Killer

This portion, as you may imagine by a couple key paragraph openers, was written while listening to music. Specifically, as you may guess, one song. I suppose I might recommend listening to that song, so I'll drop you a link to it:

Linkin Park - Hands Held High

And now, for your reading pleasure...

The song played in his head, drums and choral in perfect unison, hearkening images of billowy clouds over clear blue skies. He hadn’t seen a blue sky in many years, he had almost forgotten the color of the outdoor ceiling on his home.

Nobody believed him when he told them the sky was blue where he came from. Nowhere was oxygen or nitrogen in such perfect proportions in nature to actually allow such a thing. And the shipborn naturally only believed in stars and heat machines. Planetary entrapment was for the crazy.

The song played in his head, an old song from long ago at his home. Four years seemed like a lifetime the way he had filled them. He was beginning to abandon hope that he might ever find it, starting to wonder if everyone he met was right, that he was just crazy, that his home couldn’t possibly exist. It made him want to kill.

He admired the structure held in his hand, the sleek elegance and simplicity of the device. His finger touched lightly the contact mounted on the grip, a button to unleash a fury and rage unforeseen in the galaxy if he so deemed. The weapon hummed almost like it knew what it were about to do, like it understood that it would very shortly fulfill its fiery purpose once again.

The song played in his head and he thought about his time away from home, how this wretch on its knees before him had made his life hell and tormented his every waking moment simply for sport. He stared down the sights into the forehead of the man kneeling before him and did not see fear in the man’s eyes, nor anger. He saw surprise.

He considered for a moment a million separate options to choices already made and yet to decide. His finger twitched. The world changed.

TRH

Last Day Aboard the Wreck of the Machiavelli

My writings have a strange tendency to take place in the world that exists in my brain, all of which has well-established backstory, future, reasoning, physics, etcetera. This is not a random thing, this story that follows - it is part of a larger universe, and throughout some of these you the reader will likely glimpse into this universe. Perhaps someday you'll even learn the characters names ;)

Crawling up from under the cover of night, his eyes pressed hard against their sockets in complaint as the light of the room struck them and he knew that this pain would linger the longest. The cover slowly slid over his head, towed almost uncommanded by his toes past his head as his wearied frame rises to a sitting position. He looks around the room, packed with things but empty of life save himself. The crudely made stuffed bear reminds him of the loneliness that has defined the past year, and he considers pulling it close for comfort, but does not. The damned computer will see, and while the computer professes it does not judge him he strongly suspects otherwise.

He waves a hand through the air just right, a motion practiced and burned into unconscious muscle memory, and the computer responds. The computer has a voice he has changed so it won’t remind him of a person he knew some while ago. A hologram is projected in response and the voice chimes in as a light goes on by the door.

“Good morning, Captain. Would you like a status report?”

“Good morning, Samantha. Yes please, second and third fleets.”

The computer notes the various functionings and goings-on of the units he has specified, drones all of them, and he mildly pays attention while going about morning rituals and cleaning up the notes from last nights’ recappments.

Meanwhile, the wreck spins wildly, tracing a path chosen months ago through happenstance through the unending night.

TRH

Hello, Readers!

Space travel has been described as "hours of boredom, followed by seven seconds of sheer terror". This site will be dedicated to short science fiction stories, often chunks in the middle of a larger story, offering glimpses into the lives of various characters, storylines, etcetera. I'm not putting a cap on words because that's just not how I roll, and I'm not going to (at this point) update X number of times per week, because these moods to write hit without any schedule, and I flat-out refuse to force the feeling because when I do it just gets bad.

I'd really hate for this to be all about me though. If anybody out there has a short story they've come across and/or written, or something to say having to do with science fiction (or real science; truth is after all stranger than fiction) then shoot me an email at sevensecondscifi@gmail.com.

Ready? First story coming up soon!

TRH