Excerpts from a (subtly) dystopian story in my collection of short fiction called "Fronds".

The Blue Sun and Iris

Ralph: Regulated Relaxation Exercise No. 12: digitally recording my thoughts during down time, Day 4

Time to take a little break and rest my eyes. There’s the Hayward Building down there, and 32nd street by the coffee shop and the burger place. You can see the park from up here on the seventeenth floor, if you crane your neck and look out over there between those two buildings. I’ve spent lunchtimes down there. Brought a sandwich with me. Used to go there sometimes when I was a kid, with Ronny and Randy, and we’d play R-Ball. (We called it R-Ball because all of our names started with R. I know we used a basketball, but I don’t remember the rules; we made them up anyway. That was before all the places outside the city were burned out.) I can see the stream too; goes right through the left part of the park there. There’s a woman sitting on a bench by the stream. Looks like she’s writing or sketching something. There’s a kid running around in the grass. Maybe he's her son; oh, that’s his dad over there by the picnic table. He’s got a frisbee. That’s it, only three people, and three cars parked in the lot. Must be some other people I can’t see from here. The rest of the park, and the parking lot, are hidden behind the buildings. Nice day for a walk in the park though; I’d like to go down there for a little instead of being stuck up here in corporate sterility.

I’ll look outside again in a couple of minutes — maybe the sky will be changing by then. They said something on the weather report this morning; didn’t really hear it that well. (Thinking about that sales bid project we’re working on — need to get those estimates by 2:00! Okay, I shouldn’t have mentioned that when I’m trying to put thoughts down to relax.) …But they said something about rare ice crystals in the atmosphere which’ll make the sun look blue for a minute or two. Like an eclipse but blue.

There’s a flock of geese flying over there, above those other two buildings. I’ve always wondered how they manage to keep that V shape, and how they decide who’s the leader. Oh, there’s the sky change already, I think… Yes, for sure that’s it. There’s a cloud drifting near the sun, but it’s not a cloud; it’s this deep color of azure-sapphire blue. Really pretty. Actually it’s not that easy to see unless you avert your eyes slightly, look to the side, like you’re looking at something down there in the park. Then look back again. It’s drifting nearer the sun now. Must be some strong winds high up there; they might tear the crystal cloud apart in a minute. Let’s see if it’ll actually pass in front of the sun first. Yes, it’s like it’s touching the edge of the sun’s brightness. The whole sky is going this lovely shade of aquamarine, rippling a little like it’s underwater. I’ll take a picture. There. Looks good.

There’s something moving in one of the trees in the park; the branches are bobbing and flopping around. Must be a squirrel, jumping from branch to branch. Looking for pine cones, probably. That’s what squirrels do, isn’t it? Can squirrels see color? I wonder if it, or any other organisms, say plants or fish or even microbes in the water there in the stream, if they noticed the change in color? Would it mean anything to them? The color’s returning to normal. The blue cloud is drifting away. I think the geese were confused by it. They’re going around in circles. Another picture, click. The geese flew off to the left behind the Hayward Building and I don’t see them anymore.

Well, back to work on those estimates. Back to reality. Recording stopped. Not helping me relax anyway.

 

Silvia: Pinequest, Part One

Run along the branch. Look for pinecones. Scrabble up the other tree. Run along the other branch.

 

Timothy: Oonies from the planet Frod

I’m Superman flying above the city buildings that look like grass down there. I’m going to save them from the big monster from another planet! No, I think I’ll be the monster for a minute. Like in a TV show. They’re filming me. I’m Godzilla, stomping around the city. Roar! I’m a million billion “Godzillon” times bigger than the buildings. The buildings just look like grass. And the people would look like ants in the grass except that I can’t see any ants right now. Are there ants in this grass? What about spiders? Hey, there’s a squirrel in the bushes over there. Here, Squirrel. No, I can’t give you any nuts. No, Dad, only girl squirrels are called Sylvia. Hey Dad, throw me the frisbee! It’s hard waiting like this. Waiting for the sky to change. How much longer? In the meantime, I’m Godzilla, except Godzilla stomps on things and there’s nothing here to stomp on except for the grass. Maybe I’ll be something else. Throw me the frisbee! Thanks! I almost caught it that time. Maybe we could go home and get Iris from Ms. Joy. She can catch a frisbee! No, not Ms. Joy. I mean Iris can catch a frisbee. Hey, I caught it! Good throw! It’s a flying saucer full of Oonies from the planet Frod. What? I can too call a planet “Frod”. What? No, I don’t know what “fraud” means. Oh. Okay, then, it’s “Fron”. They’re Oonies from the planet Fron. They’re Jedis with light sabers and they’re gonna help Superman fight Godzilla in this Grass City.

Oh, hey, is that it? The sky’s turning darker blue. Yeah, I know; I’m not looking right at the sun. I can see the blue over there too. Some shadows or something. Okay, who should I give the candy bar to? There’s a lady sitting over there on a bench by the stream. She’s got a notebook and she’s writing something. Maybe I’ll go look and see what she’s writing. I can read now, you know. Okay, okay, I won’t bother her. I think there’s a man in that parked car there. He’s talking on his phone. Maybe I’ll give the candy bar to him.

Hey, no fair! Everything’s turning back to the normal color before I had a chance to give it to him! Help, Superman! Help, Oonies! Turn the sky that color again! Oh well, never mind, I’ll give out the candy bar anyway. I’ll be Godzilla giving a candy bar to Mothra as a pact to make peace.

 

Silvia: Pinequest, Part Two

Run along the branch. Find pinecones. Find more pinecones. Always be on the other side of the tree from the humans. Run across the other branch.

 

Huey: Greens

Halfway between the river and the clouds, suspended between outstretched wings, geese ride the air. The fifth in the left fork of their lopsided V-formation gazes below him. We’ll call him Huey; an approximation of a goose name Ho’wha’hoo (though we don’t know whether this name applies to him specifically, or to his flock or to geese in general). Maybe his (or their) mentality does not allow for such distinction. Huey calls out “Ho’wha’hoo!” and “Hoo’ha’haa!” and “Whoo’ha!” and other sounds to check the proximity of others to himself. His eyes are particularly sensitive to green. They observe the scenery below. There are fourteen others with him, and they do the same.

Look there (yes, I hear you on my right): there’s a clearing between all those weird reflections and angles. There! (Yes, I hear you in front of my on the left; I’m over here!) Different greens: light whitish green, darker green, bluish aqua green, yellow green, brighter yellow green, grey-mottled granite green, vibrant green with an underlying tinge of orange. There’s sunlight on the stream. Sparkling. Should we stop here? (Yes, I hear you behind me.) There is short grass. It’s different from all those black and grey embers back there. It’s real grass. And some trees. More of those odd biped human things in the grass. Maybe one by the river too. (I hear you in front of me!) We should stop here. Oh, what is that? (Can you hear me to my left? I’m in the middle, here!) The color is changing. The brightness in the sky is shifting a little; some of the green is in it now. The different greens on the ground are different greens now: light whitish blueish green, darker aqua green, deep darkest aqua green (like green seen at night), bright green green, brighter radiant green green, blue mottled green, vibrating green with an underlying tint of magenta. The sunlight on the river has turned blue. No, it’s the usual white again. (Can you hear me on the right? I’m here!) Let’s stop here! No, let’s keep going. Let’s go over there, the place the color changed! No, it changed over here, this way. Let’s go that way! Was there some change in the color there? …We don’t know now. It’s gone now anyway. (I hear you behind me to the left!) Let’s continue; if there was a change it’s gone now. But we need to stop here for a while because I see more of those burned places in front.

 

Silvia: Pinequest, Part Three

Find pinecones. There’s one. Can’t reach it. Find pinecones on the ground. Scuttle up and down the trees.

 

Gregory: The Vanishing

(Post on Social Media)

...so I'm beginning to realize: babies, with their unawareness of object permanence, have a special grasp on reality. It appears that inanimate objects do, in fact, pop in and out of existence when nobody is looking; mostly they just fucking pop *out* of existence. When I need them. Many people complain of missing socks and car keys. In my case the disappearances are somewhat more spectacular. Besides the thumb drive which disappeared from my keychain when it was in my pocket, the college term paper that vanished from a folder on the way to the class (twice), and the shirt which disappeared off the hanger when I turned my head; there is now another example of such quantum tunneling: an X-Acto knife has ceased to exist inside a plastic pouch of art supplies this morning. I needed it to cut out the stencils to use for the mural. Frustrating! And then to top it off, I got to the site and found some asshole had defaced it with obscene graffiti.

 (Delete)

I’m not gonna post that. Expletives might get it removed anyway. Have to say “flipping” instead of “fucking”.

 (Phone call)

…I’m telling you that’s what happened. The knife disappeared. It was there yesterday! I went to get it this morning and it wasn’t there anymore. I looked around the studio for almost an hour. Yeah, every place I had been or might have put it. Yes, I checked there too. I even looked in the flippin’ garbage. What? Har har. No, I didn’t want to murder him. I needed the knife for the mural. I was going to use it to make a stencil the size of a person. No, a stencil of a person. Me. No, not that painting. The other one. The mural here on 32^nd street. Down the street from the park. Hidden under a tarp. The fundraiser for sasquatch habitat protection. Don’t laugh. We’d endangered them before we even officially discovered them. Hey, I know it’s illegal. Technically. But they’re not arresting anyone anymore. They gave up on that. You know my thoughts on that. All their talk about the People, and they finally realized that the People actually want to protect the environment. This park looks pretty clean from where I am, at least. Can’t speak about the outside, of course. What? Um, no, the stencil wasn’t of a sasquatch. An outline of me. Like one of those old Banksy cut-outs. Yeah, that’s true. I went to the art supplies store, and, guess what, they’re closed for the day. Owner’s sick. Of course it would happen today. I needed to finish the mural. No, I can’t let you see it yet, supposedly, though like I said, some idiot… Okay, I’m deep breathing. Calming. Serena said someone might have recognized it as environmentalist and so defaced it. No. I don’t know Marina. I said Serena. Kristi’s friend. They both work at Minitech. She came by to look at it. She tried to cheer me up, but it’s still an asinine thing for someone to have done. Now? I’m in the park. Just sitting here in my car. Pissed off. No, the park on 32^nd. I said that. Down the street from the mural. No, by the stream. What? Yeah, that’s possible, though if I use scissors the edge will be ragged. I wanted it to be as smooth as possible. I’ll probably go to that other art supply store but I’m still gonna have to repaint the whole flippin’ thing. A lot of extra work and time. Yeah, I’m pissed off. Just a minute, there’s some kid waving at me.

Kid, whaddya want?

--Hey mister, would you like a candy bar? There’s some ice crystals in the at-most-fear right now. Makes that pretty color. My Dad says it only happens once every hundred years and we’re lucky to see it. I’m giving out a candy bar to the first person I see when it happens.

…Okay, I’m back. Kid wanted to give me a candy bar. Nice of him. Said there’s some kind of crystals… Well, lookit that. He’s right. I didn’t see it earlier. No, ‘cause I was sittin’ here on my ass, fuming. Not payin’ attention. Are you near a window right now? Take a look outside. The whole sky’s gone aqua. There’s geese flyin’ around like they’re confused by it. I’ll get a picture and send it to your smartwall. No, I told him the woman sitting on the bench by the stream might like the candy bar. I’ve had enough sugar for the day. Yeah. Two mochas, and the burger place has donuts now.

…Yeah, I’m still here.

…But, y’know… It’s interesting. Things go missing, things get wrecked, there’s a lot of shit in the world but… there’s still kindness, and, and beauty. Yeah, I said it. Just a minute… I think I’m tearing up a little. …All it takes is for someone to be nice. Like offering me a candy bar.

…He said what? Yeah, I’d agree, I think. No, I don’t know. I’ll look into that when I get home.

…Yeah, okay. See ya later. I just had an idea. I’m going to go redo the mural. Maybe I can grab one of these branches here; there are some by the stream, I think. Hanging into the stream. I’ll grab one and use it as the stencil. Spray-paint around it. The mural’s about habitat preservation anyway, not about me. Yeah, pizza sounds good. See you later. ‘Bye.

 

Silvia: Pinequest, Part Four

Run. Run on the branch. Jump over there. Find pinecones. No, that’s not a pinecone, that’s a cocoon. Find pinecones. Can’t reach that one. Run on the other branch. Over there. There’s one. Got it. Tear it apart. Look for nuts inside. Run on the branch. Run on the other branch. Another pinecone. Look for more nuts. The colors look different. Run on the branch. There’s another pinecone. Tear it apart. Eat the nuts inside. Tasty. Is that some fruit over there? Run on the branch. Don’t want to go on the ground again yet. The colors are ordinary again. Run on the branch. Find pinecones.

 

Kristi and Serena Joy: Iris is a Verb

Two months after the day when the sun briefly turned blue, Kristi smiled when the completion of the grammatical sentence arrived on Joy’s doorstep in the form of a cat-carrier with a nametag and address.

In Kristi’s grammatical metaphor, Kristi herself had always been the subject of the sentence, the agent of action, the nominative or ergative case, the one who started things. Neighbor Joy (across the dusty street) had always been the verb, the action itself; yet after Joy’s husband Rick died (during the War on Greens, fifteen years ago now) and son Charlie left home, Joy had started to shut out other things. She’d retreated and become the object, the one acted upon. Her name had even diminished; Serena Joy Naruto now wished to be called just Joy but her face was no longer expressing joy. What she needed, Kristi had decided, was some new action, a new verb.

Not that Kristi spoke of this private comparison. Joy would probably resent her for meddling, so she had had to do it as a secret. The cat-carrier would be from someone at work; she persuaded a mutual coworker to order it online as a belated birthday gift courtesy of the entire Minitech company. She watched out the window as Joy retrieved it, held it for a second or two, scanned the name and address on it, glanced around, and took it indoors.

The cat-carrier did not contain a cat. What it did contain was harder to determine. Two facts were obvious: it was a pet and it had been developed by NuGen’s genetic engineering. Its long whiskers and front paws indicated clear feline derivations; its wet nose and wagging shaggy tail bespoke of canine, and its monkey-like face and furry but nearly human-shaped back feet indicated probable DNA from the lesser sasquatch. (The lesser ‘squatch, second of the two species to be discovered, was not much larger than a house cat and even more secretive than its much larger cousin the Great Northern Bigfoot.) Whatever its origins, Joy’s new pet was adorable; NuGen had bred it specifically to be so. Its large shiny anime-like eyes and built-in smile gave it a friendly yet intelligent appearance, though of course no one knew its actual thoughts or ruminations. It was about the same size as a miniature schnauzer. It had thick white and black fur, the colors arranged in squarish patches, and it could walk on all fours or, for a minute or two, upright like a person. When Joy first removed it from its cat-carrier, it charged out of the open door (rickety and half-opened anyway) and chased butterflies among the flowers in the iris patch in Joy’s yard, so she named it Iris though it had no male or female characteristics (NuGen did not want such creatures breeding on their own).

Iris proved to be a hit with the neighbor children. Its fur fluffed up and its fuzzy tail wagged whenever it saw six-year-old Timothy, who lived three houses away with his divorced father. Iris ran around Timothy’s yard in dizzying circles and mastered the art of catching: frisbees, balls, and even mechanical dronebirds would be caught within ten seconds of being released. It liked to hide things; pens and car keys disappeared regularly, though at Joy’s scolding they would reappear in plain sight. Christmas and Hanukkah decorations likewise vanished and were found again a day later. (Joy celebrated both as well as Lunar New Year; her ancestry included all three. The totalitarian government had once branded the latter two as “foreign” and therefore illegal, but had eased its crackdown.) Like the decorations, Iris itself seemed insubstantial: one minute it was cuddling in Joy’s arms, the next it had vanished, only to reappear two minutes later napping on the carpet. Joy commented this might be part of its sasquatch DNA; nobody had ever figured out how the lesser ‘squatch in particular was able to hide so effectively.

Joy still seemed somehow faded, though. (In Kristi’s grammar metaphor, she was still the unactive part of the sentence.) She invited Kristi over for tea a couple of days, and was wearing drab sweatpants and sweatshirt as opposed to her previous flamboyant flowered dresses and a beret. She had never owned a smartwall, and instead sat at her laptop (a thoroughly antiquated piece of hardware) looking up recipes (which she never mentioned cooking) and old movies. Iris snuggled on her lap. The creature did not purr like a cat, but emitted endearing little chirps which Kristi recognized as sasquatch calls but cuter and more birdlike. Joy’s topics of conversation seldom varied from what packaged food she was going to microwave for dinner and what old movies she’d watched. She only talked about her flowers occasionally. Once, she mentioned she’d downloaded a new app to her laptop that allowed her to override someone else’s smartwall. Kristi’s eyes lit up at this idea — it was Joy taking an active role in something again — but nothing seemed to come of it, and Joy never remarked on it again.

Two years passed. The summers were almost unlivable; the time of unbearable heat, violent storms, and choking smoke from miles of wildfires — getting larger and nearer every year. (The government’s official position was climate change did not exist. They had decommissioned wind farms and were encouraging pollution and degradation in all its forms despite widespread protests; at least they’d eased up on arresting protestors and advocates of solar power.) Winters were likewise far colder and stormier than they ever had been. Kristi and Joy’s neighborhood had not flooded, but they both knew it was only a matter of time. The roads were unkempt and the houses were decrepit; too expensive to repair. However (this was a small consolation which Kristi at least enjoyed) the spring and autumn had settled into a pattern of pleasant days, if warmer than in the memories of older folks. Yards and city parks seemed as beautiful as ever during these times. (The stream running through the park on 32^nd street seemed a little too clean and pristine; Kristi suspected one of the local hidden nonprofits was filtering the water and releasing it again, though she had no proof. Such would be as illegal as any other conservation efforts.)

 

On a moonlit November night, Kristi’s smartwall abruptly went blank. All of the newsfeeds, gaming portals, advertisements and social media posts disappeared. Now a single picture splayed across the entire wall: Joy sitting at her laptop, the glow from the screen illuminating her face, moonlike, in darkness. The caption read, “Come over right now!”

Kristi smiled. Joy was again taking initiative. Being the active verb again; using the app she’d mentioned two years before! Sending a double-urgent message with the instructions for the AI to override all incoming messages…

“What is it?” Kristi asked as Joy let her in the door. Joy said nothing but led her into the living room. The lights were off. The curtain on one window was open and the full moon cast spectral light into the room. Joy’s laptop was open, sitting on a table, but the brightness was muted, casting almost no illumination. Nothing else in the room was clearly visible, except for something dark and lumpy on the floor and a sporadic gleam from an edge or corner of some metallic surface.

One of the gleams did not seem to be attached to anything. In the middle of the room, about two feet from the far wall and suspended a couple inches off the floor, there was a thin tracery of pale white lines: an abstract pattern of intersecting blocks of parallel ellipses and curves. For a second Kristi smiled again — this was an artistic construction, a delicate hologram cast from Joy’s smartwall.

“I don’t have a smartwall,” Joy reminded her.

“…Then how are you doing it? Your laptop has the hardware? Or is it a real construction…?”

A second later, Kristi’s eyes adjusted to a second object in the room. That lumpy mass of furry patches in front of the abstract pattern was Iris. The pet was sitting there on its hind legs, staring into the construction, wagging its fluffy tail up and down. “Iris sees something,” said Joy. The pet only reacted this way to someone friendly; for a threatening presence, it would emit a growling screech.

Then everything changed. Iris crouched down on its four legs and then charged into the mass of quivering lines. Joy shrieked and ran after it. Then either Kristi had become suddenly smaller or the room was bigger, as the lines rose up and surrounded her. She panicked for a second. She tried to bat them away, but her hands touched nothing. The lines shifted and reconfigured.

Kristi blinked. It seemed that nothing had changed; she and Joy were still facing the waggle of lines and the wall beyond them, and Iris was crouched on the floor looking in the same direction. And yet… There was an indeterminable difference, something about the configuration of reality.

While gazing in any particular direction, there is, behind it, some vague sense of which direction a person is looking. For some people it is a perception of north or west, for others a mere suggestion of an angle, the same or different than a moment before. For Kristi at this moment, it was an obvious sense that she was facing the opposite direction than she had been before the lines engulfed her. The moonlight seemed to be coming in at the wrong incline, and it was a different color; a glance outside the window told Kristi that there were two moons out there; the regular pale white one (with Tycho crater shining like the nub of a cantaloupe stem), and a smaller moss-brown one below it and to the left.

Joy’s eyes met Kristi’s. Then Joy scooped up Iris in her arms and stumbled back toward the impossible scatter of lines. Kristi followed, and in a second the room (and the moonlight) had reassembled itself in the familiar configuration. The three of them stood there panting in the chill air.

 

In the days and weeks which followed, the neighbors seldom spoke of that night’s strange occurrence. Both continued to work at Minitech. They met sometimes for dinner or a coffee or a drink at Harvey’s bar down the street. Joy often brought Iris along to such outings, and the pet was as docile, playful, and adorable as always.

It became obvious that something had shifted. Joy announced one day at work that she was “restoring her name”; she could be called Serena or even Serena Joy again. She gave no reason for this, though her speech became more bubbly, her hands more animated while speaking. Long strings of words replaced her quiet utterances. Her wardrobe became brighter and her beret reappeared.

Then one day she invited Kristi back to her house. It was a sunshiny April day before the smoke had begun, and the iris flowers in the front yard were in bloom. Serena Joy sat in her favorite overstuffed chair with Iris on her lap. Kristi shot a nervous glance at the place near the wall where the lines had been the previous November, but saw nothing there; instead, there was a pile of miscellaneous objects stacked haphazardly on the table. Kristi’s eyes questioned them, but Serena Joy started speaking about something else.

“I think I’ve got it figured it out,” she said, gesturing with her arms like she hadn’t in years. “Cryptid DNA. Iris is part sasquatch, right? Turns out there’s a reason they’re so hard to find. They’re cryptids. That’s what cryptids do. Must be some kind of defense mechanism. Predators can’t find something that’s hidden in the lines between reality. Looks like it’s happened two or three times in the animal kingdom; something evolved the ability, I mean. They can slip into the cracks between things. The little spaces between the air and objects, for example. That’s what those lines were. It’s still part of the world, but there are two moons there. The little one orbits the big one.”

She stood, shooing Iris off of her lap. The pet let out a meowing bark, and curled into a ball at Kristi’s feet. Serena retrieved a few of the objects from the dinner table: a plastic rectangle Kristi recognized as an antiquated credit card, a boxed deck of playing cards, a blue sock, two or three pens for writing, a paperback novel. Serena said, “Turns out the space between things — the space where Iris can go, and has gone, and we went that one time — turns out there’s more there than we knew. I’ve been there a couple of times since. Iris has taken me again. All these things — they’ve all gone missing from here, I think. I lost this book several years ago. In the in-between, I call it, the book was sitting on this exact table! Just sitting there. And this X-Acto knife; I’m sure that Gregory, your friend the artist I mean, was complaining that he’d lost one just like it. He was trying to use it for some kind of cut-out for a mural he was doing. I remember him telling me that. And this sock — you know how many people complain about missing socks! …Things fall in there, I guess; fall in the cracks between reality and get lost. Iris found them.”

She paused, then laughed. “Gives me an idea! Iris—I named her well. (Yes, I’ve decided that she’s she even though that’s not obvious.) I’d named her after the flowers, but an Iris… part of an eye. She sees things. She can not only hide there, but find things. So, how many people have these genetically engineered pets from NuGen? How many of these pets have ‘squatch DNA? Because they can go, find, and retrieve things. Your socks are missing? Send a NuGen half-‘squatch to go find them. Lost your spoon? Iris can retrieve it.”

Kristi let out a howl of a laugh. She had suddenly imagined NuGen pets hiding things as well as finding them, and then had a brief mental flash of the entire corrupt, dictatorial anti-environmental government collapsing from a missing stack of papers or absent tube of toothpaste. (Stealing? It would not be so, because the “space between things” was still in the same room as the missing object!) Then her thoughts returned to the present situation: not only had Iris become the verb in the grammatical metaphor, Serena Joy had moved over to become the subject.

“How much should we charge for an object retrieval business?” Serena Joy enthused.

 

Epilogue

Five years had passed since the day when the sun turned blue. Ninety-seven more houses had crumbled in the city. Geese continued to survey for green patches in the charred landscape. Sylvia, now quite old, was unaware of the toxic buildup outside of her little acre, and did not pause in her endless pinequest. In her mind, there was no rumor of the world’s dying (or the possibility that it was not yet time), and everything continued much as it had before. For now.

 

To read the complete story: Amazon.com: Fronds: Stories and Flash Fiction: 9798394939907: Scribner, Steven Eric: Books