Surprise Sci-Friday Flash Fiction

Raymond Chandler Mocks Me

Someday I hope to lay claim to the first and last Sci-Friday of each month, but I’m not ready for the commitment! However, today is a little foretaste of the glories to come.

I follow The Storyteller (and you can too!) and every so often there is a Prompt for flash fiction. This go round the prompt was The Unknown. As I pondered the unknowable, I remembered Raymond Chandler’s letter in which he mocked scifi:

“Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It’s a scream. It’s written like this: ‘I checked out with K19 on Adabaran III, and stepped out through the crummaliote hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timeprojector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Bryllis ran swiftly on five legs, using the other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was ice-cold against the rust-colored mountains. The Bryllis shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me round and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough.'”

Then he added, “They pay brisk money for this crap?” Not only is that hilarious (and more than a little true), you’ll also note an early use of “Google.”

So with the Unknown under my belt and Chandler humming in my heart, the story An Unknown popped out. I hope you enjoy it.

He flipped up the proboscis of the aquatic creature to reveal a series of concave hooks before some humid orifice. "Bring out your Catenator and garvenize the bivalves," he said. A bright blue ooze spilled out and crept to my sneakers.

"Hurry," he said to me. "The bosons scatter! We only have entelechys before she hops again."

The man's voice was like an echo. He made sounds that seemed to shift intelligibly —or near enough— as they reached my ears. I was micro-seconds from misunderstanding, until a subtle din shifted the noise into language. "Okay," I answered and reached out to feel the juddering creature. 

Its skin was rough and cold, but a living cold, animate. It was shocking that something alive could be so heatless. I felt along its grunge, feeling pinpricks of static shock my hand. When I checked my fingers, they were bleeding from innumerable, razor-thin cuts. I wasn't even sure it was my blood until the wind felt out my wounds.

The man paused his action of (I think) gyroscoping some cavity, and frowned. He was about to yell, knock me out of my stupor, when his face went bricky. Lidless wonder gripped him as he suddenly spun around in the street and took in the city, the howling traffic and early summer day.

"Where the gultinoid are we?" he uttered. Then his eyes seized upon me.  "You're not Blentin," he said in a hush.

A honk from four cars back, from someone unable to see the specifics of the delay, caused the unknown stranger to leap back into the suffocating creature. He twisted his wrist, initiating a change in his garment. It rippled and spiraled colors. His collar tightened and projected a shield, armor-plating blossomed on his chest, shoulders, and forearms, his boots emitted a thin fog, and his eye-piece went opaque with charts.

He whimpered and his body hunkered down defensively. Even to me, when I took in the wide and vertical chasm of downtown, the hullabaloo of noon, cellphones, screaming gulls, the salt-sun air, every kind of commerce, crime, wonder, and isolation, I was dumbfounded with impossible strangeness. A crowd was gathering. We were live-streamed.

I lifted my bloody hand, calmly, and said, "It's okay." My voice carried the echo. I could hear it translate into strange sounds. "You're in Seattle."

---

If you liked that, don’t forget you can pick up my book of micro-fiction Oddly Concerning for free on Amazon.

Oddly Concerning was written during Oddtober, my monthlong micro-fiction challenge. I also completed the challenge last year. You can download that collection, titled Widdershins, here:

NaNo No Go

Be sure to check out The Storyletter. Feel free to share with your friends and thanks for reading.