#166 The Well

My ancestors came to this land from the East. With their own hands, they built this house. With their own hands they dug the well. Twenty feet down to fresh, pure water for them to drink.

I stand beside the well diggers and watch as the machinery grinds and whirrs, burrowing into the earth at a depth I can’t imagine. Three thousand feet down. Over half a mile. When I look out over the dusty fields, three thousand feet must be about all the way to the abandoned silo on the Miller’s place. All that distance, only straight down into the earth.

I remember when the river ran in the bottom, when we could draw water from it to irrigate. I remember when there were orchards in this valley as far as the eye could see. Now there’s a patchwork, only a few squares of green where folks had the money to dig for water.

Every minute the drill pushes farther, and every minute the cost grows higher. If we don’t find water, I’ll have no harvest this year, and no way to pay the debt to the diggers. The house my ancestors built with their own hands, the ancient window glass, bubbled and warped, that they placed in the panes, will be lost along with the land it stands on. Someone who cares nothing for it will knock it to the ground, or leave it to slowly rot in the sun and the dust.

If we don’t strike water soon, not even a good harvest this year, or the next ten years, will pay for this well.

“That’s it,” one of the workers says. “Water.” He says it as if he knew all along they’d find it, as if it wasn’t the shape of my life, my family’s life, all depending on this.

The first flow comes up, pumped from deep beneath the surface. Thick and red like blood, it spills onto the ground.

Then clear water follows, washes the stain away.

We have bought ourselves a little more time.

#165 In the Twilight and the Rain 4

read the first part

The harper left early the next morning, but his music stayed with me all day. The melodies he played teased at my mind, half-forgotten. I thought I might go mad unless I could hear them again. I wanted to hum a bit as I worked, but father was unusually silent that day, and I didn’t want to disturb him. He had a long, thoughtful look on his face, sad and deep.

That night, after supper, when Father would usually sit and watch the fire and talk of the doings of the day, instead he went out with a lantern. I watched him going toward the barn, a single lone light bobbing in the dark. Some time later the light reappeared, coming closer and closer, until I could see Father was carrying something. A bundle all wrapped up in leather and tied with cord.

On the outside, the leather was mildewed and rat-chewed. Mother made a pinched face of disapproval when Father set it down on the table, but she didn’t say anything. Layer by layer the wrappings came off. My sister and I watched eagerly. “What is it, Da?” my sister asked, but he never said a word.

When the last layer of leather wrappings came unwound, at first I was sorely disappointed to see nothing but a bundle of oddly-shaped pieces of wood. But then I watched as Father set one here and another there, and a familiar outline took shape.

“It’s a harp!” I breathed out the words. A sudden hope lit up in me, a hope I hadn’t dared to admit to myself. Ever since I’d heard the harper’s music last night, I'd had an ache in my bones. I wanted to make that music myself. I had to.

Father didn’t seem to hear us, didn’t seem to see us. The only thing in the room was the bones of this unfinished harp. He fit the pieces together, two at a time, studied the joints, then dropped the pieces to the table and and buried his face in his hands.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s been too long,” Father said. “The wood has warped, the pieces no longer fit. I canna finish this harp now.”

“But you know how to make one,” I said. “Can you make another? Start again from the beginning?”

Father took a small bundle from among the pile and opened it up. A gleam of metal shone in the firelight. Fine wires of brass coiled tight in a ring. Father carefully unwound one from the others. “The wires are still good,” he said, his voice dull, almost as if it didn't matter.

“I’ll help you,” I said. “Please?”

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#164 Canary Man

It wasn’t hard to find the address from the newspaper once we got on the right street. It was the only house that had stacks of canary cages set out in the front yard, each one full of fluttering yellow birds. Mother swerved around a horse-drawn vegetable cart that was coming the other way, then parked the car along the curb. Before the car wheels had stopped turning I’d burst out the door and run up onto the lawn.

“Which one do you want?” Mother asked, adjusting her hat, then folding her hands primly over her purse. I could tell she didn’t like the look of this yard or the shabby little house behind it.

“Hello, hello,” a small man with a big smile came out the front door. “You want canary?”

“Yes,” I said. “My old one died.”

“You pick. Take your time,” he bowed and smiled again.

I walked around all the cages. A bird with a little bit of gray on his wings caught my eye. He had a funny way of hopping from side to side, and kept looking at me as if to ask, “Please take me home with you!”

I pointed the bird out to the little man. He nodded and opened the cage door and caught the bird in his hand. “One moment, wait here, I will put him in a box for you.”

While Mother dug in her purse I followed the little man into his house, not wanting to get too far from my new bird. He went inside and down a set of stairs to his basement, with me right behind.

At the bottom of the stairs I froze. The room was full of big cabinets with dials and buttons, microphones, speakers… it was radio equipment! I had never seen so much radio equipment in real life. Only in the movies, or I wouldn’t have even known what it was.

“YOU!” the man shouted. He now had a box in his hands, and had just turned around and noticed me. “Out! Now!”

My heart pounding, I ran back up the stairs and out into the sunshine. I didn’t dare say a word to my mother,, who was watching the canaries flutter around in their cages.

For a moment, I was afraid the man wasn’t coming back out, and that I’d never get my canary. At last he came, no longer smiling, but with the box in his hands. He took the money from my mother and handed her the box, ignoring me like I didn’t exist.

My heart was still pounding as mother drove us away. I could hear the gentle scratching of my bird moving around inside his box. What was that man doing with all of that radio equipment in his basement?

#163 Wrong Turn

"Get on the freeway here!" My little sister said, shaking the map in a panic.

"Going which way?" I asked.

"North!"

"Aaaaah!" I wailed as we hurtled under the overpass. "I was in the wrong lane! You have to tell me sooner."

"It was confusing," My sister leaned back with the map over her face. "I didn't figure it out until just when I told you."

I pulled over to the right and turned us into a parking lot. Breathing hard, head on the steering wheel, I tried to get up the courage to get back on the road. Why hadn't I brought my phone? Navigating by map was impossible.

"Hey, guys, what's that building?" My little brother said from the back seat.

I hadn't bothered to notice what kind of a parking lot we had pulled into. It was mostly empty, only a few cars gathered at the base of a tall, brick building.

There was something wrong with that building.

I stared at it in disbelief. Can a building exude evil? Because that's just what this one was doing. It felt wrong, like some kind of affront to nature.

The sign at the base said, "Ashton Medical Facility." Nothing sinister about that. Except the word medical. And facility. Okay, Ashton sounded kind of creepy too. Like ashes of dead people.

"Do you feel that?" I asked my sister. "That building is evil."

She nodded, staring out the window.

That's when I noticed something else about the building. There were no windows on the ground floor. No windows on the second or third floors either. Only the top half of the building had any windows at all. I couldn't see anything inside except for long fluorescent bulbs on the ceilings of the upper floors.

"What do you think they do in there?" my little brother asked.

"I don't want to know," my little sister said quietly.

I wanted to get out of there, get back on the road, take the right freeway entrance, and go home. On the other hand, I really wanted to know what was making that building ooze out a horrible feeling of badness. I'd never felt anything like it. It didn't make sense.

Could it just be because of the lack of lower floor windows?

Seriously, why would they put windows on the top floors  but not on the lower floors unless they were doing something in there they didn't want anyone to see.

None of us said anything for at least a minute. As much as I wanted to know what was going on in there, no way was I going to get out of the car. I wasn't even going to drive any closer and see what that small print was on the sign.

"Let's go home and look this place up on the internet," I said, turning the car around.  I gave the building one more glance as we pulled away, and the cold, dark feeling hit me again, hard as ever.

What was wrong with that place?

#162 Lone Robot

guest post by Colin Carlson

Bits of dust rain down from the copper colored sky. The dying star sets in the west, its red glow fading to black. The dust carries with it a deadly poison. Luckily, I cannot be poisoned. I am K.E.M, Keeper of Earth unit M. I was left on this dead world when the humans left. I was to keep alien races off the planet while they were away. But none came. And the humans didn’t come back. So I roam endlessly, wandering the planet, waiting and hoping for the humans to come back. It has been hundreds of years. Thousands. I honestly don’t know why anyone would want this world anymore. The water for the most part evaporated or became deadly. The plants and animals all but died out. Not even a cockroach survived.

Now the earth is as barren as our neighbor mars. Occasionally there are little traces that humans had lived here. A block of stone standing atop another, a hole dug 200 miles deep, and us. The humans left before things got really bad. The tectonic plates shattered. Each continent tearing into small pieces. The pieces shift along the surface. You can watch them if you have the time, which I do. The little shards of land grind together. You can feel it sometimes, and you can always hear it. Many of the bots have died. I don’t really know how many remain, but I will see the occasional dead shell of one of my own.

Earth cracks and crumbles beneath my metal plated feet. The dust is so thick here it just slides out from under you. I patrol the land, watching the skies for signs of life. Signs of anything more than a dusty surface lit by a dying sun. Dust storms fling the particles into the sky. I sit and wait out the torrent in a small alcove. My sensors indicate something a little more out of the ordinary deeper in the cave. I walk in further and find a small object. I feel its surface with the sensors in my hand, and risk turning on my one remaining eye-light to show the object.

A stone figure, etched into the shape of one of the creatures on my database. It amazes me that this stone object has not crumbled in the heat. As if reacting to my thoughts, the object crumbles to dust in my fingers. This dead world holds no life, and never can. I mourn, for I know that the humans shall never return, so I am fated to wander this dead planet endlessly, until I run down and become yet another of these dead relics of a dead world, to decay and crumble like the statue.

#161 Volunteer

I knew I’d had this dream before. I couldn’t actually remember when, but it all looked familiar. I was in the high school cafeteria with everyone in the whole school. Up at the front, an old guy in a grey suit was talking into the microphone.

“We are sorry we can not help you more,” he said.

Suddenly the cafeteria became a concert hall, and the same old man was in a tux and tails, up there on the stage. His voice filled the auditorium. “If we were to try and come to your aid, Voraak’s forces would destroy us. This is the best we can do.”

Voraak. I knew that name. They’d told us before. That’s what this was about. Voraak was coming.

Now we were all outside, seated on a grassy slope. Down below the old man had some kind of forest ranger uniform on. The kid next to me scratched at his bare knee.

“We need volunteers,” he said. “Even though we can not hope to defend your world, we can teach you how to defend yourselves.”

This was a fun dream. I didn’t want to wake up.

“When Voraak comes, he will bring great changes with him. Your world will be enslaved as many others have been. None of the weapons you now have will be any use against him. You must learn to use the same powers he wields. There is very little time.”

Now we were on a space station. I could see Earth out the window, a huge curving arc of blue and white in an ocean of stars. The old man stood at the front of the room, dressed in silvery robes.

“Who will volunteer to defend your world against Voraak’s invasion? Who will train with us and prepare to meet him? If you are willing, stand up.”

This was the best dream I’d had in ages, or at least since I’d had it last time I’d had it, though I couldn’t quite remember when that was. Sure, I’d fight this Voraak. It sounded exciting.

I stood up.

The old man was right in front of me.

“Thank you,” he said, and touched my forehead.

I actually felt the touch. In my dreams, things don’t usually actually touch me.

I woke up. In my bed. Everything normal. Two minutes before my alarm went off.

What a disappointment. It had only been a dream.

#160 Mothership 3

read the first part

“Come,” Mother said, her voice soft and mysterious. “Look here.” She pointed to a place in the wall where a panel was slowly rolling aside.

Dawn opened her eyes wide in the dim light, trying to make out what was back there in the dark. A soft red glow bathed something small and floating. It twitched, and Dawn jumped back with a little squeak. When she drew closer again, she could make out a round head, large eyes dark through translucent eyelids, arms, hands with tiny fingers, and even legs with feet and toes.

“It has legs and feet, just like mine!” Dawn said.

“She does,” Mother said. “I hope you will help me teach her how to use them.”

Dawn looked up into Mother’s smiling face. Mother didn’t have legs, she had always said she didn’t need them. Her place was in the home, Aiko did everything that had to be done outside. From the middle up, Dawn was like Mother, with arms and hands, a body, a head, a face, but where Mother was planted into the floor, like a tree, Dawn had legs to move around. She sometimes thought her legs weren’t as fast or as steady as Aiko’s wheels, or the drones’ whirring propellers that let them fly, but they were what she had. Her alone, out of everything else in the world.

But not anymore. Now there was someone else.

“This is your sister. What do you think we should call her?” Mother asked.

Dawn blinked, surprised. Mother never asked her to help name things that came out of the home. Things that came from the world outside, Dawn always got to name them. But the koi in the pond, which had come from the home, all the fruits and vegetables and flowers in the garden, they had come from the home, and Mother had taught Dawn their names. Now here was something that most definitely had come from the home, but Dawn was being asked to name it.

Dawn watched her sister’s tiny hand, the whole hand the size of one of Dawn’s finger tips, move up to the face as if to shield her eyes from the light. “Day,” Dawn said. “Because looking at her makes me feel like sunshine all over.”

“That sounds beautiful,” Mother said. “We will call her Day.”

 

#159 Mothership 2

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The plants of mother’s garden had always seemed weak and frail next to the thick, broad leaves, fat tree trunks, and heavy vines that covered most of the bottom of the crater. Dawn snapped a ripe green pea pod from the thin stem of a garden plant as she passed by and popped it into her mouth, enjoying the crisp taste and sweet juice. Here were things Mother had named for her, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, potatoes. Outside the garden were things for Dawn to name. She thought about what to call the round, yellowish fruit in her hand that she had brought with her from beneath the crater’s rim. Moon fruit, she decided, after the bright yellow moon. She hoped this fruit would be something she could eat. It smelled delicious.

The door slid open for Dawn as she came close to the round, white home she shared with Mother, Aiko, and the drones, Ganymede and Callisto. Callisto had been buzzing around overhead as she and Aiko had been out walking, but she wasn’t sure where Ganymede was. She could check his cam when she got inside.

“I found a new fruit, mother,” Dawn said. “Will you analyze it for me?”

“Put it in,” Mother’s voice said. “And come over here, I want you to see this.”

A panel in the wall slid out and Dawn dropped her fruit inside. The panel rolled shut again, and Dawn could hear the whir of her fruit being shredded up into tiny pieces for analysis.

Dawn ran to Mother’s place by the wall and gave her a hug, felt her warm, soft arms around her.

“I’m going to dim the lights,” Mother said.

The door rolled shut and the lights in the home grew soft and red.

 read the next part

#158 Mothership

Dawn tipped her head back until she could see the bright blue of the sky over the rim of the crater high above her. She wrapped her fingers around one of the thick vines that climbed the rock wall and gave it a tug. It seemed strong enough to hold her.

“Aiko, if I climbed up there, could you follow me?”

The lens of Aiko’s one eye rotated, measuring the cliff face. “No,” Aiko said. His wheels turned, backing him down the slope. “Which is why you mustn’t climb it. Not until you’re older.”

Dawn sighed. “How much older?”

“Your mother will tell you when you’re ready,” Aiko said. “It is time to go home now. Your mother has something to show you.”

Dawn gave the top of the ridge one last long stare. She could climb it, she could climb it right now. She’d climbed trees that were higher. Why did she need to wait?

Aiko began rolling his way down the slope, his tires crushing the thick, deep green leaves of the vines. Dawn followed in his path, stopping to collect a fleshy yellow fruit she hadn’t seen before. Maybe this one would be something she could eat.

“Be careful with that,” Aiko said. “It hasn’t been analyzed yet.”

Dawn could no longer see the cliff face behind them. She passed a familiar tree, the clump of rocks where she liked to sit and watch the buzzers dip into the stream for a drink, sometimes to be caught by the snake plants that grew just beneath the surface, and then they came to the clearing where her home, low and round and white, stood surrounded by Mother’s garden.

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#157 Wiggle Tooth

It started at lunch, when I bit into a carrot and my milk carton fell over.

At the time I didn’t think that biting into a carrot could possibly make my milk fall over. I just thought maybe I’d bumped the table. It could have happened. I wasn’t paying much attention because when I bit that carrot, my tooth came lose, and that hurts!

“What happened?” Joe asked.

“You okay?” Kelly watched my milk puddle all over my tray.

“My tooth is loose,” I said, holding my hand up over my mouth to hide the chewed bits of carrot.

“Awesome,” said Andy. “Does the tooth fairy bring you a dollar?”

“A dollar? I get five dollars when my teeth come out,” said Kelly.

I grabbed some napkins and started mopping the spilled milk, then gave up and just went to throw out the rest of my tray.

It happened again during class. Mrs. Reed was talking about prepositions or something, and I was staring at my pencil lying on top of my language arts worksheet. My loose tooth still hurt a little from the carrot during lunch, so I pushed at it with my tongue.

The tooth wiggled. So did my pencil.

I made a kind of sniffle-snort of surprise. Was there an earthquake going on. I looked all around the room, but nothing else was shaking.

I pushed at my tooth again, staring at the pencil. Wiggle tooth. Wiggle pencil.

Awesome.

I tried it with some other stuff in the room. I made the American flag over the front board wiggle, but no one seemed to notice. I guess they thought it was just the air conditioning. I tried to make the second hand on the clock go around a little faster, but I couldn’t quite get the timing right, and just kept making it go back and forth. I even made Mrs. Reed’s glasses wiggle, so she wrinkled up her nose, then took them off and set them on her desk.

On the way home from school, I was so busy looking for stuff to wiggle I didn’t notice my brothers arguing at first.

“You have to give it back to me!” my little brother Tyse said.

“No, you traded it to me. It’s mine now,” my big brother Tim was being a jerk again.

“I’ll give you back your guy.”

“I don’t want him back. You traded and that’s it.”

My little brother shoved past me and ran out into the crosswalk. He turned to scowl back at my big brother. That’s probably why he didn’t see the car coming around the corner.

“Tyse!” my big brother shouted.

I stared at my little brother as the car braked and swerved, trying to miss him. There was no way to reach him in time.

I grabbed my tooth and pulled as hard as I could.

My brother jerked out of the way of the car, as if someone had pulled him on a puppet string. He landed on his backside in the road just as the car squealed to a stop. An old lady got out and started yelling at us for running in the street.

My little brother Tyse, his eyes big and scared, stared up at me, and at the bloody tooth I was holding in my fingers.