POCKET UNIVERSE
Flash fiction: The only way to escape a world gone mad
Toran returned at last to his farm, having endured the dreck festering in every corner of the transport corridor. Time added to his woes, prodding him to make haste. His current employer, an engineering firm seventy kilometers due east, slashed all its R and D except for munitions. He relented. The wars mounted. The horizon blackened; the urban blight as invasive and tarnished as the inhabitants within.
With a mighty swing, he opened the door and raced down the steps. The cellar was dank with must and mildew, its concrete walls lined with tools and dusty furnishings. Crouching down, he hopped onto the ledge of a crawl space and clamored inside.
The space was as pitch as tar. He flipped the light on his helmet, ducking his head to avoid the rafters above. The shifting bright circle passed a small wine rack before stopping on a tiny switch. He flipped it. A click. A slim shaft of light split the wall. Shoving the slab, the wan light widened, revealing a set of rickety stairs.
His feet shuffled; the wood creaked. Under an open bulb, he tapped in a code. Another door swung open. He entered. Taking a good look at what stood at the center of the room, he nodded his approval.
The kludge sprawled from wall to wall, rife with bulwarks, cables, and sensors, reflecting the madness milling deep inside Toran’s mind. He took two steps and tapped in a command. After the diagnostic, the chamber rocked; the apparatus jolted to life. The locus, a circular frame at the center of the slipshod contraption, lit up. The grooves and scuffs on the wall beyond shifted like water, splashing and crashing, until a field of white foam roiled, then parted toward the circumference. The field collapsed into a stabilized funnel like someone sucking a straw from the other end.
It worked! Where it led, only Toran knew, but its destination exceeded the bounds of the house, the township, even the planet itself.
Beside him lay boxes, crates, and valises full of clothes. The haul would be long, and so would the night. He couldn’t delay. His freedom was short, the world shorter and crueler by the second. He saw the writing on the wall. The future under the current plight of reason made him clench his teeth. He would rather plunge a sword deep into his chest than live under the tension of dying prematurely from whatever the world had in store.
Grabbing a piece of luggage and a box cradled under the crook of his arm, he ran through the frame. For a second, his periphery blurred, and he found himself stumbling on foreign loam. He came to a lumbering halt and dropped his burden. Relief came as a gentle breeze welcoming him to the other side. A new sun shone over a canopy of rolling hills, threatened by nothing but Toran’s ambitions. He cast aside his woes, and muttering a prayer, he wished godspeed inside his pocket universe.
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Please check out the rest of my short stories here: Robert Garron's Substack