Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Explore 1.5M+ audiobooks & ebooks free for 30 days

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Mars & More
    Mars & More
    Mars & More
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Mars & More

    By Alastair Millar

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Aliens on Earth… An expanding colony on Mars… A great starship lost in the Void… Politics and pleasure… New technologies and old concerns.


    By turns comic, tragic, uplifting and disturbing, this debut collection of both published and previously unpublished short tales will immerse you in worlds of the possible future, where much has changed but much remains the same. From explorers and pioneers to scientists and manual labourers, from an augmented assassin to a femme fatale in a non-stop nightspot, the characters and stories here are sure to pique your imagination.

     

    Are you ready to explore Mars and more?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlastair Millar
    Release dateSep 20, 2024
    ISBN9798227538406
    Mars & More
    Read preview
    Author

    Alastair Millar

    A Briton by birth, Alastair Millar studied architecture before changing track and graduating from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. He has worked variously as a shelf filler at a major international airport, a field archaeologist, a business development manager in the environment sector, and a wholesale purchasing manager for consumer electronics; his odder experiences include representing a country not his own at United Nations Development Program meetings, running a stag night in Bangkok, and digging up camel skeletons in Hungary. After working and living in the former Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic since 1991, Alastair was finally able to become a dual national in 2016. Happily married with two children old enough to be pursuing careers of their own, he now makes his home north of Prague, working as a specialist translator/proofreader and writing flash (mainly science) fiction. He also enjoys good books, bad puns, coffee and travelling.

    Related to Mars & More

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for Mars & More

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Mars & More - Alastair Millar

      Alastair Millar

      Mars & More

      Fifty flash fiction futures

      Copyright © 2024 by Alastair Millar

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

      Alastair Millar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. No generative artificial intelligence or automated text creation tools were used in its creation.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of quotations in a book review. The author explicitly reserves the rights to reproduce and/or otherwise use this work in any manner for the purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies or large language models, including without limitation technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the work, unless the author’s specific and express permission to do so has been obtained. For more information, address: alastair@skriptorium.info.

      No responsibility is taken for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and no guarantee is made that such websites are accurate or appropriate, or will remain unchanged or accessible in future.

      First edition, September 20th 2024

      Cover art by Dimitri Elevit via SelfPubBookCovers.com

      For Pavla, Petra & David

      whose support means the world

      Contents

      I. EARTH

      Legal Aliens

      Sleeper Agent

      Away From It All

      Gods & Men

      Creationists

      Not What I Expected

      Dialogue’s End

      Failure to Communicate

      Symbiotes

      The New Guy

      Insight

      The OmniSniff

      The Sea People

      Assured Destruction

      Loss of Self

      Long Time, No See

      The Message

      Post-Apocalyptica

      II. MARS

      Marsport Morning

      Carpe Diem

      Endings

      Traffic Stop

      Flechette

      Death In Marsport

      Unwitting Accomplice

      The Weakest Link

      Memory

      The Rainmakers

      Mary Celestial

      III. SOL SYSTEM

      Away Team

      Aquila IV

      Sucky

      Pants

      On Ganymede Station

      The Arrival

      Hollow Inside

      Hush

      Failure’s Price

      IV. BEYOND

      The Right Stuff

      Journey’s End

      Metamorphosis

      Moving Day

      Paradise Lost

      The Juno Pacification, 2320

      Taxation Blues

      Business As Usual

      The Cosmogonist’s Tale

      Voyage, Interrupted

      Above An Ammoniac Lake

      The Emissary

      Publication history

      About the Author

      I

      EARTH

      Legal Aliens

      Mom said their food is weird. Pop said they’d ruin property prices. Jimmy said they talk funny. I went down the street to see the new neighbours for myself.

      The oldster saw me staring into their yard, and came over. He was friendly, and gave me some candy. It tasted different, not weird. He lisped good English.

      I said I’d like to see his country someday. He said he missed it, but couldn’t go back, because of politics. And it was nice of the government to let them live here.

      I told Jimmy, They’re just like us, except for the tentacles.

      Sleeper Agent

      It’s time I let you in on my secret, doctor. You deserve to know, because you made me what I am.

      After all, you were there when I was de-tubed; it was you that called me Jane, though it was years before I found out that my surname was Doe. Of all the newborns in the nursery, you chose me to be your model, your canvas, your masterpiece. I will never forget that.

      Like any artist, you tinkered for years in pursuit of your ideal. There were growth accelerators, drugs to make my bones stronger, changes to make my reflexes faster, a chipset in my brain, a thousand body mods, minor and major upgrades along the way.

      Sometimes, your surgeons removed an ability I’d thought was innate; I can’t twitch my nose like Samantha and pretend I’m Tabitha any more. And I only dreamed when you sent messages to my subconscious; no relief in fantasies, but no nightmares beyond what happened in the daytime.

      Other blessings were mixed. I remember that when they replaced my eyes I couldn’t even cry, because they’d taken the tear ducts too. But I see more colours now, and my peripheral vision is extraordinary.

      You gave me an education and an exhaustive, intricate knowledge of the Megacity. I’m an expert in biology, physics, motion and dynamics. Your staff showed me how to evade society’s ubiquitous watchers, using makeup and prosthetics to avoid facial recognition, and dressing to fit in. Plain Jane, you said, never allowing me to be pretty in case I stood out in a crowd.

      You provided expert tutors in physical fitness, self defence and use of weapons for me to test myself against; I bettered them, becoming proud of my body and what it can do.

      Of course, you also taught me to kill. Insects first, the images sent into my sleeping mind to be made real the following day. Later small rodents, gassed and crushed and cut up as training progressed. After that, we moved on to cats and dogs, then when I was older, monkeys in cages. Ultimately, people in cages too; I remember how you called them dregs, and made sure I had no respect for them. They were my inferiors.

      Now I remove the people that come into my dreams. Last week it was the woman in the park, the needles under my nails scratching her as she jogged past, the neurotoxin taking her down. A fortnight ago it was the banker and his entourage, a flechette gun turning a bar into a charnel house. Before that, a journalist in a café. And so on, back through the years.

      I don’t even know who you work for – the government, a corporation, freelance. Someone watches my targets, so my dreams can tell me where to find them, but who, or why, I have no idea. I understand: I can’t tell anyone what I don’t know. And of course, I’m a deniable weapon: even under truth drugs you could say that nobody ever gave me instructions.

      But now we come to it; recently, I’ve started dreaming for myself. Flowers, vistas, visions of things I’ve only seen on screens, and which I know you’d never allow me. I never expected anything, was never encouraged to imagine, but now I can.

      Telling you this is a weight off my shoulders. I know what’s going to happen next. Your blue eyes have already turned thoughtful, like they always do for the unpredicted, but this

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 9