Tag Archives: Speculative Fiction

15 Minutes to Showtime

15 Minutes to Showtime

by

15 Minutes to Showtime

 

The Stone Pony on Earth closed for good in 1998. Or so they say.

 

Technically, it reopened here — in orbit — a hundred and twenty years later, because humanity can’t let go of its favorite myths. Some venture capital type decided to recreate every “legendary” Earth venue in a ring-shaped station orbiting Mars: CBGB, Whiskey a Go-Go, the Fillmore (with a barrel of real apples). But the Pony? That one’s the crown jewel: gravity set to a perfect 0.98g so you still feel your boots stick to the floor, and the bar smells faintly of beer, salt, and disinfectant — nostalgia with a citrus finish.

 

They kept the name, too: Stone Pony II. The font’s the same, neon tubes flickering by design, even though nothing on the station actually flickers anymore. And if you look out the portholes behind the stage, you can see the curve of Earth glowing like an amp light left on after load-out.

 

The tour buses may be interstellar shuttles now, and the roadies wear magnetic boots, but the bones of being in a band haven’t changed. It’s still equal parts exhaustion, duct tape, and ego management.

 

And I’ve still got fifteen minutes till showtime.

 

 

15 Minutes

 

Greenrooms haven’t evolved either. This one’s the same as every other: peeling posters, half-dead couch, snacks that expired before the moon was colonized. Someone left a case of synth-beer labeled “Pony Pilsner” — probably brewed in the same tank as the coolant.

 

The sound tech pokes his head in to say, “Ten till line check,” which in musician time means “eventually.”

 

There’s an old photo of Springsteen on the wall — original Earth-era — smiling like the world hadn’t gotten loud yet. I tap the frame for luck.

 

Outside the airlock, I can hear the low hum of the crowd. It’s not real air I’m breathing — just filtered atmosphere — but it’s heavy with anticipation anyway. Maybe that’s what rock and roll is now: recycled oxygen, still managing to catch fire.

 

10 Minutes

 

My bandmates are arguing about set order. The drummer wants to open with something fast. The bassist insists we save that one for last because it’s “the only one people remember.” The singer, who’s twenty-three and has never lived on Earth, suggests we cut both because “slow songs are more emotional in partial gravity.”

 

I don’t bother voting. I’m busy restringing my guitar. Even up here, the laws of physics still hate E-strings.

 

The tuner glows green and I grin. Old habits. I still use a manual pedal — analog tech, no AI assist. The kids call it “vintage.” I call it trustworthy.

 

A notification pings on my wristband: “SET TIME CONFIRMED — STONE PONY II MAIN STAGE — 2100 HOURS.”

 

My pulse answers, just slightly off-tempo.

 

 

5 Minutes

 

There’s a superstition we carry from planet to planet: never say it’s going to be a good show. That’s a jinx. You can say loud, tight, on time (rarely true), but never good.

 

I check my gear one last time. Amp hums steady. Pedals lit. Picks magnetized so they won’t drift if someone kills the gravity mid-song — a lesson learned the hard way during a festival gig on Titan.

 

The monitor tech floats by the door, grinning. “Crowd’s hyped,” he says. “They say someone from Springsteen’s great-great-grand-family’s out there.”

 

“Terrific,” I say. “Maybe they’ll write us off on their taxes.” He laughs and disappears down the hall.

The room goes quiet. That’s when it hits me — the same flutter it’s always been, no matter the planet or century. The kind that makes you check your strings again even though you just did.

 

The kind that means you still care.

 

 

2 Minutes

 

The guitarist from the opening act stops by to wish us luck. Kid can’t be more than nineteen, hair the color of ambition, holding a borrowed Strat with duct tape across the pickguard.

 

“Man,” he says, “you guys are legends.” I smile. “In certain zip codes, sure.”

He stammers, “No, really — my dad used to play your first record. Said it sounded like the future.”

 

“That’s ironic,” I tell him. “The future sounds like us covering the past.” He laughs politely, not sure if it’s a joke. Maybe it isn’t.

He floats back down the hall and I catch myself muttering, “Don’t buy the cheap strings.” Some advice transcends gravity.

 

 

Showtime

 

The hallway to the stage is narrow and lined with holo-posters that shimmer when you pass: CBGB at its peak, the Fillmore in color, the original Pony before the tides took Asbury Park. The air tastes faintly of metal and memory.

 

The crowd noise rises — not a roar exactly, more like a heartbeat. The house lights dim, the stage lights ignite in blue-white arcs.

 

My boots clack against the floor as I step out into the glow. The artificial gravity hums underfoot. The room tilts — not physically, just that rush of recognition: we’re on again.

 

The singer counts us in. The drummer misses the downbeat by a microsecond, which means everything’s perfect.

 

The first chord hits — loud, imperfect, human. It echoes through the hull, bouncing off the aluminum ribs of the station, traveling farther than sound was ever meant to.

 

For a second, I can see Earth through the portholes — that thin blue curve, distant and soft. Down there, the original Pony’s long gone, sand reclaimed by the sea. Up here, the noise keeps going, amplified by nostalgia and vacuum.

 

I glance at my bandmates: old friends, new recruits, a rotating cast of dreamers with calloused fingers. They’re grinning like kids at their first gig.

 

And I think: some things really don’t change. The gear, the gravity, the crowd — all just variables. The constant is the noise we make and the way it feels when someone out there sings along.

 

The lights flare, the monitors hum, the room vibrates. I catch my reflection in the glossy curve of my guitar — tired eyes, dumb smile.

 

Someone in the front row yells a request for a song we haven’t played in twenty years. I laugh into the mic. “You got it, pal. Let’s see if we remember the bridge.”

 

We don’t. Nobody cares.

 

Because for the next hour, the universe contracts to the size of a stage, the crowd moves like a single heartbeat, and every old song sounds brand new again.

 

And when it’s done — when the feedback fades and the applause feels like gravity pulling me back — I grin and think,

 

The lights came up, the crowd cheered like it mattered. And for the next hour, it did.

That’s enough.

 

 

This story first appeared on my substack. If you want to see my work before it comes here, please consider subscribing as a paid or free member. New stories drop there on Wednesdays, and here, sometime later.

Signal red buoy on blue water

Salt Logic

by

The ocean started apologizing on a Wednesday.

I was halfway through reheating yesterday’s chowder when the first buoy pinged. It wasn’t unusual — equipment hiccups, rogue currents, barnacle interference. What caught my attention was the rhythm: dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dash-dot….

Morse.

Old habits die hard. I still keep a code sheet taped to the fridge, a souvenir from my early NOAA days, before satellites made men like me mostly decorative. The message spelled SORRY.

I muttered, “For what?” and the microwave dinged as if answering.

Retirement had been my idea, though my department head called it “strategic downsizing.” I consult part-time now, checking data feeds from buoys scattered along the Maine coast. The system runs itself, mostly, but I like to think it appreciates a human witness.

The next morning, another ping. SORRY AGAIN.

I sent a diagnostic request, assuming a frequency overlap from the Coast Guard channel. The server replied clean: no interference detected.

By Friday, the pings had multiplied. They weren’t random; they were conversational. The pattern came from several decommissioned buoys — units I’d deployed twenty years ago. They hadn’t transmitted in over a decade.

 

Signal red buoy on blue water

The messages shifted tone:
PLEASE. LISTEN.

I poured coffee, black and briny as the sea air, and said to the empty kitchen, “I’m listening.”

I told myself it had to be a prank. Some ham-radio hobbyist with too much time and a flair for the dramatic. I posted on a forum, casual-like, asking if anyone else’s coastal feeds were acting up. The silence that followed felt like an answer.

That night the fog came in heavy, thick enough to muffle the world. I opened the window a crack to hear the buoys calling — long tones drifting over the water.

I TOOK TOO MUCH, they said.
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GIVE BACK.

I laughed then, a short bark that startled me. “You and me both.”

The fog swallowed the sound.

I drove down to the pier the next day, checking the harbor sensors manually. The air smelled like kelp and gasoline. Fishermen nodded as I passed — men who measured time in tides, not hours.

One of them called out, “You seeing the glow out by Bartlett Reef?”

“Bioluminescence,” I said automatically.

He spat into the water. “Funny. Glows in daylight, too.”

I didn’t answer.

The coordinates lined up with one of the old buoys. The one that had first said sorry.

Back home, I replayed the data. The signal wasn’t simple Morse anymore. It carried harmonics — layers of tone outside normal acoustic range. When I slowed it down, the pattern formed something like a heartbeat.

I should have been excited. Instead I felt tired, the kind of tired that gets behind your ribs and hums.

My ex-wife once said I had two emotions: analysis and avoidance. She wasn’t wrong. But curiosity’s a hell of a drug. I packed my field recorder, rented a dinghy, and headed out before dawn.

The water was calm, deceptive as a mirror. The buoy loomed ahead, orange paint faded to rust, solar light still blinking. I cut the motor and drifted close. The sea was strangely warm — not tropical, but body-temperature.

I tapped the buoy casing. “You wanted me here. Now what?”

The speaker crackled once, then settled into a low hum. Not mechanical. Musical.

Phosphorescence bloomed around the hull, not blue but green-white, swirling in time with the hum. It wasn’t random light. It was pattern — waveforms writ in motion.

For a moment, the ocean looked back at me.

No eyes, no face, just the sense of being regarded — gently, curiously. Like I was a specimen it didn’t quite understand.

Then, through the water, the vibration changed. Words formed not in sound but pressure, a resonance inside my chest.

YOU LISTENED.

I dropped the recorder. It hit the deck with a clatter.

When I came to — yes, came to, because at some point I’d apparently fainted like a Victorian lady — the sky had gone orange-gray. The buoy was silent. My watch said I’d lost forty minutes. The sea looked normal again, except for the faint shimmer beneath the surface, like heat mirage.

I told myself I’d hallucinated. Dehydration, low blood sugar, wishful thinking. I was a scientist, damn it. The ocean doesn’t apologize, and it doesn’t talk back.

Still, I logged the data. Frequency unknown. Amplitude variable. Subjective response: awe, mild panic, gratitude.

The next day I found the recorder washed up on the beach below my house. It was bone-dry, which shouldn’t have been possible. When I played it, there was only static — until the final minute.

A sound rose from the noise, deep and soft, like a whale’s call slowed to human tempo. Then words, barely audible:

YOU’RE PART OF US. ALWAYS WERE.

And then nothing.

I deleted the file. Some truths are better as rumors.

It’s been two weeks since then. The buoys are quiet. The weather reports are boring again. I pretend to be relieved.

Sometimes, though, when the wind hits just right, I hear a tone under the gulls — low, forgiving. I find myself answering without thinking, humming the way I used to when calibrating instruments, before I learned silence wasn’t the same as peace.

I’ve stopped trying to decode it.

I just listen.

Last night I filed my final report. The field labeled Cause of anomaly is blank. The conclusion reads:

Signal resolved. Recommend no further investigation.

I almost signed my name, then added a postscript — not for the agency, but for whoever or whatever reads between lines:

Some questions don’t need answers.
Some things just need listening.

The printer hummed as the page fed through, a perfect, familiar pitch. I caught myself smiling.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

And the sea, patient as always, hummed its agreement.

Art Credit: Staver
red_apples_by_crystalrain272_ddyb5kw

Apples From the Sky

by

red_apples_by_crystalrain272_ddyb5kw

It started raining apples on a Tuesday. Not metaphorical ones, not the kind you make mental jam with later.  Actual apples. Red, green, gold, a few bruised from altitude. They thudded into the street like soft hail and rolled into gutters.

I was at the café, the only one in town that thinks latte art counts as religion. When the first apple hit the window, I thought someone was playing a joke. Then another landed, then three. A cluster of high schoolers on the corner cheered as if fireworks were shooting off above them. Someone yelled “Free fruit!” and ran into traffic.

We’re not big on miracles in this part of the world. We’ve got potholes, power outages, raccoons, coyotes, and the occasional black bear, but nothing that drops Granny Smiths from the clouds. Still, everyone ran outside. The barista grabbed an umbrella, which was instantly rendered useless. The apples came down like marbles in a jar. They weren’t falling at anyone, though. They bounced off awnings and parked cars but never hit a person directly. As if they had manners.

I picked one up. It was warm, but not sun-warm, more heart-warm. The skin shimmered faintly, like it had been kissed by a rainbow no one else noticed.

That should have been the weird part but when I turned it over, I saw words burned into the peel. Not written, not carved. Etched.

It said: “Don’t take the night shift,” which was unhelpfully vague advice for someone who works freelance from her couch.

By the time the local police showed up—one car, lights politely flashing—the street looked like an abandoned orchard. Apples covered the pavement in uneven mosaics of color. Kids were collecting them in bike helmets and backpacks. Old Mrs. Haskell from the library filled her rolling walker basket and muttered about pie crust ratios.

Someone handed me another apple. This one had writing, too: “Say yes this time.”

And just like that, the miracle turned personal.

By late afternoon, the whole town was covered in fruit. Highway crews blocked the on-ramp because the apples kept bouncing onto the interstate. The mayor went on local radio, sounding far too chipper. “We encourage citizens to harvest responsibly,” she said, “and remember: one per person until we understand what we’re dealing with.”

As if this were a civic emergency and not the most interesting thing that had ever happened. here. (And no one stuck to picking up just one.)

At home, I lined up my apples on the kitchen counter. There were ten of them, each with a message. Some were bossy: “Go home.” “Stay.” “Turn left.” Others were tender: “Call her back.” “The cat forgives you.”

One just said, “Wednesday.” That one glowed faintly when I turned off the lights.

I know, I know. I should’ve called someone. The news stations, maybe the agricultural department, the guy who had that podcast about paranormal produce. But the truth is, it felt private. Like the universe had decided to pass me a note and was trusting me not to share it.

So I sat at my kitchen table and read them again, trying to piece together some narrative, as if they were tarot cards instead of fruit.

That’s when my phone buzzed.

It was my ex, Leah, who had moved two towns over for a “change of scenery” and a woman who owned a food truck. “Crazy weather you’re having,” she texted.

I typed back before I could stop myself: “You’d love it. It’s raining apples.”

She called instantly. “You okay?”

“Define okay.”

There was a pause. “You sound… happy.”

And I realized I was. I hadn’t felt light in months. Not since the slow ending, the furniture split, the weird polite silences.

“Maybe it’s the vitamin C,” I said.

She laughed, the kind of laugh that used to undo me. Then she said, “You should come by. Wednesday? I’ll make something apple adjacent.”

I looked at the counter. At the glowing fruit. Wednesday.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I will.”

The next morning, the apples were gone.

Not stolen—gone. No cores in the trash, no sticky spots on the sidewalk, nothing. Just clean streets and confused pedestrians looking up at blank skies.

The mayor declared it a “localized meteorological anomaly” and promised a commemorative plaque. The café printed “We Survived the Great Apple Fall” mugs. By Thursday, life had folded itself back into normal, the way it always does after magic: quickly, almost gratefully.

But one apple remained—the glowing one.

It doesn’t rot. It just sort of…  hums, sometimes… like a faraway cello. I keep it on the windowsill by my plants. When sunlight hits it, the words vanish, replaced by faint rings of light, like ripples on water.

I don’t know what any of it means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe the sky just needed to empty itself of fruit.

Still, on Wednesday, I drove to Leah’s. The sunset was the exact color of Honeycrisp skin, and the world smelled faintly of sugar. She opened the door with flour on her hands and that familiar raised eyebrow.

“Brought dessert?” she teased.

“Sort of,” I said, and held up the apple.

Her smile softened, like a chord resolving.

And for just a heartbeat, I could swear I heard something—a faint sound above us, high and far away, like applause carried on wind.

Art Credit: crystalrain272