After twenty minutes of floating through the sky, we land back in the city, on the top of one of the few remaining ten thousand foot buildings. Popping the hatch proves a challenge for my weary and burning muscles, but my synth-arm is still up to the task. We’re greeted by the cool night air, kept clean and breathable by air scrubbers running up the sides of every building in town. I suck the air in like a siphon.
The girls climb down the side of the satellite one at a time, both refusing my help. I’m just shocked that I offered to begin with. As I roll my neck back, letting the bones crack back into place, I notice how bright the stars are. Stars... I laugh as I realize that when the weapon was fired it cleared a clean hole over the city. Probably killed a bunch of civies in the process, but you know what they say about breaking a few eggs.
My vision follows the stars to a bright object floating in space that I’ve only seen in books. The moon. With all the crap orbiting the planet, no one on the surface has seen the moon for a thousand years. Probably just the way they liked it, being able to move in concealment, like sneaking up on a scared kid hiding under the blankets. Too bad for them, this scared kid got hold of a big gun.
A perfectly round hole, the size of Maine, stares back from the Moon’s surface—evidence that any threat from the moon has been wiped out. Any Mooner forces remaining are probably scattering in a confused daze, unsure where to run. Rehna and Gawyn stand next to me, staring up in silence.
“Hard to believe we did that.” Rehna says.
I look her in the eyes. “Think they’ll let me go back up there and turn it into a smiley face?”
She just smiles back and takes my hand. Feels funny, but I let it linger. A pressure on my finger brings my eyes back down, and I see Gawyn holding onto my index finger. My muscles tense and I fight the urge to shrug them both off, but after wiping out an entire civilization, I’ve destroyed enough lives for one day. I pick the kid up and throw her over my shoulders. With my arm around Rehna, I head for the roof stairwell, thinking about starting a new life. Maybe I’ll get a dog too.
Heh, I’m all freakin heart.
AFTERWORD
My editor recently described this story as noir. My immediate internal reaction was, “What?! No! I hate noir!” Having reread the story, I see that he’s right. While sci-fi noir is not something I would consciously write, it seems a part of me appreciates the genre. My only memory of actually writing this story is being in between novels, having a few hours to spare and sitting down in front of laptop.
As an artist, I often sit down with a blank piece of paper and just start drawing. I don’t know what I’m going to draw. I just start putting lines on the page and something emerges. It’s not some kind of metaphysical experience, I just see something in the shape and expand upon it. I play the same game with my family while waiting for food in the restaurant. Someone scribbles some quick lines and I turn it into a drawing. The creation of FROM ABOVE was similar. I sat down and started dreaming up good first lines. After a few minutes I typed, “When my arm came off, I knew something wasn’t right.”
I built the rest of the story around that line, first explaining how it had happened and then asking and answering the follow-up questions that explanation created. The story emerged on its own, and I suspect the noir feeling of it comes from it being written that way. I was asking and answering questions like a detective and that voice crept into my writing.
The end result is an experimental story that turned into my first magazine published piece and made me a whopping fifty bucks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEREMY ROBINSON is the author of eleven thrillers including Pulse and Instinct, the first two books in his exciting Jack Sigler series. His novels have been translated into ten languages. He is also the director of New Hampshire AuthorFest, a non-profit organization promoting literacy in New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife and three children.