Present Perfect?
Flash Fiction, but not from the Vault...
A series of Flash Fiction stories.
Present Perfect?
Daniels resisted the hot desert wind. His boots crunched on orange sand while the emergency crews gathered behind him: firefighters, including Lee; paramedics beside Emma; and police officers with Sergeant Jenkins.
Mara, still cloaked, gestured towards the ridge. “Come. The caves stay cooler.”
Beyond the rise, the ground fell into shadow. Cave mouths punctured a short cliff face. Solar cloth stretched over them like black awnings. Children collected water from wind-driven moisture catchers.
Within the rough stone chamber, unmatched chairs, cushions, and carpets formed a discordant but welcoming room. Mara pointed. “Sit. Refreshments will follow.”
Daniels stood. “Mara, what created Continuity?”
Mara unwound the scarf from her head. White hair tumbled across her shoulders. “You did.”
Jenkins bristled. “We just arrived.”
Mara glanced at everyone. “Smith-Haven built systems to control speech. We all enforced them.” She stared at Daniels. “People who believed themselves to be lawful or faithful let it happen.”
Daniels’s frown shifted from anger to introspection. Guilt weighed on his conscience.
Mara watched him. “You remember the protest?”
Faces returned to him. An old man stabbing a finger through the air. A woman clutching a complaint form. Two youths shouting insults at each other. Noise.
“The pyramid came down,” he said. “We took shelter.”
“You sequestered authorised personnel into hardened reporting units.”
“I followed emergency procedure. Fix your own oxygen mask first.”
“You left everyone else outside. Continuity begins when authority decides only compliant lives matter.”
Daniels drew the baton. “Can this take everyone back to when the meteor arrived?”
“You have to want it, Elias. You have to choose it. The pyramid is truth. It doesn’t dictate an outcome. It only shows you the way.”
Jenkins shook his head and his fist. “No! Send us home to that moment in time. Why? If we stay outside—then what? We could die. We can’t respond if we’re dead.”
Daniels frowned. “If everyone else dies, Sergeant, then who are we responding to? Who are we responsible for?”
“Ourselves, Captain. Me, I can only do me.”
“So, you’re not your brother’s keeper?”
Daniels stepped into the desert’s orange glow. Jenkins caught his arm. “I can’t let you.”
His wide eyes did not shine. They deepened to black.
“He’s a drone!”
Daniels remembered how Jenkins shimmered in the portal.
Could Continuity in Neo Smith-Haven have—
He didn’t have time to complete the thought.
Mara shot Jenkins.
He slumped.
Not a bullet—sparks arched around his twitching form. Not a simple Taser either.
“You killed him?” Lee asked.
“You can’t kill what is already dead.” Mara pointed to the blackness that oozed from Jenkins’s chest—oily and mechanical. “Clean up!” She called to her soldiers. “Isolate the nanites before they can reassemble.”
She looked at Daniels, at Emma, at Lee.
“Go!”
Daniels opened the portal once more and crossed the threshold.
Grey light replaced copper.
He emerged beside Smith-Haven Park as the stone pyramid’s point pierced the ground. The crowd screamed and scattered across the avenue. Behind him stood the Cluster, its armoured pods waiting.
Emma, Lee, and the others poured through after him.
Daniels waved. “Open every pod. Public access. Override the locks. Keep broadcasting for as long as the network holds. Let everyone see this.”
He turned towards the crowd.
A man who accused three strangers of speech violations now dragged an injured woman from the road. The old complainant stood frozen beneath the falling stone. A child cried beside an overturned barrier.
The pyramid slowed as it descended into the earth. Its mass ruptured the protected cabling and data centres buried deep beneath the park. Power arced as the feedback surged through the city.
Daniels ran.
Behind him, the alarms rose across Smith-Haven, no longer recording accusations but broadcasting a message:
Run to your neighbours. Not from them.
Community.
Great story!