5.
 Menet’s belongings began to appear in sacks an boxes outside her room. They lined the narrow, cottage-like walls on both sides. Her instruments, paints, dolls, papers, recorders, players, flute, stuffed animals, toys, and candy jar seemed packed by a firm, determined, and slightly angry hand. She kept to herself, avoiding him, and he, noticing, began to avoid her. He felt a hollowness inside, like the Basilica at Um. He already longed for the old days, when he’d worked and played hard. But all things in life were gone irrevocably once they were gone—like Um. Only memories remained, for a time, and then nothing.
He drove her to the gravbase and kissed her good-bye. He waved as her rolling stair with hundreds of terraformers on it moved toward the vast underbelly of the InterGalax Terraform Corp work ship. The ship covered the western sky like a huge green white and blue balloon. Kery was already driving away, kind of glad to see her go, kind of missing her, ultimately glad to start a new life that he’d worked so hard toward. The hammer sound rolled across the miles from the ship, one long slow pile driving smash after another as the antigravity engine cut in. Once gravitational energy had been understood, and added to both ends of the energy spectrum to make a unified circle, those waves that were both something and nothing could be counteracted with waves that were nothing and something, thereby canceling the attraction of a huge mass like Mirabel IV. The great ship, containing all of Kery’s companions of the past five years, including Menet, began to vanish into the thin white clouds high up in the powder blue sky.
His residence on the roof of the 500-story Kalopolis Tower was as quiet as his wood frame lakeside house, which was already being torn down to make room for a mile-long resort hotel. The residence proper was a quiet, sumptuous structure of elegant materials—polished marble, finely chiseled granite, stainless steel trim, many colors and textures of glasses from crystal through waxy polychrome blobs. The carpets inside were thick, the furniture filling every nook with the smell of leather. A complete entertainment center in the form of a sunken amphitheater seating 80 could project live holographic shows from around the galaxy. Six master bedrooms formed a semicircle to let him house guests of state in style, unless they stayed in the hotel downstairs. A private elevator big as a house took him down 300 stories to the shopping malls or 500 stories down to the domed train station that one day would connect all of Mirabel IV.
|
Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads,
and other online resources. If you want to thank the author, you may also buy a copy for the low price of a cup of
coffee. It's called Read-a-Latte: similar (or lower) price as a latte at your favorite coffeeshop, but the book lasts
forever while the beverage is quickly gone. Thank you (JTC).
|
TOP
|
MAIN
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
