Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Yesterday was cooler outside — eight-eight F — a drop of ten degrees from the day before and night from the one before.
Summer had arrived. Temps are night were falling to sixty, fifty-nine, but it was often seventy by ten AM and quickly climbing.
We have a gas fireplace. Standing by it yesterday, I felt the heat from its pilot radiating out and thought, time to turn that puppy off. So I did.
Clearing their throat, Nature declared, “Hold my beer.”
It’s my custom to keep windows open at night. A wind was blowing through the night, bringing what felt like Arctic air. Getting up, I closed all the windows and thought about turning on the fireplace.
Made me smile. The capricious fates had fooled me again. It’s like, if you study something expensive to buy, and finally pull the trigger, it’s bound to be on sale immediately after you take position.
I guess Alanis Morissette expressed it better in “Ironic”.
Thursday afternoon, under warm sunshine, Handley parked his car and dashed across the street.
Returning from the cafe with his purchases scant minutes later, the man beside him was opening his door. A box was on the ground beside him.
“Excuse me,” the man said.
Door unlocked, being opened, hot food starting to cool, Handley paused, eyebrows up in expectation. “Yes?”
“Do you have jumper cables?”
Handley nodded. “I do. You need a jump?”
Smiling, the man popped his hood and picked up the box. “No, I just bought a charger. I’d been waiting for an hour. Nobody had cables. I figured that the first person I saw in the parking lot after I went out and bought this would have cables.
“And here you are.”
Handley commiserated. “Isn’t it ironic?”
Saw this one on a car on Lithia in Ashland, and found it online, so it could be properly displayed. It’s available on Cafepress.com.
“Do you need a break?”
Those were the words Coyote had awaited. “God, fucking yes.” Seizing the remote, he thumbed the volume up over the sirens passing outside and people shouting, and listened to the commercial. Details were confirmed in his head. He wrote down the website and then went to it.
Stasis. That was exactly what he needed – a month away from his life. Thirty days, technically, but still, fucking yes, he needed a month away from his job and his wife and the general malaise and ennui sucking the energy out of him. He’d dreamed about going into stasis since the first time that he’d read about it. But stasis wasn’t for middle-class people like him. The cheapest stasis was two grand a day. Two grand a day. Fucking outrageous. Like the rich needed stasis. Why would the rich need stasis? Just another thing to lord over the other ninety-eight percent, the bastards.
But this was different. This was a lottery. Tickets were ten dollars per. Proceeds were supporting school vouchers and health insurance subsidies, the usual beneficiaries of lotteries. Ten dollars per, ten winners picked per night. Tickets could be bought online, paid for with Bitcoin, debit and credit cards, or Paypal.
After skimming exceptions and warnings, because it wasn’t completely safe – nothing is completely safe – he sweated the math, established an account, and charged five hundred dollars of chances to his Visa, rationalizing it as an early birthday present.
Then he had to wait. The next drawing wasn’t until the next day, six thirty P.M. Pacific Time, twenty hours away. In the meantime, he wondered, how the hell had he missed hearing about this? Still, he didn’t mention it at work, nor to his wife. That was easy, because they weren’t speaking to one another, again. He thought about telling The Third, but he was on another fucking anti-government rant. Coyote decided telling The Third would be like tossing an M-80 on a campfire, so, no.
He didn’t win the first night, and bought fifty more chances. He didn’t win that lottery, either, causing him to scream at the fucking television as fire trucks and police cars roared by outside, sirens going as loud as a rock song. It wasn’t fair that he hadn’t won, but that was his fucking life, wasn’t it? He never won anything, never got any damn breaks while everyone else in the world was blessed. He consumed a case of Miller’s bemoaning his luck.
Fifty more tickets were purchased. He giggled as he did it. He was fully committed, all in. Yeah, he was committed all right. Heather would have a shit-fit when she saw the Visa bill. But if he won, that confrontation wouldn’t occur for a while. Besides, she would eventually thank him. This would be a vacation away from him for her, too, as much as it was a vacation for him away from her.
He didn’t win.
He was down fifteen hundred. He sweated over the number. Fifteen hundred. That had become a relatively large number in their financial world. Five hundred wasn’t bad, a thousand was okay, but fifteen hundred. Going into the Visa account, he checked the balance.
Thirty-six hundred.
Holy shit. Sweat poured over Coyote’s face. That had to be incorrect.
He brought up the statement’s transactions details and almost crapped his pants. They’d overcharged him for the stasis lottery tickets, charging him for tickets the day before he’d bought his tickets, and the day before that. Damn fucking crooks.
He chugged down a beer to consider his options. Truth came up with a burp.
Heather was buying stasis lottery tickets.
That bitch.
His jaw dropped as he went through the Visa statement again. Besides the stasis lottery tickets, she’d purchased airline tickets.
Coyote broke into her email. She hadn’t changed the passwords. She was a fool. He’d changed his passwords about a year ago, when the marital cracks seemed like the precursor to separation and divorce. He really thought the ice princess was going to leave him. Well, in a way, she had, hadn’t she? If – as he thought – she’d won the stasis lottery. When was the last time he’d seen her, anyway? Day before yesterday. No, two days ago, three. It’d been the night before he’d first bought tickets. She’d had a business trip. Yes, but was it really a business trip?
The etickets receipt was in her email. She’d flown to Montana.
Montana was where the stasis center was located.
Her ticket’s return date was thirty-two days later.
Then, he saw the other email.
She had won.
Sitting back, Coyote stared at the email in disbelief. She’d won – she’d bought tickets, and she’d won, and left – without saying a word to him. Not a word.
Unfucking real. It just wasn’t fair. Giggling, he popped another Miller open. Well, there were advantages to be had, here. Heather was gone, into stasis. So, if he bought more tickets —
A buzzing noise sliced through Coyote’s thoughts. A door opened. Blinding light streamed in. As he raised his hands to protect his eyes and squinted, Coyote asked himself, “What the fuck?”
“Hey, Coyote, how was it?” someone asked behind the light.
The room dissolved around him, becoming a tight cylinder. Cringing against pain, Coyote asked, “How was what?”
But he knew as soon as he asked. He could take a break from his life, but it wasn’t the problem.
She just wanted a little something. Forty feet by six feet of lit, colorful options faced her, which would be? Her mind didn’t want to address something so trivial as an area problem.
A couple entered the aisle, apparently solving the same problem. They seemed to be approximately her age, that is, mid-fifties to mid-sixties and of similar economic status. They probably were enduring the same paradigm shift as her. It used to be that if you wanted ice cream, limited selections were available. Her mother bought Neapolitan because the three flavor choices satisfied almost everyone, although they would always end up with a carton of strawberry left. Later, they would buy vanilla ice cream and add toppings of nuts, cherries, syrups and whipped cream. Then they learned to make banana splits. All the while, her father would reminiscence about making ice cream with his grandparents, and his favorite, root beer floats. They made their own root beer, too.
She could follow such a simple route and buy vanilla. Even were she to make that choice of flavor, decisions remained about sugar-free, slow-churned, size, price and brand. Gluten-free and dairy-free ice cream was available. Ten variations of vanilla ice cream competed. America, land of the free and home of the ice cream.
This was not just ice cream. She walked down the aisle. The couple shadowed her. All of them stared at the choices like they were fine art in a museum. Frozen yogurt, gelato, sorbets and sherbets were offered. Rice Dream. Soy ice cream. Prices for them were ridiculous. Specials were available – two one-gallon containers were available for six dollars for club members – she was a club member – but she didn’t want a gallon, just a pint.
Her father would have had fits. “Gelato? Sorbet?” Yes, she was channeling her father. He would admonish, “What do you want? Decide what you want, Helena.” She’d thought she’d known what she’d wanted. She’d wanted to be an accountant when she was a young girl and had become a data scientist, even though she had a literature degree. She didn’t know data scientists existed when she was a child.
Straying into frozen fruit and yogurt bars, she smiled at the man — the closest shadow — and swapped places with him, to go the other way. Actually, she knew what she wanted. She either wanted a Stonyfield Merlot Blackberry sorbet or a Haagen Dazs sorbet, flavor to be determined. Neither were present.
Drat. That was the problem. She knew what she wanted but couldn’t attain it, the shortcoming of living in a small town. Safeway was one of three grocery stores. They generally had the same choices, as if they were in collusion.
An imagined scene arose. The three store managers sat in a small, windowless room, making agreements about what ice creams to offer and setting the prices. “Listen,” one said in her scene, “I’m putting the Blue Bunny on sale this week.” He put his pricing gun on the table. “Anyone have a problem with that?”
Did they still utilize pricing guns in this digital age?
She sighed. This was taking too long. Impulse streamed through her. The hell with fat, calories and health. Take one and go. It’s just ice cream.
Marching to one section, she found mint chocolate chip. The flavor almost always satisfied her. It was a gallon. She didn’t want a gallon but she would buy it for three dollars with her club card. She would eat some tonight and keep the rest or throw it out. The price was such a bargain, she could afford to bin it.
Sure.
Selection in hand, she passed the couple. Holding a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, he complained about the price. The woman was staring at a wall of Breyer’s. There was one advantage to being single: no compromise or consensus was required.
The choice was hers, alone.
Michael Seidel, writer 