Drabble Collection Published

I have gathered all the drabbles on this blog together with another 48 that I've written since into a collection of one hundred 100-word stories. The book is titled 'Paradox Lost' and is available for the Kindle at the following links:

Amazon US | Amazon UK

You can find out more about my published work at either of these places:

[w] www.chriswalkerbooks.com
[f] www.facebook.com/cwalkerbooks

In All Probability

The next swing of his pickaxe uncovered the shimmering light of a 1-nugget. Even after years working in the Probability Mines, the rarity of this find staggered Yuri. Most minerals were low grade, 0.2-nuggets at best, and could only affect the chances of trivial outcomes.

He could hand it in and get a bonus - but the cost of medicine for their sick daughter was crippling; the money wouldn’t go far. Or . . . he could steal it. Use it to cure Natalya, before they locked him away.

Yuri pocketed the gleaming rock. Everything would be alright - he was certain of it.

A Moon With a View

"The stars . . ." he croaks. "I've never seen them."

The fever has him bad and he doesn't have long. Despite being born in this hellhole penitentiary moon, few care and none can help the boy now. A guard owes me, though, and I call in the favour – surface access, briefly. Even my old ass can drag a sick child up there.

I look out at the glorious spectacle. I'd almost forgotten it and the reminder hurts. I turn to the boy, but the eyes are just glass orbs in a mannequin.

I wonder – did he see the stars before he died?

State Imposition

The unheralded entrance brings fresh hope. Words, speaker unseen, grind it into despair at point of recognition. Accusations lash the heart, strip the soul. Denial is torn away to leave no hiding place.

Torrential confession: a river of regret. Voice soothes until until the flow is dammed with acceptance. Quiet pleading tails off into silence, forgiveness ungiven, and only the ragged breath echoes. Weary, spent; defiance swallowed by the drain in the stained concrete floor.

A future, once blessed by uncertainty, now stone-bound; utterly known. The addition of one to ranks of statistics harvested with efficient indifference.

For the people.

Craze

"It isn't right, you know," bemoaned Father, as he stumped angrily around their habitat's main chamber. "It's inconceivable that any rational being would ever do this - let alone as a fashion statement."

He paused briefly in his tirade. "Inconceivable!"

"But he's young," soothed Mother. "It's his way of being different. Asserting his individuality." She immediately winced at her choice of words.

"Different?" stormed Father. "Individual? Deliberately replacing his limbs with prosthetics? Brain-damaged, I'd say."

Mother sighed. "No harm done, though. It is a reversible process after all."

"But we're androids!" exclaimed Father. "Grafting on these organic parts is simply . . . disgusting!"

A Fresh Start

Becky relaxed in the one of the sumptuous leather couches in the lounge of the luxury space-yacht Distant Horizons. She could finally leave it all behind. Her past. The squalor and deprivation and addiction; all that pain and misery. She had scraped together every credit she could and bought passage on the first starship with a destination she’d never heard of. Should be far enough away.

Becky glanced over at those passengers whose bodies lay sprawled by the doorway. She would airlock them and the remaining corpses later.

Yes - today was the first day of the rest of her life.

Farewell

The gentle lapping of the loch against the wooden hull had become a lament to him.

It was difficult to tell where the faded brown of the crinkled-soft envelopes ended and the man's hands began. The perfume, though faint from the years, lingered even yet on the cherished, worn pages. There was a quiet splash as the string-tied bundle was given to the depths; the ripples died swiftly.

*       *       *

The sun is low, and its rosy light fractures into brilliance on the dancing water with a distant, still figure in a boat the only silhouette. The hours pass unmeasured into night.

Another Fine Mess

Revenge is a dish best served cold. How very apt, thought Imperial Ambassador Ennodius as he watched his diplomatic rival, Harrington, finish the gazpacho soup across the banquet table. Last year's humiliation would be repaid at last.

He had gauged the dose of the medical-grade laxative perfectly, mused Ennodius - for as Harrington stood to deliver his inter-course speech, a look of consternation crossed the man's face. The results promised to be . . . explosive.

Ennodius regarded the brash sepia decor, and sat back with a beatific smile. The chamber's unofficial designation of 'the Brown Room' was about to go down in infamy.

Covenant

Angelina massaged her aching eyes with trembling hands as she considered the lab reports again. She couldn't sleep, anyway. Over a third of the colony was infected, and still the virus, codenamed Isaac, defied their quarantine efforts. Vector unknown; almost 100% mortality.

Just one had survived - a child. So, the only vaccine Angelina could make had to come from him. But to have any chance of saving the remaining thousands, she would need all of his blood.

Angelina's tears fell freely on to the small, sleeping form that stirred before her.

"Hush, my son," she whispered. "Everything will be alright."

Trouble on the Horizon

The tortured hull shrieked as their opponent's laser drilled it again.

"Where are those calculations?" shouted Alderson.

Miller's hands shook as he tried feverishly to determine the correct destination coordinates. With the navcomputer a smoking wreck, his mathematical abilities were the crew's only hope.

"Problem solved!" he cried, entering the numbers.

The hyperspace tunnel that wrapped the ship in its safe cocoon had never looked so glorious - but joy turned to dismay upon exiting. They stared, disbelieving, at the nightmare maw of a black hole.

A death sentence.

Alderson peered at Miller's scribblings. "Is that a plus or a minus?"

Extroversion

"There’s nothing but earth below," they say, but I'll see for myself. That’s why I'm still descending through the endless tunnels I'd discovered earlier, trembling with fatigue.

The torch's firelight illuminates dirty but otherwise smooth metal walls - they’re obviously from pre-Catastrophe times. In this claustrophobic darkness I long to see the surface again, curving up and around into blue-white haze; a giant bowl around the sun.

The shaft ends in a window beneath my feet. It reveals a pure black speckled with thousands of brilliant points of light. A huge cave, surely? I decide to break through the glass.

Onwards!

The Room

The closed door looked innocuous enough, but Wouters knew the truth. Young Lambert had been in there for two days, and it had been unusually quiet for most of that time. Everyone came out changed.

Everyone.

It was interesting, he thought, how just one experience could so profoundly alter the core of someone's self-identity. Many had been broken entirely in that room.

The door opened and Lambert emerged. Unsteady, ashen, the eyes different now, but - walking. Perhaps he'd been more resilient than Wouters had given him credit for.

"Congratulations!" exclaimed Wouters. "You've completed the EU Administration and Bureaucracy Exam!"