flash fiction

Aloha Poets,
Flash fiction from my novel, "The Outpost." Enjoy!


Cooper starts the long walk up the rock steps to the cliff lab. He looks out across the vast ocean and thinks, "Another temporary place. I could never think of it as any different."
It happens again; the PTSD kicks in. So the great scientist looks out across the vast green dead sea, smug with his so-called education. So he now holds the esteemed title of lead scientist with his projected energizing manner.
Four billion years for the genetic code to ravel up here and all that comes up is "temporary."

The lab base is an oversized fortress abandoned on the edge of a jungle. Remodeled on the inside, high tech, and of course paid for in full by SortiumIV. The lab is immaculate, not in a religious kind of way, more control freakish, and clean matters to Cooper; except for right now. He enters.

"Hello," Cooper says.
"Hello Dr Cooper." Suzi stays at her lab station, as if she were communicating with a space object near a black hole.

Cooper was being extra personable for a bespectacled scientist. These new digs made him easy going. Carter was already inside the lab when Cooper unlocked the inner metal door.

"Suzie from Beijing came up here while you were gone," Carter told Cooper. "She's the one who interviewed for this job about five months ago," Cooper said.
"I remember her. Tall, thin, always carrying a red umbrella, rain or shine. Yeah, her complexion. She's worried about it. Pretty face. She said she's applied to a number of stations. She wants to work here."
"Because we're closer to Beijing?"
"No."
"No homesickness? A true woman of science."

Cooper opened a fresh stick of gum and began chewing. He considered himself a lucky man, never getting hooked on the pleasures of smoke."She says she's a scientist," Cooper thought. "And really, there's no reason to disbelieve her. But a woman with those looks?" He hesitated with a side glance. "I'm a fool to think women of science should all be Madam Curie."
"Has anyone else seen her transfer papers?" Cooper asks.
"I don't think so."
"May I see them?"
Carter stopped checking protein gels long enough to retrieve the document. "Yeah, it's right here," he said.