The Black Seas of Infinity
Read The Black Seas of Infinity Online
Authors: Dan Henk
Tags: #Science Fiction, #post apocalyptic, #pulp action adventure, #apocalypse, #action adventure, #Horror
A PERMUTED PRESS book
Published at Smashwords
ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-467-7
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-466-0
Black Seas of Infinity
copyright © 2015
by Daniel Henk
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Daniel Henk
This
book
is
a
work
of
fiction
.
People
,
places
,
events
,
and
situations
are
the
product
of
the
author’s
imagination
.
Any
resemblance
to
actual
persons
,
living
or
dead
,
or
historical
events
,
is
purely
coincidental
.
No
part
of
this
book
may
be
reproduced
,
stored
in
a
retrieval
system
,
or
transmitted
by
any
means
without
the
written
permission
of
the
author
and
publisher
.
To Monica Henk. My late wife who always believed in
me.
Cover painting and interior illustrations by Dan
Henk.
Editorial maestro Karl Monger.
Editor for Permuted Press Matthew Baugh
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VIII A LITTLE SNAG IN THE PLAN
X
THE FIRST TASTE OF SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
XII
EVEN MORE OF THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS
XIV
THE TROUBLES WITH ILLEGAL EMIGRATION
XVI
NEITHER MOUNTAIN NOR RIVER NOR ALL THE KING’S MEN?
ILLUSTRATIONS
BURIED IN THE BUNKER
IN THE WOODS
THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE
THE KEY BRIDGE
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
GUERILLAS IN THE MIST
THE RUINS
LOST IN SPACE
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
The highway is black. Ebony asphalt made
darker by a moonless night. A slight breeze wafts, but there are no
signs of life. Trees surround me on all sides. Or maybe they are
hills. Hard to tell in the twilight. I think it’s cold out. It’s
autumn, and I register the temperature, but I no longer feel its
effects.
My whole life I’ve had an agenda. Now that
I’ve accomplished it, I don’t know how to start again. I need time
to think, time to plan. Everything has been so hectic for so long.
Fortunately, for now, much of the world is still wilderness. I can
disappear? At least for a while.
I no longer feel a real kinship toward man.
Not that I ever did, but now it’s even more striking. I still have
to deal with him—he’s at the height of technology on this tiny
planet, after all—I just have to figure out how. It’s not as though
I can just waltz into some nearby metropolis and get a job. Not
without a human face. I look down at my sleeve. It glistens, slick
and black. The bloodstains? One more thing to take care of,
although realistically, it’s the least of my problems.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND
In college, I majored in engineering, with a
concentration in robotics. Not because I loved math or engineering,
although I did well enough in them. I think what sparked my
interest was my love of mythology and science fiction. I devoured
everything from comic books and fantasy movies to incredible
fiction and art. I always wanted to be immortal, like the heroes
and gods I read about. I had the idea of building a robot body. It
seems like such a delusional little kid’s fantasy now, but at the
time I seriously debated how to transfer my essence into this
lifeless machine. I tried to think it through scientifically. Would
I, as a cold, electronic system, still experience human emotions
and feelings? Would I retain whatever it was that made me a unique
individual? I figured I would build it first and iron out the
details later. I was that kid that took apart all the electronics
in the house. I’d pull open the VCR and then try and figure out how
it worked. I even did a ninth grade science project on mechanical
prosthetics, thinking I was well on my way. A little more
education, some trial-and- error experimentation, and I’d be set. I
worked out charts on notebook paper, incorporating everything from
parts I could get at Radio Shack to stuff straight out of the
movies that I was sure would be invented any day now.
I didn’t think it mattered what I did to my
body—smoke, drink, take drugs, whatever. The flesh was but a
temporary shell, the best yet to come. Reality reared its ugly head
in college, or maybe even earlier. I had rumblings, black thoughts
that I tried to shut out with conscious assertions of optimism. But
the hard facts eventually overwhelmed me. Technology was just not
able to meet the expectations my imagination imposed on it.
Besides, even if it could be advanced by leaps and bounds, given
private, isolated research with the best of materials, who would
fund it? Where was the commercial potential? Who, except for a few
decrepit CEOs, really wanted to live forever?
I was floundering, searching for meaning, a
goal in life, when the government hired me fresh out of college.
They told me they wanted me to build “surveillance droids” for the
military—to send into caves looking for militants and that kind of
shit. That wasn’t the real reason they hired me, although it wasn’t
apparent that first year. They had to check me out first. Then it
all came crashing down, and I wasn’t floundering anymore. I was far
too fascinated. They had hired me to investigate crashed alien
spacecraft! How they thought a degree in robotics transferred to
dissecting alien spacecraft is beyond me, but they gave me work,
not to mention a new outlook on life. The pay wasn’t great, but
that was beside the point because the access to extraterrestrial
technology was all that mattered. I was in heaven, a boy lost in a
toy store. If it were within my means, I probably would have paid
them.
I’d encountered a few conspiracy theories,
and they all seemed to center on some secret, shadowy government
agenda to breed a master race. That would have been far cooler than
the truth. The real scoop, in a sense trumping all the conspiracy
theories, was that the government was incompetent. Imagine how it
would be if the DMV ran everything. Now imagine there were several
DMVs, all suspicious of one another and playing manipulative games
to camouflage their mundane objectives. It reminded me of some
overwritten science fiction plot from the ’80s, filled with all the
drama, strange characters, petty intrigues, and other crazy
bullshit that keeps most things from being accomplished in a timely
fashion.
As peons in the military complex we were in
way over our heads. We were unable to comprehend even the basics of
lift and drag, much less the tools that countered or engaged it.
And the funny thing is we were the experts! I couldn’t imagine what
the government’s grand scheme was. Protect us from attack? Enhance
our current understanding of technology? Build the ultimate weapon?
I’m not sure there even was a plan. Maybe just having something
unexplained was reason enough to create a new agency, demand a
budget, and pretend to investigate. The military was involved, at
least the air force and army anyway, but they always performed low
level grunt work, like guarding facilities, securing crash sites.
The NSA signed our checks, but beyond that, who knew? I don’t even
think most figureheads knew what we were doing. Or if someone high
up—for example, the president—knew, he had no idea what to do with
it. We were the black sheep, the necessary embarrassment. We kept
toiling away, trying to figure out what these visitors wanted, why
they were coming to what for them must be some backwater planet
populated by ignorant natives.
It was impossible to decipher all the barely
legible clues. We found several races, each with different
languages, and there appeared to be several planets involved. Or
they might have all been from the same planet, one with different
races, languages, and technologies. Perhaps they were here for
observation. It certainly wasn’t about warfare. If they had wanted
to wipe us out, they could have done so easily.
The one cliché aspect of the whole “men in
black” thing that did prove true was the high level of secrecy.
Everyone was under constant surveillance. Our only real friends
were one another, if you could call our fucked up working
relationships friendships. Everyone was overly nice on the surface,
but an undercurrent of tension and suspicion tugged at the corners.
And sometimes people vanished. No one really talked about it. We
all seemed to assume, or at least I did, that they must have
screwed up. Or fucked with the wrong person. Not to mention,
whoever disappeared seemed to be acting strangely, all nervous and
guarded, right beforehand. At least that was most of the time.
Sometimes a perfectly average co-worker simply stopped showing up
for work. It didn’t happen that often, but often enough to keep
tensions ratcheted. There was a kind of unspoken code of silence.
You didn’t know, you didn’t want to know, and you really hoped you
wouldn’t be next.
