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Evaporation [MultiFormat]
eBook by Dave Smeds
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$0.85 |
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$0.72 |
eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Since his sentence was been pronounced, Glenn has literally died a thousand times. The only thing that keeps him going is the possibility that someday he might have his revenge...
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Nanodreams, 1995
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2005
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [281 KB], eReader (PDB) [46 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [23 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [21 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [92 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [95 KB], hiebook (KML) [122 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [124 KB], iSilo (PDB) [19 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [24 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [96 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [34 KB]
Words: 6587
Reading time: 18-26 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Dave Smeds has an ingenious eshort Sci-Fi addicts will love. Written with the clarity of George R. R. Martin, paced in the suspense of Stephen Popkes, 'Evaporation' is a cruel tale of survival. Framed, sentenced to hell in a desolate world, Glenn Ashwood has much to contend with. Tongue scaling, lips cracking, skin rapidly desiccating under the bite of inescapable ultraviolet rays, he is in agony. Eighty-nine deaths later, Glenn is still alive. Again. This is the hardest penalty: outcast, alone, consumed in decades of torment, he cannot defy pain with mortality. His nanodocs (molecular robots keen as thirst) revive him if it means eating his muscle to resuscitate him, even when he begs and claws for death. Water, when he finds it, is encrusted in salt. Vegetation is vindictive, inedible. Lizard heeby-jeebies squirt venom. Safe meat creatures are either scarce or giant enough to ingest him whole and still feel hungry. Finally, ah finally, another castaway. This Eve shares his fate in the erosion of a barbaric world, bringing with her... nipples. Copper skin. A sway of hips. The fact that Glenn looks older than Adam, coarser than Moses, even lightly resembles Zinjanthropus, an original cave man, is of no consequence to her. And that is worrisome because promise, sexual tropism -- and Glenn struggles. It is hard, so very hard, to build trust for another human. But -- she is all woman; smells all woman; feels woman. And he is starved. -Eugen Bacon, Fictionwise Recommender
PART ONEGlenn Ashwood woke to a fierce sunrise, cracked mud beneath his naked body.
The stark, antiseptic quarters of the jumpship brig had vanished. Glenn was outdoors now--out in raw air, looking up at a blue sky shimmering with heat. A small waning moon he didn't recognize hung just west of the zenith, its craters indistinct in the daylight.
He sat up, scanning right and left. No buildings. The only sign of human presence save himself were the impressions left in the dry lakebed by the transport. Sand dunes, outcroppings, and bleak, eroded hills ringed him in every direction, without a single shred of vegetation nor any trace of cloud. Whatever rain had created the mud beneath him had done so months, years, even decades earlier.
He shaded his eyes, trying to push away the intensity of the glare. The closest shore of the lakebed was at least two kilometers away. The nearest shade was well beyond that and, as far as he could judge, would vanish as noon approached--long before he could get to it. Meanwhile his exposed skin was cooking in ultraviolet radiation.
His nanodocs should have protected him. Right now the little molecular robots should have been deepening his tan, modifying his fluid retention abilities, and repairing the scrapes on his back--a token of his escorts, who had obviously thrown him bodily out the hatch. Nanodocs were one of the great boons of civilization. They healed every minor injury, preserved youth, enhanced beauty. The only people denied their full beneficence were convicts.
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