Kyle Garret

So what is The Weekly Dose, aside from a few random pictures I've uploaded on the side there?  Well, it's exactly what the name suggests: a weekly dose of new material.  My goal is to put something new up here every Sunday, whether it's snippets of something new I'm working on, entire short stories, or samples from my books.  Every week you can come here and find something new.  And if I find an artist in the near feature, perhaps I can add some art, too.

04/03/09 Update: Perhaps I should call this the Bi-Annual Dose.  At this point, I'd settle for a Bi-Monthly Dose.  *sigh*  Regardless, here's a new one, the first six pages of a short story I've been working over and over and over again because it seems to be a bit too odd for publication anywhere.  There's an awful lot I like about it, but there are still some spots that I have problems with, and I think the ending (which you're being spared) is a little off.  Still, I think there's some meat there, and hopefully you will, too. 

08/01/08 Update: I'm really bad at this.  I mean, it's understandable that I'd be bad at the daily blogging, since I actually have to WRITE something NEW every day.  But with this?  With this I just have to cut and paste something.  Anyway, there's Battleground State in its entirety, wonky formatting and all.  Enjoy! 

7/14/08 Update: Man, I'm a day behind AGAIN on this!  I decided to change things up a bit, so today I'm bringing you the script for the first half of the first issue of "Battleground State."  Keep in mind that this is written, in many spots, to an imaginary artist who would be drawing this.  Also, the formatting is a bit messed up, but I think it's still pretty easy to read.  I'll post the second half next week.  I hope you like it!

7/7/08 Update: Tehcnically difficulties (*cough*Yahoo doesn't accept Firefox 3.0*cough*) kept me away for a while and, honestly, I meant to get this up last night, as I want to continue to do something new Sunday-Thursday (the other days being my blogs).  This new bit is...well, a bit.  It was once part of a longer story that just rambled too much but had two things going for it: a great opening and a great ending.  So I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point. 

6/15/08 Update: I added the second half of "Everything Is Both."  For those who missed last week's update, I left it there and just added the rest of the story to the end.  For those who read last week's section, the break is there as before so you know where to start. 

6/8/08 Update: The first half of "Everything Is Both!" 

6/1/08 Update: All five pages of my short story "Crusader!"

Not So Much a System as a Theory

By Kyle Garret

            “I have never wanted anyone so badly in my entire life.”

            It took me four days to convince her that I’m not crazy.

            It took me six days to convince her not to kill me.

            This recent turn of events is rather shocking.

            The first rule of time travel: Don’t try it.

            I don’t know that there are actually rules for time travel and, if there are, I know that I’m not even remotely qualified to come up with them.  This is, after all, my maiden voyage.  But I suppose there are really only two choices: forward or back. 

            Her name is Sheila and she’s rough with me not just because she can be but because it’s what she wants.  She’s also much stronger than I am, evidently one of the up sides to being created in a lab.

            She’s got both of my hands pinned together above my head.  This only requires one of her hands.  She’s using the other to undo my pants.  I’d say I’m becoming aroused despite myself but I know that simply isn’t true.  There is no spite here, save for perhaps the venom each of us has at what’s become of our lives – our very different lives.

            I let out a grunt because, as I said, she’s rough with me.

            “So this is post-apocalyptic love?” I say.

            “No,” she says as she pulls her shirt off with the same hand that was just undoing my pants.  “This is pre-apocalyptic love.”

            I repeat: Don’t try it.

            A few years into the twentieth century I was visited by a woman.  I don’t get many visitors.

            She told me that she had some distant relation who knew me and knew what I did.  She told me she was having some problems.

            “I can see the cracks,” she said.

            “Cracks in what?” I said.

            “Reality.”

            We started running some tests.

            I was looking for numbers.  All questions, regardless off their origins, have equations for answers.  And I can solve equations.  So it was simply a matter of figuring out what the numbers were that made up her problem.

            Delores was a perfectly healthy 36 year old divorced mother of one who lived in a modest ranch style home just outside the city.  A few months ago she started noticing disturbances.  She couldn’t explain them.

            “It’s like when you lose satellite reception on the TV,” she said.  “Everything gets fuzzy.”

            “What gets fuzzy, exactly?”

            “Everything.  Everything within my line of sight, although I know it extends further than that.  Everything gets fuzzy, like the world is having trouble coming in.”

            “I see.”

            “I don’t think you do,” she said.

            “Does anyone else notice when this happens?”

            “No, no one.  And for a long time I thought it was just me.  I thought I was going crazy.  But I don’t think that’s the case and I think you know that.”

            “I do,” I said.  “And while I truly believe that you’re perfectly sane, I don’t see how what you’re doing is possible.”

            “What am I doing?”

            I ignored her.  She was rather attractive.  I could tell that she’d been under duress, though.  It looked as if she was once a woman who prided herself on her looks, but no longer had the time to care.

            “What triggers it?” I said.

            “Nothing,” she said, “well, originally sleep, but now nothing.  Now I can pretty much make it happen whenever I want.  So I guess I trigger it.”

            “Do it now,” I said.

            We were sitting in my lab which also happened to double as my office, my waiting room, my apartment, and anything else I needed it to be.  Grant money only goes so far, particularly when you only get so much of it because you haven’t produced any results.

            “Will that – will that help?” she said.

            “It might.”

            “Okay.”

            She sat there.  I waited.  She continued sitting, looking at me, not saying a word.

            “Dolores, are you…?”

            “I’m doing it right now,” she said.  “I can’t even see you.  You’re static.”

            Nothing had changed.  I had no doubt that she was telling the truth, but for me nothing had change.

            “Okay, come back,” I said.

            She blinked.

            “I’m back.  Did you notice anything?”

            “Nothing at all,” I said.

            She didn’t like that answer.

            “It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said as she looked away from me.  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the – “

            “For the dreams?”

            “Yes.”

            “That makes sense,” I said.

            “It does?”

            “Yes.”

I stood up and walked away from her, towards the window.
            “Perhaps I should watch you sleep,” I said, speaking to her but looking out the window.

She didn’t answer right away.  I think it was becoming clear that I needed her as much as she needed me.  That information made her uncomfortable. 

At this very moment in time Dolores is dead because this very moment in time is decades after she came to me.  At this very moment in time I am lying on the floor with a test tube baby named Sheila who has just used me for her own carnal purposes.

The strange thing is how gentle and loving it was, at least after the initial penetration.  It was as if all the violence was a build up for some bizarre form of romance and intimacy.  At one point I think we even began to care for one another, which is perhaps why this particular post-coital moment is so awkward.

That, or the fact that she was genetically engineered in a lab and I’m a time traveler from the past…and the world is going to end in exactly three days.  It’s hard to be sure what matters most when you’re having sex.

“You okay?” she says.

“A little stunned,” I say, “but otherwise intact.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she says as she sits up and starts collecting her clothes.  She should know where they are; I had little to do with removing them.

I sit up and look for my own clothes.  “Did they genetically engineer you to be sexually aggressive?”

“Ha!”  I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard her laugh.  “It’s funny you should mention that.  GEPs are more sexually promiscuous than NBs.  No one knows why, but I think it’s because we have a stronger desire to experience life.”

“You’re definitely strong,” I say.  GEPs are Genetically Engineered People.  NBs are Natural Births.  She explained all of this to me two days ago.

 “All I know is that every GEP I’ve ever met wants to have sex with me and every NB I’ve ever met is scared of me.”

“I’m an NB,” I say.

“Do you want to have sex me?” she says.

“Little late for that question, don’t you think?”

“Would you have said yes if I’d asked?”

“Is there a physical reason for this higher sex drive?” I say, changing the subject.

“You don’t buy a psychological one?”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

“Maybe,” she says as she pulls on her pants, “but I’m pretty sure it’s just that being raised in a lab makes you incredibly lonely.”

“Says you,” I say.

“Anyway – I don’t think we lost much time,” she says and I take that as something of an affront on my sexual prowess.  “We should still be able to make it to the Black Sun by tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” I say and I’m being sarcastic because I’m trapped in a post-almost-apocalyptic future, traveling to the source of the actual apocalypse and my only way out – my only way back – is in two giant pieces and being carted around by genetically altered horses with six legs.

I’ve been told that I’m too analytical, but that’s a skill that’s paying big dividends here in the future.  I keep thinking that I should be freaking out, but that thought never translates into actual reaction.  I’m stuck in the future and I’m completely calm.  I might never return to my own time, and I’m perfectly fine with that.