John Moralee - Future Imperfect - A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

Only when I see individual faces staring up at me, only then, do I flick my wings and soar over the cheering crowd and–

I ripped off the band, jolting out of the trance like I had been electrocuted. I was stunned. I had just seen my sister in the crowd, watching as the airwalker swooped overhead. I’d seen only a glimpse of her in passing–the briefest, intangible flash of her among the sea of faces–but it had been enough to make me positive. My sister had definitely been watching at the beginning of the performance, but what had happened to her later?

It was my first clue to solving the mystery.

It took me a minute to recover from the shock, but then I returned to the memory, re-starting it seconds before I had seen my sister.

Once more, I was inside the airwalker’s mind, soaring high over the crowd...

Three hours later, I knew what had happened to Marila that day. I needed to share my discovery with someone, but I didn’t want it to be my parents, who had returned while I was experiencing the airwalker’s memory. They had already suffered enough. They didn’t need me dredging up the past. I acted like nothing was wrong when I left my room and encountered them in the kitchen. Ava was serving them dinner.

“Are you joining us?” my mother asked.

“I ate earlier,” I said. “I’ve got some research to do at the Central Archives. Bye.”

Outside, I contacted Paulo and asked him to meet me on the Bridge of Echoes, which hung over the Great Falls, connecting the upper city to the lower one. I arrived ten minutes before my cousin showed up in his parade uniform.

“I just sneaked out of a class,” he said. “This had better be important.”

I broke the news of my suspension, then, while Paulo absorbed that revelation, I told him something far more shocking. “I know what happened to Marila, thanks to reviewing the airwalker recording.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

“My sister was in the crowd at the beginning of the show. Later on, about an hour into the recording, she left the market to get a better view from this bridge. In the recording you can clearly see her leaning over the rail, watching the dancing from up here. She did that for another hour. She was right here, where we’re standing.” I looked down over the rail. Far below, I could see the turbulent river under the Great Falls. “My sister was alone and looked like she was enjoying herself – until 127 minutes into the recording, when something creepy happened.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone else appeared on the bridge. A stranger in a black suncloak. You can see them walking towards my sister. Unfortunately, the airwalker turned its head in another direction at that point, so the actual encounter isn’t recorded. The next time you see the bridge – at 132 minutes – my sister and the stranger are gone.”

“We’ve got to tell the police. This is new evidence.”

“No,” I said. “We’ll never find out the truth if we tell anyone. We have to investigate it ourselves.”

“How?”

“We need to find more recorded memories from that day. One could provide evidence of what happened next on the bridge, like which direction the kidnapper took Marila. We’ll have to go back to the market vendor to find the source of this recording.”

“It’s getting late. The gateway shuts down in another hour. The vendor’s probably gone home already. It’s probably too late.”

“We’d better hurry.”

The twin suns were low over the canyon when we returned to the market. Most traders had closed their stalls once they had sold out. Those that were still around were packing their goods. The Karrunian memory vendor had gone. We talked to the owner of the next stall, a local Screek who had seen the Karrunian leave only twenty minutes earlier in a transport bound for the subway train to the gateways.

“Maybe it hasn’t left the planet yet,” I said to Paulo. “We could beat the train if we hire a taxi.”

Within a minute, an orange-and-black taxi dropped out of the sky, landing beside us. We boarded and paid for the flight as the craft lifted off in a cloud of vapour and dust. We flew over the city at breathtaking speed, then accelerated over the canyon to fly low across the Thork Desert.

There was nothing but sun-baked rock and red sand to the hazy horizon. We were flying at a speed that blurred the ground. We had departed ten minutes after the train, but we were still accelerating and expected to arrive ahead of it.

Nervously, I stared out of the windows, looking for the Gate Rings.

They became visible after twenty minutes.

They stood in a circle on a dry plain like an ancient Earth monument, towering over the desert floor, sixteen huge and imposing portals to other worlds. I could see transports flying in and out of the rings like a swarm of bees, racing to their destinations before the gateways shut down, stranding travellers on the wrong side.

About a kilometre from the Gate Rings, the railway emerged from underground into a dome where passengers and cargo transferred to transports waiting on the platform. Luckily, the last train had not yet appeared, so we landed and waited for it to come out of the subway tunnel.

We didn’t wait long. The train emerged thirty seconds later. Servitors started unloading cargo as soon as it stopped. A large number of humans and aliens exited the carriages, making it far harder to spot a mirrored knight with four arms than you’d expect.

We located the transport heading for Karru and waited by it. I spotted a Karrunian in the crowd.

“Is that it?”

“No,” Paulo said. “Different visor. Karrunians belong to clans with different face-plates. The one we are looking for it from the Ru Clan. It has a crescent engraving.”

“How do you know that?”

“Navy graduates have to know all kinds of things. We are the peacekeepers of our galaxy, so we need to study every culture possible.”

A Karrunian was approaching with a servitor carrying a black cargo box.

“Is that it?”

“Yes,” Paulo said.

We approached the alien before it boarded.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you remember me? I bought a disk from you this morning.”

“No refunds,” it said, its head-hands flapping in agitation.

“I don’t want that,” I said. “I want more recordings from the Traliad troupe on the same day. Do you have any?”

“I do not have time for business,” it said, trying to pass.

Paulo blocked its way. “I’ll pay you well.”

The Karrunian ordered the servitor to stop. Then it opened the cargo box, containing thousands of disks in a compact barrel-shaped storage unit. Its large arms removed a segment and the smaller ones selected disks from it.

“Six recordings. Only copies.”

It named an exorbitant price, way beyond my means.

Paulo didn’t haggle. He paid the full amount. The Karrunian boarded the transport waving its head-hands like it was very happy.

“Well, I’m broke,” Paulo said. “I hope these recordings are worth it.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving him a hug. “Don’t worry about the money. I’ll pay for the train back to Canyon Falls.”

“Gee! How generous!”

It was after midnight when I got home. I was too old to have a curfew, but my parents were waiting up for me like I’d sneaked out to a hardcore narco club. Their faces were grim. My father glared.

“Veya, where have you been all night?”

I’d been at Paulo’s apartment studying the airwalker disks, looking for clues to what had happened to my sister. But I didn’t want my parents involved in my amateur detective work. Not yet. I didn’t want to give them false hope. “I went to the archives. Then I hung out with Paulo, Dad.”