SAMPLE STORIES
Here is the first half of the story "Facts of Her Own" from the book Eve of Valor of speculative-fiction writings by Lorenzo Samuel (me). The protagonist of this tale is a young alien raised by two aliens known simply as Mother and Father. These aliens are without bodies, yet they have many of the family problems that we do. How do they deal with them without bodies. Read and find out. I hope you enjoy the story "Facts of her Own."
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FACTS OF HER OWNS (first half)
Father flung my facts between our two suns.
These verities came up at camp in discussions with other trainees. I found the data figurative when answered, rhetorical later on, fictional at the start, actual now. In one conversation, I found an archaic bit of knowledge: that all bodies served only as refuges or places to birth and die.
I spent my vitality in a world where bodies exist only as growth. They have no memories. Just sit in the fields. I shouldn’t criticize as the past contains no conjectures of my devise. Father had supplanted them with his own. He ripped my trail of away and sent them toward the suns.
My body on the surface ruptured then; it fell to shreds as it turned inside out. It became useful only for compost, so that became its fate. Father smirked. “I offer you safety and a way to exist. Just follow my trail of facts.”
I refused. He punished by banishing me to dark energy. Of course, I became obtuse, not underpinned by my own experience. Nevertheless, vanishing didn’t work so Father sent me to training camp. There I did not gain adjustment or alignment with his trail of facts. I still would not welcome his, thus failed to become myself from his point of view.
He had sent me to camp to learn to accept his past. His great “gift” to me. Thus, my failure will not go well with him. Now he will use force in joining me to his facts. He will make me his slave. I will have no choice so will not conceive my own ideas, not travel my own path, not have a center.
Yet, I believe, although disconnected from my past ‒ unconnected actually. Only me, alone with no trail, no family or friends. No enemies. No home. No links. Lost. No landmarks, no comparisons, no way to tell. I seem just here. Not over there. I exist bereft of anything.
I might waddle in despair, yet my situation sustains me, gives me hope too. One travels only along his emotings, sets his course by them. Mother thinks I need something else so she has given me one of her bodies as a sanctuary.
​
I do not wish to go home. Still, the camp's transport materializes. We tumble end over end until the ship finds its alignment, gains dimension, and we shoot toward our star.
I try to relax in my assigned magnetic-field. Ideas drift from the ceiling where they had awaited for me to right myself. They show me that I have learned more at camp than my instructors allow: All universes differ. Some inhabitants of these places even travel via bodies. Of course, our bodies remain in their caches, immersed in flowers, friendly insects and bubbling water that mists under our twin suns. Mere vegetables though, they ignore their world. I cannot imagine riding one of our bodies through the heavens.
My species has flitted to all the worlds, surveyed all sorts of places. Nearly 50% contain people who send their forms into the sky to leave their worlds. Several of my fellow trainees argue that body travel lacks panache. I disagree. To free a body from support must take quite a spell. Many body people have a beginning named Eve, magical in herself. She must have cast spells, for that would constitute the genesis of body travel, for a spell could spring the confidence necessary for bodies to lift off planet.
Here’s how it works in our space. Father creates an essence. Its body results from vegetative pollination. Minds reside with essences, not with bodies. What use bodies then? In short, refuge, birth and death. Thus, our bodies orient us to the planet. To die, just enter one and remain there.
When I existed not, Father conceived me. I learned to flit in his space and became bound to it. I never feared it until he destroyed the facts I had accumulated. That’s what led to training camp. Now I return unchanged, and there lays his space, rotten and festering in the heavens.
I cannot stay away; I plan to imbibe my Mother again. Unlike Father, her love for me has never faltered. Always she meets me with joy and thanksgiving. She had helped me orient, but Father ignored her ritual. His only interest seemed to feed me his facts, to push a copy of his trail off on me.
Perhaps, a visitor to this space would have no qualms. As he courses the edge of our system, this place could snag his attention. He might say, "Perfect," for such does this space appear on view. But if he locates himself here, plumbs mind and matter and dispenses with innocence, he will divine past the gloss into Father's reality and travel afoul of the stench of old things. Then, he might say that those masses stagnate, those linkages petrify. He might declaim, "Who conceives this space fixed and permanent, burdened with what has been?"
Our visitor might even denigrate my Father for this quality. More likely though, he would tremble and flee to a place more diverse. But, in forgoing this space, he would not learn why terror has settled in my mind.
Supposedly, I manifested defective ever since Father dreamed me up. Perhaps that explains why I remain here rather than flitting to other worlds. His solution for my imperfections? Send me to training camp out beyond our twin suns to take the course in stabilization, hopeful that I will accept my lot and kowtow to facts as he conceives them.
Perhaps I should have performed better in the course had I sympathized with Father’s patterns and memories, his ways of reacting to stimuli, his roads into the past, all bolstered by his facts. Well, here I float unchanged, about to enter my home.
By now, Father will have absorbed the report on my performance. He will want to examine me himself to discover why I fared poorly. I will not tell him of course. The link that joins us attenuated long ago. Still, he will pick my mind apart.
One might get the idea that I could analyze Father's actions, discern his meaning and predict my course in his trail of facts. Not so. Because my memory would only mimic his, my future would depend on the facts he has constructed. When we meet again, he will try to lay in his facts. I would then tumble along, not on my own trail and determinism, but according to his desire and wish. He would have constructed my memory. My mind would match his and pop me through the boundary into his trappings. When I reach him, he will attempt to align my progress to his trail. I both fear and depend on it, for I exist in his memory, not in my own.
​
At camp, I discovered a circumstance that shot my amazement into the ionosphere: Fathers differ! In that space, trainees merge to share tales. Some tell of their Fathers so concerned with directing the future that they do not create pasts as mine has done. These Fathers move forward as rays unconcerned with their sources. Other Fathers concern themselves with the present only with no worries about future or past.
How different my father ‒ satisfied with the road of his life and having the same memories, relationships, ways of experiencing the cosmos, pleasures, even the views he has long held of his friends, enemies, associates, Mother and me. He holds his dozens of bodies static on the planet below. He creates only what steadies about him. He could name himself "Same as ever," and it would fit.
He says, “In making your past a copy of my own, it enhances the solidity of our planet.” No wonder I free up when gone away ‒ I try to discover my past and find nothing there, for it has stayed with him. Now, here he appears like a specter hung with ultraviolet. Gathering his space, he awaits to enfold me with his trail.
But as I approach him, I do not sense what I expect. My past remains unburdened. Could his facts simply come and go? Then, why this anticipation? I conceive these words as I drift toward him. Shouldn't I be grateful? Should I not lie in beauty on my homecoming?
Father reaches out to me from the center of his space. He expands with such welcoming that we meld, his images the primary, mine following. He takes my mind for prancing and twirls me around. Then, we drift through a tunnel he has formed of rays from our suns. He beams like the stars. "You're home," he says. Nothing about my failure at camp.
When we come out the far end of the tunnel, Mother flits near, approaching and receding as the suns make love above. She leads us into a bath of sunbeams. Hope vibrates, beauty glows, future brightens.
She had faded toward death at the hour I left for camp. Now, as she approaches, her field provides a rainbow on which she glides. On this day, the freedom drifting from Father to me infects her space. She picks up the sense of it, then floats in to join us. Clearly, Father has put the past aside or, at least, put off the maintenance of his facts.
So, here we float ‒ three beings at ease, discussing the best way to refract beams to the planet below, planning colonies of energy for the skin of our space, talking about borders and other projects. And Mother grows stronger with each moment. She drifts with us without help, feeding off the rays streaking through our space, her vibrations fine and articulate. Past forgotten; all terrible has faded away.
As the suns begin to set, we laugh, bouncing around like newborns. Mother jabbers as if she hopes to make a future of Father and me. Her wonder at his insouciance seems to urge her once again onto a route of desire.
Seemingly both pleased and puzzled by her improvement, Father's words roil into space, then circle around her uncertain of their reception. He flinches at her every joy as a lover startled to find his darling near.
Amazed by her recovery, I turn my sparkle to flitter. She glories beyond any possibility of weakness or fate. She coasts above her glen of bodies, binding us together once again, her memories apace.
She had submerged her hopes. They blossom forth now as from a slave emancipated. "I could lie in shine forever," she says, pointing toward the glow firing from the poles. "Such beauty never was before." When the ebony of our planet reaches her, she skips like an elf, her periphery bursting to include it all. Her touch skims the surface of hills and oceans and deserts. Every indent vibrates with her amusement. She smooths the grass, draws in the perfume of flowers wafting on the breeze, but when she strokes the caches where Father's body-mothers lie rubbing their tumescences, she pales.
Above each body-mother hovers an essence, just a shimmer in the air, waiting for joining with its form. Mother merges with Father, "You're going to let these essences join with bodies, aren't you?"
Father's flux frizzes, surrounding him in an aura of sparks. "Only for reason could I keep such beauty from them."
Ether-ripping accompanies Mother's next utterance. "I couldn't survive the thought of you preventing essences their joining."
Father continues to merge with her; however sternly now, "No. They are quite welcome to it. As usual, I will guide them through joining."
Mother's light dulls. She shivers. Father grows glum. What comes next I cannot abide. I engorge myself with doubt, hopeless ‒ a door in his mind creaks open, and the heaviness of our past leaks out.
Mother sinks into the cache. Before entering her bodies, she stops above their skin. She squeaks at Father. "Please gather me some glow from the poles to wake by. A small bundle will do."
Father blossoms like a sunrise. I sigh, Perhaps Mother will vibrate after all. If he gathers it now, she shall have enough to challenge the dawn. He shoots away like the dark, leaving Mother and me hanging in the wake of his facts.
Mother drops the rest of the way toward her many bodies. She begins cooing to put them to sleep. Her flux shrinks until the sphere of her could not have enclosed a drop of rain. She flutters and implores me to get Father before she fades into her bodies.
I find him just above the magnetic lines, hidden by the brilliance of the glow he has already collected. He does not move. The shine does not vary. His past streams from his flux all the way to the cache where Mother waits. He rotates slowly toward me. I stammer. “Hurry. Mother may not last without the glow.”
"Our space has enjoyed her presence.” Nothing about Mother's state of mind or her condition. Like an involute, he follows his mind toward me. He threatens me with the glow. He has read my mind. I sense his worry that I will flee his space.
Beams shoot from his core to hold me. His past lives in every shiver of energy. Like stakes driven into the hearts of blood, his facts rip my mind, and my world turns gray. I dive down and away, dragging his past like a chain. Not daring controlled descent, I fall toward our cache like flotsam. The degradation and humiliation of stumbling through facts not mine make for tough going. Only Mother's touch can secure me. I surf into the cache ahead of Father, pleading her to tell me why Father terrifies me. No response issues, for she has lapsed to inside her bodies.
All the while, Father approaches closer. I exist abject, immobilized by my question. My flux erupts like a flare from our suns. I throw my query into Mother's bodies as if they could understand. I wish that she would tell me why I have fright. I scream into her mind, “What has Father done in his past that terrifies me?”
Mother answers not. Her bodies do not move. They still in the pall of dusk. Their whine, long drawn out, fades to a whisper of a haunt. When their choiring ceases, they sigh breeze into the grass. Through their mouths, Mother says, "It is almost over."
Then, Father catches our space. He reaches out with arms of the past. My projections die. My influence shrinks to a point. Like a coward sans wits, I spin crying for him to keep away from her.
He casts the bundle of glow away. I tremble, barely sense him releasing me from his mind and turning to Mother's bodies. He becomes indistinct, silences the night with despair and whimpers as he stares through the eyes of his flesh. He moves the lips of his bodies as he tries to speak. Only blubbering comes out of their mouths. Blood dribbles from their eyes.
My flux dips into my body. I drag it around, touching Mother's bodies one after the other. None pulse, no spark comes from her many eyes. Her meat cools in the breeze.
​
After the rites, I hide in my body, for fear now shakes me. Something awful lies in Father’s mastery of our past. On the third day of misery, my uncle enters our ken. By right, he comes as our adviser and, by tradition, as our friend. I leak out into the air and eavesdrop when he speaks to Father, "Where now does Daughter keep herself?"
Something lies hidden in his question.
Ringed by sadness, Father maintains that he desires to gain that wisdom as well.
Uncle's flux skews. "Perhaps her death poses too much strain for Daughter. If you want, I'll ferret and speak with her."
Shrugging his flux, Father agrees.
Out of view, I track Uncle as he searches. He senses me, though pretends he does not, then says to some distant space that skulking around will not solve a thing. I must have sparked as obvious as light, yet I cannot talk it out. I show him my emanations. Then, I babble about my experiences at camp. He says nothing. He does not draw me out as he usually does, and soon my silences lengthen. I can contain my fear no longer; it tears from me like abnegation ‒ stink, stink ‒ “Uncle … Mother … she did … did she like … being with Father?”
Uncle's flux shades toward my meaning. "She maintained her bodies longer than we had any right to expect. She bled off Father much of the time to form her patterns. Surely, she set her life to you and him."
I bounce around helter skelter trying to figure where I stand with Uncle. Does he consider me variable? He tells me to calm down and come with him, but to hide behind his cloak. He sweeps me along to where Father hangs immobile. Uncle flicks his cloak, revealing my tremble.
Father does not speak.
Uncle says that I struggle, lost in my own mind. He claims that I share some of the dependence of Mother, the endearment that led to her fading out. All of us should have predicted her end, for she would not, or could not, construct her past, which sent her tumbling with nothing to grasp. (I have the same trait, the fault of creating only with Father's energy.) He spins his cloak. "I'm afraid the loss of Mother may have sickened Daughter. I'd like to spend some period with her. Do you approve?”
Father yeses him. But that "yes" pours out brutally, rending his energy. For an instant, his past lies nude before me, hideous enough so I flinch outward to stare at the empty sky. Yes, the empty sky ‒ as if I could put something there to view. An unpainted canvas, his facts touch it. Hopeful and threatening at the same time. If I could wield the brush, what trail would I paint?
Uncle delves deep into Father’s “yes,” then pulses violet as if he has confirmed a suspicion. He glances away. "I will take Daughter to the trainee pick-up point for her trip back and another try."
Father’s flux dims. Nothing more.
​
"Why haven't you incorporated any packages?" Uncle yells while we scud on a wave of his devise.
“Packages?”
While waiting for an ionization to manifest, we screen through each others’ fields for bits of conversation. I become bored, but Uncle animates like a sprite with a wonder to tell. He sluices through the space between us to face my contents then asks that question again.
I cannot answer. I never wondered about such a thing.
"Well, seems your education has been lacking. We will select a construct for you to absorb on your trip. That could be the beginning of your recovery."
He guides me toward the racks, fuzzy behind the platform. He seems altogether too anxious to help me select one. Solicitously, he indicates a construct called Snuffed.
I explode: Sparks, what would one do with a memory about end-of-life? That only replays Mother’s demise.
He just wants me to put it early in my mind. "A start," he says. But, where to put it? I could not find facts to bracket it. After all, Father maintains all allowed. Uncle grates his field and spews flitter. He claims all facts evince mine. "You can find or make any memory you want."
“But Father installed in me his memories. I had no choice.”
He talks about getting into my mind and sorting out facts to make sense of things. Have I moved things around, created memories, dug up stuff or thrown it away? Why, he's experienced beings making records with imagination alone for no other reason than they found memories they did not like. He tells me about those so displeased with the tales of their ancestors that they have built anew their history. These pasts became fact and part of traditions. It does not matter from where the memories have come. Only their use stands important.
Uncle's next words blank out from the compression of an arrival. He waits until it comes to a stop, then continues, "Can't find early memories to bracket a construct? Spazzz! You drag them along wherever you go. Anything that went into your mind, you can find or recreate whether it's yours or not."
Sounds like rubbish. Yet, I say I'll try even though I have no memories or trail of my own.
"You'd better. Do not end up like your Mother. She could not create her past. That weakness augured her death."
We lose connection due to static from the transport's field. As I sweep to my cushion for the trip, I barely catch Uncle's encouragement, "There's no reason you can't find or create every memory, even the earliest one."
If what he has considered could exist just halfway ‒ finding memories, taking some out I don't want hanging around, bringing in new ones and if I could reach in with deft, I could plan for yesterday without fear. I doubt it possible. As soon as Father discerned what I had done, he would swoop down the air drafts like an eagle focused on a rabbit, flood my mind with his facts, and there I would founder.
Fear drums into my space. Mother had failed to create her past. Can I succeed? How can I when the only conceptions in my mind present another’s facts? No, I’ll despair. I drag along not one fact of my own choosing.
The second half of the above story from the book Eve of Valor will post on or about 1 Sep.
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To get the book Eve of Valor: click here.