Bonus Story

Echoes of Haller Canyon: A Bonus Story

 

Glitch

a dystopian science fiction scene

The morning sunlight filtered through the thin haze of morning, casting a pale glow across hillside facing the sun. Jahan Moridi sat beside her husband on a worn boulder in front their small home, which was carved into a hillside. Her husband, ran a calloused hand over the conduits embedded into his forearm. Jahan had the same ones. Neither of them new of a life without this built-in obedience to the Ai ruling their lives.

“Bowman will command us soon,” Sanam said. He made the same comment every morning before they went off to do whatever the AI demanded of them. Their mornings were steeped in ritual. If the weather was good, they greeted the rising sun.

For the next part their morning routine, Jahan rose and walked inside. Their home consisted of three small rooms. Carved out of dirt and rock, the dirt had been treated to harden the walls, floors, and ceiling. One room was for eating and living, another for sleeping, and the third was the bathroom.

A small grill made from stones was closest to the door, comprising the kitchen along with a large metal basin on top of a wooden box for washing and a set of table and chairs. Farther into the room, a sofa, a data console and crude end tables comprised the living area. Jahan passed all of her paltry comforts into the back room. Having no windows, the second room was dark and fit for nothing other than sleeping.

Jahan powered on the lighting, sat on the bed, and pulled open a drawer. Her hands brushed over an old painting she kept tucked among her few items of clothing. On thick paper, the painting depicted an exact likeness of two children—Mahda, barely ten, grinning in her patched tunic, and Naji, her younger brother, who had drowned during one of the great floods. The heavy paper was frayed at the edges, but the memories it held were sharp. A kind neighbor had painted the children on a lovely summer day—before Naji met with tragedy and before Mahda ran off to the Moon. The artist was gone now too, lost in a firestorm. “They’re all gone,” Jahan whispered her grief to the ghosts living in the shadows of the tiny, stuffy room.

“Mahda would send word if she could,” Sanam said as he came into the room. Picking up the painting, he kissed his fingers and waited. Jahan kissed his fingers, and he pressed them to the smiling faces. “Important work takes place on the Moon. We’ve already seen a shift in the weather from the efforts, bettering our lives. Our Mahda did that.”

Jahan nodded. “I know.” Her voice was steady, but her soul carried the weight of too many years of heartbreak.

The conduits in her skin flared, emitting a faint hum. Sanam’s arm lit up too. He gently kissed her lips. “I carry them and you in my heart, even when I am unable to say.”

“Same,” she answered. Bowman would cruelly block their thoughts and words for the next ten hours.

Sanam grimaced and tucked away the painting.

Jahan took his hand, lacing her calloused fingers through his. Instructions scrolled across her mind, Sector 5—construction duty. She repeated the instructions aloud. Sanam whispered the same words. She let the happiness of working together today fill her. Besides, the few moments where they remembered their children, she had little else to give her joy.

In unison they rose from the bed, their bodies moving to the orders pumping through their conduits. With only the directions of where to go in her mind, Jahan noticed little else.

Outside, the hillside paths buzzed with the quiet activity of their neighbors. Everyone moved with the same measured precision dictated by Bowman’s omnipresent will. The AI didn’t allow for detours or conversations. Everyone was a cog in a vast machine.

The day unfolded as expected. The construction site, which would become a new farm protected from the brutal swings in weather was a blur of stone, metal, glass, and relentless labor. Jahan fitted pipes, while Sanam welded, their hands moving with the automatic efficiency Bowman commanded them with. By day’s end, an acre of land sat under the arcing roof of a new greenhouse farm.

Jahan’s conduits in her arm flared again, signaling it was time to return home. But something was off. The instructions led them down a winding path that veered away from their usual route.

Sanam noticed first, frowning. “My love,” he said quietly, “this isn’t the way home.”

Jahan slowed. The neighborhood they entered was unfamiliar, the houses worn and tilted as though they’d been forgotten by time. In front of a crumbling doorway, the humming ceased with deafening silence.

“This… isn’t right,” Jahan whispered.

Sanam glanced at her, his expression unreadable. For a moment, they stood there, untethered and no longer driven by Bowman’s commands. The stillness stretched until it became unbearable. Climbing onto the roof of the steadiest looking home, Jahan surveyed the horizon. She spotted the hills where people lived. The hills offered more protection than the long-abandoned cities.

“This way,” she said, leading Sanam away from the dilapidated housing.

As they walked, a faint unease settled over them, like a shadow too small to notice but too large to ignore. Bowman never made mistakes. Until today.

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The Afterworlds Bonus Snippet from Sanjy Strom

 

Sanjy Strom as The Afteworlds Opens: A Crossroads of Leadership and Friendship

backworlds character Sanjy Strom

The galaxy was safe. The Quassers posed no more threat, and the parasitic vines that had once threatened to overtake the galaxy were tamed and about to be neutered. For the first time since stranding Craze and his crew in space, Sanjy Strom found herself standing at a crossroads. She had commanded a battlecruiser for most of her lifetime, but now the one person who had truly understood her—the one person who had shared the weight of war and the cost of victory—was walking away.

Craze had resigned as general and was on his way down to Jix to ensure the hard-won peace would last. Once this final mission ended, he return to his simpler life, the life he missed, the life denied them since he joined her on Teerant to broker an alliance with her people—a people she no longer identified with. Craze’s invitation to join him in discovering a new home was tempting, but Sanjy knew better than to be swept away by needs and emotions. She didn’t have the time to mark out a new path for herself.

Part of her envied Craze. He was walking toward something better, something he dreamed of, something simpler. Like most Foreworlders, Sanjy didn’t know how to dream, but she had learned to hope. The hope crushed her, and she wished she had never encountered it. She had two years left—two short years—before the curse of the Foreworlds claimed her life. Every moment mattered, but that wouldn’t prevent her from feeling the empty space where Craze’s friendship had been every hour of every day for the past few years.

He went to join his sister on Jix and help tie up the final loose ends of the war. Sanjy admired Craze’s sister, Temerity. A fiery woman with spunk, Temerity let her emotions fly without apology, something Sanjy could stand to learn, if only she had more time.

The shuttle that took Craze away from the battlecruiser grew smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than a dot against the vastness of space. It was then that Sanjy realized: this time, Craze wasn’t coming back. His path and hers now diverged. Her path remained as it always was, but he would carve out new roads with new adventues, and she didn’t doubt he would find happiness—something she had only known when he was around.

The pain in her chest twisted like a vice. She had never thought losing Craze would hurt this much. She had never expected to feel so abandoned. The tears came unbidden, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

Craze was gone. She would never know anyone else like him. She shouldn’t have let his friendship slip away so easily.

 

 

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