Fiction River: Moonscapes Read Online Free Page A
three-ton Stegosaurus wheeled away from the water, swinging its spike-tipped tail.
And charged straight for the children.
The boy gasped and took a startled step back and tripped, the simulation so real that he forgot for a moment that it was all just for fun and there was no way the pretend dinosaur could hurt him.
The girl’s eyes widened and she fell backwards, arms thrown out, terror stamped into the lines of her little face.
She was afraid just like her brother. But, unlike him, she didn’t get up.
Not even after the stegosaur charged past.
***
Saxon awoke, the dream still in his mind. It wasn’t just a dream, it had really happened—but it wasn’t quite a memory either. He couldn’t remember that day, couldn’t recall why he wanted so badly for Kara to leave, couldn’t remember the shock and fear when she didn’t rise.
Oh, he had watched the vidclip of the event, watched hundreds of times, had reconstructed, reimagined it but he didn’t remember it.
Not really .
His sister had died , and he couldn’t remember any of it.
Because his mother had stolen that memory away.
Children were rare, precious. No parent would trust their progeny to messy biology. Children were engineered , every chromosome, every gene just so.
But sometimes there were mistakes.
In Kara’s case, the mixture of terror and a subtle coronary defect had proved fatal.
Unable to live with the tragedy, Saxon’s mother had administered a heavy-duty psychotropic combined with neural pruning to wipe Kara from their memories.
If it hadn’t been for the nightmares, Saxon never would have known he’d had a sister.
She’d been killed twice, once in a dinosaur holo, her fear accentuated by the excellent simulation and Saxon’s taunts. And then she’d been killed a second time.
In his mind.
All around him the moon’s scarred surface passed away, dusty and gray and as dead as time.
***
Saxon had expected the strange alien signal to lead him to long-abandoned alien ruins or a crashed starship or, at the very least, some kind of advanced communications tower. But when he reached the source of the signal, he found none of these things.
What he found was stranger still.
The artifact sat on a mostly flat piece of black basalt a meter above the moon’s gray surface. Not a speck of dust marred its perfect surface, as if its alien master had set it down a moment ago and would be back for it any time.
It looked more like a work of art than a mechanism. It was circular, about ten centimeters in diameter, and resembled a rose more than anything else, a flower fashioned from pink petals.
The petals pulsed with a faint light, like a heartbeat.
Around the rose’s outer diameter were a collection of metallic rings painted black and marked in some white, alien scrawl.
Knowing it was foolish—and perhaps dangerous—Saxon reached out to gently touch the rings, to see if he could move them.
He couldn’t.
They were locked in place.
He studied the artifact for a long moment. It wasn’t emitting any kind of radiation (beyond the pulsing pink glow in the visual spectrum). Its temperature precisely matched its environment. He probed it with gamma and UV, microwave and radio, IR and X-rays, looking for internal structure.
Nothing.
Saxon peered down at the little enigma, caressing the strange device with his gloved hand.
One of the rose petals depressed.
He jumped, jerked his hand, and managed to brush one of the black rings.
Terrible, crushing weight slammed Saxon to the ground.
Agony lanced through his body and he struggled to breathe. It felt like someone was sitting on his chest. Crimson bars edged his vision.
The device had fallen mere centimeters from his outstretched hand, but it still took all of Saxon’s strength to reach out for it, to place a gloved index finger on the ring he’d bumped before. To slide it the other way—
Suddenly, the horrible weight was gone, just gone , his chest heaving, his lungs
And charged straight for the children.
The boy gasped and took a startled step back and tripped, the simulation so real that he forgot for a moment that it was all just for fun and there was no way the pretend dinosaur could hurt him.
The girl’s eyes widened and she fell backwards, arms thrown out, terror stamped into the lines of her little face.
She was afraid just like her brother. But, unlike him, she didn’t get up.
Not even after the stegosaur charged past.
***
Saxon awoke, the dream still in his mind. It wasn’t just a dream, it had really happened—but it wasn’t quite a memory either. He couldn’t remember that day, couldn’t recall why he wanted so badly for Kara to leave, couldn’t remember the shock and fear when she didn’t rise.
Oh, he had watched the vidclip of the event, watched hundreds of times, had reconstructed, reimagined it but he didn’t remember it.
Not really .
His sister had died , and he couldn’t remember any of it.
Because his mother had stolen that memory away.
Children were rare, precious. No parent would trust their progeny to messy biology. Children were engineered , every chromosome, every gene just so.
But sometimes there were mistakes.
In Kara’s case, the mixture of terror and a subtle coronary defect had proved fatal.
Unable to live with the tragedy, Saxon’s mother had administered a heavy-duty psychotropic combined with neural pruning to wipe Kara from their memories.
If it hadn’t been for the nightmares, Saxon never would have known he’d had a sister.
She’d been killed twice, once in a dinosaur holo, her fear accentuated by the excellent simulation and Saxon’s taunts. And then she’d been killed a second time.
In his mind.
All around him the moon’s scarred surface passed away, dusty and gray and as dead as time.
***
Saxon had expected the strange alien signal to lead him to long-abandoned alien ruins or a crashed starship or, at the very least, some kind of advanced communications tower. But when he reached the source of the signal, he found none of these things.
What he found was stranger still.
The artifact sat on a mostly flat piece of black basalt a meter above the moon’s gray surface. Not a speck of dust marred its perfect surface, as if its alien master had set it down a moment ago and would be back for it any time.
It looked more like a work of art than a mechanism. It was circular, about ten centimeters in diameter, and resembled a rose more than anything else, a flower fashioned from pink petals.
The petals pulsed with a faint light, like a heartbeat.
Around the rose’s outer diameter were a collection of metallic rings painted black and marked in some white, alien scrawl.
Knowing it was foolish—and perhaps dangerous—Saxon reached out to gently touch the rings, to see if he could move them.
He couldn’t.
They were locked in place.
He studied the artifact for a long moment. It wasn’t emitting any kind of radiation (beyond the pulsing pink glow in the visual spectrum). Its temperature precisely matched its environment. He probed it with gamma and UV, microwave and radio, IR and X-rays, looking for internal structure.
Nothing.
Saxon peered down at the little enigma, caressing the strange device with his gloved hand.
One of the rose petals depressed.
He jumped, jerked his hand, and managed to brush one of the black rings.
Terrible, crushing weight slammed Saxon to the ground.
Agony lanced through his body and he struggled to breathe. It felt like someone was sitting on his chest. Crimson bars edged his vision.
The device had fallen mere centimeters from his outstretched hand, but it still took all of Saxon’s strength to reach out for it, to place a gloved index finger on the ring he’d bumped before. To slide it the other way—
Suddenly, the horrible weight was gone, just gone , his chest heaving, his lungs
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