Sci-Friday – Excerpt from “A True Joule”

A glimpse into my upcoming book of 6 eerie sci-fi stories

My book of short stories in the science fiction realm will be published soon by Wordwooze Publishing. (Great editor there, very accommodating and easy to work with.) The encouragement I have received from everyone following me here and elsewhere has been like a tide raising my boat safely to shore. As a thank you, I will be posting excerpts from some of the stories. This first one is from a story that came to me in a dream (honest!) but that turned out a bit differently than any dream ever would. Hope you like it.

The Excerpt

Hugh laughed. “My grandfather tracked seismic activity and the core temperature for decades, and was the first human to make the connection. My father took over from him. I’ve taken over from my father. We’re part of a global team. Did you know that plate shifts are related to the Earth’s core temperature? Water isn’t the only substance that expands as it cools.”

“Isn’t it normal for a planet’s core to cool?” I asked naïvely, wishing I had brought my sleeping pills and at least a piece of stale bread with me along with my coat and gloves. My hair fluttered out behind me like a silken black cape as I rushed to keep up with Hugh’s long-legged stride. And I could see my breath when I exhaled.

“Not this fast,” he said. “It’s dropped about thirty degrees per year since 2020.”

“So about twenty-four-hundred degrees?” I asked, doing a quick calculation in my head.

“Fahrenheit.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Do you really think a cold front is causing this deep freeze?”

“Well, I—yes.”

“Because some guy claiming to be a weatherman on the radio said so? China controls the media. They’re hiding this from us.”

“Any idea why?” I asked, glancing behind me and seeing the people who had met me at the entrance following us down that glowing hallway.

“Because they set this in motion—quite by accident, but if word got out, accident or not, it’d set the world against them.” Hugh stopped and laughed. “They’re so worried up there about carbon emissions. No one’s thinking—or probably even knows—about the huge thermodynamic generator the Chinese set up. How do you think they’re staying all warm and cozy with plenty of electricity while the rest of us in the northern hemisphere freeze? And it’s going to get worse.”

He resumed walking.

I followed, remembering the icicles. When the deep freeze had first hit, the snow came down heavy but landed on relatively warm roofs, causing snowflakes to melt and drip off the roof eaves and gutters. As the temperature continued downward, those drops froze before they could fall, and massive icicles built up, some ripping gutters off those eaves. One gutter had fallen with its weight of ice and crushed a man shoveling snow below. An icicle had pierced his heart and others had gone through other parts of his body. They had to be chopped off his frozen corpse.

More to Come

I’ll be posting excerpts from other stories from the book over the next few weeks and welcome your feedback.

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to start and/or continue writing!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my author website. And thanks for reading.

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Thanks for reading. If you’ve been enjoying my flash fiction on here, please check out my first book of short stories (a couple are actually novelette length), newly published by Wordwooze Publishing. (I even designed the cover.)

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