Tag: Special Correspondents Lottery

A Novella in The Fundamentals Universe

When he found his dead parents, he had wished that he had been there earlier. He wished that he would have skipped school that day, would have come home earlier, not spent that extra five minutes flirting with the girls in homeroom. Ever since that day, he felt like he was just missing out, just a minute late, just a second too slow to make a difference.

Now he wished that he had missed it all. He folded the plastic bag between his fingers, so it formed a rigid edge, then used the bag to gather the red and white space dust into a pile. Making the lines were part of the ritual. His face grew flush. He shouldn’t do this.

Scoop to a pile, then separate. His groin pulled in anticipation. He wished someone was here to share the experience. He pushed the lines apart. Three of them, just as he planned. Do the short one first, to take the edge off. A few minutes later, when the dust had erased the guilt, he would do the second. That would get him high. He would go outside, stare at the launch tower, get one last look at that nighttime sky. Then he would come in and do the third line. A big line. Enough to overdose, enough to end up like his parents. Something clicked inside him. A click like the sound of those doors opening at the Exposition Coliseum.

A Novella in The Fundamentals Universe

Emily smacked her lips, fresh lipstick, an invitation to something that had to wait. Ryan groaned. They shouldn’t have done that, but at that moment he was glad they did. He thought Emily would leave Kitty and she would come back to Austin. Now he knew otherwise.

He snatched the bag of space dust from the pillow, opened it. Part of Rainbows charm was the fragrance, sweet, like candy. Emily smelled the same. He poured the contents of the bag onto the nightstand. The red and white powder sparkled against the dark wood. It reminded him of the parking lot where they met Marcus.

Marcus’s fire engine red minivan was two parking spaces away. He leaned against the van, brushing his horseshoe mustache. “Bomboncita,” he lifted Emily and spun her. She kissed his cheeks until he put her down.

“What is this?” Emily said, looking in the windows of the minivan.

Ryan pointed to the dent in the rear quarter panel.

Marcus waved him off. “My minivan,” he said to Emily. “This is the project I was telling you about before you left Austin. I finished her this year. Isn’t she beautiful?”

A Novella in The Fundamentals Universe

If he had missed that train, he wouldn’t have seen Kitty again, wouldn’t have hooked-up with Emily, wouldn’t have witnessed a man cut in two with a laser scalpel. If he had missed that train, he wouldn’t have been there to carry Emily away from the carnage at the lottery, and The Viking wouldn’t be trying to frame him for that carnage.

He should have missed the train, should have been excluded from the lottery because he was late to Earth Channel One’s tower. But once through the security line, a woman in a skintight white jumpsuit asked if he needed help finding his party.

“I am here for the Special Correspondent’s Lottery,” he said, showing her his ticket.

“They are boarding a train to the spaceport. If you hurry, you should catch it,” she said, pointing to the far end of the tower.

The maglev platform was full of reporters trying to load camera drone crates into the cramped cabins of the train. He took a chance, relieved himself in the station’s public restroom, then slid on as the last passenger.

A Novella in The Fundamentals Universe

The Terra Channel’s office was in Education Corporation’s downtown Austin campus. The campus had a short running trail looping its perimeter. Most mornings Ryan lapped the other joggers on the trail. His tall frame and long legs gave him the edge. At one in the morning, the trail was empty. The space dust dealer worked the trail near the interchange. He turned off the running trail for a sidewalk that cut through the heart of the empty campus. Best to avoid temptation.

Not so easy when a bag of Rainbows is lying in front of you like a mint on a hotel’s pillow. The Viking knew he was a junkie. But how? He didn’t have a record. He limited his public profile to the work he did at TTC. But here was a bag of Rainbows.

Rainbows was the perfect mix of space dust. Half-way between a rocket-ship and a hibernate, it was an amazing trip. You entered a psychedelic wonderland where the grass talked to you, and the clouds came out of the sky to be your friend. Space dust wasn’t special, it’s just phencyclidine—PCP—but mixed with a narcotic or an amphetamine.

You could go down or up with space dust; hibernate, or rocket-ship, your choice. What made space dust special was that if you went up or down you had the same experience. The problem was that once you rode the rocket-ship; you needed a hibernate to come down without getting sick. And if you went out like a bear, the pain of moving again made you crave rocket-ship. Addicts claimed they had mastered the art of managing the space dust cycle, and Ryan was a professional addict.

A Novella in the Fundamentals Universe

What you can’t imagine is worse than the imagining. Ryan Jameson couldn’t have imagined the events of the past day, that they would lead him to this cabin in the New Mexico spaceport to face his demon. Yet here he was, staring at the red glittery substance that was his downfall, Rainbows, his favorite mix of space dust.

One line and he would unsee everything he had seen in the past four hours, two and he would forget the pain, three and he would be a junkie again. Being a junkie was easy. Running an affiliate of the Public News Network was hard. He liked easy.

A month or more of covering the First Expedition Crossing from the Santa Maria was the break The Terra Channel needed. He could be the star of the ‘A’ block, or he could be a junkie. The Viking wanted him to be a junkie, take the fall for what happened at the lottery. That plastic bag on the pillow was an invite. A temptation he wouldn’t be considering if he had not accepted that first invite, the one to the Special Correspondents Lottery.