Posts Tagged Fortnightcap
Fortnightcap: Vicious Cycle
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on August 25, 2011
Vicious Cycle
A Fortnightcap by DL Thurston
“So. You’ve come to kill me then?”
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to. He’d heard the faint click of the gun’s hammer being pulled back, and knew there was only one person who could be holding it.
“I have to. You know I have to. It’s the only way.”
“You won’t be able to.” He turned his chair around, wanting to face the person with the gun. He knew a general identity but not a face, not even a gender. There was no mistaking the man there. The high cheekbones. The gentle nose. This could only be his grandson. “And really, I’m disappointed in your lack of imagination here.”
“You’re not making this easy for me.”
“It’s not supposed to be easy. In fact, it’s supposed to be impossible. I’m sure you’ve seen the equations, the proof that the timeline is immutable, unchangeable. And really, picking on an old man like me?”
“You’re five years younger than me.”
“Oh sure,” he rose from his chair, and walked towards his grandson. Around him lay the bits and pieces of his failed prototypes, in a room beyond was his success. “I suppose now I am, but don’t you know me as an old man? Wasn’t I kind to you? I’ve always wanted to be a grandfather. Your grandmother says I can’t wait to be old, and I suppose she’s right. Are we still alive?”
His grandson’s hand was shaking, more and more as he stepped closer and closer. “Please. Please just stop. You know it has to be this way.”
“Why? Just because it’s called the Grandfather Paradox? You have another grandfather, you know. Somewhere else out there. You could have even tried to kill your younger self, same paradox.”
“You invented the thing. You’re the one everyone knows. You’re the one that proved it’s impossible. It just…it just has to be you. Has to be this way.”
“You can’t.”
“Could you please sit back down?”
“You can’t.”
“Stop saying that!” He was getting flustered. There were tears streaming down his face, and his hand shook all the more.
“What’s your name?”
“Why does that matter?”
“If you’re going to kill me, I’d like to at least know your name.”
“They…they named me after you.”
The inventor smiled. “Charles, then. Do they call you ‘Charlie?’ I always hated Charlie. Why don’t you give me the gun. There are other paradoxes, other ways of testing things. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“It…it does.” The resolve in his voice was slipping away. His grip on the gun loosened. The inventor reached out and pulled it away.
“That’s good. Now, I’d love to hear all about your life. My life. That would be a paradox, too. Let’s just put the safety on this,” the gun was slick with sweat. It slipped in his hand. He tried to catch it, but as he did the world exploded in noise and pain. He looked down at the gaping hole in his own chest.
The inventor fell to his knees, looking up at his grandson’s shocked expression. “This,” he said, each word a struggle, “wasn’t in my equations.” Darkness closed in around him as the paradox storms swept in.
Fortnightcaps are biweekly experimentation into short form fiction. All Fortnightcaps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So if you like the story, please feel free to link people back here. And if you didn’t, maybe the one in two weeks will be better.
Fortnightcap: With Apologies
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on August 11, 2011
With Apologies
A Fortnightcap by DL Thurston
Ah how the sake did flow.
We’d gathered for a celebration in the great hall, among the jade and gold sculptures and tapestries that hung along the walls. It was a room that promised decadence, and we delivered. The battle had been long and hard, many good men lay dead on the fields. Around me were the surviving samurais, cloaks stained in blood. The blood of enemies, the blood of friends, their own blood, it all mingled together into dried brown stains. Their swords were clean, they’d seen to that.
We drank to their brothers, we drank to their foes, we drank to the lord of the shogunate, lost in the battle and assumed dead. But his land was secure, and in his place his son would rise and rule.
It had been an honor to fight along side them. To see them in action. To follow their code and defend their lands.
Again the servers went to the giant cask rolled out for the celebration, plunging ladles farther and farther down, bringing out more of the sweet drink that fueled the festivities. It had a bite, but it was a pleasant one trimmed with the taste of plums.
Finally the cask was emptied, and the samurai and their attendants lefts one by one until there were just three of us left enjoying stories that translated past our language barriers, laughing at jokes that we couldn’t understand. I’d hoped for one more drink, and looked down into the cask, hoping there might be just a few drops of the sweet rice wine left. I was aware it was from the private reserve of the feudal lord of these lands, the man they toasted, intended only for his lips. None had thought twice about opening the cask, to celebrate his life and mark his passing.
I looked deep, but alas it was gone. As were, when I looked up, my friends. Instead there stood the man we toasted, the owner of this hall, the owner of the sake, not dead but triumphantly stained with the blood of his enemies, limping into the hall.
That’s when I learned a lesson the hard way. There’s nothing more dangerous than standing alone, staring down the barrel of a shogun.
Fortnightcaps are biweekly experimentation into short form fiction. All Fortnightcaps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So if you like the story, please feel free to link people back here. And if you didn’t, maybe the one in two weeks will be better.
Fortnightcap: The New God
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on July 14, 2011
The New God
A Fortnightcap by DL Thurston
They came to this place in the time before to worship. They came to this place at the awakening to flee. That is what our stories tell us, and our stories are all we have.
That was so long ago. Generations now. Our new god protects us, even as he slumbers with eyes that never close. He protects us and watches over us, as he has for generations.
We do not go to the east anymore. There is the old city, where many of our ancestors came from when they fled. The stories speak of buildings constructed in the time before, and of great metal birds that flew the sky. I don’t believe in those birds. The only things that fly the skies in the day are the eagles. At night the sinewy gaunts take to the sky and call to us in languages I cannot understand. Thankfully, they don’t dare land where our god has sway.
There are stories of people still living there, thirsting for blood, calling for death, with brains so damaged by the gods that came that they are little more than animals. They wait for us there, keeping us hemmed in, picking us off one by one if we leave the protection of our great protector god. And so we go west. We track the buffalo, we track the deer, we till the soil.
And we try not to see the things that are out there to see.
When we come across an animal touched by the hands of the horrible gods, we kill it. That is called compassion. For they are horrible beasts with mouths that hang open and drool blood, eyes that roll in lidless sockets, limbs with no bones that pull these poor creatures slowly and painfully over the land. We do not eat them, but we do bring them back to burn them, sacrificing the creatures created by the enemy gods to our protector.
We knows he sees the sacrifices because his eyes, his eight glorious eyes, are always open. And we know he gets the sacrifices because he continues to protect us.
We do not know where our god came from, or how he came to be. We just know he came from the before time, the good time. Some say he was thrust up from the earth, some that he fell from the sky. Some say he was crafted by men. That is called heresy, for how could men create a god? But there is some hope in that thought. If a god could be crafted once, could not one be crafted again? That too is heresy, sadly.
So here is the land where my father raised me, and where I am raising my children. I will teach them of our god. I will show them the forests to the west, and warn them of the lands to the east. Soon my oldest will be ready to hunt, to kill, and to sacrifice. And I will tell them of this history of this place. How their ancestors came to Dakota to be protected from the gods that rose. And how they found our new god, our Rushmore.
Fortnightcaps are biweekly experimentation into short form fiction. All Fortnightcaps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So if you like the story, please feel free to link people back here. And if you didn’t, maybe the one in two weeks will be better.