Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Leap Day
Friday, February 29th, 2008
We had to get, like, I don’t know, a million fucking klicks out past Jupiter’s orbit for Leap. We didn’t get to see anything the whole way, and it took, God, like a month and a half. Rinnie and me were going batshit by then, practically, because while it was a huge-ass ship, we were stowaways, and there were only like three places we could hide: hydroponics, cargo 2, and the morgue.
But after the Leap, we figured they’d have to just let us join the colony. Because what else were they going to do, shoot us out into space? Call our moms and and have them come get us in another fucking solar system?
It wasn’t like Rinnie and me wanted to go into space so much as that I got Rinnie pregnant and we figured we should run away because her dad would fucking kill me when he found out. Not like, he’d be really pissed or something, but actually kill me, like with his hunting knife or just beat me down with a tire iron or something. And Rinnie wouldn’t abort the baby, because she said that would be murder, and seriously, I had dreams sometimes that we aborted the baby and it came back and was this little fucking zombie child with its head all wrong. I was way, way more cool with stowing away on the Leap Ship than killing that baby.
“Hey, I think they’re doing it,” Rinnie said.
“Shut up. You don’t know,” I told her. “How do you know?”
“I feel something, like in my uterus.”
“That’s the baby, stupid,” I said, but then I knew I was wrong, because I started feeling it in my uterus. Or, I don’t know, my liver or something. It was like there was a little tiny drain in there, trying to suck me through. It felt like hell.
“I think I’m going to hurl,” I said.
“Wait–” said Rinnie, and then suddenly the whole universe burst into stars and pieces, and there wasn’t me or Rinnie any more, but we were both just tangled together like one person, tangled together with the baby, and the stars flew through us, and we stretched until time stopped and feeling stopped and we were the whole universe, Rinnie and the baby and me.
In a Lucid Moment
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
“Is plastic all right?” said the gangly high school girl at the end of the checkout conveyor, and all at once Derek realized that plastic was not all right, that plastic was one of the pieces of the suicidal petroleum dependency the humans had developed, and that he himself was in fact not human, that one of the things he was on Earth to do, having drawn his consciousness down into a fully human body from hundreds of light years away in order to warn and inform humanity, was to wean humans from their fossil fuel dependencies and usher them–propel them, really–into a more harmonious and energy-rich future.
His race were adept at these occupations of other life forms, but in some cases it was difficult to keep his own mind going instead of the occupied creature’s mind, and in the human he had found himself drowned in sensation and emotion the moment he’d occupied. He was only surfacing enough to be lucid every few years. This could be disasterous, because between impending ecological disaster and the Nithing fleet ranging ever closer to Earth, the end of things was rushing toward the humans much more quickly than they realized. If they didn’t have his help–
“Sir? Is plastic OK?'” said the girl, and Derek jerked back to himself from wherever he’d been woolgathering.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Long day.”
The girl’s hands hovered over the groceries. Derek’s tub of peppermint ice cream was rolling in place, held there by the bag of potatoes. “So, the plastic?” said the girl.
“Oh–fine,” Derek said. The girl began sorting the items into the bags with a sort of reckless competence. Derek reflected again that he ought to get those environmentally-friendly, reusable grocery bags, so as not to keep using up plastic unnecessarily. But it was OK. There was plenty of time for that.