

  I nodded thinking also of the “anomalies” we had detected. By a combination of OTH scans from the land wagon and the mini-satellite imagery still coming in. They looked like areas for us to avoid. If we could.

  “We are only here for one purpose,” I said reminding both of us of the obvious “we don’t particularly need to unlock this world’s secrets. Just rescue our lady and get out of here and back to Earth.”

  “If the gateway is still open,” offered Janelle.

  “Or we find another gateway,” I countered.

  “I’ve been saving the best news till last,” smiled Janelle “take a look at this.”

  “Wow!” I replied viewing the 3D representation “it looks like an old Drorne station. If it is that’s the next best thing to finding a gateway. I’d take a guess that the Drorne built the highways traversing the sand oceans,” I added, more as an afterthought.

  “Have you got a fix on our objective?” I asked.

  “She is 1500 clicks from here, in a semi-mountainous location. On the far side of this current sand ocean we are traversing,” replied Janelle. “She does not appear to be moving at present.” Janelle brought up a 3D real time map illustrating our objective’s general location. Though the images were very fuzzy. Of course that could mean she is dead I thought.

  “Her life energies are detected,” said Janelle as if reading my thoughts “so she’s very much alive!”

  If we had been on Earth and with our equipment we would have been able to see her clearly and exactly what she was doing. Yet, even though it was purpose built with alien environments in mind, our land wagon and its much vaunted equipment had its limitations. To some degree it was inevitably less efficient on other worlds and in other dimensions and realities.

  “Where she is located,” I said “she is not so far from the Drorne station.”

  “That could be very convenient,” offered Janelle.

  We set out at a cautious even sedate speed of 150 clicks per hour and very soon revised that considerably downwards as a thick dark elastic entity roughly the size of a house emerged from the sand ocean and spread itself across the full modest width of the highway. We came to a screeching halt but not before running into it slightly. It gave, in an elastic way, but did not yield and covered us with secretions that were slightly acidic according to our equipment.

  Not taking any chances we reversed right out of there and putting our automatic laser cannon on manual hit the elastic entity repeatedly with heavy duty laser fire. Which seemed not to trouble it a great deal until with Janelle on the laser I added in some ordinary heavy duty machine gun fire from another
turret of the powerful land wagon. It was strange how sometimes the older, less exotic of our weapon systems could still do the trick. Begrudgingly the unusual entity slowly withdrew back into the sand ocean. Though we both had a sense that we hadn’t done it any permanent harm.

  It was to be the first of a number of encounters with the weird denizens of the sand ocean. Encounters that, without exception, I prefer to forget. Each entity quite different from the last. One that particularly shook me was a shape shifting mass that formed a huge semi-elastic vaguely human form. At least it had two apparent legs and two apparent arms. It rose out of the sand ocean and towered above us. We had the distinct impression it had taken the shape after observing us and drawing something from our minds. None of our weaponry bothered it at all until we teleshunted a mixture of aggressive biological viruses into it. Never the preferred option but they seemed to give the thing pause. Thankfully the thing didn’t seem to be very fast.

  Having gotten past it during the virus attack and upping our speed to 200 clicks per hour we were able to easily outdistance it. Though later an OTH scan showed the thing still sluggishly but persistently pursuing us. It must have eventually given up though as we never saw it again.

  Some might have questioned the release of such viruses into the alien sand ocean eco-system but they were in fact very short lived viruses, lives measured in minutes. In any case our survival was always paramount against that of an aggressive alien eco-system. There were some even worse things in our armoury. If needed.

  We both lamented that our land wagon was three persons short of its usual complement. We had left from the rescue service base in a hurry as we knew the temporary gateway would not last. We had been the only people on emergency call at the time that were anywhere near the temporary gateway.

  Thankfully almost 1,000 clicks later the sand ocean finally ended and oddly the highway ended just about a half a click beyond it. Why that was so we couldn’t even guess. Yet any vehicle going on past this point would have to be at least the equal of a very good Earth SUV.

  I was about to pull over as the highway ended when Janelle using our land sonar suggested I drive on a little further. “The ground near the sand ocean is still somewhat fluid,” she said. It looks like some of the sand ocean denizens can travel through it at least for a small distance. Until it hardens and becomes rockier up ahead.”

  We drove on and up for a while quite slowly through increasingly rocky outcrops. Stopping only when the land sonar showed no trace of burrowing “nasties” and we were pretty confident that nothing was going to attack us from below.

  We tried to get a better fix on the individual we sought to rescue. She who had inadvertently crossed through the temporary gateway.

  For several years now such gateways had appeared on Earth and from time to time unknowing people accidentally entered them and arrived on other worlds, other dimensions and even other realities. The major powers had combined to set up an international rescue service for just this contingency. Our little rescue station had been the closest to the temporary gateway when the lady inadvertently went through it.

  .

  “Unless we want to go the long way around,” said Janelle “we are going to have to skirt the edge of one of those major anomalies we noticed earlier.”

  “How so?” I asked “I thought we had plenty of room for manoeuvre.”

  “They move,” explained Janelle “not fast but since we last looked at them this one’s definitely moved a lot closer to our projected path.”

  “Knowingly?” I asked.

  Janelle didn’t reply. Perhaps she thought I was sounding a bit paranoid.

  “I’m getting a much better reading on it now,” she said eventually. “It seems even weirder, even more out of place than when we viewed it earlier. A slow moving small city sized area totally different to its surroundings. As if it was wrenched from another world, dimension or reality and just dumped here.”

  “From what we can see from the mini satellite and OTH scans,” Janelle continued “all of these anomalies appear to be just that. Alien to this sandy, rocky world and at the same time quite different from each other.”

  “None of the others are anywhere near our projected path,” I heard myself say “even allowing for some movement on their part.”

  “Yes,” nodded Janelle, “no worries on that score unless we have to go vastly out of our way.”

  Up fairly close and personal the anomaly was eerily confronting. It looked like what was once an advanced alien city now fallen into ruin and partially overrun by vegetation quite alien to the surrounding environment. There was a slight shimmer about it that suggested some form of barrier around it. Whether it was to keep things in or keep things out we had no idea. Nothing registered on our instruments. There was just the sense that it may even have been partially mystical in nature.

  We kept as far away from it as we could without hitting the side of a nearby mountain. Also we were travelling quite fast for the terrain. Several times we thought something came out of the anomaly towards us. Each time it appeared to be some form of mirage/hallucination. Almost too late we realised that the last hallucination wasn’t a hallucination. Two apparently android soldiers were coming our way. At a speed fast enough to catch us. We couldn’t begin to guess what their intent might be.

  “They look positively fearsome,” shuddered Janelle. Yet even so we held our fire at least until their intent was clear. In the end we outdistanced them before the need for sustained fire. The android soldiers, if that’s what they were, seemed more tenuous the further they got away from the anomaly. Ultimately it seemed as if something drew them back to it. As if they had a limited range away from the anomaly.

  “Unnerving, something unnerving about that,” said Janelle “let’s get plenty of distance away from here.”

  The shimmer surrounding the anomaly obscured our vision into it. Yet we had seen other android soldiers moving among the ruins. They had looked as if they might be fighting each other.

  “We are still not getting any kind of communication back from our objective,” I said “it must be that she has no working communication devices of any kind.”

  “That and maybe some peculiarities about this world,” offered Janelle “something limiting communications.”

  I nodded.

  At that point we were close enough and had a good enough fix on our objective’s location to launch a beacon. In the form of a returnable just over the horizon holographic message featuring Janelle and I and advising our target of our rescue attempt. Thankfully she had just enough technology to respond to the hologram. “I am well. SUV not working. Hostile terrain. Please extract digit and come get me.” Both Janelle and I smiled at the last comment. Clearly she had retained a dense of humour and was maybe not totally overawed by this world.

  “What took you so long?” was her first greeting once we finally got to her. Though there was a smile of relief behind the cheekiness.

  Standing before us was a tall attractive woman possibly in her late 40’s. An eminent surgeon that just happened to be the wife of the United States Attorney General. At least that’s what the briefing said. I hadn’t known of her personally. Not that her eminence had anything to do with the speed of our response. It would have been the same for anyone. At least we would like to think so.

  “My SUV broke down soon after I arrived in this place,” offered Susan.

  “I realised I was in a gateway even as I drove into it but by then it was too late.

  Thank goodness my situation was detected by you people.”

  “Transit through a temporary gateway usually is,” said Janelle.

  We both knew that it was always more a matter of getting a rescue service vehicle through any gateway before it disappeared completely or moved to another part of Earth.

  Thankfully Susan had known not to stray from the place of her arrival. Though it was inhospitable here she had not been menaced in any way. Or even seen much of anything. As she also
had plenty of food and water her main problem had been boredom.

  Janelle and I looked over Susan’s SUV. It was very expensive but really not up to the terrain hereabouts. No good at all to us now except for a few electronic parts that we stripped from it as spares.

  Susan came aboard the land wagon and we gave her a suit of ultra lightweight exo-skeleton boosted armour. Of the same type as Janelle and I were wearing. Standard issue for rescuers and the rescued in our circumstances.

  We showed her the main features of the land wagon and I could sense her starting to relax a little. The well equipped wagon always had that effect on the rescued. Giving them a small sense of security in a hostile alien environment. We also told her what we knew about this world. Which, all things considered, was not such a lot.

  Then we started to roll.

  We headed off in another direction to that we had come. The temporary gateway that had admitted Susan and ultimately Janelle and I was now gone. With not even so much as a trace of its residual energies. Sometimes with a very quick rescue it was possible to go back out on the same gateway. Not this time though.

  We needed to locate either another temporary gateway or a permanent gateway. This was our only ticket home. Well the only one we knew about.

  The truth was there were no signs of either – for the moment.

  “So if that’s the case, where exactly are we headed?” asked Susan. A quite legitimate question in the circumstances.

  We had told her about the slow moving anomalies we had discovered and our desire not to go anywhere near any unless we had to. Also we had no particular desire to end up near the sand ocean again.

  “We detected an old Drorne station not so far from here,” I told Susan. “The Drorne are the people who created these gateways you know. For reasons we’ve never been able to divine. There’s a good chance we can locate a gateway from there. Failing that the Drorne station, old though it is, may contain superior equipment to help us in this alien environment.”