io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. As soon as a month, we function a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present difficulty. This month’s choice is “Six Months After All Life on Titan Died” by JB Park. You’ll be able to learn the story under or take heed to the podcast on LIGHTSPEED’s web site. Take pleasure in!
Six Months After All Life on Titan Died
I would like a binge-worthy banger concerning the incident on Titan. Let’s begin with that one image from Titan that leaked, the one of many bizarre fishes in these underwater ruins dying. Let’s get going with a second-person narration of You it, fascinated by how extinction simply occurred, and your fingers are trembling, and historical past—your recollections of all of the tragedies and scandals previous—informs you that everybody will overlook about it in a couple of weeks. Insert some beefy office drama within the background that possibly we use later because the motivation for a few of the hits. Somebody hates our protagonist; they hate, maybe, that she was born poor.
Subsequent, let’s hop into the top of Tristiana, the whistle-blower. She didn’t kick ass sufficient in actual life. She kicks ass now. She’s standing there within the briefing room, and the You was Her all alongside. She’s standing there watching the final transmission from the probe. Flashback: She helped develop the AI as a supervisor of the Cradle mission. Rigidity. A little bit of horror.
Then bam, again to actuality. She realizes, with horror rising in her coronary heart—stress is up, body the scene with the screens going haywire behind her ticking down a bunch of science stuff as she’s on their own in her personal head—and all she will be able to see is the close-up of the fish-alien factor, its mouth-open and going belly-up within the waters of Titan.
Office stress, civilization stress, existential stress, anxiousness, melancholy, despair.
We found sentient life and proceeded to wipe it out within the span of two days. Let’s get some historical past of the probe’s journey, it dropping into the environment, the reactions from individuals world wide (or the dearth thereof). For a day it was a factor. Some persons are crying, they’re weeping like their household simply died. Title drop the individuals that truly did die.
The constructing is rigged in opposition to connections in each instructions and no unbiased daemons are allowed so Tristiana downloads the photographs onto her cellphone. Undercover agent vibes. Her coronary heart’s pumping, it feels flawed to maintain this secret, like somebody ought to find out about this. She is aware of it’s mainly suicide. NDAs have been signed—and as of late they’re enforced with bullets—so she is aware of she has to maneuver quick, get exterior, and add. She figures she’s obtained possibly thirty minutes, so she goes to her automotive with the excuse of needing a break, and that’s when she notices three goons following her. All of them have small hitboxes; it’s terrifying the best way they’re strolling as much as her three deep with SMGs in hand. Possibly fill in with some killing particulars concerning the goons, possibly they’re ex-Particular Forces, however now they’re operators who hunt enemies of one thing. The cage being closed behind you as you stroll in. The noise of the creaking hinges. Boots tapping away on concrete. Good climatic motion scene right here. We want a method for Tristiana, a scientist with a civilian flechette gun, to deal with three hardened operators who survived wars on 5 completely different continents and likewise that one time on the moon (and people are those we find out about). I need Warmth, true-immersion, a real-enough-to-smell-the-gunpowder sort of an motion scene.
I need every of the goons to have total household bushes behind them; we’d like lore. Each single life she takes right here may have individuals coming after her from up and down these bushes. She’s going to kill brothers and sisters, cousins, nephews by no means seen. Entangling vines round her ankles. Actually dig in and describe each bullet and each shred of flechette hearth like every thread snaking via pores and skin issues. The armor stops many of the flechettes however the ones that make it into flesh tear it aside. The bullets bounce off the armor she’d constructed into the automotive and spiderwebs throughout the bulletproof windshield.
So now these three are lifeless. Tristiana has some accidents, however she rapidly digs the bullet out with a heated knife and wraps it up with a torn shred of material from her jacket. One of many operators died in her automotive and there’s pink arterial spray throughout the again home windows. Physique horror. She digs within the operator’s pockets and finds the important thing for a gasoline automobile close by. Then she’s off and the alarms are blaring as she burns rubber out of there.
Now that she is off the lot, her daemon comes again on-line. She instructs it to add the photographs on-line. Just one goes via. The daemon is terminated remotely and she or he feels the onset of post-daemon stress. Simply then, her gasoline automobile begins sputtering, and her instinct that’s been honed from combating in warzones since she was sixteen tells her that she’d higher ditch it. So she brakes and involves a fast halt by the facet of the street the place the automobile begins glowing red-hot. It explodes a bit of later, it sends up a giant black plume of smoke, and now she’s on foot. She flees from the scene and she or he searches the air for circling birds or the whisper of popcorn drones within the sky. There are not any sirens. There may be nothing and the silence is essentially the most unnerving factor.
Fugitive. On the run. Concern. Nervousness. Panic.
A driver stops his automotive on the facet of the street close by, will get out and calls to her to see if she’s okay. Instinct: there’s one thing flawed about this man; maybe it’s his eyes, the best way they wander. She figures it out fast after a dialog they usually have a Man From Nowhere knife combat there. She’s practiced in knife combating as a part of her self-defense programs alongside together with her weekly Muay Thai session, and she or he additionally rolls with the native jujitsu membership if she is aware of there hasn’t been a staph an infection previously week. He’s had some primary coaching however he rapidly falls behind, and the attain benefit is negated by the sharpness of the blades. She parries a slash and steps in to stay it into his windpipe. He thrashes a bit of, fingers to his throat, eyes dulled, soul snuffed out. Make him an alphabet company with decrease than 3.4 stars, have her discover a badge or one thing when she digs via his issues after. Possibly he’s a sicko too, gasoline station dick drugs in his pocket and a cellphone smudged with keen smears. The physique will get tossed within the again. She’ll determine it out later. She throws his cellphone out the window however didn’t know he had one other in his boot.
She’s off in his automotive. She’s already deserted her cellphone, however the lifeless man’s cellphone rings, and it’s the quantity for the hospital her mother’s in. She picks it up, and her mother is crying as a result of they’re transferring her out for some purpose. She says that they’re saying that the insurance coverage ran out. She has stage 4 one thing. Emotional, stress, transferring, unhappy.
Tristiana goes to go get her they usually’ll determine one thing out. Her indenture received’t wrap up for one more twelve years. She’s eighteen years into it with a stint right here and there working for the Cradle mission to spice up her resume however she senses that it’s not working, not that it issues anymore. Sixteen-hour shift on a Sunday, payments for hire three weeks previous. Her medical insurance and her GI Invoice debt forgiveness safety voucher is all tied up in it. No cash for varsity, existential angst.
She sits there and she or he realizes how fucked she is. Emotional, stress, anxiousness. However she did the suitable factor, proper? However she doesn’t even know if the factor she did labored. Doubt, fear, sorrow. She’s driving down the street when a bullet cracks proper via the windshield and smashes into the headrest of the passenger-side seat. Stress. Have her assume in a disassociated method, like she’s not likely there proper now, as a result of the stress of the second is attending to her. Morning Glory. Her physique is leaving her behind, the physique is transferring by itself, the physique is wrestling with the wheel, the automotive is veering off the street, it smashes in opposition to the guardrail and sends sparks flying then one of many tires blows out, and the automobile tumbles off the street altogether and involves a cease within the shadow of the huge pine forest whose gloom she has by no means left, not for the reason that knife-fight. Panic, concern, sorrow, concussion haze, Vietnam, Full Steel Jacket, one thing like that for Iraq. Discover a couple and use the one with the third-best ranking total.
Flashback. It’s the peacekeeping mission she obtained despatched to when she was sixteen. She has a rifle they usually’re operating down the halls of an deserted shopping center, and the bottom shakes right here and there with the tremors of falling explosives. Music is pumping in her ears. Pleasure. All of the targets are shaded in pink. Excessive rating really feel; our bodies crumple. She thinks about it like—she used to consider in issues. A number of gore, individuals blowing up, lifeless youngsters, survivors in rubble. Describe how her eyes get wider and extra lifeless till she’s obtained the thousand-yard stare. The shriek of one thing falling from the sky, it repeats with a boring rhythm, a drum that fades as she returns to the current.
Now her soul is again in her physique, she’s sitting there dazed staring into the rear-view mirror with the identical eyes she as soon as had and can all the time have whereas she hears footsteps closing round her within the forest. She’ll must shoot her method out however that’s not what’s inflicting this sorrow—it’s all of the individuals she’ll must kill to seek out freedom. Resignation, competence. Freedom ain’t free. It’s lots of people although.
When she’s carried out, one of many telephones that the goons have been carrying rings once more. It’s her mother. She says that they’ve her. Tristiana says, I’ll come discover you, and whoever is controlling the opposite line disconnects. Resolve, power, dedication.
The waters of Titan are turning pink as a series response melts down their ruins and a complete biosphere beneath the crust goes belly-up. Individuals go up in flames exterior authorities buildings and nobody even seems to be. They douse themselves in gasoline and light-weight their our bodies on hearth as a result of one other world simply died, identical to how this one died. Tragedy, anxiousness, nervous, unhappy, partaking. The fires fade into the water into the blood-spilled stream flowing into the pipes. There she is within the rest room of a Burger King washing the blood out of her hair when all of the lights exit.
Concerning the Creator
J.B. Park’s tales have appeared in Clarkesworld, Gamut, Lackington’s, Lightspeed, Liminal Tales, Nightmare, Unusual Horizons, and The Darkish. His web site is maybepark.com.
Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the July 2023 difficulty, which additionally options work by Nic Anstett, Sandra McDonald, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Lauren Bajek, Ashok Okay. Banker, Isha Karki, James Van Pelt, and extra. You’ll be able to look ahead to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire difficulty proper now in handy book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the book version right here.
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