Issue 30 March 2016 Flash Fiction Online March 2016

The unfamiliar townscape rolls past, a glare of light and bleached-bone stone under weedy mesquite. I don’t know where I am. The whole town is low-slung and the same, framed by raw mountains on every side, and the sun is always hard.

I roll down a big road. At the side of the road stands a bike.

It’s nestled in bright silk flowers. Every inch of it, pure white.

What are those bikes, I say, to a local friend who knows better. I keep seeing these abandoned bikes that’ve been spray-painted.

Ah, says my friend. Those are the ghost bikes.

For people on bikes who get killed by cars? I ask.

She smiles. She says, Sometimes.

* * *

In early November, my friend carefully paints my face in black greasepaint and bone-bright makeup. It’s the All Souls Procession, she tells me. You’ll love it. Everyone paints their faces like skulls, and we all dress up, and at sunset, we march through town and think about all the people who have died over the past year.

I wear black. I think about the dead, as instructed. My friend wears her wedding dress and a sky-blue wig, rhinestones in the black-painted sockets of her eyes, like stars. She is well-versed in the ways loss can be beautiful.

On the edges of our silent procession, I glimpse the bikes. They wobble slowly. I can’t see who rides them because night has fallen, and the solemn-faced crowd is thick with skulls and bones and ghosts.

The ghost bikes used to be full-sized, says my friend, but people would steal them to ride. So now, all you see are the bikes of children.

A bike rolls past. The training wheels rattle like teeth. I see an empty seat, and I assume that the bike is pushed by a hand I cannot see.

* * *

Near my new house, there is an accident. A boy has snuck into the back of a FedEx delivery truck, and when the truck backs up, he falls out. The rear tire crushes his skull. His death is instantaneous.

For weeks, his family conducts a fruitless vigil at the roadside. Neighbors bring out threadbare recliners and folding chairs. The desert at their feet collects empty bags of Taquis and glass bottles of tamarind soda. The police leave them alone. It’s nice of the cops to let them mourn at their own pace, I say, and my friend says, This is the south side. You think the police even come here?

By February, the furniture is gone. The empty bottles have crumbled into a million stars, and in the place of the family stands a bike.

* * *

On a cold night with a lean, bright moon, I see a ghost bike rolling. Just rolling along the never-used sidewalk, like me, out for a head-clearing stroll.

Hello, I say to the bike, but of course, bikes don’t talk. It rolls on past me, stiffly, in non-acknowledgment.

I see it again when I pass the old shrine for the dead boy. The bike is poised on its bed of glass stars. Is this what you do? I ask it. You just go out at night and…?

When I ask my friend, she only says, Shhh.

* * *

Next year, I do my own make-up. I tell my friend that I’ll meet her there, but we both know there are too many people and we’ll never find each other.

The All Souls Procession begins. I’m near a group of people holding signs for victims of school shootings when I see a flash, the slow-rolling tires glimmering with fragments of star. I push through the mourners, but the bike keeps dancing away, so I ease off, and we walk side by side across a great, human, breathing distance, content to let things go.

* * *

The next morning, I start to tell this story to my friend. She asks for the name of the boy whose skull got crushed, those many months back, but to my embarrassment, I can’t remember.

It was–I say. It was–it was–

* * *

The next time I walk past the old shrine, the bike is gone.

There’s nothing there at all, now. Nothing but stars.

You ask Teacher to put you in the Open category of the chess tournament, instead of the Girls category. You point at the other representatives she’s sending. “They’re in the open category,” you say, and you’ve beaten them all before.

“There are very strong players in Open,” Teacher says. “The top-rated player in Open has an international title and has represented Singapore overseas. You sure or not?”

You nod.

The top player is easy to spot. He’s been at the number one board since the start of the tournament. In between rounds, players brag about how many moves they lasted before he tore them apart on the board, what tricks they would try next time.

But on the board, there’s no room for talk. There’s only the clink of chess pieces as they are exchanged, the tick of the clock. All genuine threats are silent. A rook on the seventh rank, like a knife at the throat. When you win your eighth round, all you do is flick a thumbs up at the teacher-in-charge, and the chatter slowly radiates out from there.

Even the students from the other schools are talking about you now. A hush falls over the immediate vicinity of the tables you pass, before a wave of glances and pointing starts from behind you.

It’s not about the sewn-on patches on your schoolbag. It’s not about how you had to help serve noodles at the shop every afternoon until your parents decided that the tournament was more important. It’s about your swift, smooth placement of each piece, your fianchettoed bishop poised like a dragon, your rook barreling down like an army tank.

You may look like any other scrawny primary school girl, but you feel tall inside when the flag on your opponent’s clock falls when they tip over their king in acceptance of the inevitable.

At the stage in the front of the hallway, the trophies have already been laid out. The challenge trophy, the tallest of them all, glints in the fluorescent light. The bubbling discussion of prizes is infectious, and you find your mind drifting as well. You carrying the trophy home, its tip brushing your nose.

“Look at the big prize our girl Xiaotong brought back!” Ma will say, and Pa will bring them to the stir-fry stall instead of eating their stall’s leftovers. Little Brother would like playing with the trophy, spinning the little globe at the top that bears the logo of the chess federation.

It all depends on who wins this round: you, or the top-rated player. He’s known for precise, calculating play, and his gaze as he surveys the board is sharp and intimidating like he’s ready to swoop down and rip your position apart at the slightest mistake.

But the checkered board in front of both of you is the same as at any other table, your pieces the same height as his. For all that he is the better player on paper, both of you have the same row of pieces shielded by the same row of pawns. It is no different than any other game.

The arbiter ascends the stage, and the chatter fades to silence.

“This is the final round,” he says, without preamble. “You may begin.”

The only sounds are the whir of the ceiling fans, the cheeping of the birds outside, the click of the clock as your opponent starts the timer. You meet the unblinking gaze of your opponent, let it pass through you. The branches of different opening moves stretch out in the corners of your mind, the tip of each branch a position dancing with possibility. You take a deep breath, let the adrenaline wash away the unimportant branches of the game tree until your first move remains.

You guide the king’s pawn forward two squares and press the clock.

Previously published in Island of Dreams. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

I remember picking up a National Geographic as a kid and seeing pictures of snaggle-toothed, bulbous-eyed, ferocious-looking deep-sea fishes; creatures so strange they looked as if they belonged on some alien world, not the world I knew. I also recognize that photos like these—proof that such things exist—left me mildly afraid of deep, dark water. Who knows what might be down there, waiting to come up and grab me by the toes?

Of course, it didn’t help that my brothers and sisters fed me with wild tales of Lake Sharks. Or that much of the dark waters I had the opportunity to swim in were often littered with drowned shrubbery and trees that you might not be able to see well, but that felt exactly like underwater sharp-toothed monsters reaching up from the depths to drag me down.

Apologies if I’m feeding your phobias.

My point is that we don’t have to go very far from home to find the fantastic. In fact, this month, you can find it right here, safe from your sofa, protected by the anonymity of the internet. Here we give you three tales of the strange and unreal—oh, and one story about chess, which, depending on your perspective, may qualify as well.

We’ll begin with two earthbound stories from Flash Fiction Online alumni, KJ Kabza and Shannon Peavey.

From Mr. Kabza, “All Souls Proceed,” a ghostly tale rich with local culture.

From Ms. Peavey, “Millepora,” a tale of change and acceptance.

And from an FFO Newbie, “This Is the Sound of the End of the World” by Matt Dovey, a ‘galaxy-far-far-away’ offering with a healthy serving of heart.

Finally, this month’s reprint story–the promised chess story–the beautifully written “Opening Move,” by Xin Rong Chua, which originally appeared at writingthecity.sg, where it won first prize in the Island of Dreams contest.

Happy swimming!

Most of the others have not adapted as well as I have.  Oh, we’re all equal now, rooted and still — what is there to fight about? — but the boy next to me is in pain, he keeps craning his neck up to see the sky, and I want to say to him: be still.  Turn to stone.

The tide is low, crabs and all manner of small creatures crawling through the water, and all around me people are blinking salt water from their eyes and remembering what it’s like to breathe air.  A volunteer from the Red Cross hurries my way with food and fresh water; just the sight of it makes me want to retch.

“She’s far gone, man,” the boy-thing next to me says, and then he says, “fuck,” with a sharp kind of despair.  The Red Cross volunteer is carding their gloved fingers through my hair, picking out the worst tangles.  They pluck up a little squirming creature and flick it back into the water.

On the shore, a big movie-theatre-type projector is playing a rerun of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  It’s pretty funny, right, that what most of these people miss most about being landbound is television.  Their families visit, when they can, and bring stereotypical things: favorite foods, pets, children.  Books for those who still have the ability to move their hands.  But rooting to a rock can be boring, especially in those quiet hours where the tide slicks up around our necks.  Most people can’t be alone with their thoughts that long.

They’re not trying to rescue us anymore.  It’s all palliative care, making sure we’re comfortable and happy before we lose ourselves completely.  The president came out last week and gave a teddy bear to a kid whose whole body was nearly calcified.  Just tucked it into one of his branching arms and smiled for the cameras.

There’s nothing I need, of course.  Only for the change to happen faster, so I can no longer turn my head to face the shore.

The Red Cross volunteer finishes picking through my hair and gathers their kit to leave.  They look to the boy-thing beside me and say, with terrible pity, “Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Get me a chainsaw and cut me off this rock,” he says.

The volunteer’s not sure whether to laugh or not.  They titter and touch him on the shoulder, and their face behind the window of the protective suit is obscured by salt-scum and little scratches on the plastic.  Practically as inhuman as I am.

The volunteers work all low tide, going to everyone in turn and touching them, talking to them, helping them remember what it is to be human.  The press calls us mille-people — I’ve seen it on the news, whenever they can be convinced to turn the projector off Bravo or HGTV or ESPN.  Because we branch like fire corals, because our skeletal outer skin conceals little stinging tentacles that burn on contact.

“Don’t tell me you’re fine with this,” the boy-thing says.  “Don’t tell me you chose this.”
I say, “Didn’t you?” because maybe it wasn’t a choice like deciding where to drive the camper on a family vacation, but it was a choice all the same.  A kind of calling, a salt tang in my mouth.

“No,” he says, and then, “I don’t remember.  I don’t remember any of it.  It felt like being high for days, and then I come down, and I’m here on this rock next to you, and my feet won’t move anymore.”

There’s a little edge of hysteria to his voice, so I say shhhhhh in my most soothing tone and watch the vans drive off the beach as the tide laps back in.

“I wanted to travel,” he says.  “I wanted to get my fucking degree and some stupid office job and marry this girl and have like twelve babies.  Just normal things.  I was never ambitious.  I just wanted normal things.”

“You’ll travel,” I say with serenity.  Poor kid — he’s too upset to feel it.  “You’ll have a thousand babies, and they’ll go all over the world.  Don’t you know?”

“What?”

He’s blinking at me, slow and stupid.  Not his fault — the planes of his face have started to harden.  Poor thing, too busy trying to be human to appreciate what he is now.

“Look down,” I say.

He looks down.  In the swell of the tide, it’s easy to see them swimming — little medusae, tiny little carbon copies that will be carried along the current to other places, quieter and less crowded.  They will find their home and anchor down.  On a rock or perhaps in the mouth of an incautious swimmer.  I don’t know.  I don’t know how these things work.  All I know is this swelling sensation in my ampullae, this feeling of potential.  The little baby-thing the Red Cross volunteer had plucked from my hair.

My old life is starting to slip away, piece by piece — I’d traveled a lot, sometimes lived in my car, shifted from job to job.  It’s not important now, and so I can forget it.  Now I’m part of something bigger.  There’s no more running.  Finally, I have found a place I can rest.

On the projector screen, a woman is drinking wine and laughing a shrill, unhappy laugh.  Next to me, the boy-thing says, “Holy shit.  Does the Red Cross know about this?  Or, like, the police?”

“Shhh,” I tell him again, and I watch the babies swimming, vanishing between clumps of seaweed and silt and old garbage.  It’s beautiful to watch — our little clones so at home in the water.  Until they, too, find a place to rest.

We’ll go so far, all of us.  No matter what things were like before — oh, we’ll go so very far.

“Ambition is the last refuge of failure,” Oscar Wilde

“Never tell me the odds,” Han Solo

I’ve received interesting feedback on FXXK WRITING. Much of it from pros and amateurs in writing, music, and theater, lots of it good, some critical, and a minority have been upset, which I find bizarre. But I was also given a challenge from a friend who enjoys the column.

“How about answering: why do you continue to write?”

Gauntlet thrown, and raised!

My “why” consists of many parts, working in tandem. Be forewarned. This month’s contribution is something of a vanity project. No showbiz insight. No laws. No rules. Just one voice amidst the crowd. And it starts off with everyone’s favorite topic . . .

DEATH!

I’ve always been impressed with writers who have extensive bibliographies. They seemed to indicate a life that endured far past their years, influencing the world after they’d become dust. I’m also a historian, so I spend a lot of time recovering and recreating the lives of the dead. Both facts speak to my mortal coil.

Philosopher Ernest Becker’s macro thesis argues that the engine of civilization and its products (art, war, love, peace, etc.) is rooted in our need to deny the reality of our own death. The older I get, the more this idea becomes a deep drum behind my thoughts, as well as a side-effect from working with the dead. This is not an active part of the process. I don’t sit down and say, “Right-O, let’s pretend I won’t die by writing a story that will outlive my fleshsuit! One with a monkey and a vampire!” But I won’t deny the desire to “live after death through a body of work” is in me. And now . . . it’s in YOU!

INSIGHT!

Steve Tem wrote an essay about why writing revealed how he actually felt about many things once he crossed the threshold from preparing to write, to creating the work. I find myself drawn to this effect as a conscious or unconscious goal. Writing stories let me gain greater insight on how I feel and think about morality, ethics, love, desire, hate, life-and-death and, of course, PRO WRESTLING. Revealed are layers and depths beneath the surface of the conscious narrative. Which is a nice surprise: as the old scriptwriters used to say (taken from Robert McKee’s STORY): “If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re fucked!”

Range of depth varies. Sometimes a story is just a story, and I’m fucked; but I like . . . those stories, too (keep your mind out of the gutter, perverts). The authors I dig tend to have both surface and depth running symbiotically as well (see Philip K. Dick, Jim Thompson, Megan Abbott, and Elif Shafak, for example), and I wonder how much of that was discovery or planning, or planning by the subconscious (which Ray Bradbury thought was the real motor of fiction). Best to try all of the above.

Short stories are a wonderful road on this journey. And before anyone thinks these tales always turn into literary or experimental or realism pieces, almost all involve the mechanics of commercial fiction, too. I love the iconography of pop culture, always have, and its mythological overtones still grip me. Especially in noir. SWILL magazine published my story “Lose to Win,” which I thought was just a tirade about working in sales for one day. Underneath that story was a bigger one, about abusing the ability to empathize with others; and how being driven by circumstance to do so breeds monsters. Sure, it’s a shitty-day-at-work-story, but not just that.

SHITS AND GIGGLES!

I find joy in creating stories, even the dark ones (hell, especially the dark ones), even the tricky ones. Each has its own level of difficulty. Some are easy. Some are difficult, but fun. Some are like yanking my molars out with chopsticks, but the effort is rewarded with the relief of a hard task well done (like a c-note from the tooth fairy).

I also find great joy in a variety of storytelling mediums: short stories; novels; essays; historical works (articles and books); columns (this one!); improv with teams and duos; and live storytelling on my lonesome. Each has different kinds of fun attached. Together, they become more than the sum of their parts. Abandoning the sole “I’m a writer of fiction, it’s who I am, it’s what I do” mantra ironically rekindled an interest in writing fiction. Variety, not monopoly, was integral to the recipe of shits and giggles.

CRAFT!

Writing is difficult. Getting better is hard. That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, but sometimes fun is not enough if you want to improve. Years back, I became competent at writing a particular kind of story. I wasn’t sure how to get better, but I knew writing another iteration of the same kind of story wasn’t the way. I had to stop my momentum of writing four of these books a year.

Getting better meant reading wider, finding joy in non-writing stuff, new storytelling stuff, and then returning to writing with a new perspective and tools. I experimented with form and genre and style. I learned to enjoy revision (though it ain’t easy). I’m re-learning how to work with hard critique. Abandoning my self-identity as a writer also gave my brain room to fail as I worked hard on new approaches. Being cool with failure, and learning to work with it, helped me improve. If you don’t fail every now and again, you’re not really trying.

CASH!

Writing is labor. Labor should be compensated. I primarily write commercial fiction. I like commercial fiction (just not all of it). And commercial fiction has the benefit of paying more than many other forms (experimental, poetry, academic, etc.). I’m also poor, with zero job stability (USA! USA! USA!). Every little bit helps.

Short stories have been a sideline to thousands of dollars over fifteen years. I usually sell them for a few hundred bucks (small compared to non-fic, but that’s the biz). My indie novels bring in less, because I burned out on PR and production when my life collapsed in 2013, and thus lost two pillars required to make those works cash-intensive. But they do sell, and will continue to do so. And I can change their status as a priority, but other things dominate my horizon.

The sum total of my professional successes as a writer also allows me to find other work (teaching classes, this column, curriculum development, writing from RPGs, video games, etc) that also pays cash. I enjoy that kind of work, too. See also: Poor.

I take some pride in my body of published work. I’ve mostly catered it, not to fit the greatest demographic, but for me and had others enjoy them anyway. It’s a harder road in terms of selling, of course, but I know that fact. For these projects, the primary goal was other things (see above). Hunting for cash was at the end of the process.

I’ve written stuff specifically for money, too. Nothing wrong with that either. It has restrictions that other work doesn’t (if you don’t find them restrictions, awesome for you!), and I try and find the best way to create great stuff within the limitations and get paid. Sometimes I end up making things that are pretty damn awesome. Other projects are so limiting that they are pure killjoys, regardless of payday. So, I generate content and find opportunities accordingly, and get paid. Sometimes well, sometimes peanuts, but rarely on spec. See also: Poor.

PROVE THE MUTHAFUCKERS WRONG, RIGHT?

This is the unhealthiest driver, a bastard child made of ego and spite. It does not come from a “good” place. But, this column isn’t about looking solely at the good. There are a zillion other columns, blogs, and books for that, and I’m a little tired of the “all writers are awesome snowflakes” approach to viewing our craft, so, allow me to open the Pandora’s Box of my Id for a peak at the dark side.

At different times of my life, I’ve had people say something akin to “Ridler . . . you’re oneofthoseguys who’s gonna make it Big Time!” When I ask if they know how or when, I get a rim-shot (you know which kind, perverts). Musician? Historian? Novelist? Improv actor? BIG TIME??? I’m unsure why they say such things, but I suspect it’s my fetching personality, Latvian good looks, and rugged Canadian humility (RIM-SHOT!).

And, of course, “making it big” is code-words for “rock-star-like success where worry vanishes, wealth and prestige spring like a sexy Athena from the head of Zeus and straight into your Flying Tesla, and all you must decide is what act of genius you will unveil to the world  that morning.” In short, it’s a “porn dream.”

When this has failed to happen at various times in my life, often without me aiming for it, the dialog switched from “you’ll make the Big Time,” to “why aren’t you Big Time?” and “You’re fucking up, Big Time.”

Why? Many factors . . . bad luck. Stubborn intent. Wasn’t trying. When I did, it was for the wrong reasons. Not meant to do Big Time things. Big Time only has so many spots. No idea how the Big Time works. Unable to game the Big Time without feeling like garbage. Writing novels about pro wrestling instead of elves and pretty vampires (though many love my fugly vampire novel) . . .

Also, when I’ve thought about success (not the Big Time), I wanted it to happen because I did good work over a long time, as if the system was fair. And it’s not. Hell, getting by is dangerously unfair. Big time? How about off-store and partially damaged Lean Cuisine from Grocery Outlet Bargain Market for dinner time? 

Friends have left my life and traded up because of my lack of Big Time. If you think that stigma is easy to live with, then you were born made of diamonds, I guess. Such losses ate a good part of my heart, like battery acid on an already open wound.

Yet, I keep writing.   

Why? 

Well, all the reasons above. And one buried deep below.

In that burned out hole in my chest sits a punk rock kid in a boxing ring, two black eyes, broken nose, busted lip, kidney’s shot and liver shaking. He knows the odds are shit. Hell, the game is rigged. But he doesn’t care. Like a punch-drunk underdog, he keeps getting up, for one more round, one more shot, one more chance. He’ll keep fighting, money, marbles, or chalk, just to see how big the winner’s purse is when the final bell tolls.

And it tolls if I stop.

And I won’t give the shithooks who punched me on the way down an ounce of satisfaction.

Not pretty, is it? I agree. But it’s real. Cue my theme song.

Bet you thought it would be Metallica! PSYCHE! Ah-whoo Ah-whoo!

Dedicated to Gary Braunbeck and Bruce Holland Rodgers, for their inspiring essays and fiction. Like this piece? Buy Gary’s work here, especially To Each Their Darkness. Buy Bruce’s work here, especially WordWork

This is the sound of the end of the world: a billion voices raised in song, a harmony twisting and ululating around the colossal vibrating bass of the core immolators, twelve shining lances of light from the Yattari ships that pierce the now-dying planet of Korthia at equidistant points and pin it in space like a dissected animal on a metal tray.

Captain Jann Yo watches from her bridge. Doubt gnaws at her, and so she connects to the colonial beacons. She needs to hear the hate and violence of the insurrection. She needs to remember her reasons.

The beacons transmit everything. They fulfill their function blindly and faithfully, unable to question their purpose, only to follow it.

They make Captain Jann Yo uncomfortable. She wonders if she is only a beacon to the Empire.

She broadcasts the audio to her crew.

* * *

Grandmair Rhu Laria sings of family, those she’s lost and those by her now. Round her stand her children and their children and their children, lifting their faces and singing their song. All the slum folk sing too, voices mingling, ringing off pitted plasticarbon sheeting and soaring to the sky. There, the songs of slum town mix with the songs of the city carried on the wind from glittering skyscrapers.

She sings her happiness to have known all the people she’s known, those gone down the Everafter River before and those that’ll accompany her tonight. She sings her sadness that her voice was too small to fight the tide of resentment swelling up across the Kora system. Life’s not been so bad, for all the misery of the Yattari imperialists. Moments of sweetness have lit up the dark, and any life is better than oblivion.

A great-grandchild clings to her leg, fear and confusion on his soft face. Rhu Laria reaches down and picks him up, hugging him tight to her bosom. She sings of the future he should have had, struggle though it would have been. He follows, shy at first but carried along by those around him, all his family and all the world outside, singing at the sky, singing their stories, singing the world to sleep.

* * *

Preacher Rhat sings to his flock. He sings the promise of the Lake of Elders, waiting at the end of the Everafter River. He sings hope for the next life, now that hope for this life is lost.

He sings the prophecy of Sky’s Spear: that this pillar of light falling from the heavens and stabbing at the plains is from the Gods themselves; this is their plan, and all will be well. He does not think he believes it himself, but he must strive for faith. It is all that is left to him.

Small flecks of black rise against the blinding white as chunks of rock lift from the ground. The incredible hum that has filled the world for an hour is dropping into bass tones, the vibrations shaking through the dirt and into Rhat’s feet. He does not know when the world will end, but he hopes it will be soon. He does not want his faith to crumble. He does not want to let his flock down.

Rhat sings for them, but also for the animals of the plains and the forests and the oceans that cannot sing themselves. Herds of hurrenbeest flee across the rust red plain, bellowing their madness as they swarm around downed skyfighters, remnants of the Scrap Navy. There is nowhere for them to flee.

He sings for his brothers on Kallia and Kis. He hopes they learn the lesson the Yattari now make of his poor Korthia. The lesson comes too late for him. He preached resistance and uprising. He should have preached acceptance and endurance.

* * *

Tetha sings his fear, his hatred, his scorn. He crouches in the branches of a great bis tree and sings to the sky, not for the Gods to hear, but for the Yattari. He wants them to know he still fights them.

He sings the song of Sekkil, the fight with no hope but no choice. Sekkil fought the Gods though he was only a man, a war he could not win but had to fight, for pride and freedom and righteousness.

Tetha has fought this fight. He has lost, as he knew he would. But he does not regret fighting, only that he was forced to.

His dark hair is scraped back in a long braid. It swings as he howls his resentment, a song without words, a song without melody. It is raw, and it runs through a billion voices across the face of a dying planet.

* * *

Captain Jann Yo hears all this.

She does not hear, as Command had warned, the grindings of a military-industrial complex capable of withstanding the Yattari Empire.

She does not hear the myriad tongues of the subjugated peoples of the Empire, gathering at a flashpoint of rebellion.

She does not hear evidence for any of the lies given as justification by her Emperor.

She hears only the sound of singing. Where there are words, she does not understand them. Where there are melodies, they are lost in the deluge, surfacing like a drowning man in a flood only to be swept away again. Somehow the songs still speak to her, at a level deeper than thought.

Louder than the songs, she hears the silence of her crew. She feels eyes on her as questions grow like weeds through the crumbling concrete of faith. They are children looking to their mother, good people finding they are on the wrong side of history and looking to their Captain to make the hard decision.

Louder than their silence, she hears the sound of her targeting computer as she locks onto each of the other eleven capital ships. Warnings are overridden, and missiles are armed. A final look at her crew confirms her decision.

This is the sound of the end of her world.