Closer Than You Think

License Notes

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Closer Than You Think

A collection of short stories by S.A. Barton

Copyright 2016

Smashwords Edition

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Contents:

License notes and title

(Foreword)

One More For The Road

Laundry Day

VR

Spoof

Put It In Your Mouth

SickTube

No Echo

All In The Mind

Rise And Fall

To Labor No More

The Little Door By The Candy

Disconnect

Goat Ba'nannies

Empty Plastic Father

HAPPY FUN WAR

And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

New Housing Starts Increase For Twenty-Second Consecutive Year

Black Grail

The Mangrove At The End Of The World

Heavy Cold

Overheard Through An Apartment Wall In A City Orbiting Jupiter

Foreword

These nineteen stories were written over, roughly, the last two years. They range from the very short (barely over 400 words) to the very long (9,000 words plus).

They do not share a common continuity – the later stories do not necessarily proceed from the events of prior stories, or share characters – but they do share a common thread and a direction. They are all visions of our future as humans, on earth. No aliens, no space stories. Just things that may result from influences that I see at work now or coming soon.

The stories are arranged roughly from the future closest to today to the farthest. One More For The Road could happen twenty years from now. At the end of the collection, the final three stories are visions of what may be many centuries from now.

There are other common threads, threads we see just starting now. Self-driving vehicles. Robots doing work that humans once did. Artificial intelligence. Climate change. These are relatively small things now. (No! You say. They're not small! Well, you're right – ultimately. But right now their effects are small compared to what they will surely become in the future. See?) Small changes in our economy, our society, our way of looking at the world and thinking about ourselves, about others, about... well, to steal a phrase, life the universe and everything.

As time goes on, these changes will accumulate. Travel a century ahead (don't worry, no time travel stories in here – it's not my thing... so far), and everything will be strange to you. People will think a little differently. The jobs will be different; some will have disappeared and new ones will be in their place. The technology – imagine! The weather – I fear it will be worse; the expert consensus is pretty clear on that.

Go ten centuries ahead and you'll hardly recognize the place. Society itself will have become alien to you. That's what this collection is about, too. As you go, you'll find yourself in increasingly alien worlds – without ever leaving Earth.

But surely things wouldn't be that strange, you say. Humans would still be humans. Sure, but think of it in reverse. Would a person from 1916 feel out of place now? How about a person from 1016? See what I mean? Give it some thought. Read some history. History is a great subject for science fiction fans to study.

But first, read these stories.

One More For The Road

He kept the windows of the car opaque and rolled up the whole way, even though it was a warm spring day.

It's a good thing you didn't do this sort of thing when we first met, I said. You'd have scared me off. It's weird not knowing where I'm headed.

I gave my own 'joke' a little laugh. He didn't; he didn't seem to notice I had spoken. He was reading, but I could see he was still on the same page he had been on fifteen minutes earlier.

Gently, I lifted the tablet out of his hands, turned the rigidity off, folded the 'glass' rectangle neatly and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

Hey, I was...

No, you weren't, I said, in a gentle no-nonsense tone I had learned from my abuela as a child.

His lips pursed and he sucked air sharp into flaring nostrils, ready to argue.

You were thinking about your great-uncle, I said, leaning forward and putting a hand on his knee. He's only been... gone... less than a month. Of course you're thinking about him. I met the man just half a dozen times in the five years we've been together and I've been thinking about him a lot, too. Especially that week fishing when we rented the cabin up in Tahoe. Phil was a great guy, Buddy.

He sighed, deflating.

Yeah, he was.

He had a weird nephew, though. What kind of man names his son 'Buddy'? It's only about a hundred fifty years out of date. This time he chuckled a little. Progress.

You're not taking me up to Tahoe, are you? I asked. That's a three-hour drive. Let's put on a movie if you are. I swiveled my seat and rummaged in the mini-fridge under the dash display, found a can of chilled cafe con leche.

No, we're almost where we're going, he said.

Why not tell me? I don't understand. I cracked the coffee open and drank. It wasn't as strong as Abuela Flora used to make for me when she had decided I was old enough to drink it. I sipped the coffee. Phil's passing made me wonder how many years Abuela still had. But how many years do any of us have? It's beyond knowing—you just enjoy what there is. But Buddy didn't think like that. He liked to agonize over feelings, caught in an anglo-macho duality of emotional repression and dramatics.

I, um, Angela... Buddy said, and stopped. Dramatics. As he spoke, the car slowed and turned, and there came the sound of gravel rattling against the undercarriage through the so-called soundproofing. We began to jostle gently; unlike the highway this road was not smooth.

Well? Sometimes he was exasperating, hesitant like a child. My father before my mother died and he left, my grandfather, they would both say what was on their mind directly. Sometimes that habit, too, was abrasive. But in many ways I preferred it to Buddy's reticence.

I don't know. I wanted to surprise you. The car eased to a stop and the doors unlocked themselves.

Sleep mode in ten minutes, the car said in a soft and neutral voice.

Sleep now, Springbok, Buddy said, and the little Kenya National Autoworks sedan eased its suspension upwards a third of a meter to make it more convenient for us to step out. The shocks clicked as they locked in place and we exited. Buddy helped me steady myself on trip-stiff legs, one hand in mine and the other on my elbow. He pulled them back too soon and I almost reached out to take his hand back. Instead, I stood next to him surveying the landscape I hadn't been able to see from the car.

Ay, it's hot out here, I said, shading my eyes and wishing I'd brought sunglasses. What is this, the edge of the Mojave? The land was rocky, marked by a few puffs of twisted mesquite scrub and a dry wash running parallel to the little one-lane gravel road we had driven down. A long streamer of dust from our passage still hung in the air, rising sluggishly; even the breeze was limp with the heat.

In front of us, a little flat house jutted a picture window and screened porch out of the side of a low hill, as if we had caught the desert in the middle of an architectural meal. On top of the hill there was a stand of green solar trees made to emulate the cactus silhouettes of Joshua trees, slowly turning photoelectric limbs to track the sun.

Phil's retreat, Buddy said. He left it to me. To us. He walked to the porch door, the sand-brown flagstone walk almost invisible against the natural color of the bare hardpan soil. The porch opened for him.

Welcome, Buddy, the house said in Phil's voice, delivering a recorded message. Come on in and make some more good memories here.

"Aw, Phil," Buddy said, soft. The inner door of the house opened itself, but Buddy didn't move.

"Aw, Phil," he said, looking down at his feet.

He was a good man and we should remember what was good, not just that he died and we're sad, I said, giving him a little hug from behind. Let's go in and have a drink in his honor.

But inside, Buddy walked through the kitchen and living room—decorated in rustic bare woodgrain—to the back of the house. Between the doors of the two bedrooms snug under the protective hill above, there was a staircase down, the door to it standing open.

There's a cellar? I asked. For what, wine? It must have cost a fortune to dig it way out here, so far from town.

Not just a cellar, Buddy said. A garage. The stairs were narrow, steel, and clean; the flight lit itself with cool and faintly blue light from an overhead LED strip as we approached. Buddy started down. With a herky-jerky flicker, older florescent lights lit themselves below, illuminating a concrete floor hazy-glossy with sealant and age.

Not the most accessible, I said, starting down after Buddy. The stairs were steep.

The stairs can also function as an escalator, the house said. And the garage door is at ground level behind the hill.

So we'll be fine when we're a hundred and need chairs and walkers. Handy, I said. Buddy stumbled, paused.

Um, he said, and then nothing more as he continued down. I sighed and revised my estimate of how much longer it would take him to work up the nerve to propose. Unless I worked up the nerve to break with tradition and propose to him...

Look at this shit! he said from the bottom.

Give me a... shiiiiiit, I said, as the stairwell opened up and I could see.

The garage was easily large enough to hold four cars in addition to the tall red toolboxes and tidy steel compressed air tank next to the professional-grade lift set in the floor. But there was only one car in residence.

The car was an artifact, a museum piece, a rectangular slab of automobile with the barest of curves offering only a lick and a promise to the concept of aerodynamics, but more than that, its lines were a resolution to smash through the wind like a hydrocarbon-fueled brick. It was painted deep stormy purple, lacquered and polished and waxed to the point that the purple looked like a calm sea in the moments after sunset, as if, if you dropped a stone on the hood, it would vanish into the depths with a splash.

The odor of rubber and oil and gasoline hung faintly in the air. I hadn't smelled gasoline since kindergarten, the year they finally banned petrol-burners and manual drivers from the city roads and my mother and I had to take the bus everywhere for a year before we saved enough money to buy a beat up old all-electric autodrive car.

"What the hell is that," I said, stopping next to Buddy, who stood a respectful distance from the car, as if waiting for it to give him permission to approach.

It's a car, he said. I snorted and smacked him a backhanded tap on the shoulder.

I can see it's a car. I mean... I don't know antique cars.

I don't really either, that was Phil's thing. But it's not an antique, it's a classic—that's how Phil put it. He showed it to me when I was fourteen. Twenty years ago. Haven't been back here since. His voice broke and he stopped talking. I spotted a couple of office chairs by a desk at the wall opposite the toolboxes and led Buddy over to them. I sat next to him, and we sat together in the quiet, watching the car as if it was doing something other than sitting there looking pretty. Time passed.

I drove it, Buddy said, as if no time had passed. 440 cubic inch displacement V-8. Not totally sure what the '440' part means, but it has eight cylinders and they didn't make engines much bigger than that according to Phil. Miles per gallon? More like gallons per mile, he said when I asked him how much gasoline it took to make it run. That thing is one of probably half a dozen surviving 1968 Dodge Charger automobiles left in the world, Buddy said.

Are they even legal anymore? I asked. The house answered.

They are legal on private property and designated rural routes outside of the boundaries of towns or cities, the house said. The road that meets this property's driveway is a designated rural route. There is an alert keyed to alterations in that portion of the legal code. It is also legal to buy and possess gasoline, and I maintain a regularly autoupdated list of suppliers within a hundred miles. There are three, and two deliver. There are also a hundred gallons of gasoline in a tank next to the garage; the pump runs through the wall next to the toolbox. The gasoline drained from the car's tank to prepare it for storage is in four five-gallon cans in the ventilated storage room next to the vehicle door, along with coolant, fresh lubricating oil, and an oil filter.

That sounds like a pre-loaded speech, Buddy said.

You own the sixty-eight now, Buddy. It's yours and the house can tell you how to take care of her, the house said in Phil's voice.

"Don't you fucking talk in his voice!" Buddy screamed, and ran up the stairs. The door slammed.

Good job, house, I said, sighing. I stayed put; I had learned that when Buddy was emotional the best thing to do was to leave him alone. He needed to calm down before he'd let anyone comfort him.

I will also take direction from you, Angela, the house said. Phil directed me to bring that to your attention if you were with Buddy.

Really? Guess Phil assumed Buddy and I were meant for each other. I wish I was as sure about that as he was.

I cannot comment on that, the house said. But I can tell you about myself, and about the vehicle and other things that Phil willed to Buddy. As long as you are together, according to his final recorded wishes, they are yours as well, though ultimate legal title resides with Buddy.

If you're taking my orders, house, then the first one is this: do not mention Phil or use Phil's voice to Buddy for the next ten days. If you must refer to Phil in Buddy's hearing, refer to him as your uncle.

Acknowledged.

Cool. I walked over to the car, gazing at my barely-distorted reflection in the deep lacquer of its hood. Cool.

I gave Buddy an hour, idly exploring the garage and listening to music. Phil had pre-loaded the garage with music from the car's era. The sounds were odd, sometimes flat compared to the EDM, Warp, and Dubpop I was used to. At first it felt like the songs lacked complexity. After a few, I began to see the charms of simplicity, of music where you could pick out each of less than a half-dozen instruments by ear. Charming antiques, a look into the world of people who lived long enough ago to be Phil's great-grandparents.

Maybe simpler times in some ways, but still the songs were the same at their roots: about love and loss and wanting and pain and war and peace and humans being humans. The instrumentals still spoke to the same ancient human rhythms of beating hearts and tapping feet and maybe drums around fires when people took shelter in caves and wore the furs of the animals they killed with pointed sticks. Maybe not simpler times at all, prehistoric or the days the car came from. Maybe long ago and different always look simpler. We just know less about then than about now.

I went up and found Buddy on the porch, rocking in a chair made to look like it was built of mesquite limbs scavenged from the desert. I sat in the chair next to it, gingerly; despite its spindly looks it didn't give or flex under me. The limbs, though they looked fragile, were rock solid, reinforced with metal in some way that didn't show.

Buddy, the house is just a machine. I told it not to use his voice again for a while.

I know it's just a machine. The car's just a machine, too. They're here and he's gone. I don't know if I can stay here, Angela. He put his elbows on his knees and curled in on himself, looking down between his feet.

This is our place now. But Phil will live here too, in our memories. Buddy, you've got to find the good ones...

You already said.

I did. I know it's hard...

How do you know? What do you know? Who have you lost? He said the words through his teeth to the dusty planks of the porch, refusing to look up.

That's not fair, Buddy.

So what? It's not fair. What is?

Sigh. He knew I had lost my parents in my childhood, first one then the other, one year and the next, orphaned at 10. But... So maybe I don't really know how you feel. Make me understand.

He looked up. I don't know how. I didn't even hang out with him that much. Maybe a week a year. Some years it didn't happen at all.

"Regret the time you didn't have, and you won't be able to appreciate what you did have. You'll poison it. Mira, I'm not telling you not to grieve. You have to grieve, it's natural. I'm telling you that it's not all about your pain. It's about his memory, and it's about us together dealing with his being gone, and you need to give those things as much energy as you're giving to feeling like shit."

I don't know.

Maybe you need to feel alive, I said. I rested a hand on his knee, knobby under the thin denim of jeans that dated back to high school. Old and comfortable. Familiar and comforting.

We screwed on the old rag rug in front of the rocking chairs, hard and fast and rough. After, we left our clothes scattered on the porch and sat nude, rocking, looking out over the desert, hand in hand. The house was a long way from the road and there was nobody to see us but a single coyote crossing the hardpan a hundred meters away. He stopped for a few seconds in front of the house, looking at us sideways; for a moment his mouth lolled open and it looked like he was laughing at us, two naked humans with sex bruises on knees and elbows, savoring the fading pain and the memories of pleasure.

A long silence rolled out between us. There was a lot to say, but I