Beyond the Stars

Echoes

Written as a qualifying entry into @ForbiddenPlanet's Sci fi Smackdown 8.

Using the sub-genre 'soft sci fi' as our prompt, we've to write exactly 500 words and must include the phrase "The shit always hits the fan just as I'm about to..." (In bold) I just hope this is classed as soft sci fi!

*****

Only after the ringing in my ears stopped, did I hear the faint murmur of long ago voices begging for release. Thick dust, disturbed by the excavation, swirled through the stale air, carrying the stench of rotten flesh. I tried breathing through my mouth, but I could taste it. Taste them. Bile rose, threatening to spill over and spoil the treasures that time had forgotten.

Treading carefully, I avoided the skeletal remains of those who hadn't made it out before the bombs fell. Their panicked murmurs grew in volume as I brushed by. A boney arm touched the bare flesh of my leg, causing shivers of revulsion to radiate from the point of contact.

Echoes of the past - fear, disbelief, guilt, anger - overwhelmed my perception of the present, momentarily plunging me into their time. I saw it then, laying open beside the radio that uttered words of reassurance to the general populace. All lies. A pre-recording from the Chief of Security claiming we were under attack from an unidentified source, presumed alien.

It had been a long time since I heard that message, one of the last ever broadcasts made on a radio. Biological warfare responsible for our leap in evolution - millennia in span of a few years - meant we no longer needed radios or telephones to communicate. All the survivors of the Last War need, is a conscious thought of the one they wish to talk to, and they hear us.

Only it affected me differently. Some say I'm cursed, I say blessed, to relive the last moments of the dying. Control can be difficult sometimes, especially if the death is brutal. The shit always hits the fan just when I'm about to see the person responsible, leaving me with the need to make sure they pay the price for their crime. Skeptics will say I prey on the living, telling them the last thoughts of their loved ones were of them. I've never lied.

It took more effort than normal to pull myself back to the present. Feeling the despair of the dead fade to a tolerable level, I retrieved my prize and flicked through the last few pages, admiring the elegant penmanship. I stopped only when I read the admission written in his own, unmistakable handwriting. The order to test the bombs carrying the chemical concoction that altered our DNA, came from a man who hid in this bunker for a time. My find would prove the responsibility lay with our own kind. Our own technology and weapons were to blame for the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the devastation suffered by much of our planet.

Anger from the dead entombed here made sense at last. And with this knowledge came the realisation that the lock was on the outside of the door, not the inside.

There's money to be made from selling secrets. I would rather they pay me than some hitman to keep me quiet.

The dead keep no secrets from me.