The Robert Stanek Short Story & Novella Collection Read online

  The Robert Stanek Short Story

  & Novella Collection

  Absolutes

  Magic Lands

  Silence Is Golden

  August Rains

  Exploring Ruin Mist

  Robert Stanek

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person or event is entirely coincidental.

  The Robert Stanek Short Story

  & Novella Collection

  Absolutes, Magic Lands, Silence Is Golden, August Rains, Exploring Ruin Mist

  2nd Edition. Copyright © 2015 by Robert Stanek.

  First printed in 2005.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Country of First Publication: United States of America.

  Cover design & illustration by Robert Stanek

  REAGENT PRESS

  www.reagentpress.com

  Discover magical worlds and be swept away in the adventures of a lifetime!

  Ruin Mist Books

  Reading Order for Young Adult Editions

  Kingdoms and the Elves of the ReachesWinds of ChangeSeeds of DissentPawn of DragonsTower of DestinyIn the Service of DragonsA Clash of HeroesA Dance of SwordsA Storm of ShieldsA Reign of DragonsGuardians of the Dragon RealmsThe Dragon, the Wizard & the Great DoorA Legacy of DragonsDragons of the Hundred WorldsBreath of FireLiving FireA Daughter of KingsBetrayalDeliveranceRebirthDiscord

  Achievements for the Ruin Mist books…

  #1 Fiction, Audible (12 weeks, 2005)

  Top 50 Sci-fi/Fantasy, Amazon (26 weeks, 2002)

  Top 10 Fiction, Audible (25 weeks, 2005)

  Top 50 Fiction, Audible (52 weeks, 2005-2006)

  Top 10 Kids & YA, Audible (180 weeks, 2005-2007)

  #1 Featured Book Audible June-July 2005

  Featured in Cover Story, Publisher's Weekly (2009)

  Featured in VOYA (2007)

  Featured in Complete Idiots Guide to Elves and Fairies (2005)

  Featured in Ancient Art of Faery Magick (2005)

  Popular Series Fiction for Middle School and Teen Readers (2005, 2008)

  Top 10 Recommended Author -- SciFi Bookcase (2004 - 2012)

  Top 10 Book -- SciFi Bookcase (2004 - 2012)

  Top 20 Author -- RateItAll (2005 - 2012)

  A Top 100 Fantasy -- The Fantasy 100 (2005 - 2007)

  The author’s books also have been in:

  The Olympian

  The Journal of Electronic Defense

  Publishers Weekly

  Parenting Magazine

  VOYA

  BookWire

  Children's Writer

  Children's Bookshelf

  Library Journal

  School Library Journal

  The News Tribune

  Praise for Ruin Mist…

  "Sure to attract fans of graphic novels and classic Tolkien alike. Stanek will likely draw a cult following. This guarantees fans, and those fans will be ready to wield their swords against the Dark Lord in Stanek's next installment."

  -- VOYA, the leading magazine for YA librarians

  "[The author has] a penchant for clear and simple prose. He also prefers swift, action-oriented scenes. Solidly built. Stanek moves among his main characters with ease, always switching at a climactic moment to maintain suspense. The accessible, brisk language keeps things moving."

  -- Foreword Magazine

  "Word of mouth turned it into a bestseller. Very satisfying."

  -- The Fantasy Guide

  "Recommended reading."

  -- BookWire

  Join Robert Stanek on Facebook!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ABSOLUTES

  CHAPTER ONE: CRYOTERRAFORM

  CHAPTER TWO: STORMRISE

  CHAPTER THREE: STRUGGLE AGAINST TIME

  CHAPTER FOUR: FADING MEMORIES

  CHAPTER FIVE: FINAL SALUTE

  MAGIC LANDS

  CHAPTER ONE: THE QUEST BEGINS

  CHAPTER TWO: THE DEEP

  CHAPTER THREE: CHOOSING

  CHAPTER FOUR: OLD BULL

  CHAPTER FIVE: LAND BEYOND THE HILL

  CHAPTER SIX: WATCHING AT THE EDGE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: IN AND OUT / OUT AND IN

  CHAPTER EIGHT: RETURN FROM ADALAYIA

  CHAPTER NINE: STRANGE MEETING

  CHAPTER TEN: CURIOSITY

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE STONE LAND

  CHAPTER TWELVE: DISCOVERY AND ESCAPE

  SILENCE IS GOLDEN

  AUGUST RAINS

  AN INTRODUCTION TO RUIN MIST

  BONUS EXCERPT FROM: IN THE SERVICE OF DRAGONS

  Absolutes

  Chapter One:

  Cryoterraform

  The light pulsated, its amber glow intermittently bathing the lab. The hum of the elevator as it descended, a faint whir growing closer, had everyone’s attention. I kissed Kendyll on the cheek and whispered in her ear, “It’s been a wonderful 17 years. If we follow the plan, we can make it through this. Trust me.”

  She burst into tears and ran from the lab. I watched her go, my legs going numb as I sought to chase after her. I glanced at my watch as the elevator came within sight. It was 23:45. Fifteen minutes to midnight. Fifteen minutes until doom, January 15, 2365.

  The team had worked through the night for days. We were one step away from everlasting breakthrough and now Project IV decided to send out their goons and the brilliant goon who was going to save the day. One of my colleagues kidded me once that what we were doing was akin to exposing lime Jello to the vacuum of space, supercooling it, then condensing it in order to figure out why it’s the color green it is.

  I hoped goons liked lime Jello.

  The elevator stopped. Everything stopped. I swung my eyes around the lab, from the monitor that showed security waiting on the surface to the elevator doors as they slowly opened. I could hear the pulleys winding, the levers moving, the doors slowly retracting.

  I waited, my heart pounding in my ears, my eyes leveled on the spot where I imagined the face of the brilliant goon — Project IV’s hope — should be, but instead of seeing a face, I saw a mop of rusty brown hair.

  As I panned down, I saw blue eyes and a galaxy of freckles. Still lower, a T-shirt that proudly announced “I found It,” then genuine Bermuda shorts as florescent a green as the green in lime Jello, and finally a pair of dirty yellow sneakers.

  I found myself gritting my teeth as I stepped forward, hand extended. Eighty-two days into this latest attempt, I was confronted with a kid from Moonbase III. Worse still, I knew his name, would never forget that name: Krzysztof Steelbridge.

  Eighteen hours into the current workday, I suddenly found the humor of the Jello statement. Yet I wasn’t laughing, I was near tears. I didn’t need this kid anymore. We were on the verge of our own breakthrough and his arrival was just an untimely interruption. I needed him two months ago, not now.

  My hand jolted back to my side, I don’t know what came over me, but suddenly I felt bold. I screamed, “Get off the pad you idiot!”

  “That’s pronounced Krzysz-tof,” he said. “But you can call me Krys, everyone else does. Wow, some ride, I tell you!”

  My jaw dropped. I remembered him as wet behind the ears from my classes and loud as a choir rat. “The journey’s going to end real quick if you don’t get off that pad,” I found myself saying.

  He upturned apprehensive blue eyes. “Why?”

  “Stormrise,” I said. “Where’s your protective gear?”
>
  “Stormrise? You need to shut everything down.”

  Genius? I smiled now, having stumped genius boy. The pain receded from my gut as I tossed him a protective suit. Kendyll came back into the central dome of the lab from the living cubicles. The mascara around her eyes was newly penciled in. The pale rose lipstick gone. Her beautiful high-boned cheeks were now dry.

  For a moment, I caught her eye. She smiled seeing what I knew was renewed confidence mirrored in my eyes. I glanced to the monitors that showed there were more arrivals on the surface, then to my watch.

  Midnight.

  Kendyll began directing the efforts of the team. I turned my attention back to the common array and made sure everything was exactly focused on the single dwindling mass in the cryo-chamber’s heart. A minor resonance problem captured my attention for a time, but soon I noticed the press of Krys standing behind me.

  Krys tapped me on the shoulder. I turned.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, the tone of his voice pointed, as if to say he was in control. “You have to shut everything down!”

  Cryoterraform. How the hell was I supposed to explain all this to some punk kid and not ruin my day? I said, hoping to say nothing that would interest him, “The array is quite simple. Focus a thin stream of photons with a micro-precise amount of energy that reacts with the center mass of atoms. The focused stream of photons bombards the larger atoms, like meteorites striking the face of old-Earth with the precise purpose of ending its rotation and bringing it to a dead stop. The slower, the colder, until the atoms are on the verge of the absolute: standing still. Others may have reached it, but no one knows its full potential—”

  I bit my tongue to stop my lips from moving and wished for a bowl of lime Jello to fill my mouth before I said something that I knew I’d regret.

  Krys stared up at me. The glazed-over look in his eyes, I hoped was a good sign. Then he said. “Is cesium still the atom of choice because of the way it reacts to light?”

  I laughed. Yes, cesium possessed a whole integer spin, but cesium was the atom of choice no more. “Its mass is simply too large.”

  “What about hydrogen? It has a whole integer spin, a boson, right?”

  Yes, hydrogen was small, the smallest, and it was capable of clumping together in unlimited numbers. But its mass was simply too small. I said proudly, “Too small.”

  A moment later I found myself filling the silence with, “How old are you anyway, kid?”

  He glared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.

  “It’s English, kid… And don’t answer, I don’t want to know any more. My colleagues hit an invisible wall with cesium and hydrogen: They couldn’t get the atoms cold enough or dense enough to form one of the most spectacular states of matter: Bose-Einstein condensation. The point where matter condenses into a single entity. An entity few have seen and no one truly understands. Cryoterraform, kid. No one has ever seen; no one has ever done it. And it all starts with an entity perhaps akin to the incredibly dense white dwarf — and that’s what I am after, a miniature white dwarf, a manmade white dwarf, a miniature and super-dense, bright white star of my own design and then—”

  I bit my tongue again. I’d reached the absolute, but it was the final absolute I was after. I was sure this kid who’d been here all of five minutes would get credit for it somehow. I knew it, I just knew it.

  Krys smiled. I shrank back.

  He said, “I can see now why the community labeled you mad, but also why your team never had a lack of financial backers—”

  “Yes, Project IV was always there but only because while the other guys were at a virtual standstill, I defied the laws of nature and won for the very reason quantum mechanics confounds conventional thinkers. Label me mad if you will, but at precisely 00:15, we’ll have finally reached critical density.” With or without genius boy.

  Call me Krys, call me Krys, label me stupid. How was I supposed to explain a lifetime to genius boy in fifteen minutes?

  I turned to the technicians and Kendyll. “Stormrise in ten minutes. I’ve got to revert power from the field, I need it for boosting.”

  “Boosting?” Krys asked. “You’re not supposed to—”

  “Yes, boosting,” I cut in. “Fasten the zippers on the suit, kid. Where’d you get your degree from?” A diversion. I knew the answer already; he’d been in five of my classes.

  “I got my—”

  “No, talk while you zip.”

  “I did my post-doctorate work on Moonbase III. I found Top-Omega.”

  “How old are you, kid?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  I knew I didn’t want to know. “Well son, I’m fifty-seven, don’t forget it,” I spoke fast, “I don’t care if you found Top-Omega or Charm-Delta. Grab those goggles there, you’re going to need them eventually.”

  He pointed to a pair of goggles hanging from a support next to a line of protective suits. “This?”

  “Yes. Do you see any other?”

  “No.”

  “Put them on. Come back over here. Yes, over here…” I paused, and then asked, “What do you think? They said it’d never work, but there it is, developing before your very eyes with the cameras to record it. At Stormrise, I’ll have reached the final absolute: the cessation of motion born out of the coldest cold — 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit — and soon afterward, the birth of our very own super dense—”

  “What’s causing that vibration there?”

  “What vibration, kid—” My eyes went wide. I shouted. “Kendyll, get over here! Kendyll, where are you?

  She appeared at my side.

  “Switch the exterior image recorder on now and boost the levels.”

  She did. I watched the instrument panel, my eyes darting to the cryo-chamber.

  I said, “There, that’s it… Yes, that’s it.”

  Krys exclaimed, “It’s still shrinking and the glow is spectacular.”

  As I turned to look at him, I lost track of Kendyll. “What’s happening? Kid, where’d Kendyll go?”

  Krys said, “The vibration resonance is drowning out everything else, but it looks to me like she’s busy with the technicians.”

  “Save the commentary, kid. Adjust those levels: point zero zero zero one. Kendyll?” I’m going to kill her; I’m going to kill her. Where is she? I need her.

  “Point zero zero one.”

  “Give me that, point zero zero zero one.” I turned and shouted, “Kendyll?”

  Krys said, “I would’ve gotten it you know. Yes, I am twenty-three, but I’ve—”

  “Save the commentary, kid. Here, keep adjusting the levels down, point zero zero zero one every fifteen seconds.” The vibrations intensified, shifted. “Cryoterraform, we’re almost there. Can you believe it?”

  I craned my neck and peered around the lab, but couldn’t see clear to the other side of the chamber. “Where’s Kendyll, where’s Kendyll?”

  “Here, I’m here,” she said, “you stubborn, old goat. You don’t need to carry on so. They were having problems maintaining reversion. I’ve got most of the team on it. The others are — I can’t hear anything over that noise. Where’s it coming from?”

  I pointed.

  Her eyes went wide. “No?”

  “Yes.” I smiled.

  Her eyes became great saucers. “It isn’t?”

  The particle cloud was completely gone now, replaced by a phenomenal glowing point of light of microscopic proportions: the source of the teeth-rattling vibrations. “It is.”

  She said, “It’s never done that before. What’s causing it?”

  “I don’t know. Get Gwen and Tabbith on it pronto.”

  The kid said, “It’s feedback, feedback from the reversion processing. It’s got to be.”

  “Who’s the kid?”

  I smiled at her casual nonchalance. “Dr. Margaret Kendyll, Krzysztof Steelbridge.”

  Kendyll stuck out her hand.

  “Shake her hand, kid. She’s my wife
and colleague. She won’t bite.” I turned back to Kendyll. “He’s what Project IV sent, can you believe it? Just arrived a few minutes ago.”

  “You said tomorrow and the report said — Well, I was expecting—”

  I shrugged. “So was I, so was I. Let’s get back to work.”

  She said, “Don’t you think the rest of the team should see this? I mean, isn’t this—”

  “They can gawk later. For now, I don’t want them to move. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? We’re almost there and I don’t want anything to spoil this.”

  “You know I do, you old fart.”

  I glanced at my watch. 00:13. “Stormrise in two minutes!”

  Kendyll said, “I’ll get Gwen and Tabbith. We’ll start the survey.”

  Kendyll hurried away, I watched her go. To Krys I said, “Kid, you adjusting those levels?”

  “Krys, and yes, I am.”

  “Good,” I said, standing back. The nacreous point had just trebled in size.

  “She’s a good-looking woman,” Krys said glancing over his shoulder.

  “Save the commentary, kid, she’s wearing a shielding suit, and she’s twice your age. You still down adjusting those levels?”

  Krys nodded.

  “Good, worry about them and nothing else.”

  My heart was beating so fast, I had to sit. I backed against a cushioned lab chair and fell into it.

  Krys looked down at me. “You know why Project IV sent me, don’t you, doctor?”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn, kid… Okay now, keep that adjustment. Would you look at that?”

  Chapter Two:

  Stormrise

  One of the technicians shouted, “We’ve got Stormrise!”

  I jumped out of the chair.

  Krys said, “They sent me to replace you, doctor. Your wife would stay on of course, but you’d go back to Moonbase III.”

  “Save the commentary, kid, I’m not listening.” I double-checked the laser array and the strength of the magnetic field inside the chamber. “What’s the readout, second column, third row?”