Sci-fi fantasy
Date Published: 01-19-2022
Publisher: Indies United
In 2045 America is ruled by ‘The Brain’. It’s a country of dried-up rivers, computer project educations, holographs, and robots. Most species have died off and even fresh air is scarce. Children don’t form bonds and therefore can’t love. They become drones – dangerous killers. The answer lies on a road in Pindar Corners but to find it is to risk the loss of your soul.
In need of a hero, Harry Erin Cooper steps up to the plate and, along with his wife, Adina, they restore what should have been.
My last memory from that time?
That I was never to return to it.
As I ran to the rhythm of my
breath, the beat of my heart provided the music of being alive. I took a hill,
not as bad as it looked; steep but short. Chestnut was a single-lane road that
cut through the back of town and led me onto Bishop Farm, where I picked up
Maple Lane.
Dotted with sugar maples,
Maple Lane wound out ahead of me, and like a lazy letter S, it snaked around
for two long shaded miles. The sycamore trees had limbs that reached across the
sky like Rorschach spills. The sweat on my back saturated my T-shirt, clinging
like a second skin. The road had been nothing but dirt for over a hundred
years; though the town kept threatening to pave it, they probably never will. A
good part of the trail was a long narrow easement that took me past a mile of
farmland. The dirt kicked up a gentle cloud of dust under my feet, soft and
dry. The smell of freshly hoed hay and country pine lingered in the air.
Maple Lane begins and ends at Pindar
Corners, a fork in the road with a blinking light. I picked up Robin’s Nest
Road from there, turning left at the traffic signal, as I always did. How many
times? I’m not sure. But I do know this, or thought I did: Robin’s Nest is the
road I lived on with my wife, Adina, and our children, Teddy, who was eight at
the time and Lindsey, who hadn’t yet turned six.
The scent of flower gardens
hit me like a perfumed galaxy, overwhelmingly intense, from the abundance of
flowers hidden behind picket fences and green bristly privacy bushes, odiferous
and colorful. I saw irises, lilies and peonies that tilted in the breeze and
slipped their scents toward me with flirtatious artistry.
Hundreds of times, I have
picked up fragrances whispering from the mountains. You see, for me, one of the
pleasures of jogging on a country road was catching smells. Even running
through traces of horse manure carried in the wind, or the mysterious scents of
unrecognizable plants and animals just behind the weeds, scents like that thrilled
me. Might be perceived as such a small thing but it isn’t, not when sweet,
scented air was such a new thing for me.
I breathed in deeply. I took
in passionflower vines climbing up trellises, a cacophony of color. Sometimes I
can catch freshly cut grass and the sizzled scent of meat lingering on a
barbeque, whetting my appetite for lunch.
Robin’s Nest Road is paved and
wide, and I liked it because it dead-ends; the only drivers who take it know
exactly where they’re going, and trucks are rare. Sometimes, I could run right
down the middle with my arms outstretched. Feeling good for me was sweating
hard ... feeling good for me was pushing up the last half mile, knowing I'd
make it.
Jogging kept me centered ─
going at my own pace, my thoughts a free association of expression. No race to
win, just moving through the silence of my mind, despite the rare chatter of
birds or the occasional challenge of estival winds.
The only smells picked up back
in New York City were mornings drenched in the stench of garbage and the
rancid, putrid odor of the homeless inhabitants who lined the streets of
midtown. I tried not to think about that because I was one of the lucky ones: I
wasn’t there. And I was where I was because of the foresight of a man a lot
smarter than I am. I was in Pindar Corners. A place you might want to be a
hundred years from now, or maybe a hell of a lot sooner.
The reasons why I was there,
in Pindar Corners, were too complex to fathom. Mistakes too great to lament.
There was no sense dwelling on the past at all. Best to just breathe in deeply
and try to let it go. Besides, there was nothing we could have done about it.
No, nothing. Just concentrate on the aroma of gardenias, orchids and the
delirium of lilac, and forget about everything else. We still had flowers, some
species of birds, animals like skunks and rodents. We had life, and most of
all, we had the solace and the surety of Pindar Corners.
However, the luxury of
forgetting was the one thing I couldn’t accomplish. I was a generation too late
for that. And as I jogged that day, the sound of a distant gunshot jarred the
aromatic titillation of my senses. So loud, it practically threw me off my
feet. It certainly wasn’t hunting season. I knew that well enough, but there
were those who didn’t give a damn about laws. Could have been someone wanting
to frighten off a black bear. Then again, plenty of people liked target
shooting in their back yards. It might have been some bored jerk shooting cans
off a fence. Or it might have been one of the children. I don’t think I was
able to let in that fear. As far as I knew, there had only been one murder in
Pindar Corners committed by a child. Maybe the shot I heard was just random and
unintentional. That was my thought that day: that was my prayer.
About the Author
At the age of fifty Jane began to write novels. Some of her titles include Dancing Backward in Paradise, winner of an Eric Hoffer Award for publishing excellence and an Indie Excellence Award for notable new fiction, 2007. The Story of Sassy Sweetwater and Dancing Backward in Paradise received 5 Star ForeWord Clarion Reviews and The Story of Sassy Sweetwater was named a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards. She has published in ESL Magazine, Christopher Street Magazine and has written early childhood curriculum for Weekly Reader and McGraw Hill.
Jane still lives on the upper west side of Manhattan right near Riverside Park where she takes her delightful dogs for a jog, Peanut and Carly. She comes home to her spouse of thirty years and her two cats, Sassy and Sweetie Pie.
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