Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Secret-Runner
Monday, March 17th, 2008
You know that you are related to the Trians who own you, though your body is much smaller and your three legs longer in proportion. But you are a Secret-Runner, and your kind, as far as you know, is always property.
You are on a strange planet, you’re told: Earth, the human planet, but you never see anything except Secret-Runner nests and the long, narrow, smooth tunnels bored beneath the ground from one Trian habitat to another. The tunnels are narrow ovals in cross-section, tilted to one side, a perfect shape for you as long as you are moving at top speed, your three legs out like spokes, spinning from one foot to the next, moving so rapidly that the world is a blur. But if you are tired, or simply want to stop for a moment to remember who you are, then the tunnel is cramped and uncomfortable: you can’t stand on all three legs, you’re forced to lean, and you feel you can hardly breathe. Better to keep moving and not think.
Because you can see nothing when you spin, you’re taken by surprise today when the walls of the tunnel are no longer there, when you’re tumbling helplessly through space. You crash into a wall of dirt and rocks, and pebbles rain down on you.
“Got it!” says a human, the first one you have heard with your own membranes, and you try to look up, but the light is blinding and painful. You’re thrown into a cage, and the cage is covered.
You know why they’ve broken into a tunnel and taken you, because you have only one purpose. The long, complicated message-secret you were given this morning, which one of your Trian owners throbbed to you over nearly an hour–that’s what they want. They must know that you have been conditioned, brought up, even bred for secrecy, so they must think they have some power that will break your conditioning. You are frightened to imagine what it might be.
The cover slips, and you see it is now less bright outside. Thousands and thousands of pinpricks of light gleam far above you in a soft, black sky. You have never seen anything farther off than a few dozen meters. Now you are seeing what you know must be stars, they are light years away.
Do you wish you had never been captured, now?
Old Bear
Friday, March 7th, 2008
Mars wandered through his dead mother’s house, using a data gun to tag items for storage, the estate sale, gifts. His dead parents’ things seemed to glare at him, and wished he could run out the door and not come back, have some kind of service do the work, but he knew he’d regret it if he didn’t make some kind of goodbye. He retreated to his old room, a sanctuary. He’d tag there for now. It should be easier.
His room had filled with twenty years with junk: his parents’ old holorecordings, unused craft supplies, spare curtains. The only clear surface was the toybox, which his mother had used as a bench for her sewing station. Mars relaxed, opened it, and began to sort through the items. The dusty pathos of the long-abandoned toys was easy to ignore compared to the echoes of his mother in the other rooms.
Near the bottom of the box was a stuffed bear, still plugged in: Boxer, his old teddy bAIr from before he went away to boarding school. His father’d had to run an extension cord through a hole into the toybox, because if Boxer was left out as he charged, Mars would stay up late into the night to talk to him. Boxer had been Mars’ best friend for years, but he hadn’t been allowed to bring him to boarding school, and when Mars finally began to make real friends, human friends, he’d forgotten.
“Please put me down!” said the bear. “I belong to Mars.”
Mars dropped the bear as if it were leaking acid.
“Boxer?” he said. “Boxer, have you been turned on in there this … the whole … ?”
“I’m waiting for Mars,” Boxer said. “He left me in the box. I thought up a lot of things to do with him when he gets back.”
“It’s me,” Mars said hoarsely. “Boxer, it’s me. It’s Mars.”
Boxer brushed the dust from his glassy black eyes with one paw and stared. Finally, he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Mars is a little boy, and you’re old. Grown-ups don’t need bears for friends.”
Mars dropped to the floor, clutching Boxer, and hot tears spilled down his face. He sobbed chokingly and clutched the squirming bear, embarrassed and miserable.
“Oh … maybe grown-ups do need bears,” Boxer said in a hushed voice. “You can keep me until Mars comes home, if you want to. You don’t have to be sad.”
Mars nodded and dragged his sleeve over his face.
“OK,” he said. “Maybe just until Mars comes home.”