Writers of the Future Volume 31

  He should have felt relieved.

  This potential source of humiliation or disruption would soon be dealt with. The book would no longer be in his life, could no longer irritate or goad him by its very existence. No fans would have a chance to either criticize or clamor for more. The chapter would be closed.

  Yes, Mitchell was definitely relieved.

  After he lit the match, he hesitated for a long, indecisive moment before finally touching the flame to the edge of one of the loose sheets. There. A burnt offering to a cruel muse.

  As the fire caught, guilt gnawed at the ragged edges of his mind. There was something intrinsically criminal about burning a book, especially the only copies of a book. While this event would not go down in history with the sacking of the Library of Alexandria, it was still a loss to at least some tiny backwater of the literary sea—especially to the hopeful fans who had waited so long for any work by Mitchell Coren.

  The flames grew higher, devouring the loose pages and curling the glossy dust jacket of Infernities. An interesting play on words, he thought. Infinity, Alternative, and Eternity all rolled together. Now he could add “Inferno” to the quadruple-entendre. He wondered how it related to the story.

  Didn’t he owe it to himself at least to read his own work, to see what he could have done with his talent? Infernities was tangible proof that in some other reality his author-self had overcome the pressure and the expectations. But how? Didn’t that mean that he, too, could do it?

  No. He’d made the right decision. He thought with some satisfaction of the author photo blackening and blistering, cremating his cocksure successful doppelgänger. The man had dared to risk his reputation, his spotless literary legacy, to write this second novel and offer it to an unpredictable reading public. He had dared. Had risked …

  With a groan of annoyance and frustration Mitchell snatched the hardcover from the fire, dropped it to the floor, and stamped on it to put out the flames at the edges. He bent and picked up the singed novel that had disrupted his calm life.

  As he picked up the blackened book, Mitchell’s lips flickered in a smile. Though he still had no intention of publishing the novel, he would hold onto the book as a goad. Just to keep him honest. To remind himself of what could be.

  He had his own ideas for new stories and novels, of course. Every writer did. The ideas had never stopped coming, and he had jotted down notes during lunch hours at his tech-writing job. Some of the outlines were damn good, but he had been too afraid of failure to write the books, believing it better to let readers live with his mysterious seclusion than to risk them shaking their heads in disappointment.

  Yet his alternate self had somehow shaken off the fear of failure. Therefore, it could be done. And that sincere, appreciative look he had seen in Jeremy Cardiff’s eyes told Mitchell he still had an audience, no matter how small.…

  Some authors were motivated to write strictly for the critics, for the kudos and awards. Others wanted the money and name recognition of sales, with big print runs and splashy publicity. Some wrote only for themselves, giving the finger to anyone else’s expectations. But why had he become a writer?

  Now there was a group to whom he owed something: his fans—the readers who understood what he was trying to do and who saw him as a human being with a talent that should not simply be thrown away. Those fans would enjoy whatever he wrote.

  Certainly, a few of them went to the crazy fringe, seeing him as a guru with unparalleled insight into their particular problems. But most were just regular people. If he struck the right note, his pool of fans would be large; if he chose a path that was too esoteric, the numbers might dwindle. In either case, the readers still deserved his respect.

  Mitchell looked at the charred copy of Infernities he held. He realized now that burning the novel was selfish. There were thousands (or maybe only dozens) of people like Jeremy Cardiff, who would have enjoyed this book if he allowed it to be published.

  Setting the burned hardcover down, he opened the bottom file drawer of his desk where he kept the folder of notes and ideas that were just too good to throw away. If he was going to bury this cuckoo’s egg of a book, then he was obligated to give the readers something in exchange.

  Mitchell skimmed his outlines. He had forgotten how clever or thought-provoking many of them were. Had he intended to be an Emily Dickinson, locking his notes away in a box for someone else to find after he died? Not long ago, he had been tempted to burn these, too.

  Now he would write some of them.

  As he flipped through his notes, the ideas reached a critical mass, and Mitchell saw how he could combine concepts and characters. What might have been simple short story ideas now became enough material for a multi-layered novel. It wouldn’t be just like Divergent Lines, but so what? It would still be good, still be worth writing.

  He spread the papers out on his desk. He had an old, outdated laptop computer and plenty of time during his lunch hours. Some of the greatest works of literature had been completed a few pages at a time during lunch breaks.…

  Mitchell glanced at the fireplace, where the fire had now died to a pile of orange embers. The photocopied novel was now nothing but ash.

  On the mantel above, his Hugo and Nebula awards reflected the dull glow. He turned away from them and focused on his desk. Divergent Lines had been an unnecessary ball-and-chain to his creativity, along with all the other excuses he had made up over the past ten years. That was enough procrastination.

  He looked at the charred but still readable hardcover of Infernities. First, before he started on any new book or short story, he had to write a letter.

  “Dear Mr. Cardiff, let me make you a bargain.” He proposed that if he had not produced any new novels or short stories in the next five years, then Jeremy had his blessing to publish Infernities, if only to reward the fans who had waited so long. He packaged the letter with the scorched book and mailed it to his “number one fan.” Simply knowing the novel existed would be all the inspiration he really needed.

  On the way back from the mailbox, he smiled to himself, convinced it would never be necessary for the other Mitchell Coren’s book to be published here. He would take that risk for himself.

  Between Screens

  written by

  Zach Chapman

  illustrated by

  TREVOR SMITH

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Zach Chapman grew up on a ranch just north of San Antonio, Texas where he could see the cows grazing in the pasture from his bedroom window. Summer evenings were often spent camping under a canopy of Spanish Oaks down by the Cibolo Creek around a campfire, listening to his dad tell stories. His imagination was ignited by the works of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, and Philip K. Dick.

  Along with writing, his passions growing up were playing video games, reading, and sports. In school, he competed in wrestling, weightlifting, and football.

  Zach graduated in 2011 from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio with a degree in English, where he won the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) English Award for creative writing. At the moment, he lives in San Antonio with his librarian wife Taylor, a cat, a rabbit and a lazy-eyed rescue dog named Dingo. He is currently finishing a science fantasy novel in the vein of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  The art spirit inside Trevor emerged early as he sat at his little table drawing for hours. It didn’t take long for the subjects to reach monsters and robots.

  Like so many artists, he tells a story of being struck by inspiration when seeing Frank Frazetta’s art in a magazine. If it made Trevor say “Cool!” he wanted to learn to draw it.

  After five years in San Francisco and graduating from the Art University, he returned to his hometown of Tucson with a strong foundation and critical eye that he needed to begin a career in fantasy art.
>
  Five years later, he is making a living doing book covers for self-publishing authors. Trevor Smith won the grand prize of the Illustrators of the Future Contest, the Golden Brush Award, in 2014 and is published in Writers of the Future Volume 30. It was a memorable experience that helped expose Trevor to a world of networking, promoting himself, and learning what it will take to make it to the top.

  Between Screens

  I was fourteen when I first skipped across the galaxy, trying to fit in, trailing the older boys who had ditched class. Cox, the grunge leader of the group, tattooed and modified, ran the skipper code hacker with one hand and shoved me through the portal with the other. One moment I could hear the others laughing, the next I was in an empty station on my hands and knees, picking myself off the cold floor, heart racing. I didn’t know much about skipping, or space travel—I had only been off Earth for a week—but I knew it wasn’t cheap. A moment later I heard the others stumbling in after me, shouting in fear and excitement.

  “We’re caught.”

  “By who?”

  “The pigs!”

  “They tracing us?”

  “’Course. Gotta skip. And trip the pigs. Lose ’em, yeah?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  I was shoved by three other boys through another skipper, and like that, I was across the universe, in another grey skipper station, running from the pigs who were light years behind.

  They never did catch us, not that first time. Cox made sure of that, rerouting stations with his hand hacker to throw them off. We skipped, racing down long hallways in abandoned stations. We skipped, shoving through dense crowds of business drones. We skipped, diving past upkeep bots. We skipped until my world spun and nausea swelled inside me.

  When we arrived at our final destination—a claustrophobic, cold room—a dozen boys were touching up a rigged cacophony of gerrymandered technology. Some of the boys I recognized from school. Their stares jarred me. I was foreign to them, tan Earth skin, natural brown eyes and hair, a stark contrast to their pale features.

  A screen that looked scarcely different from a threadbare bed sheet was draped on one side of the room, a blindingly bright projector shone on it from the other side. Wires and ancient technology, a haze of smoke, the stink of synthetic bliss, and worn blankets and pillows filled the cold room.

  Cox bumped and pounded two tall, thin, pimply boys who were entering some final calibrations on the projector. “Ready, ready? The telescope spitting what we need?”

  “Sure, sure,” the two answered in unison and returned to their work. Their complexions were more corpse-like than the other spaceboys, and their greasy light hair curled at their shoulders.

  An image flickered on the screen. It was a black canvas speckled with burning white stars. The projector clicked several times, then the image zoomed in on a planet, green and blue, much like Earth, but with strange-shaped continents. All the boys quieted. Cox pushed me to the blanket-covered floor and stuck a warm drink in my hand. “Drink up, new kiddie, the lightshow’s starting.”

  “What’s so special about it?” I asked, taking a sip of the burning elixir. A boy next to me hushed me as if I were speaking over some audio, but there was no other sound in the station.

  “Boys projectin’ the light. That’s a planet, this ain’t no movie. There’s a telescope outside of this station. Boys hacked it. Boys real smart with equations.” Cox tapped a finger to his temple. “Real sharp. Taller one’s name Timmet, other’s Trager. Real ugly, but so sharp they’re smarter than the teaches we ditched. Sure, sure.”

  “That’s another planet out there, hundred light-years away?” I asked.

  Cox nodded, irritated, then punched my shoulder. “Just watch. I ain’t seen it at this angle yet.”

  Sitting, I began to watch, but nothing seemed to happen. I gradually became aware of a hand on my back, slowly rubbing as if to annoy. I turned to look, but the light from the projector distorted my vision. I could make out the shape of a girl, narrow with long synthetic dark hair. In the dimness and blinding projector glare, I thought I saw her wink. She hissed, “Don’t lose your lunch, new kiddie.”

  Before I could respond to her, a gasp from all the boys brought my attention back to the screen.

  A meteor hurtled for the planet, brown and jagged. The two masses collided. Breaths hissed in. A shockwave slowly spread from the impact, followed by a wall of ocean. Cox turned toward the projector and yelled over the silence, “Timmet, Trager! Zoom in! Can’t see nothing.”

  The brothers tapped away with their hackers, the telescope zoomed in, and our projector followed the shockwave as it ate forests, deserts and mountains, obliterating all to dust and magma. It zoomed in further. A city came to view, quaking, buildings falling, ants scrambling. Then it was dust too. And then a wall of water. The projector flicked to several other dying cities before the visible half of the planet was devoured and dead. When it was over, the entire room fell silent. The telescope flicked back to the impact site—a circle of red-orange magma, glowing as the tectonic cracks slowly tendrilled across the planet like stretching skeletal fingers. The nausea from skipping returned. I accidentally tipped my drink over, but no one seemed to notice, their eyes were nailed to the dying world.

  “Why?” I managed to utter, “Why did those people stay? They must have known their planet would die.”

  “Misguided principals.” Cox shrugged. “Or just too poor to leave. Not like you, new kiddie.”

  “If I was rich, I’d still be on Earth,” I began, but something buzzing on Cox’s hip took precedence. He fumbled at the device, brought it up to his face. His eyes widened. Pointing his finger toward the skipper gate, Cox started to shout. Boys began to clear the skip station, running, packing up pillows and synthetic smokers and hard drinks, spilling their possessions everywhere as they jumped through the skipper. Cox jerked me to my feet. “Move, new kiddie—the pigs’ve found us.”

  I turned to look for the girl, but she was gone. Cox shoved me forward. “You hear me? No time.”

  Then I was skipping again, Cox at my heels, more boys chasing after, hooting. Instantly through space we ran: Abandoned comet drill site. Packed synth-steak meat house. Sliding living quarters. Busy commercial district, grey and dull. And a hundred skip stations between. The boys began to split, skipping off to different stations.

  Pigs in pale suits popped up here and there, never able to crack us with their electric batons, though once, right before we lost them for good, one dove for Cox, catching his ankle. I kicked the fat man in his teeth, stomped the hand that had captured Cox, and shoved us both through the portal. When we finally lost them it was just Cox, Todd, and I.

  Cox swung a tattooed arm over my shoulders and squeezed. “Kiddie, you did good. Respect, respect. Did good watching that planet blow for the first time, too. I’ve seen it five times now. First time was the hardest. But it hooks you, yeah? It’s a day later and you want to keep watchin’. Skip to new stations where the light ain’t passed through just yet. See it again, at a new angle.”

  Yes. This is what I wanted. Right?

  “Uh, yeah,” I said.

  Cox laughed and pushed me forward. “You’ll see. Go on home. See you at school tomorrow.”

  When I finally found the way back to my living quarters, I could hear mom crying in her room. She was still grieving over dad, though she claimed that the sudden weeping outbursts were due to the artificial days and nights, or the synthetic smell of life in space, or some other lie. Luckily, she didn’t notice me slip in, nor did she complain when I drowned out her moans by blaring music in my cramped room while I struggled to sleep.

  The next morning I ate synth-meat for breakfast, rushed out the door before mom could bring up dad, and used my school pass to skip to the school station. My first three periods I drifted off, day-dreaming of skipping, kicking a faceless patrol officer in the teeth, but mostly about
the dying planet. In my daydreams I could hear the peoples’ cries. Why hadn’t they left? Surely they weren’t so poor that they couldn’t leave. Who would choose death on a planet over life across the million space stations?

  At first I sat by myself at lunch, sure that no one would want a tan Earther sitting with them, but, to my surprise, Cox grabbed my shoulder and gestured over to a table where Todd, Timmet, Trager and a few others from the night before sat.

  As I joined them, I heard discussion of last night’s exploits—rehashing, bragging, hyperbolizing. Cox cut in, explaining how heroic I was when I smashed officer piggy’s teeth in. After that the other boys seemed more accepting of me, listening when I spoke, giving the occasional nod.

  By the time lunch was dismissed, they had begun planning another show, but this one was something new, not the same dying planet from another angle.

  Reluctantly, I ambled to class, a dark boy in a scuffed hallway full of skulking corpses, my mind fixed on skipping, wondering what the new show might be—Cox, Timmet and Trager had kept me out of the loop. In class I sat in a listing chair, impatiently leaning back from my desk, not listening to some teach chew the side of her mouth. Suddenly, I felt a kick on my tailbone, hard enough to sting. I glanced back; it took me a second, but I recognized the girl from last night’s show.

  She winked a pale-blue eye. Her hair was dyed darker than my natural color; it shimmered purple if the light caught it just right. She wore a splash of cherry lipstick, and I spotted tattoos swirling up the side of her neck: a few colorful planets, some stylized stars and a spiraling galaxy—not the sort of ink you’d find on Earth.