The Trauma Tales Index
Every Story About After The Trauma
This is the Index for the Trauma Tales. This series started out as a single short story musing about a couple things for the Sci-Friday slot. The first was my view on how AI is going to evolve, the second was from work I am doing on the design of a NEW post apocalypse economy.
But thoughts about the Trauma kept on coming, and then they turned into characters and story arcs without me doing much more than write them down. This process is likely to continue and I will add any new stories to the index as they arrive.
It all started with Arthur …
An Arm For Arthur
‘Dad, Dad, come quick! Grandpa’s arm dropped off.’
And just like that, a beautiful mountain morning has turned into a whole world of pain. Not Arthur! Anybody but my boy’s surrogate grandpa, the centre of my young boy’s life.
Chapter One – Haven’s Law
‘It was a slice of history right out of a clear blue sky. Like a star hanging from a bloom. Sunlight on polished metal. The canopy red and white. High up and far away out over the sunbaked fields.
‘What is that boss?’
Chapter Two – Haven Skies
‘Raymond (Sly) Sylvester the Third woke that morning on the boardwalk outside the Lazy to the drum beat of his hangover and a swill of acid in his gut. So far so normal for Sly the Third.’
Chapter Three – Haven’s Past
Coot Demure is part Creole, part Cherokee and part witchdoctor according to the more Puritan members of the Haven cooperative. Coot’s family had drifted west and north for a generation or two but it was only because her grandfather ran out of gas just outside Haven escaping the Trauma that the Demure family ended up a fixture in the cooperative.
Chapter Four – Haven Seven
‘Tom Ridley is shrieking across the flat farmlands of the Haven cooperative like a stabbed banshee, the slipstream whipping his hair back in a taught black flag, his goggles and scarf protecting his face from the bugs that could not move out of the way in time. Tom is way out where nobody comes unless they are loaded for bear, deep in the solar fields, the skeletal frames of the steel foundations flickering by, the shadows of the big canted panels casting slabs of shade, black, black, black, into his path.’
Chapter Five – Haven’s Door
‘It was quite the entrance! The Haven cooperative police cruiser had all its lights on. Every photon launched to maximum effect bouncing from every surface. A carnival on wheels rocketing along Main like Mardi Gra on speed. The big machine slewed to a halt in front of the Lazy kicking up dust like a market day herd.’
Chapter Seven – Haven Flight
‘It’s going to be a warm day again but its too early in the year for real heat and hot nights. There are thunderheads on the horizon, maybe rain tomorrow. This time of day I am usually wearing my work clothes but today I’ve got to talk to Space Girl and Coot, and the one I am thinking about right now is Coot. I have a feeling about Coot I normally reserve for strangers, or the sign of a Trauma tribe on the horizon
Chapter Eight – Haven’s Deep
‘It’s a face from a nightmare. Wild with a greasy grey-haired halo and skin the colour of rust. Two bloodshot eyes glaring out of slits, and a nose much like my own, except it had lost more fights. Beneath the nose, a broad mouth was snarling with teeth bent every which way. Or maybe it was a grin.’
Chapter Nine – Haven Bones
‘Where the hell are we, Boss?’
‘Half a mile underground, Sam. Ain’t right.’
Joe Pepper’s hackles are up; you can feel them from where I stand.
‘How? It’s impossible!’
‘No, Son, it’s just Oli. Bastard’s had more money than god and dumb as a bag of hammers, but they had some smart people and machines working for them,’ Wolf-man Ripley drawls.
Chapter Ten – Haven’s City
The Oli had designed themselves a paradise. The dawn light that shines through the machine standing on the ridge is the light of creation itself. The sun just cutting the horizon is impossibly big, crowned by mountainous cumulus clouds engorged with rose and crimson leading up to the dark crown of the sky. The world is hushed, we are all hushed by the grandeur. The machine's complex interior, visible through its glass shell, glitters with the light of this impossible dawn as it stands knee deep in the tall grass looking down at us.
Chapter Eleven – Haven’s Fall
The machine advances in slow strides, as if the time on the other side of the glass doors is different, but it's just the way it balances and moves. I feel that hard throb in my head start up again and I realise I am breathing hard. I am poised to run and my hands are trembling. I'm reacting the way you might if you were scared of insects and woke with a spider on your face.
Chapter Twelve – Haven’s Last
Tom says 'Now Jo.'
Gnarly Jo Pepper said, 'about damn time,' and his big gun cracks the air as the machine's head vanishes. The machine clatters to the floor. The remains of the head lie in a wide fan of wet glittering shards on the immaculate floor.
'Been wanting to do that for too damn long.' Jo said.
Thats the End of the Haven Short Series but more Trauma Tales be added to the index as they arrive. Thanks for reading, and if you like Trauma Tales, why not share with a friend?