Plot Medics 

This one comes from a dream fragment.

Three Blue Things (658 words)

It started with a little girl’s balloon. It caught Alice’s eye as she hurried through the park.  The bright sunshine gleamed on the pearly blue rubber, stretched thin against the thunder purple sky. Alice smiled. It was amazing that everyone’s kids demanded total immersion games, but they still liked balloons. Outlined in summer storm-light it was significant, iconic. As she tried to work out what it meant, it burst with a loud bang. She jumped. For a second afterwards her shoulders relaxed, she breathed from the bottom of her lungs, the sunlight warmed her back. Then the little girl started crying, a cold wind whipped the clouds over the sun. Alice shivered, and strode on to the transit station. She had a holiday to earn.

#

Alice and her friend Chloe jogged along the assigned pedway, next to the river. Summer storms were months gone. It was dark at four and the embankment was strung with coloured Christmas lights and glittered with threedee stars. The ads from the sponsors hung in the air, gaudier than the real lights and festooned with virtual tinsel.

Sophie and Chloe weaved around worried-looking people lugging bagfuls of gifts.

“I don’t know how you do it,” puffed Chloe. “I’ve only got one job and I’m clinging on to my sanity by my fingernails. I hope your holiday is worth it.”

“The jobs are boring, but they’re not hard,” said Alice.  “I spend most of the time day-dreaming about the trip. Mentally packing my bags.” She swigged from her water bottle. “It’s weird though. I’ll be thinking about hiking boots and a tent and suddenly find that my brain is throwing in my grandmother’s photos, my dad’s tools and that odd little toy my great aunts knitted for me.”

“Stripy Jim? I thought you loved that toy.”

“I do.”

They collapsed gratefully on the bench that marked the end of their run.

“You’ve never been that far away before, have you?” asked Chloe. “Maybe you’re a bit nervous.”

Alice laughed. “Yes, it’s like I think someone’s going to steal my favourite stuff while I’m gone. I’m not even sure why I want to go. I just know I have to.”

“Hey, everybody needs a bit of adventure. The only holiday I’m going to get is three days over Christmas. And you know what that’ll be like.”

Alice, relaxed and weary, sipped her water and watched the festoons of lights. They hung against the winter sky like a coded message, written in red, yellow, green, white, blue. Behind them the rising trail of a ship slashed across the sky. A pop burst on the cold air as a light winked out. Alice and Chloe jumped. With a firecracker series of pops, every blue light in the string exploded.

“What the hell?” said Chloe.

“Must be something wrong with the blue ones,” said Alice. “Power rating too low or something. Let’s go back. I’ve got wine in the house. Fancy a drink?”

#

Alice settled into her seat on the ship. Her main luggage had been stowed. At the last moment, she’d thrown one photo album and her dad’s knife into her suitcase. She’d also tucked Stripy Jim into her handbag with her ID and entpod. She’d booked a window seat. Six months of three jobs, she made damned sure she was in the right place to get a good view. The noise at takeoff battered at her eadrums, the acceleration shoved her back into her chair. The businessman in the next seat flicked through the inflight ezine on his screen in a bored way, and then took out his comp and started working on a spreadsheet. Alice turned to look out the window. It was all worth it. As the deep blue of the sky zoned into star-studded black, the ship turned towards the gate and Alice got a perfect view of the Earth. A bright blue ball in the dark, pumped up and filled to bursting.

Leave a Reply