DDM Featured Fiction
Floater
Bryan Thomas Schmidt
The stars went out
one by one leaving Bia alone in the dark. Blast him! She knew she shouldn’t have listened. She knew and yet, as always, his smile had been all it took to convince her to ignore her reservations and climb aboard his steam ship.
Another relic from the past to feed Jax’s endless fascination with history. He’d spent two years researching the parts needed to fix it and making them in his shop. “A spacecraft mechanic can fix anything,” he’d bragged.
She remembered the glow in his eyes when he told her he’d finished. A working steam ship, and he wanted her to go with him on its maiden voyage. The thing didn’t even look seaworthy to her. Besides, no one sailed on actual water anymore. It was unnecessary with the abundant shuttle craft and air taxis. They could get you across any body of water in minutes. It was the twenty-third century, for heaven’s sake. She cursed Jax again for his stupid obsession with the past.
To make matters worse, when it went down, he hadn’t even stayed with her.
“A captain goes down with his ship,” he’d said. Some stupid quote he’d read in an old story or fable. She hadn’t really thought he meant it. Her last memory of him was Jax kneeling on the deck, hands deep inside a compartment, struggling to figure out what went wrong and repair it. All he cared about was saving his ship.
“What about me?!” she screamed to the stars. “If you loved me so much, why wasn’t I more important than that stupid ship?!” She sighed.
No one could hear her anyway. At least, no one who could answer. Besides, she was in dangerous waters full of all sorts of creatures she didn’t even want to think about. What if one of them heard her? No more yelling, Bia. You’ve got to not panic and stay in control if you want to live. And she desperately wanted to live. Never had she been so grateful for her mom’s insistence that she learn how to swim.
“No one swims, Mom!” she’d protested. “I don’t even like water!”
“Swimming used to be very popular,” her Mom insisted. “Remember Grandma’s stories? You never know when a skill like that might come in handy.”
Her mother was right again, of course. She hated when that happened. She’d tried swimming for a while after the ship had disappeared, but she couldn’t continue for long. Her arms weren’t used to it. I have wimpy arms, crying out at me with every stroke! She blamed her Mom for that, too.
“Men are the ones who do the heavy labor, Bia,” her Mom’s voice echoed through her mind with such clarity that she almost expected to see her mother floating nearby. “Women take care of the softer, finer things.”
So she’d grown up shirking physical exercise as something for men. With four brothers and a father, she hadn’t needed to do it, and after she’d grown, she’d had boyfriends and friends to take care of those things requiring physical endurance.
I fell into a stereotype! My God! I hate stereotypes! Too lazy to live by my own principles! Maybe I deserve to drown out here.
A white glow floated across the water to the east, drawing her eyes to it. It seemed to float along across the water. She watched it approaching until a face appeared, and then a long white gown. Were those actually wings she was seeing? She hated clichés even more than stereotypes. The angel-like creature stopped above her and looked down, smiling.
“Hello, Bia,” he said in a soft, tenor voice.
“What are you, some kind of angel?”
He laughed. “Something like that, I suppose. I’m whatever you want me to be. I appear differently to each person.”
“What are you doing here? I don’t exactly have time for light conversation.”
He laughed again. “Keeping your sense of humor, even at a time like this. That’s a good sign.”
She frowned. “Look, either help me or go away.”
“What if I told you your swimming is a waste of time?” he said. “The shore’s too far away. You’ll never make it. Not in the shape you’re in.”
She cursed to herself and sneered. “Is that why you came here? To tell me something I’d already guessed?” She started swimming again, hoping to get away from him, but he floated along above her, never losing the position he’d held when he first arrived.
“That’s it. Wear yourself out. It will make it easier when you go down,” he said.
“Look, I thought angels were supposed to help humans, but you’re not helping at all,” she said between breaths as she swam. “So shut up.”
The angel chuckled and shrugged. “I’m not that kind of angel.”
“What are you then? A bad angel?”
“Perhaps to some.”
She ignored him and kept swimming. “Fine. Enjoy your last moments, Bia.” He watched her a moment, then disappeared into the blackness as if he’d never been there.
Her arms were already tired. Maybe he was right, she couldn’t even see the shore from here. “Jax, you idiot! Why do I always choose the losers?”
She might die out here, but if she was going to go, it was going to be her way. I will not just lie here and drown! The thought made her swim harder, stroke after stroke, doing her best to ignore the emptiness of the horizon in the distance ahead.
When she stopped again to rest, the angel was there again, floating just off her right shoulder. “Waste of time.”
“The only waste of time out here is talking to you,” she said, not even bothering to look at him.
“That and swimming for your life.”
“Just go away,” she said as she began swimming again, desperate to leave him behind. If there was a God, he must not care about her.
When she stopped again, short of breath from the exertion, she looked around for the angel, but he was nowhere to be found. “That’s fine, God. I don’t care about you either!”
After she’d struggled on for what seemed like an hour, another white glow appeared on the horizon, moving toward her. Not another angel. God’s mocking me, just like those religious fanatics at university did. Okay, so I have no faith in fairy tales. It’s my right. Freedom of choice and all that.
The white glow moved faster than the bad angel had. Within moments, it was upon her. A shuttle craft? She blinked. Her eyes weren’t lying. She stopped swimming and began waving frantically. “Over here! Please God, let them see me!”
God? Why am I calling him? Stupid expression! Another thing she’d gotten from her mother.
She spun in the water as she continued to wave. I don’t think they saw me. But then the shuttle turned, moving back toward her. She saw the pilot’s eyes as he leaned toward the window and peered down at her with surprise. Yes! He saw me!
The shuttle turned again and hovered over her. She saw the door slide open and the ladder drop. Even angels can be wrong? She laughed. I can’t wait to tell my mother. Then as the shuttle descended she saw a cross painted on the side.
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Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the short story serial “The North Star Serial.” His first novel, the space opera “The Worker Prince,” will be coming in 2011. He is currently working on a fantasy novel, a non-genre novel, and sequels to “The Worker Prince.” He lives in El Paso, Texas with his wife and pets, and can be found online at www.bryanthomasschmidt.net
