Misc. Bits

Spindles

AN Update: Winner of the May 2022 Science Fiction Short Story contest, Criminal.

The shuttle flies low across the planet. Long skinny rock formations—black as night—cover every inch of the barren landscape of Dim-3. Affectionately referred to as the Spindles, I've always thought the masses of rock looked more like a swarm of angry cobras.

"So these are the famed Dim-3 Spindles?" the stranger asks. His voice is unnaturally low.

"Aye," I say.

I glance over at Rua. She is staring impassively through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the shuttle, her face speckled with light from the planet's eternal sunset. She doesn't trust this strange spacefarer. I don't either, but we've never been spoiled for choice.

"Bring it down there," the stranger says, pointing to a small clearing among the endless masses of curly black stone.

The shuttle lurches toward the opening, tilting at a steep incline. I place a hand on the glass to steady myself. Rua does the same. The stranger seems unphased.

We touch down softly. The bay door opens silently, no hint of the hissing steam or mechanical clanking I'm used to from our old junkers.

The stranger is the first one off, his dark black cloak billowing behind him. Gravel crunches underneath his boots. A wall of twisting crags surrounds us. Some of the Spindles extend hundreds of meters in length. They loop around one another, double back, shoot straight into the sky.

"How big was the Dimenium deposit?" the stranger asks. His voice is measured, but I can tell he is struggling to contain his excitement.

"If you believe the history books, 'bout 40,000 tons," I say. I glance at Rua. She nods in affirmation, looking out of place in the harsh landscape with her brilliant blue ambassador gown.

"What a sight it must have been," the stranger says.

He's right of course. I've walked the Dim-3 of the 2600s in the museum's VR pods. Machines as big as mountains roamed the surface—extracting Dimenium with pneumatic appendages. The sky buzzed with ship traffic. Pioneers flaunted an endless supply of new money on the streets of New Bluefield.

But it's still hard to imagine what it must have really been like. The Dimenium reserves were dried up long before I—or anyone currently alive on Dim-3—was born. Now we live in the graveyard of decadence.

"That's what made the Spindles, ya know?" I say. The stranger remains silent, staring into the abyss of twisting rock, so I continue. "When they extracted the Dimenium, it messed with the fabric of reality. It'd warp the rock—turn it jet black and send it into a spiral."

Nothing. The stranger looked deep in thought.

"So y'all really think you can use 'em?" I say, gesturing to the Spindles.

"Oh yes," the stranger says.

I let out a long breath. I hadn't even realized I'd been holding it.

"That's great!" I say. Even Rua is smiling.

The Spindles are all Dim-3 has left. After the Dimenium dried up, the money soon followed. Requests for recolonization—promised to our forefathers—fell on deaf ears. The bigwigs back on Earth apparently had bigger fish to fry. Now that they had our Dimenium—and the artificial wormholes it helped produce—Dim-3 and its people were left to slowly die out.

The stranger spins around at an inhuman speed. For a moment, I see bright red orbs deep inside his cowl where I would expect his eyes.

"What is that?" he says, pointing to a nook in the crisscrossing stone. A small creature hops into it, disappearing.