2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Read online

  By Dreaming Robot Press

  Las Vegas, New Mexico

  Edited by Sean and Corie Weaver

  ~~~

  Smashwords Edition

  The 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

  Edited by Sean and Corie Weaver

  Copyright c. 2015 by Corie J. Weaver. All Rights Reserved

  First Electronic Edition: January 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-940924-05-2

  Published by Dreaming Robot Press

  1214 San Francisco Avenue

  Las Vegas, NM 87701

  www.dreamingrobotpress.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of these authors’ rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Permissions

  Introduction

  Why I Hate earth

  Standing Up

  Goliath vs. Robodog

  Unsealed

  The Doom of Wonder Bread

  Lobstersaurus

  The Journey of a Thousand Miles

  The Mystery of the Missing Clockwork Birds

  The Sugimori Sisters and the Interplanetary Concept Clash

  Pax

  Of USBs and Fingerprints

  Chit Win

  The Best Cheesecake in the Universe

  A Smelly Problem

  The Care and Feeding of Your Pet Robot

  The Wreck of the Airship Octavia

  Robot Sister Number Phi

  The Cliff

  Where You Belong

  Repeat After Me

  Jigsaw

  When Mama Went to Dumfries

  A Universe of Talk

  The Rocket Maker

  Preview: The Seventh Crow

  Preview: Coyote's Daughter

  Acknowledgements

  The Young Explorer's Adventure Guide began as a casual conversation which ended with "wouldn't it be cool if..."

  Obviously, we couldn't have made it this far without an amazing amount of support, patience and help from family, friends, beta readers, Kickstarter supporters and even the friends of friends who were pulled into this crazy plan.

  Our thanks go to Helen Jacobs, Kim Klimek, Martina Holguin, William Ewers, Mieka Kramer, Dani QL, Madison Spillard, Kenneth Hargis, Sarah Goshman as well as Ronald Gardner and Maggie Allen of Silence in the Library and a host of other friends and well-wishers.

  And of course, all of our amazing authors, who saw our vision of what this anthology could be.

  Permissions

  “Lobstersaurus,” by Eric James Stone. First published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, May 2012. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

  “Chit Win,” by Deborah Walker. First published in Daily Science Fiction, December 2011. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

  “Jigsaw,” by Douglas Smith. First published in Odyssey (Fitzhenry & Whiteside Press) January 2004. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

  Introduction

  This way, this way!

  In this volume we are pleased to present 24 tales of adventure. Stories of alien ships and human ingenuity, of faraway skies and maybe-just-around-the-corner Earth.

  Of exploration, survival, kindness and friendship.

  In these stories you'll encounter robot dogs, baffling aliens, space pirates, airships, the recipe for the best cheesecake in the Universe and much more.

  And we hope you'll also find friends who you'll want to revisit through the years.

  Nothing is quite like the first time you read a story, and we envy the adventure you're about to embark on.

  Have a great trip, and write us when you get back!

  Sean and Corie Weaver

  Dreaming Robot Press

  [email protected]

  Why I Hate earth

  Nancy Kress

  Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won five Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Most recent works are After The Fall, Before The Fall, During The Fall (Tachyon, 2012), a novel of apocalypse, and Yesterday’s Kin, about genetic inheritance (Tachyon, 2014). In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad; in 2008 she was the Picador visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle. Visit her website at www.sff.net/people/nankress.

  My name is Nia. I’m nine and three-quarters. I live on Earth.

  And I hate it.

  Before you tell me how beautiful Earth is, let me tell you that I don’t care. Everybody tells me how beautiful Earth is. Everybody tells me and tells me. And I tell everybody: You haven’t seen the moon.

  I grew up on Moon Colony Alpha. It was all wonderful. The warm, cozy underground habitats, where Dad and Mom and I had our apartment. The tunnels where we played, clean and smooth-floored and well lighted. You didn’t trip over rocks or roots; you didn’t get too cold or too hot; you weren’t surrounded by strangers who might or might not be dangerous. There were no strangers; we were only 150 people. And on the moon, you feel light and can run faster and jump higher. Gravity doesn’t pull at you like some sort of tentacled monster, the way it does on Earth. Basketball, which my friends and I played all the time, was awesome.

  And on the moon, when we went up to the surface for a picnic under the dome, you could see a gazillion stars in the clear black sky. The Earth hung above like a blue-and-white ball, the way it was supposed to. The view just took your breath away.

  I loved living in Alpha Colony.

  Then we moved to Chicago.

  …………………………

  “I won’t go,” I said, for about the hundredth time.

  “Nia, we have to go,” Dad said patiently. He is always patient. Mom—not so much, which is why I was talking to Dad.

  “But I don’t even remember Earth!”

  “I know.” He patted my arm. “But we’re already over the five-year limit. And your mother’s been reposted.”

  People aren’t supposed to stay on the moon longer than five years. Human muscles don’t grow strong enough without Earth gravity. We moved here when I was four.

  “Dad, I do the exercise machines every day! Sometimes twice a day!” Well, one time I did them twice. But once is sometimes, isn’t it?

  “That helps, Nia, but it’s not enough. Eat your dinner, honey. Mom said to make sure you eat your broccoli.”

  “I hate broccoli. And where is Mom, anyway?”

  “Packing up the plant samples for the trip down. She’ll be home soon.”

  Mom is an important scientist, a geneticist who creates plant
s that will grow well in our underground farms. You’d think she would grow something better than broccoli. Dad is a scientist, too, but not as important as Mom, except to me. But nobody listens to me because if they did, we wouldn’t be moving to stupid Earth, where they probably eat broccoli for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  “Nia,” Dad said, trying another argument, “you’ll make new friends, have new experiences. You can even have a real dog.”

  “I don’t need a real dog! I have Luna!”

  Luna, who was sitting under the table, barked when she heard her name. I programmed her to do that. I did a lot of her programming myself, and she’s the best robo-dog ever.

  Dad said, “Well, I need a real dog. I miss dogs.”

  I didn’t say anything because Dad looked unhappy, and I hate that. Although I’m the one who should look unhappy. I have to leave my friends, Jillian and Ben and Katie and Jack and Rosa. I have to leave my bedroom, all safely sealed into smooth rock where nothing bad could get me. And all I could do to show how unfair this was, was leave all my uneaten broccoli on my plate. So I did.

  Dad said nothing about it.

  …………………………

  Earth was awful even before we got there. The shuttle from the moon entered the atmosphere, and gravity slammed out of the ceiling and pushed me so hard into my seat that I thought my bones would be crushed. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever experienced, but at least I knew that it would only last a few minutes. The shuttle screamed and everything shook and then we were down—only the gravity didn’t go away. It kept pressing on me so that when Mom unstrapped me and pulled me to my feet, immediately I fell over.

  “Take it slow, Nia,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Stones on my shoulders. Stones on my feet. Stones at the end of my arms and a big heavy stone on the top of my head. That’s what it felt like. Dad and Mom wobbled, too, but they both had that look on their face that said I can do this. So I had to do it, too. But there were tears behind my eyes. I would never jump for a basketball again, never run as fast as Luna, never even bounce on a bed. Not in this gravity!

  But I could walk. After a few lurching steps, I did get a little used to it. At least I was upright.

  Dad said, “You’re doing great, Nia!” Even Mom looked proud of me, and that was enough to keep me going down the aisle of the shuttle and out the door.

  Where I started screaming.

  There was nothing. No walls, no roof, not even a clear dome. The shuttle sat on a huge expanse of white stone with empty land around it and nothing above it, just a lot of empty hot blue. Nothing to hold you in place, nothing to keep you bounded and safe, just a whole lot of dangerous open space….

  I tried to claw my way back into the shuttle, but the door had already closed. Still screaming, I dropped to the ground and curled into as tight a ball as I could. Anything to keep out the nothingness, keep out the vast emptiness large enough that I would just fly apart in it, swallowed up by the huge vacant blankness.

  “Nia!”

  “No,” I cried over the pounding on my heart, “no no no no….”

  …………………………

  Agoraphobia.

  An ugly word for a perfectly reasonable condition. I had agoraphobia, which meant I was afraid of open spaces. Well, who wouldn’t be? Anything could be out there, and “anything” was only a little bit better than nothing was. That was Earth: anything dangerous, with no walls and stone roofs to keep it out, or nothing, with empty space to swallow you so that your molecules spread out all through it and you didn’t exist anymore.

  Some choice.

  “Nia,” Dad said, yet again, “you have to get used to it bit by bit. Just come stand in the doorway with me. That’s all—we won’t actually go outside. We’ll just stand in the doorway together.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “Nia, sweetheart—”

  “I can’t.”

  That was the truth. Every time I tried to leave our new house, my heart sped up and I sweated hard and the space behind my eyes burned. Then I got dizzy. Then I ran back into my bedroom, where Dad had nailed boards over the two windows. The rest of the house had curtains but at least my room was properly closed up. In here I felt safe. Gravity could still get me, but I was getting used to the gravity. I would never get used to the empty, swallow-you-up outside.

  Besides, it was dirty and hot. Dust blew in the hot wind—”Well, it’s August in the Midwest,” Mom said, like that excused anything—and the sun burned down. On the moon, the dust stayed where it belonged, up under the surface dome and not where people lived. The temperature was always the same and the sun kept its proper distance. We didn’t need weather. Plants grew with irrigation and grow-lights. It was civilized. Weather is not civilized, as I found out when the “heat wave broke” and there was a huge “thunderstorm” with terrifying rain and sound and electricity just loose in the air! And then the power went out. The Midwest did not have a back-up generator.

  So I stayed in my room and played with Luna and used up my allowance on radio messages to my friends on the moon. Which are not cheap.

  “Just come out into the woods with me,” Dad said. “You know we’re not in the city anymore, we’re way out in the country and it’s cool in the woods and it smells wonderful.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. Woods were just a lot of trees, and trees were just really tall plants. Why did they need to get so tall? What was the point? I just didn’t see why trees were necessary. We didn’t have them on Alpha.

  Mom was gone a lot, mostly doing science things with the government. Dad worked at home on his computer so that he could be with me. Two grandparents and three aunts came for a visit and I had to come out of my room, but they were a lot of strangers and I didn’t know what to say to them. The visit wasn’t fun at all. Nothing was fun.

  After her family left, Mom looked grim. “You could have made more of an effort, Nia.”

  I looked at the floor.

  Her voice got softer. “I know you miss Alpha, honey. And your friends. But things will be better when school starts next week. You’ll meet kids your own age.”

  I took a long breath. This was as good a time as any to tell her. “I’m not going to school.”

  “Of course you’re going to school.”

  A long pause. I risked a peek away from staring at my shoes. Mom wasn’t looking at me but at Dad. She said, “Wayne—you knew.”

  “I knew that Nia doesn’t want to go to school.”

  I said, “Not just don’t want to—I’m not going.”

  Dad and Mom gave each other That Look. They do that a lot. That Look can mean different things, but in this case I knew exactly what it meant. Dad was going to be on Mom’s side, not mine.

  I ran into my room and slammed the door. Luna sat on my bed. I turned her on and she licked my face with her cool metal tongue and crawled into my lap. She does that whenever I cry.

  I couldn’t run away—there’s no way to run away to the moon. I couldn’t stay in my room, because Mom would drag me out and Dad would look really unhappy. I would have to go to school.

  I said a bad word and hugged Luna.

  …………………………

  The very next day, Dad brought home the puppy.

  “I don’t want that! I told you!” I said.

  Dad said, “It’s not for you, it’s for me. I told you I miss dogs.”

  Nothing I could say to that—I had Luna so it was only fair that Dad have a dog, too. The puppy was smaller than Luna and had hair all over it, like on a person’s head. Its head was too big for its body. It sat in the middle of the kitchen floor and blinked, then it rushed at me and started licking my toes. I jumped on a chair.

  “Eewww! Make it stop! Its tongue is all wet!”

  Dad laughed. “So is your tongue, Nia.”

  “I don’t lick people!”

  Luna, who was still turned on, poked her head out of my bedroom. Then she walked ove
r to the puppy. She put her head down and stuck her butt up in the air, which is what she does when I give her the Play! Command.

  I said, “I didn’t tell her to do that!”

  Dad said, “I think robo-dogs are factory-set to play when they see another dog.”

  The puppy gave a little squeak and stuck its butt in the air, too. They circled around each other, barking and yipping. Then they chased each other and cuffed each other and rolled around together, while I watched from on top of the chair. It was pretty funny.

  Dad was laughing his head off. Finally I got down off the chair and said, “Does that dog have a name?”

  “Bandit.”

  Bandit’s fur was really, really soft.

  …………………………

  School was even worse than I feared.

  Dad took me there in his new car, and I kept my eyes closed the whole way. He stopped right by a back door and led me inside after school had already started, so I didn’t have to see any outside at all, although I felt the awful heat until we were in the school. At least it had AC like civilized places such as, for instance, the moon.

  I said, “Does the teacher know I have agoraphobia?”

  “Yes, but the kids don’t. You won’t have to go outside, Nia—I explained all that. Your class will be told that you have allergies.”