When I looked up on Friday, I realized that November was nearly over, and I had no fiction to show for it. I was failing National Just Write Some Fiction Already Month — but I wasn’t about to go down without a fight. So I picked a fight in the form of 500 words (or so) of flash fiction, presented here for your amusement and edification.
Reunion
“I can’t believe they turned it into a museum, man!”
Steve stared up at the wreckage of the starship half-buried in the earth. Vines snaked across its hull, and trees had grown up around its lower half. The jungle had long since filled in the enormous gouge the ship had made when it first crashed; the naked furrow of a decade ago was now a foliage-covered ravine.
“What else were they gonna do with it?” snapped Mara. “We don’t have the resources to recycle it, or try to get it going again. And they couldn’t just leave it there.”
“Why not? It wasn’t hurting anybody.”
Mara cocked her head at her brother.
“It killed Doogan, remember? When we were kids?”
Steve pondered for a moment, then nodded.
“Riiight. Doogan. Well, he shouldn’t have been flipping switches near the engine like that, man. That’s a good way to get killed.”
Mara took a deep breath, opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and let the breath go in a deflated sigh.
“Well, let’s just say there have been a lot of Doogans since you went off-world. So now it’s a museum with security gates and security guards and a security forcefield that I need you to get us through. So stop gawking and stay focused.”
“Okay. Fine. I’m focused.”
“Great. So where do we go?”
“We need to find the tree.”
Mara gestured at the dense jungle on either side of the metal road they were stopped beside.
“Do any of these trees look familiar?”
Steve swung his head from one side to the other, taking in the jungle, the road full of tourists, the museum poking through the jungle’s canopy ahead of them, and then finally the jungle again. He shook his head.
“Sorry, no. Of course, the road wasn’t here before, so that’s throwing me off.
“Hang on. Wait a second.”
He swung his head around again, slower this time, with his hands held in front of his face, thumbs extended to form a frame through which to look. He nodded at the mountain range on the horizon.
“Have those mountains moved?”
“No. The mountains are where you left them when you went to the academy for idiot brothers.”
“Hey, there could be tectonic—”
“Shut up. Do you see The Tree?”
Steve shook his head.
“No. But I think it’s this way.”
He turned off the road and walked past a sign reading, “DANGER! JUNGLE IS FULL OF HOSTILE LIFE FORMS!” in six different language. At the tree line, he turned to his sister.
“You coming? Or are you suddenly scared of a few bloat vipers?”
Mara glanced at the passing tourists, a couple of whom glanced back. She adjusted the shoulder strap on her pack and trotted up to Steve. He grinned.
“Yeah, man. Just like old times.”
“Yeah,” said Mara as they crossed into the jungle’s shadow. “Just like old times.”
