Category: Science Fiction

Deep Time: Twins Across Two Times, part 2

, , , 0

Back to Deep Time   The waitress approached again. “Just wanted to let you know that my shift is ending, but we’re staying open during the shadow hours, and we have a few specials.” Anders looked up in the sky as she flitted away, and realized the sun had been growing dimmer. “This part of Rondella Duo has a daily eclipse. Lots of people use it to take naps. At least, they did the last time I was here,” Claribel said. “How long ago was that?” “I think our waitress’s great-great-great grandmother was probably still in diapers.” Anders chuckled. “Did…

Continue reading

Deep Time: Twins Across Two Times, part 1

, , 0

Twins Across Two Times Anders Macbeth waited at what he presumed to be the analog of a café. The patio was ringed in verdant foliage of some unknown variety, and filled with people speaking in the strange accent typical of Rondella Duo. It was still English, old and proud, but it had a sick, throaty quality to it that Anders disliked. It sounded to him like a croaking of some cadre of amphibious creatures, and did nothing to aid his anxiety. “Here you go, dolly-wa,” his waitress said in her strange tone, and dumped a wide cup of a mocha-brown…

Continue reading

Deep Time: Prophet of the God Seed, Author’s Reflection

, , , 0

Another work of size is finished, and so it is time once again to reflect on the work – a service I do for myself as well as for any readers that might be writers themselves. It helps to think critically about a work immediately following a release when it comes to making future plans and improving the craft. Since I have the ability to edit and revise work post-hoc, such a reflection can also serve as the first baseline for revisions when and if the work changes formats (for example, if I publish a work using traditional means in…

Continue reading

Prophet of the God Seed, part 5

, 0

Padalmo grimaced as he swallowed another spoonful of the strange, semi-solid grey substance. He would not have known it was food had he not seen the bald man slurp down half a bowl himself. Moses. I like that name. It has a godly quality to it.  He looked at the bald man, sitting in a chair beside Padalmo’s bed in the long room that made what Padalmo assumed to be part of a hospital. Now conscious, he could take in more clearly the image of the man beside him, who was tall and lean. He wore a simple set of…

Continue reading

Prophet of the God Seed, part 4

, , 0

Padalmo dreamt nothing more. Fala did not come to comfort him. He awoke to the sounds of machinery, humming quietly and clicking away in uncertain rhythms, and was aware of a soft repeating tone. He forced his eyes open. The ceiling was a cool white interrupted by grey lines intersecting one another in squares. He tried moving his head and found he could move slightly to either side, though it hurt gravely to do so. He could see that he was on some sort of bed, only raised off the ground a few feet. There were similar, empty ones off…

Continue reading

Prophet of the God Seed, part 3

, 1

Death, at long last. Padalmo was crawling now. His legs had grown too tired and weak to continue shoveling through the sand. He got better traction crawling, though the infinitely small particles of silica slipped through his fingers like they were water. “I am a child again,” he said aloud. His voice croaked. “You must become like a child to enter the kingdom of God. So be it, either I enter now, crawling like a baby, or I become its prophet.” His mind was flooded with vivid memories of his home, the high house of Tala’Drog’Chu, the mansion of Imalmo,…

Continue reading

Prophet of the God Seed, part 2

, , 1

Padalmo woke to darkness. It was not the darkness of drapes drawn on the sunward side of a house during a sleep period, which was deep and overwhelming, but rather a soft, rippling diffusion of light. He could see the sand outside the rock overhang, sitting still in piles and dunes where it once was shifting. The shadow of the rock itself blended with the color of grey sand outside. A storm, Padalmo thought. There’s not supposed to be storms over this part of the desert for another quarter year. He crept out and looked at the sky. Large billows…

Continue reading

Prophet of the God Seed, part 1

, , 1

The desert. That is where prophets are made. Across the vast wastes of time, when each year past is but a grain of sand and each world gained and lost a chapter of a book, the desert has always meant something to men of faith. Flat, desolate, waterless… only a man of God can survive, and only with the blessing of his god, or so it seems. Karakum. The Place of Burning. Drogathalum. The Sea of Sand. It marched all the way from the mountains of drought, Staltutum, to the steaming sea, or Drog’ta. The sea was the only sure…

Continue reading

Deep Time, an Introduction

, 0

From Deep Time, created by Matthew J. Wellman and David V. Stewart. Written by David V. Stewart. You can find Matt’s blog here: http://thespiritualvoluntaryist.blogspot.com/ Malcom Macbeth stood on the iron walkway extending into what he called the “nose” of the ship, likening it in his mind to one of the mechanically propelled airships that humans used before they had made the leap to space. A glass nose, complete with fire turret, and a glass belly and tail, used to defend the mighty airship as it delivered it’s precious cargo of living fire. That time in history seemed so brief to him…

Continue reading