flashFiction

He is sipping his reflection in the water. "That smile," he thought. "That unexpected smile." He hears her voice, soft, smooth. He'll always hear it as poetry. He thinks for a moment, that she never hated, but she never loved either. He thinks of all those blues. All those tints of blue in her eyes but barely a human heart. He thinks he could escape when she pierced into his eyes. He escapes from nothing. That look of hers always comes out to play and it's here at this moment as a memory. She looks glamorous--beautiful--the way she always wants herself to be presented. Though her memory has come after him as if a phantom, he sees only her beauty. He sees her as any man would see her, not as something odd about her program. It's always summer with her, summer in robot seasons. Where raindrops never hit the ground.

flashFiction-jungleSciFi

Grace Liquifies

No one would hear her noises, not tonight as the two shadows moved in on each other with impossible serenity. Grace liquefied into a ghostly dance. Her miniscule effort  focuses and faces her little nemesis, who stares back with his own set of nerves. She is, beyond all else, driven; she wishes only to be left alone, to return to her banyan grove. The universe, her universe, suddenly feels slow and cold, distant from everything. There is the shift, a shift at the blink of an eye; there are the tall trees and their fresh smell; there is the deep lush jungle valley; there is the rising river and its one directional rush. She leads her prey back into her corner, redirects him with a rising of her back feet so fluid even the cold light of the moon couldn't expose her.  Once she is satisfied, she returns to a more focused battle, without a pause, picks up her prey and dumps it on the jungle floor before her. The body lands with a surprising quiet, a bright tropical red streaks below her. She increasingly feels nothing, as if a weight had been driven from her heart. She can return now. According to the distant horizon, it was still early.

She has enough time to make it back to the banyan grove before sunrise. This day she will not invite the intruder into her world. This day she will forget the tides of battle and rest on the mountain. Simply a decision to vanish, and she was gone. 

flash fiction--jungleSciFi "The Outpost"

Dim Blue Glow

Something resembling hope enters into Cooper's awareness in the darkness under the huge banyan grove. So, he thinks, time doesn't exist here, or would like him to think so.  The cool moonlight falls with a quiet, as if delivering silence were a nightly chore before the sun could rise. This is exactly how this forest kills, with darkness and quiet, as it sleeps, cycles set in motion in her ancient past, not waiting for, or expecting, anything new to be learned. Trees set back from the sheer cliff offer a rain forest meadow.  High ferns shelter the opening where death will occur because someone or something forgot a duty and now she, this rainforest, the ancient one, will not forget and serve the sentence. Why is water so unstoppable, dripping off the sheer rocks?  These primeval waterfalls may atrophy by their own hand.  Intimate dances of the ancient past have made it through eons with no trouble. Why is it so difficult to teach the humans; to have their feelings come back to life and stir inside them?  Something is still home here. Something knows how to climb the rocks, how to breath air into its lungs, how to put off the moments until logic would perfectly place itself, something like a motherly unseen force, breathings, as if heard a million times before.  Why don't we just keep our softness, allow the moon to bring a familiar glow. The Tigress is in a strange force field today and I fear the outline of her body against the rocks will fill you with uncertainty you won't recognize, will haunted you inside, freeze you.  

     Cooper will give the Tigress a focus more than awake, with slow leanings across her body in the moonlight.  Her eyes will open wide as her sleek body stares and her back stiffens.  Her stare will love wildness. Her vision in the dark would be perfect. The dim blue glow of the moon, or of something, dances on the jungle floor through the canopy. 

     It comes to offer more than mere moonlight.

flash fiction--coaastSciFi "The Outpost"

Alien


It's not cloudy tonight down the coast, she told herself; this was just a little impediment to her view of existence. Suzi has no need of friendship from Carter--forget it!--and she didn't think she was keeping vital information away from Cooper. 
     Cooper never thought those types of thoughts about her, ever (and he knows what he can reveal, but then, would he have left so much up to chance during every one of those flybys this morning, with so many components in full insrantiation, and even ignored the flagship?)        Recklessness can be contagious. It seems even probable, in a minimal way. Why not betray your friend, even so, they won't know about it and you don't mind lying, just a little?  
     The distant smell of salt mist and lush tropical mountain permeates the sector now. Suzi increases her scanner speed, but her eyes focus on an image.  The smell of salt morphs into  exotic fragrance. The weight of the recent incidents sink further into her mainframe. She had always eliminated pressure; that was the time when everything comes into prefect focus.  Soon she would know what to do.  Right now, though, she feels like she is about to meet a real-life halloween alien.