draliman on life

It’s Storybook Corner time again! As usual, I’m getting this in just under the wire.

This is a 300-500 word story based on a photo prompt, and is hosted by Adam Ickes. This week’s photo is quite open – just a door – where could it lead?

But first, the logo!

You can read the other stories for this month (March) by clicking on the little blue froggy below.

And here’s the photo for this month’s prompt.

Marcus took a deep breath and walked through the door, shaking the snow from his boots. It was warmer inside, and warmer too at his ultimate destination, he hoped.

They had arrived twenty-two years ago amid world-wide panic. “Invasion!” was the word on everyone’s lips. “Aliens!” followed close behind.

After a few days nothing untoward had happened. Contact was made.

The Vonotvi, they called themselves. A peaceful race from the far side of the galaxy, their planet had died when their sun exploded. These two hundred were the last of their race.

They brought new culture, new technology. Technology like Space Fold Unlimited Travel allowing almost instantaneous travel across the planet between any two terminals. Operated by SFUTlink^TM under the guidance of the Vonotvi, this building held one such terminal.

Today Marcus was travelling to warmer climes. The last of his family lost in a flaming mass of twisted metal, he was leaving familiar shores and painful memories behind.

He’d heard the stories, of course. People disappearing, walking in one end and never seen again. Nobody was particularly worried. Did they really disappear? No-one had reported them missing. Most were transients. Who knew if they were missing or not?

The Vonotvi had been on Earth for decades with never a problem and besides, there weren’t enough of them to cause trouble. Conspiracy theorists, they’ll always find something. Everyone used SFUT. Commuters, celebrities, hell, even world leaders. Perfectly safe!

And so Marcus walked up to the desk, swiped his ID and joined the queue of travellers. Men, women, children. Families. Families like the one he’d lost.

He swallowed to clear the lump in his throat and approached the Threshold. A swirling, pulsating mass of colours, the Threshold was everything popular science fiction had promised. One by one the travellers entered, to emerge on the other side of the planet. Marcus closed his eyes and crossed into the “tunnel”.

Immediately the air exploded from his body. He felt weightless. He opened his eyes but had no air in his lungs to scream as his eyeballs threatened to burst from his skull. He was floating in blackness, unable to breathe. Something had gone horribly wrong!

As consciousness left him, he imagined he saw a dark shape approaching.

When he opened his eyes again, everything was clear. He stood in a large metal bay, a hanger maybe, amidst many others. A huge screen flashed images of a planet – clear blue seas, huge cities, open countryside, somehow familiar? – his enhanced brain absorbed the information. Power generation centres, transport hubs, seats of power. Tactics. Mission parameters. The vicious pincers at the ends of his arms, bonded to his flesh, felt wrong somehow. Everything felt a little wrong, but he put that thought aside as he screeched the Vonotvi battle cry, echoed by thousands of others in the hanger.

Ka Vonotvi kee’ash! “For Vonotvi to the death!”

In the gallery above, two Vonotvi, or “Patient Ones”, smiled in grim satisfaction.

Soon.