Deija, the Martian Princess of Glass, was lounging on a chaise longue in her Dapto Castle. Her butler was nearby, drinking bluegas through a striped straw.
She sighed.
“There’s nothing new under the sun.
Is it worth invading the rest of this sorry planet?
It might all be like Dapto. This place
has infected me. I have a rash.”
We’re dropping out of hyper now into normal space, the words of Azulinha, the fluidic pilot,
flashed inside my head, and don’t touch that, it’s not a percolator.
Soon there’d be no more
chromatic thought transference—
empathic rivers of the gaseous mind.
It would all be stuttering and stumbling
with optics and acoustics
on the surface of the planet.
Through the window, washes
on a watercolor planet,
rainy autumn shades in spring, and
in the early evening, scattered photon showers
are forecast, a luminous return of light
from the shadow sun.
Indoors there are smaller mysteries,
trailing motes in negative space—
old-fashioned sunlight
leaving lamps and bulbs,
domesticities and peripherals,
drawn out between the curtains
to the shadow sun.
Last night I dreamt we went together to the sea
and joined the others gathered on the beach,
figures made of sand who dreamed within a dream
of alluvial forgiveness.
From the kitchen doorway
a flock of shadows flies out on the ridge,
and in the gullies yellowed smog
is bleeding from the ground.
The earth is sick, reclaiming its own,
and the far horizon is a never ending fuse,
unquenchable linear fire.
So silvery and sleek, and quiet
as a mouse trying to purr,
no steering, no gearstick or pedals.
The salesperson kept on talking,
but I was already sold.
It doesn’t have a motor at all. A universal transport moves you to a nearby timeline, where the i-coupé’s a little further down the street.
They call the parasitium a paradise, they tell us we’re all safe beneath its dome, but I’ve heard rumors there’s another land outside—if we can only loose the ties of our dependency—a place where each wild star might cast its light.
By day I wander in the markets, stop before the soap box preacher who swears that only those without a heart are truly pure, that they alone will know a rational salvation in the world beyond the plastic.
The Third Dimension appeared on-line in Plasma Frequency Magazine. PFM re-emerged in 2016 with help from Kickstarter, and they’ve introduced a number of new features including a rookie author program, revamped editorial process, and broad reading choices with stories free on-line as well as in print and ebook editions.
Note: Unfortunately PFM has now sunk again and all that is left is a terrible spam site.
‘The Third Dimension’ is pretty much sci fi, as long as you can suspend your disbelief—I find a glass of wine helps, except with politicians—and it owes something to Ian R MacLeod’s magical novel The Light Ages, plus a few other works that I won’t name to avoid spoilers.