Gliese and the walking man

by SYNGENIC

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1.	ORBIT 02:49	lyrics	buy track
“I sat peering out of the small circular porthole looking down to the surface of Gliese, just watching the cloud formations and weather fronts, picking out a few notes on my acoustic guitar to pass the time of a well-deserved break. It was a beautiful sight below, undisturbed, serene, very similar to old Earth some 20 light years back, albeit as it was some four or so centuries ago. White and grey clouds stretched across the continents and oceans, a storm front moved in over the northern hemisphere as the poles slept in white. It was peaceful, beautifully peaceful.” “Then it happened, so damn quickly. They appeared out a nowhere, too small to be detected by the conventional equipment of my day, until they formed up into a swarm, eating their way through all the mid-orbit sats and stations. They said later it was a cloud of robotic / autonomic something or others – tech-eaters someone called them. My proximity alarm sounded as soon as they took shape, so I fired up the thrusters, going manual to try and avoid their course, but they turned quickly like a preying shark toward my little sat as it moved aside. They began eating their way through my sat before I knew what was happening, so I suited up as the engines groaned, stuggled and died, and I jumped the locks. The eaters devoured everything behind me so quickly, storing it, replicating themselves with the material they’d gorged upon to move swiftly on.”
2.	RESIGNATION 02:56	lyrics	buy track
“I was lucky, perhaps too small to be significant, as I’d jumped my locks. I righted myself with a suit thruster and watched as the swarm moved away, turning their attention toward Home One. A handful of tiny vessels tried to escape, but the swarm grew, reaching out in the silence to intercept every single one. Then Home One imploded, perhaps a self-destruct to take a few of those alien bastards with it, we still don’t know, even today. But I didn’t have time to be an idle spectator to this horror, as I realised I was being pulled slowly towards Gliese’s upper atmosphere and my death.”
3.	DESCENT 04:51	lyrics	buy track
"My suit’s hud – powered by embedded dual processors back then – began feeding telemetry data to me as fast as it could, but the processors began to labour, arguing over their conclusions as they double-checked each other’s results. They weren’t built for this kind of analysis, as the speed of my descent fed them too much data too quickly, and as they struggled to complete a calculation, the data altered, rendering their results inaccurate. There was all this mad audible electronic chatter between the two processors and I knew I had to rely on instinct for the most part to hit the first tunnel with the correct trajectory."
4.	RED SUNRISE 05:58	lyrics	buy track
“I was awoken to darkness, apparently by a group nannite charge, a jolt to wake my sleeping heart. My heart beat sporadically at first, uneven, unsure, a broken rhythm of near death, struggling to find the consistency of life. As I teetered on the precipice between this life and the next, my mind swam against the tide of many drugs towards the distant shore of lucidness. It was if I was trapped in a dream, hallucinating all kinds of disturbing images. Had the eaters landed planetside, ravaged Gliese, perhaps having developed a use for and therefore a taste for the constituents of what makes us human?”
5.	PILGRIMAGE 05:35	lyrics	buy track
“It was almost like a pilgrimage, that long journey from east to west across the surface of this planet, a pilgrimage to the rest of my life I finally decided, and it was going to be a long walk. I began, slowly at first, then found my rhythm – evenly measured, kicking up dust and dirt, heading for that far-off city with the sunlight bathing my face. My thoughts were mixed, elation and horror to what I’d both achieved and seen. Would the eaters pose a threat to the inhabitants of our young world as my hallucinations had suggested? Or, were they simply automated miners like our deep range bots, intending simply to harvest, unknowing or unaware, uncaring of the life forms they had condemned to perish in space?"
6.	HOPE 03:22	lyrics	buy track
"As I continued on I noticed a patch of colour ahead, and as I came nearer, I could see it was a tiny flower, lonely amid the dust. I stopped and bent down to examine it more closely. It was beautiful against the starkness of the dusty ground, delicate red and yellow petals, with seemingly fine leaves, light green with darker spots near their edges – I remember it distinctly. As the wind rose it swayed and slowly its petals closed upon themselves almost with a shiver, its head bowing slowly as if respecting the coming storm it knew it couldn’t survive against. The plant then retreated beneath the surface, vanished as if it had never existed. I wondered if there were more of these delicate flowers hiding beneath the surface, or if this was the last of its kind."
7.	RUNNING FOR THE GATE 02:48	lyrics	buy track
"I was elated, the city and its safety, its food and clean water – a cold beer, they’d seen me! Human companionship – and ultimately my family waiting on the city’s opposite side, possibly unaware I was alive, all and more was just two hundred meters distant. Perhaps my freefall had been detected, and I was expected. Then I realised with some confusion the gate guards were pointing behind me, not at me. I turned, the road behind me shimmered in the sunlight, changing, gathering – but no, not the road itself, but rather what was upon the road and around its edges. These small scurrying shapes rapidly formed up upon each other, creating a huge bizarre metallic shape, scared with disfiguring burns and melted black welts. It ambled slowly toward me, jaws snapping at the wind with a horrid measured repeating snap as it reared up, a rasping growl emanating from its maw as it realised its prey was almost within reach."
8.	GLEISIA 03:22	lyrics	buy track
"The eastern district, the city’s founding two mile square area displayed its hereditary proudly, its old Earth origins, the two great eastern powers that had combined their resources and more importantly, determination to reach Gliese, had ensured so. Colour was thankfully important now as much as authenticity. These two powers knew the old cities, as much theirs as well as their many western counterparts were guilty of having fallen into a monochromatic trap over the centuries of development, a trap of cultural conveniences that favoured the counterfeit and dismissed the authentic. Where once cast grey blocks formed mighty flat roofed accommodation towers, broken up by dull white framed glass, where corporate edifices, tall and defiant simply reflected the grey buildings around them, here, grey could only be seen high up, represented as a storm cloud’s reflection upon the glass. "
9.	COLLIDING APART 04:11	lyrics	buy track
"I couldn’t control myself and wept silently as I remembered what I’d witnessed – more from relief than anything else I finally decided, as I tried not to. Steadying myself, regaining my composure I forced my shoulders to relax and ordered food. As I watched the bar fill up and I listened to the chatter grow, I found myself saying good afternoon to a woman that had taken the stool to my left. She ordered sushi and lemon tea, unfolding a napkin and placing it delicately across her lap. Before I knew it we were chatting, small talk I guess, nervous release – although I do remember saying to her, ‘Aliens ate my guitar,’ at some stage – which afforded me a slowly raised eyebrow. You know, it’s funny how sometimes bars can do that to people, allow them to relax and open up to complete strangers."
10.	REQUIEM OF RAINFALL 05:38	lyrics	buy track
"Then the first droplets appeared, punctuating the background hum of electricity, faint music filtering out into the street from the tiny restaurants, where dim lights glowed orange behind thick leaded glass. At first, these tiny slivers of water created an uneven rhythm as they dampened the pavements in small dark spots. Then slowly the slivers grew, swept along by the wind as the thunder loomed closer. I huddled into a doorway to take shelter and looked up. The rain drifted in layered sheets, bouncing from the neon, momentarily absorbing the colours. Showers of yellow and blue and red, mid air fountains of orange and white cascading, spiralling and twisting in the air. A little way off to the north, a collection of narrow-field gravity tunnels were in operation, accepting produce and general supplies for the shops, restaurants and business of the district from delivery bots. The rain coursed through the tunnels, altered by their varied field strengths, slowed, forming larger droplets as the wind grew, creating a dozen different types of rain to extinguish the dryness of the streets and slanted rooftops. "
11.	HOMECOMING 02:25	lyrics	buy track
"The silence around me was a little daunting, and I considered the possibility I’d wake up back in that ravine, that my journey had been nothing more than a drug induced forgery – my suit tricking me into self-belief, to drag me back to reality with a counterfeit memory of a future that may well be, whilst the drugs and nannites did their best to revive my shattered body to function. What better way to convince a broken man his life would, could continue if he wanted it to do so? For a moment I feared this to be true, that everything around me would evaporate, to reveal that craggy plain before me, and my journey would now have to be endured once again, but this time different. I imagined those chattering processors colluding with each other in a sub frequency I couldn’t hear whilst I lay unconscious, hatching this plan – laughing at me, somehow communicating with and convincing my nannites this deception was for my own good and ultimately, survival."

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released December 30, 2015

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SYNGENIC Seaford, UK

SYNGENIC is Howard Stephen Watts, a writer, artist and composer from the U.K. He has provided book and magazine cover art and interior for The British Fantasy Society, British Science Fiction Association, Fantasy Short Stories magazine, Shoreline of Infinity and Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.
His novel, 'The Master of Clouds' is available on Amazon Kindle. ... more