What I wrote in 2016

I'm making a note here of the short stories I had published in 2016 for those of you who are planning to nominate for the Nebulas, Hugos or any other similar recognition.

My novel "Another Girl, Another Planet" was published after the start of the year, so it's not eligible this year - although, of course, I strongly recommend you buy it!

Here is the rundown of my nine short stories published in 2016:

1. “Captain of the Clouds” – Aurora Wolf, January 2016

The year started out right with the publication of my alternate history "Captain of the Clouds" on January 1st by the ezine Aurora Wolf.

"The Second Confederacy used unremarkable biplanes to patrol the border, but the greater Texas Republic used helium-filled dirigibles on its side of the Mississippi River—and Billy Greer knew each one by sight.

"The airship on patrol that summer along the Mississippi-Louisiana border in 1936 was the Gov. Ferguson. During the summer Billy and his friends would wait every afternoon to see it float past Natchez.  This afternoon, though, Billy was alone.  Some of his friends had been distracted by a report of a dead cat run over on a nearby street.  Billy took advantage of being alone to do something he’d been wanting to do for a long time."

The POD in this alternate history is that the great Spanish Flu epidemic after World War I carried off a third of the U.S. population as opposed to maybe three percent in real life (one-third off all Americans did get sick, so the one-third figure is not unreasonable if the flue had been universally fatal).

As a result of the great death toll the U.S. falls apart into a number of smaller entities, with both the Confederacy as well as the Republic of Texas rising again.

The "trick" in the story is when you realize who the "Captain of the Clouds" is in our timeline.

INSPIRATION: "Captain of the Clouds" was both a patriotic movie and song title from 1942.

You can read the story online here.



2. “Higher Powers” – Sci-Phi Journal, February 2016

He read the label on the wall:

“Warning: Maximum life support duration for escape pod: 72 hours.”

It was now more than 80 hours since he fell into the pod as the ship decompressed.

Reeves looked around.

“Is there anybody out there?” he said softly.

Running into a black string was the only thing that could have caused such a sudden and catastrophic ship failure. The only reason he was alive was that he was adjacent to an escape pod when the alarm sounded.

It was hard to believe, as fast as the ship was destroyed, that any emergency beacons were deployed. There was no sign anyone else escaped. No com chatter, no signs of other pods.

He was all alone with no hope of rescue.

One of my few forays into space-based stories of any sort, "Higher Powers" was published on Leap Day, Feb. 29. In it, I explain how an alien race might regard the human ritual of prayer.

INSPIRATION: The hymn "This World Is Not My Home" - referenced in the story.

You can read it online here

3. “The Milky Way Dance Hall” – Decision Points anthology. May 2016

Light pollution.

We didn’t have any of it back then.  

Heck, we were lucky to have lights.  I was still in junior high school when the REA ran electricity to the farms in Franklin County.

When I was in high school, there really wasn’t anything for teenagers to do there.  Drive-in movies were popular, but we were much too small to have one.  The nearest was one county over, in Mount Pleasant.

There was absolutely nothing in between the two cities. There weren’t even any farms; the power company held the land for the lignite underneath.  So it was completely black, and boy, did the stars shine at night.


There was this one farm-to-market road than ran through that wilderness, between us and Mount Pleasant.  Late at night, after all the adults thought us teenagers were in bed, a bunch of us would sneak out there.  It was the flattest stretch of road anyone had ever seen--smooth as a glass dance floor. And that’s what we used it for.  

Picked up by Bryan Thomas Schmidt for his YA themed anthology "Decision Points", in keeping with the theme, it tells of a fateful night when a teenager on a date must make a painful decision in the wake of an alien encounter.

INSPIRATION: Personal anecdote told to me by Ralph K. Banks, who is credited in the introduction to the story.

You can buy the book here.

4. “Lone Star, Lost Star” – Fiction on the Web, July 31, 2016

I was standing almost smack dab in the middle of State Line Avenue, looking across the street at the Baptist bookstore - where I had parked - with a six pack of Coors in my hand, when Texas disappeared. 

I am quite familiar with what happened, yes. 

If I hadn't had to wait for a car to pass, I would have already been on the Texas side of the street when it happened. I hold the record for the person who was closest to Texas who didn't disappear with it. 

I was so shocked I almost fell into the abyss, but the enormous thunderclap that accompanied its disappearance as the vacuum collapsed knocked me backwards flat on my ass. I clutched the ground face down as the wind rushed in to fill the empty space. The beer went flying and one can rolled towards the car that had just passed me. 

The driver came to a tire-squealing stop. The car was buffeted as the wind rushed past into the space where Texas had been. I lay as flat as I could and clutched the asphalt. 

After what seemed like forever - but was really only a couple of minutes - the wind subsided. The driver looked shocked as he exited the passenger side. He looked over his roof and then looked at me. 

"What the fuck just happened?" he asked. 

People were streaming out of the shopping plaza on the Arkansas side of the street, including the liquor store I had just left, and rushing to the edge of the vast empty space. 

As we found out later, everything that had been Texas was gone down to a depth of 150 feet below sea level. 

This story was written as a submission for an anthology with the theme "No shit, I was there", but wasn't picked up. Instead it was published by the U.K. based ezine Fiction on the Web.

INSPIRATION: Anthology theme.

You can read it online here.

5. “The Yellow Flag” – Sci-Phi Journal, August 2016

Chris looked around into the darkness. “Something is out there.”

“Grab the camera,” said Pete, as he began to wave a hand-held detector around.

When Chris came back to him, Pete pointed. “Whatever it is, it’s that way. Turn on the camera light.”

The paid began to walk across the tall prairie grass. Pete frowned as the signal grew stronger and louder.

“This is like a reading for an electrical power plant,” he said. “You sure there’s nothing out here?”

“The nearest ranch is over 20 miles away,” said Chris. “This is protected federal prairie land. It took me six months just to get the camping permit.”

“What the fuck is that!!!” Pete shouted.

Chris froze and let the camera fall off his shoulder.

Ahead of them, a dull reddish glowing disc-like object rose into the dark sky.

“Run!” Chris shouted.

They turned, but didn’t get far.

This is the story I wrote, submitted and had accepted in four hours, a record which I think will be hard to break. It offers a plausible - and to some people, obvious - answer to the Fermi Paradox.

This was also my 100th published short story since 2003.

INSPIRATION: Fermi's Paradox.

You can read it online here.

6. “And He Threw His Hands Up in the Air” – Siren’s Call, No. 28 August 2016

Modern civilization started in ancient Mesopotamia about 10,000 BC -- you read that in a history book, didn’t you?  That was about the time agriculture was invented, too, wasn’t it?

Allow me to set the record straight for you -- although no one would believe what I’m about to tell you if you repeated it.  Oh, about 10,000 BC, maybe we could say civilization was restarted,  and agriculture was reintroduced.  I should know--I was there when it stopped in the first place.

In fact I was an eyewitness.

Talk about agriculture --our office park sat in a beautiful green valley; from my observation post I could see corn flowers across the highway, and cattle grazing in a nearby field.

The mutated descendants of those cattle were among the few animals that survived the devastation caused by the war.  They grew gnarled and woolly to survive to survive the nuclear winter; it still pains me to see an American bison, even if only on a nickel.

Another one of my secret histories about Atlantis and ancient civilizations, this short tale explains how the image of The Burning Man is embedded in our subconscious.

INSPIRATION: The Burning Man Festival.

You can download a PDF of the issue here.

7. “Time Like a Rope” – Silver Blade magazine, October 2016

Time is like a rope.  –  Ray Bradbury

This is a story about how I traveled along a loop in the rope of time. It starts with what I was told by the little old lady in Pasadena.

Okay, I know you are hearing that Jan and Dean tune in your head. No, it wasn’t that little old lady. Yes, she was a little old lady, but she was English, and I met her in Pasadena, Texas. It’s a suburb of Houston, where I grew up. I was fresh out of the UT journalism school, on my first newspaper job. They didn’t trust me with any hard news stories back then.

The managing editor called me over to his desk. “We have a local hookup with the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic,” he said. “There’s a woman living here now who is a survivor of the sinking.”

“Wow, how old is she?”

“She’s 82. She was saved in a lifeboat with her English family. She later married a petroleum engineer and moved to Texas. She didn’t like to talk about her experience on the Titanic while her husband was alive—she said it bothered him to hear about it—but she’s widowed now and living alone in Pleasant Estates.“

“That’s a real link to history,” I said.

He handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s her address and phone number. Her name is Nancy Atkins.”

The sinking of the Titanic is one of those events we keep going back to. In this case, I composed a tail biter of a story where the narrator realizes by the end he is just one strand in that rope of time.

INSPIRATION: The Ray Bradbury quote that starts the story.

You can read it online here.

8. "Three Twilight Zone Variations on a High School Reunion" - 3rd Spectral Book of Horror Stories, Oct. 31, 2016

He faced the fountain in the center of the atrium.  "It was sitting right over there that Joyce dumped me." 

The retired teacher knitted her brow.  "Joyce Mann?" 

The author grimaced.  "Sho 'nuff, Mrs. Lennon.  That's the reason I went to college in Texas, rather than staying close to home," he said.  “I wanted a change of scenery.”

She looked at him.  “It must have hurt.”

“A lot,” he said.  “It still does.”

He walked briskly across the atrium.  “And I remember how, when we both stood up, we were both so mad, and she took off in one direction, and I went the opposite way, and when I rounded the corner...”

"Stop!" shouted the teacher.  “There’s scaffolding!” 

The author struck his head on a protruding plank, and fell to the ground unconscious.

An uncommon foray for me into the peripheries of horror, this is really very much a Twilight Zone-type ghost story - the ghosts being teenage angst. Joseph Rubas picked this up for his U.K.-based horror anthology.

INSPIRATION: A real visit I made to my old high school in 2013

You can purchase it here.

9. “If You Were a Dinah Shore, My Love” – Gallery of Curiosities podcast, Dec. 26, 2016

Jack was seething.
 
The other nightclub owners always said he was a two-bit.
 
He’d been trying to get some respect from the Dallas mob for 16 years – with no success.
 
“Big Boy” Louie Campari had just dropped in for drink. On the way out, he looked at Jack’s “Teresa Brewer” on the stage.
 
The clone was warbling “A Sweet Old-Fashioned Girl.”
 
Campari sneered.
 
“Couldn’t afford anything better, eh?”
 
Jack watched him walk away, and clutched his fists in barely suppressed anger.
 
The son-of-a-bitch was right. He couldn’t afford someone from the top ranks of entertainment.
 
A Doris Day clone, or a Patti Page clone. Now THAT would be class.
 
He didn’t have the money.

Basically a feghoot played off the title of another spec fic story from a a few years ago that I really got sick of hearing about, I decided to exorcise the original title by writing a flash story to purge it from my brain.

Ironically, it turned out pretty good, and was sold to the Curious Gallery podcast, and so became my first original publication via podcast.

INSPIRATION: Rachel Swirsky's story, "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" - obviously.

It was the second story in a double bill; you can listen to it here. My story starts at 19:30.

"On a Spiritual Plain"

It's just about three weeks until the end of voting for the Hugo awards. I took some time Friday and made a video of myself reading "On a Spiritual Plain", if you would like to hear the story read by the author his own self. This takes 20 minutes.

(I picked the most quiet place I could find read it, which was the newspaper morgue room - which in our case happens to be an old bank vault.)

On a Spiritual Plain

The deadline for The Hugo Awards nominations is March 10. My story, "On a Spiritual Plain", which was published in issue No. 2 of Sci-Phi Journal last year, is on the Sad Puppies recommended reading slate. Here is is:

---

The alien cleric gestured for us to come closer.  I pressed my back up against his bulk, and drew my knees under my chin.  "Thank you," I said simply.

Around us, the various clan groups were drawing together--their masses the only thing breaking the gray monotony of the planet’s polar plain.  Ymilans on pilgrimage traditionally slept clustered together--including ghosts of the dead.  The spirit of Joe McDonald stared at Dergec and me, still somewhat uncomfortable by what was going on.  I beckoned to him. "C'mon, Joe, you're with us," I said.

The ghost of the dead human scooted over to us.   He sidled up beside me, his back against the Ymilan cleric.  Dergec became dormant--Ymilans really don't sleep in the human sense--and I eventually began to drift off myself.   Joe didn’t move.  I didn’t know if he was asleep.  Do the dead sleep?   Can the dead sleep?

#

Compared to Earth, Ymilas has an energetic planetary core, and the planet has a very strong magnetic field.   Its ionosphere is constantly permeated with brilliant auroras.

The planet, however, is spectacularly bereft of minerals useful to Terrans, and there would be no reason to visit it, except for it being near a wormhole.

Some Terrans also find the Ymilans interesting.

Unlike Earth, Ymilas has only one sentient life form.  The Ymilans have a low-tech highly-ritualized culture.  Their religion is genuinely unique because the living and the spirits of the dead coexist side by side.

Dergec is the chief cleric of the continent where our Terran base is located.  After my posting there as Base Chaplain, we spoke frequently and found a surprising amount of common ground.   The Ymilans believe--as do many Terran religions--that each individual has a spark of an eternal extra-dimensional over-arching consciousness that is imbued in each of them at birth and ultimately returns to a higher dimensional plane when the physical form is no longer viable.

I told him we call it the “soul”.

They also know--I won’t say believe because the evidence was obvious on Ymilas--that while alive we develop an electromagnetic imprint as a result of the experiences of life that survives after death.  I told Dergec an ancient Terran religion had the same belief, and in fact built elaborate pyramids and tombs filled with personal belongings to keep those spirits happy.

The ancient Egyptians called that type of a spirit the “Ba”.  The Ymilans call them Helpful Ancestors, and they are considered part of one’s extended family.

I explained Earth’s weak magnetic field apparently allows most of our spirits to dissipate, “Although there were many cultures on Earth that believed their ancestors were a part of their everyday lives," I said.  "But you couldn't interact with them."

 "But are you sure of that?" said Dergec, with the Ymilan equivalent of a smile. “Don’t you have a type of literature called The Ghost Story?”

He was smart as well as wise.

#

This first Terran base had less than 50 people.  Because of the isolation and sparse conditions, it was traditional for the Service to “suggest” a posting to the planet.

Although most people went along with being “volunteered”, after the suggestion was made I agreed willingly.  I was single and so nobody else had to suffer with me; I thought it would be worthwhile experience for a young Methodist minister.

Dergec was always polite if not a little bit bemused when I peppered him with questions. "A mutant race like yours asks a lot of simple questions," he said.

The Ymilans were comfortable being a race with both physical and spiritual members and had evolved with sensory organs that could both detect and communicate with their spiritual world.  When Dergec learned of humans' inabilities in that regard, he was compassionate.

One thing I had noticed in passing was that I never heard of an Ymilan extended family of the dead going back more than six generations.  I made a mental note to ask Dergec why these ancestral houses didn't extend back farther.

That "note" was the first thing I thought of when Joe McDonald's ghost appeared to me.

#

Joe was an average Service "grunt”, just another face under the dome.   He never had come to me for any counseling or help--until after he died.

I had been updating my sermonblog when I heard the base emergency siren.  I ran out and saw a large shipping container swaying back and forth from a crane, a body lying on the floor beneath.

Apparently Joe took a left when he should have taken a right and walked just close enough to the edge of the container as it was being swung around that it clipped him.  The sharp corner punctured his helmet and crushed in his temple.  The light was gone from his eyes by the time I reached him.
His base file did not indicate any religious preference.

That night, I noticed the lights flicker briefly in my quarters--not terribly uncommon, our shielding constantly battled to protect our tech from the strong Ymilan magnetic field.  I did think it strange, though, that the lights flickered from white to blue, and back to white again.

During the next few minutes I got the strangest crawling or burning sensation on my skin.  Despite its violent climate--or perhaps because of it--Ymilas does not lack for water.  I thought it would help to take a nice, hot shower.

When I left the bathroom, gusts of steam poured into my bedroom--and I saw Joe.

He gestured, looking alternately angry and scared.  Despite the fact I was speaking to a ghost, his look of discomfort and anxiety was so pronounced my natural pastoral reaction was to put him at ease.  “It’s OK, Joe, I’ll help you any way I can.  Stay here with me.”

I commed the base Commander.   "A quick question," I asked.   "Was Joe McDonald the first human die on Ymilas?"

"Why yes, he was. Why do you ask?"

"He's here in my quarters.  He's become his own Helpful Ancestor."

The Commander cursed, then asked "What do we do now?"

"I don' know about 'we'," I said, "but I have some counseling to do, and then I call Dergec."

I turned off my lights, and as I hoped, Joe appeared as a dimly lit apparition, as ghosts do on Earth.
I determined--through questions on my part and nods and gestures on his--that he understood his spirit was somehow trapped.  "Did you ever see the container?" I asked.

He shook his head vigorously, looking very sad.

"Did you look at your death?"  He nodded, slowly.
I commed Dergec,  and explained what happened.  "I will be there as soon as I can," he said.

I spoke to Joe again. “We will get through this. I know on Earth, when we die, the soul leaves the body and moves on to the afterlife.  Things are different here, but my friend the Ymilan priest will help us.”
Joe made a gesture of helplessness.  “It’s my job to deal with spiritual matters, thanks for coming to me,” I said.  “We will get through this together.”

My port signaled. "That must be Dergec."

The Ymilan was far too large to enter my quarters.  I stepped outside, assuming Joe followed me, as there was no way I could see him as we stepped into the light.

Dergec looked to the side of me and addressed Joe directly. "What is your name, my friend?"   He paused for a moment, then replied, "Your proper name is Joseph, then?"

I realized Dergec could speak directly to Joe, just as he could to his own ancestors. Despite the fact I listened to a one-sided conversation, I could tell Joe was relieved to be able to make himself easily understood.

"I understand your discomfort, your people do not exist this way," said Dergec to Joe.
"Can you help Joe to move on?" I asked Dergec.

Then with a start, I remembered that "mental note" I had made to myself.

 "Sir," I said, using an untranslatable word that is an extreme Ymilan honorific, "I have observed that your Helpful Ancestors do not go back many generations." I paused.  "Is there a way for them to move on?"

“Since when I first learned about the spiritual nature of your people,” he said, “I knew this day would come.”

#

Our lone base on Ymilas is located near the equator, where the electrical storms are the weakest.   The planet's magnetosphere dips down at the poles.  It was Dergec who suggested using the specially shielded segway for my own protection.

The Commander raised her voice.  "You want to take a Faraday segway on what?"

 "A pilgrimage, Ma’am."

"Why?  Whose idea is this?"

"Monsignor Dergec," I said, using the closest human word to the Ymilan title.  "We need to make a pilgrimage to the north polar plain so the soul of Joe McDonald can move on.  We have no idea how the ground level magnetic field at the pole would affect an unshielded human.”

"I have one Faraday segway, if you wreck it, we won’t have another one for months, until it is requisitioned, approved and shipped.”

"Bureaucracy is your problem,” I snapped.  “Do you want a haunted base?”

On cue, her case folder slid off his desk and slammed on the floor.  The Commander jumped up from her seat.  "I felt something on the back of my neck!"

I sighed. "Do you believe my ghost story or not?"

She began to type on her desktop.  "Take your segway, take the Ymilan, take Joe, get out of here.  I don't want to hear any more about this."

Dergec was waiting outside. "Did you get what you needed?"

"Yes, despite a little reluctance from the Commander.”

"Joseph accompanied you."

"I know, the Commander's hemming and hawing infuriated him enough that he was able to manifest himself a bit."

"I have noticed that human emotions generate spiritual turmoil," said Dergec.

"I'm a little angry myself," I said. "But that won't help things."

Dergec turned around and plodded off.  "Let us begin our journey.”

#

The Ymilans have well-worn trails to the polar region where the magnetic field bends down to the surface.  There the Helpful Ancestors can dissipate.

The Ymilan pilgrimage trails loop and wind, because they need to avoid serious fault zones, another result of that active planetary core.

Dergec said the journey would take 12 Terran days.  Like everyone in the colonial Service, I maintained Earth days.  Ymilas’ sun had contracted in the distant past, and the planet's orbit has adjusted as a result.  It was that gravitational disturbance that had shifted its core into such an active state.

We were joined by other clan groups along the way.  Dergec led the way, and Joe, of course, had no trouble keeping up.  I brought up the rear of our little group, my treads grinding along the slate gray landscape.  There were caravanserais at regular distances.  Clusters of pilgrims gathered and parted along the way.

The other Ymilans were fascinated to see the first humans on a pilgrimage.  It is an accepted part of their life and society and they accepted our participation with great equanimity.  Dergec spoke often to Joe, who seemed “talkative” enough in his current state.

During one stop, Dergec said some Ymilans expressed something akin to admiration for Joe and myself.  "They are proud of you," he said.  "They say humans are finally Ymilans now."

Of course, I couldn’t see Joe, but it was usually obvious from Dergec's "body language"--a strange term considering how different Ymilans are from humans--where Joe was.  I spoke to Joe whenever I could, and when necessary, Dergec repeated Joe's side of the conversation.

I noticed about the halfway point that Dergec's interactions with Joe began to diminish. "Joseph is speaking with Helpful Ancestors now,” said Dergec.

“Is he away from us?” I asked.

“Yes, he is with that clan over there,” he said gesturing.

“Why does a Helpful Ancestor finally decide to make the journey?" I asked him.

"The closest word in your language would be futility," said Dergec.  "Our term might be translated as understanding that your role in the material world is over.”

I took the opportunity to ask a question.  “Does he realize that this trip means extinction,” I said. “That his soul has already flown, he is just a ghost?”

“No.  That is something you must work out amongst yourselves,” said Dergec.  “It is not proper for me to interfere in the spiritual matters of another species.”

“Your Helpful Ancestors don’t seem to mind trekking towards dissipation,” I said.

“We are a mature race,” he said.  “I would be cautious is discussing it with Joseph, though.”
"How is Joe taking the attention from the Helpful Ancestors?"

"I believe he is enjoying it," said the wise cleric. “He did not receive much attention from his own kind in life."

The severity and frequency of the electrical storms increased as we neared the Ymilan pole.  I monitored and inspected my Faraday segway more than ever.  The pilgrimage route meandered through a landscape of diminishing hills until, on the 11th day we hiked over a ridge and saw--nothing.

"It is another day's journey across flatlands to the Temple of Release," said Dergec.

As our caravan of pilgrims marched across the plain, we began to line up abreast of each other.   Despite the many dissimilarities between the two planets, one thing Ymilas has in common with Earth is a tilted axis, and therefore seasons--as well as long polar days.

This was the depth of the polar night, and the dark grayness of the sky matched the cold gray slate that made up the polar plain.  In the darkness I could now see all the Helpful Ancestors as well as Joe.  He marched near Dergec and me, but within a cluster of the Ymilan ancestors.

It was obvious he was in a position of honor amongst them, but when everyone stopped for the "night", all the Ymilans went back to their individual clan groups, which is why Joe was left alone and off to the side when Dergec and I stopped to sleep.

There was no indication of any danger so I slipped out of the Faraday cabin and sat down as Dergec gestured for me to come closer.  Joe looked at me.

"C'mon, Joe, you're with us."

Joe nudged himself between Dergec and me, and stopped moving,  I didn’t know if he was asleep.
“Do the dead sleep?  Can the dead sleep?”  I repeated to myself.

Dergec turned his head to me.  I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud.

"He sleeps the sleep of the dead,” said Dergec. “You would call it meditation. His mind is empty."
Dergec settled down into his posture of dormancy and I drifted off to sleep myself on that dark plain with the spirits of the alien dead--and one man.

#

Dergec stirred himself and I clamped myself in the cabin of the segway.

“We will be there soon,” he said to us.

He turned aside and spoke to Joe.  “Are you at peace, my brother?”

I could tell from Dergec’s body language Joe answered in the affirmative.  “It is well, then,” said Dergec. “Let us finish.”

As the long parallel line moved forward towards the unseen destination, I noticed the general grayness began to brighten.  After a while, I instinctively looked up.  There, high in the sky, was a glowing grayish green vortex of auroral light.  Dergec turned as Joe had obviously spoken to him.  “Yes, the Temple of Release is directly below it.”

I knew the polar magnetic vortex would be the location of the weakness in the magnetic field that would allow Joe’s “Ba” to dissipate, but I had no idea it would be visible.

“It looks like the eye of God,” I thought.

As the polar night began begin to imperceptibly brighten because of the glow, I soon was unable to tell where Joe was among us.

A few hours later, the plain was clearly lit by the glow of the “Eye” and I realized the previously uninterrupted flatness of the landscape was broken now by something rising directly ahead of us in the distance.

As we approached I saw it was an obviously artificial structure, and as we neared even closer, I saw it consisted of an enormous circle of upright blocks with the dimensional ratio of 1: 4: 9--the Golden Mean.  The lintels were of the same dimensions, and it was with a shock I realized that, except for the size and preciseness, the structure was essentially of the same design of Stonehenge back on Earth.
The actual size was the biggest distinction.  Although it was hard to judge at first, as we approached I saw the structure was more than 1,000 Terran feet high.

As we neared it, the various Ymilan clans began to bunch up as they would have to pass through the openings.  Dergec turned to Joe.  “This is the point of no return,” he said.

I turned in the same direction as Dergec.  “Are you okay with this, friend?  You ready to go home?”
There was a pause, and then Dergec said “He is fearful, but ready.”  He paused and continued.  “Joseph said he wants you to know he appreciates your kindness, but he knows nothing awaits him.  He learned the true nature of the pilgrimage from the Helpful Ancestors.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t...”

“He says it is good, he realizes there is nothing left for him here, and he would rather be nothing than a ghost on a strange world,” said Dergec.  “He said the others have given him courage.  He hopes his immortal soul has already reached your heaven.”

“I know it has, Joe,” I said, my voice cracking a bit.  “I have faith in that, that’s my job. To have faith.”

“Joe says he likes that,” said Dergec.

The other Ymilans on either side of us began to move forward.  “Let us go, then,” said Dergec.
We passed between a pair of giant uprights and passed inside the circle.  There was nothing there but another caravanserai.

I turned to Dergec.  “What happens next?”

“Nothing,” he said. “He is gone. They are all gone.”

“What!  That’s it?”

“There is no ceremony, if that is what you mean,” he said.  “The composition of these stones provides the shielding necessary to allow the dissipation.”

He turned to me.  “I’m sorry, I forget your people put a great deal of stock in theater and rituals, which is to be expected in such an immature race.  We take this process for granted.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We stop and rest and sleep, and then begin the trip home,” said Dergec.

#

When I was back at the base and I filed my report with the Commander. “This opens up a whole new issue in the Colonial Relations Division.”

“Yes, but  it was inevitable, if we stay on this planet,” I said.

“Well, you’ve done well as the lone chaplain on a base with many different religions,” she said. “This is just another issue you have to finesse.”

“For the time being, let’s not file a report,” I said.  “If this problem arises again, I’ll deal with it  personally.”

“Of course, all religion is personal,” she said.  “And I don’t want anything to leave the base that will bring bureaucrats down to us.”

She paused.  “And speaking of leaving the base, where is your condition report of the Faraday segway?  Is it back in inventory?”

#

Raju Bopardikar was not a grunt, but a low-level clerk in the transportation office.  He was drunk off his butt one night in the rec bar when he started hitting on a pretty Brazilian girl, whose boyfriend didn’t take kindly to his attentions, and was just as drunk as Raju--and a lot meaner.

The jealous boyfriend had a knife hidden in his boot, and before anyone could do anything, he slashed Raju across the abdomen.  Everyone grabbed the attacker, but his deep cut severed Raju’s abdominal aortic artery, and he bled out in a few minutes.

When I heard what had happened, I checked the base records, and then called up a copy of the Bhagavata Purana and read it until Raju appeared in my quarters.

I had to speak to Raju like anyone who is in deep shock, and with great patience explained the process I had gone through with Joe.

As I was counseling him, Dergec commed me.  “I learned of another death,” he said. “Can I help?”

“I think we can handle this ourselves,” I said, nodding to Raju.  “You don’t have to come on the pilgrimage.  Raju is one of us, and we can take care of ourselves.”

“I will assist in any way you need,” he said.

“Thank you, friend,” I said, “but we will make this journey ourselves.”

I turned to Raju.  “I know the way.”

-The End-

A reviewer who "gets it"

Authors know there are reviewers who "get" a story and then there are those who don't. This review completely "gets" my story that was published in Issue No. 2 of Sci-Phi Journal, "On the Spiritual Plain".

If you don't want to follow the link, here are his pertinent comments:

"Another story, among several that impressed me, was Lou Antonelli’s “On the Spiritual Plain” (issue 2), about a planet on which, because of its peculiar electro-magnetic characteristics, one’s ghost (soul ? spirit?) becomes visible after death. Here the protagonist is a Methodist minister who first encounters the phenomenon when a workman is killed in an accident, and the ghost visits him. The story poses more questions than it attempts to answer, as the Methodist minister with the help of an alien “shaman,” for want of a better word, shepherds “Joe McDonald’s” soul to a place where it can leave the planet and “dissipate.” The story does not attempt to make a statement about the afterlife, but is a poetic meditation on of the process of dealing with death. All of the stories have a “Food for Thought” section at the end, which draws one’s attention to the philosophical issues involved. I have not decided yet whether these are more limiting than helpful. A good story speaks for itself in ways which only stories can speak. I found this story more evocative than the “Food for Thought” section that followed."

Note: The italics are mine. I realize that at my age (I turned 58 on Jan. 6), this is something more on my mind than ever - especially since I have already outlived my best friend in college and my best friend in high school. These were two of the finest people I ever knew.

2014 in fiction

With the publication of "Ad Valorem" in Omni Reboot, I've had nine stories published in 2014. That's it for the year.

The stories are:

"Bindlestiff's Daughter" - The Lorelei Signal, January 2014

"Playing Catch-Up" - SciFi Max, May 2014

"The Sub-Basement" - The Ironic Fantastic No. 3, Sept. 2014

"Back Own My Stab" - Every Day Fiction, Sept. 16, 2014

"Bigfoot Fruit" - Common Oddities Speculative Fiction Sideshow, Sept. 2014

"On a Spiritual Plain" - Sci-Phi Journal No. 2 November 2014

"The Girl Who Couldn't Fly" - "Unconventional Fantasy, a Celebration of 40 Years of the World Fantasy Convention' - Nov. 6-9, 2014

"Ad Valorem" - Omni Reboot, Dec. 11, 2014

Pending publications include "Cerulean Dream" in Tales of the Talisman and "Would Olympus Fall" in the Hadley Rille Books antholgy "Ruins".