Shoreline of infinity 22, p.1
Shoreline of Infinity 22, page 1
Shoreline of Infinity 22
Science Fiction Magazine
Edited by
Noel Chidwick
Issue 22 May 2021
Award-winning science fiction magazine published in Scotland for the Universe.
ISSN 2059-2590
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© 2021 Shoreline of Infinity.
Contributors retain copyright of own work.
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Submissions of fiction, art, reviews, poetry, non-fiction are welcomed: visit the website to find out how to submit.
www.shorelineofinfinity.com
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Publisher
Shoreline of Infinity Publications / The New Curiosity Shop
Edinburgh Scotland
100521
Editorial Team
Co-founder, Editor-in-Chief, Editor: Noel Chidwick
Co-founder: Mark Toner
Deputy Editor & Poetry Editor: Russell Jones
Reviews Editor: Samantha Dolan
Non-fiction Editor: Pippa Goldschmidt
Art Director (Acting): Caroline Grebbell
Copy-editors: Pippa Goldschmidt, Russell Jones, Iain Maloney, Eris Young
Proof Reader: Cat Hellisen
Fiction Consultant: Eric Brown
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First Contact www.shorelineofinfinity.com contact@shorelineofinfinity.com Twitter: @shoreinf
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Contents
The Sentinel Falls
John J Kennedy
Boy or Girl?
Haruka Mugihara
Crossed Paws
Marc A. Criley
Luna Press - advert
One Small Victory
Konstantina Scott-Barrett Braoudaki
Multiverse
Poems by Maija Haavisto
Quadrillion Vigintillion
Ink Blue
Space Opera – To Boldly Go Where No Man Wanted To
Samantha Dolan
About Shoreline of Infinity
Reviews
The Tethered God - advert
Ace Doubles
Ace Doubles (extract)
Eric Brown
Back Story: Ace Doubles by Eric Brown
The Portal
The Sentinel Falls
John J Kennedy
He swooped, the ice disintegrating above him, falling in chunks, rain by the time the hot air rose to meet it. He gave it some help with a quick blast and it scattered over the burning woodland. Bael was in there somewhere. But there never was much the little imp demon could do against rain, not in these quantities, so he’d be no trouble for a while. Long enough to break the sound barrier a few times and seed the clouds; a little backup.
He was cresting up when it happened. Everything blank. Where was he?
He dropped, the years dropping away with him.
* * *
The Oracle blog, 15/08 – online post by Joanna Perez (draft)
I’m on the border looking for something on drug runs up through El Paso when the forest fire starts. Cibola’s big, and watching it go up is frightening, it spreads so fast. I climb in the Jeep and get some great shots from high ground on my tablet, airdrop them to Kyle in the office, think about exclusives from the mayor and the fire chief, get some good interview material from some pretty scared townsfolk and generally do what any self-respecting journo would do; head as close to the blaze as I can get.
Thing is, the fire isn’t the story. I just don’t know it yet.
I drive okay, but the downpour catches me by surprise, that and the fact there are fish in it. I skid around as one bops off my windshield and the road fills up with them. I wrench at the wheel. Then, something big, solid and heavy passes through the awning and into the back, and the Jeep’s front end lifts. My first thought? OMG it’s a whale! I swerve and finally came to a shuddering halt, the Jeep rocking and me bouncing around. I drag myself out, the door crunching.
The Jeep’s a crumpled mess. A hire-car too.
The awning moves, a big foot sticking out of it. Something about the blue boot, but I don’t quite make the connection yet. I look around for something to grab; tyre- iron, wrench, fish? I tug at the tarpaulin.
Friend of mine once described to me the feeling he had meeting one of his idols in the flesh (rock star, in his case). Said the real shock was in finding someone you’ve only ever seen on screen or stage is actually real, up close, flesh and bone and not some celluloid construct. He said it was like finding Bugs Bunny in your bath; disconcerting, but within a few seconds, fundamentally disappointing.
With me, the opposite’s true.
He moves, that Olympian body coiling and flexing as he pulls his cape around it. The chiselled face I’ve grown up with, the careworn eyes and that buccaneer chin I mooned over when I should’ve been focused on boyfriends and not making them feel inferior. The impossibly black hair ribbed with grey now, but nothing to dampen its lustre. As he stands, the chest symbol glistens at me, its elongated star winking as he straightens. Man of my dreams. The Sentinel, standing under rumbling skies.
And blinking.
Something is wrong. Very wrong. The face creases in anxiety, the body hunching, awkward. As he bends I can see the beginning of, not a paunch exactly, but the kind of thickening waist you see on aging swimmers and athletes, still muscled, still firm, but there. Because it must be what… not forty years he’s been in action? Not more, surely.
Still gorgeous, though. He glances at me like I’m the intimidating one.
“Are you… hurt?”
His brow furrows. “Where am I?”
“You don’t know?” I wave an arm around me. “New Mexico.” He’s staring at the road. “Why are there fish?”
I start to say I have no answer to that one but then I think about it and realise maybe I have. He’s done it before, I’m sure, put out a blaze with water from a nearby source, a lake or river, frozen a huge chunk of it by doing whatever he does, then carrying it through the sky, however the hell he does that, then shooting rays of heat from his hands and bingo! Fire out. Fish in the streets, sure, but then you can’t have everything.
A rumble. What sounds like a convoy of vehicles is coming our way. I look at the Jeep, wondering if it’ll still run or whether I’ll have to hitch. I turn back to him, about to banter a little about hire-car indemnity not extending to superheroes falling from the sky, but something in his face stops me. I glance at the smouldering forest just visible over the rise. “Hadn’t you better get back to it, hero?”
That‘s the clincher really. Something like terror in his eyes. Then humility. “Ma’am. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to give me a lift to the nearest town.”
* * *
The young woman glanced at the sky and then at him, like he’d made a joke. But, far as he could remember, he’d never been too good at them. She turned to the Jeep and put her hands on her hips.
But he could help with this! He’d fixed all kinds of things for uncle Wendall in his workshop. He put his hands to it, straightened the dints, opened the hood, checked it over, sent a few surges from his fingers here and there. It would get them to town. He stepped back.
She was watching, puzzled. “If you can do all that, how come you can’t just fly?”
He snorted a little. Shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. No- one can fly.”
* * *
He’s quiet on the drive back to town, but it gives me a chance to do some thinking. Thing is, he’s clearly lost some of his marbles. But how many and how permanently?
He knows he has some of his powers, but doesn’t know he can fly, so on, so forth. He took almost a minute to fix up the Jeep and I’ve seen plenty footage of him doing far more intricate work much faster. I start thinking maybe he’s been zapped by some fiendish brain-scrambling invention of one of his nemeses, Bael or The Rat King or one of that crew. But then something he does makes me doubt it.
The facial expressions, the tone of voice, everything so far has been pretty removed from that self-assured persona that chats with presidents, negotiates truces between countries and even planets. It is, quite obviously, the face and voice of a much younger man, maybe even a teenager. So he’s regressed. But as we pass the convoy, the nineteen year old in the middle-aged Olympian’s body would, you’d maybe think, be curious about military vehicles and armoured trucks, might at least glance out the window to check them out.
He hides. Cowers down under the dash; no mean feat for a body his size. And as he does it, I swear, the boyish look is gone. For those few seconds as we pass, the Sentinel is fully himself again. Don’t ask me how I can be sure. I just feel it.
It reminds me of something. Grammy Ramirez, my grandmother, who’d suffered through full-on dementia for her last years. Terrible, debilitating and unfair. But there were moments, just occasionally, when she used it. Sounds awful. But she did. Like when she was lucid as hell but some relative she didn’t like showed up and suddenly she decided they were the postman and what the hell were they doing in the house?
So is that it? One of the most powerful beings on the planet, who I’ve had the hots for since eighth grade, is sitting here in my Jeep with early onset Alzheimer’s?
Definitely bears thinking about.
* * *
She’d been nice to him. Smuggled him into her hotel room with blankets wrapped around him. Then she’d sat him down, sent for some coffee and sandwiches. He didn’t quite get why she wouldn’t let him go to the door when it arrived. She
She looked at her computer while he ate, seemed preoccupied. He wasn’t too fond of computers.
Then she started asking questions. What date it was, how a watch and a ruler are similar, how many nickels in 60 cents, could he name twelve different animals.
The questions went on. And on. Some he could, some he couldn’t answer, the ones he couldn’t getting him antsy.
The coffee cup was Styrofoam, the sandwich wrapping made of card.
* * *
“What the hell are you doing?” I regret it as soon as I’ve said it. His eyebrows are dancing, that scared look again.
He’s melted the food wrappers into a clump and he’s squeezing it, messing with it. Does he even know he’s doing it? What else is he capable of doing without being aware of it?
But then he reaches out, puts the clump down near my laptop.
He’s shaped it into a flower. A rose. I cough, sputter a bit.
“For me?”
“You’re pretty,” he says, teenage simplicity in his voice.
I’m blushing, trying to remember this is ten kinds of inappropriate, for one thing everyone knows about him and Nancy Macguire, reporter for NY News, going steady or whatever forever, for another he’s not even human and for a third he’s currently not in his right mind.
But this is the Sentinel, my first and only crush and he’s here in my hotel room, fashioning flowers from sandwich wrappers, and his hands are strong, his arms are the kind of arms you want wrapped around you, and there’s a twinkle in his eye, I swear, that no nineteen year old boy could muster. And anyway, I’m lonely, and it’s been too long since I’ve been held.
We stare at each other, and I can’t quite believe it when I slide over to him and put my head on his shoulder, and when he picks me up one handed and takes me over to the bed.
* * *
He was happy. She was pretty. So nice.
The sweat had dried on their bodies and he buried his nose in her hair for a while. How long could he stay like this? Why not forever?
She went into the bathroom, her body swaying, her head shaking slowly, a giggle as she blew him a kiss from the doorway.
He could hear her washing in there and he picked up the remote, clicked it on, mooched through a few channels. He wanted some cartoons.
Nancy’s face filled the screen and everything changed, swooping away, the years piling back on him.
He looked at the mirror, his naked reflection, looked down at himself.
What had he done?
* * *
I burst back in when I hear the TV, see her flat-screen face, not even that attractive anymore, homely more than anything. And yeah, of course, what are the chances she’s on air that particular moment? I mean it’s not like she’s actually in broadcasting, just happens to be giving an interview about the whole Deltaleaks thing, her part in exposing a couple of corrupt politicians. In search of a second Pulitzer.
He looks at me and I’m naked. Well, I’ve been naked all along but now I feel naked, grabbing my shirt, bunching it up in front of me, jabbing the remote and killing her smug face. Why couldn’t he have watched some goddamn cartoons?
He’s stumbling into his costume and the sight of him flexing gets me horny again, can’t help myself. I shake my head. “Can’t we just…?”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t quite say Ma’am but it’s in his tone. “This was a mistake.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, drawing my legs up.
“It must’ve been Bael! He’s found some way of manipulating my memories. I don’t know how exactly but… look, this…” He gestures at the bed. “This wasn’t me.”
I’m smiling, but I don’t think it’s a nice smile. “You’re lying now. And that certainly isn’t you.”
He flinches, stops pulling at the tight weave of his suit and stares at me.
“It wasn’t Bael and you know it.” I give him my full, one- day-I’m-going-to-win-a-Pulitzer-too look. “You know what you have.”
He’s still now, his eyes on the papier-mâché rose. “I don’t… that’s a human affliction. I’ve never even had a cold.”
I see it now, how it can be so simple it’s frightening. I just have to articulate it. I swallow. “Stay.” My voice is smaller and for a moment I think maybe I’ve regressed too. “Stay with me.”
He’s staring at me.
“You’re trapped. By tradition. The life you’ve built. Did you even build it, really? It’s no wonder your mind’s fractured.”
He shakes his head. “But if I have… what you think I have… then…”
“Then stay with me. Be that teenager. Full time. I can take it.” I’m smiling, picturing it. The hours, the days. “Even if…’ I don’t say when, ‘…if you get… worse. I can take care of you. It would be… a privilege.”
This is where he should come to me, hold me against him. Even if he’s going, even if he thinks I’m crazy. It would be the manly thing to do.
But he’s into his suit, something vaguely frightened in his eyes, and suddenly I feel like a schoolgirl clutching an autograph book.
That smile I don’t like is tickling my face again. “You sure it was Bael who started that forest fire?”
His brow furrows and he’s at the window, staring out at the distant smouldering afterglow. Then he looks at me, but by the time I’ve reached the second syllable of sorry, he’s gone.
I pull the papier-mâché flower towards me and hold it until my tears start to dissolve it.
* * *
He wasn’t able to put things back together. With Nancy, with him. It should’ve been easy, but it wasn’t. So, he threw himself into work. Both as his alter ego, Richard Reeves, and as himself.
As Reeves he did the usual, stayed inoffensive, played it clumsy, scratched out a few stories. Even that was getting difficult. Words. Tricky. Some days he’d sit at his keyboard and stare for hours.
Nancy was so involved in her career renaissance, he didn’t think she even noticed. When he quit reporting, she didn’t seem surprised. She’d been telling him for years that he wasn’t any good at it; to just be himself, forget the day job. Be a full-time hero.
Except he couldn’t do that anymore either. Too many cats he’d left up trees.
That’s when the story broke.
He reeled, playing for time. Wasn’t ready to be outed. His dementia was his affair.
He scoured Joanna Perez’s website, of course. Chased the news reports for her name. But it wasn’t her. Even afterwards, when she could’ve cashed in, speculated on the Cibola fire, even done a kiss and tell, she’d made no comment.
Integrity.
In amongst the pain of his exposure, impotent pity from Nancy and a sickening grasp of the fact that without new memories to make, he had no future, he found himself admiring Joanna more and more.
Unfortunately, some days, he couldn’t quite remember who she was.
* * *
The Oracle blog, 21/11– online post by Joanna Perez (draft)
The President’s shirts look more wash n’ wear every year. And this Times Square farce is cheap, even for his administration. You’d think a closed session in the White House or the Pentagon. Maybe even something involving the UN. But no. Times Square, full online coverage of your retirement, fully networked, because the people deserve to see their hero one last time. And we gotta give the people what they want, right?
I’ve stayed out of the story but I’ve got enough kudos to be sitting not too far from the First Lady, and the other unofficial first lady of this day is close by too. Nancy Macguire’s gone for a classic skirt-suit ensemble, and I have to admit she looks good. That second Pulitzer’s given her a new lease of life. She looks through me a couple of times, of course. At least it’s indifference and nothing else.
