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    Along These Lines
    Along These Lines
    Along These Lines
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Along These Lines

    By Rei Rosenquist

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    About this ebook

    In the crumbled remains of once-beautiful Kyoto, Koko carries a broken AI doll aboard a train. As the train passes through a great black stone arch that read "World's End," Koko thinks of zer only friend back in the rubble: Shacho.

    Like the doll, Shacho is broken too.

    Today, the day to fix broken things, Koko goes to find the Magician. To try and make things better any way ze can.

    Koko steps off the train, leaving zer life behind...and enters a gateway.

    In a dark, post-apocalyptic world where magic sparkles in the cracks like the stars, Rei Rosenquist weaves together a story of love, companionship, and trust.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTangled Sky Press
    Release dateNov 7, 2018
    ISBN9781386218548
    Along These Lines
    Author

    Rei Rosenquist

    Rei Rosenquist first remembers life as seen out the high window of a hotel balcony. Down below is a courtyard, swarms of brightly dressed tourists, the beach. The memory is nothing but a blue-green washed image. Warmth and sunlight. Here, they are three years old, and this is the beginning of a nomadic story-teller’s life. Over the years, they have traveled to many countries, engaged many peoples, picked up new habits, and learned new languages. But, some things never change. For them, these are stories, food service, and traveling. These three passions have bloomed from hobbies, studies, and jobs into a way of life. These days, Rei can be found in between Tokyo, Kailua, and Bellingham, Washington pouring beautiful latte art, baking off a batch of famous savory scones, and cozying up with a laptop to obsessively write mountains of dark speculative fiction. You can find Rei’s stories and blog at reirosenquist.com. You can also reach them via email at reirosenquist@gmail.com or connect via Facebook (Rei Rosenquist), Twitter (rylrosenquist) and Instagram (rylrosenquist).

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      Book preview

      Along These Lines - Rei Rosenquist

      Along These Lines

      Along These Lines

      A Short Story

      Rei Rosenquist

      Tangled Sky Press

      Contents

      Along These Lines

      Also by Rei Rosenquist

      About the Author

      Along These Lines

      The train hissed and grumbled along the track, screaming around the sharper turns. The sound was grating, and yet oddly comforting, because the sound was the sound of motion. Movement. Change. The air was stale, though, unventilated and over-ripe with the stench of bodies who'd long since departed. Out the window, the train passed through a great black stone arch that read World's End, and entered a long dark tunnel. Koko sat back against the stiff bench seat and let out a slow breath, trying not to choke on the stinking, dry air.

      The train came out of the tunnel with a blinding flash of light. Koko leaned against the grimy window, flat nose to cool glass. Outside, the sky turned from the smoggy grey-white to a bruised green-blue, powdered with fat cumulonimbus clouds that shimmered with rainbows despite the lack of sunshine.

      Shrine Town, the locals once called this stretch of railway, since it'd once been lined with thousands of shrines for thousands of reasons. Now, this stretch of land was a graveyard to shrines and temples of old, to towers of a city gone. Blown away and burned to ash, it was. Only the ghosts and bones left to tell the tale.

      Koko liked to think of this place as the Haunted Forests instead. More poetic that way. As if something so ugly and laid to waste could be beautiful instead of a reminder of tragedies past.

      That was Koko's hope today: that broken things could be redeemed.

      A dirt-caked hand lifted a tangled pile of metallic gears, rubber tubes, and shredded wires. Once a good scavenger, Koko had put the little AI doll together by hand from a self-made design, then cobbled the body together from scraps lying around the old shipping yard where Shacho and Koko lived together.

      Nowadays, Koko didn't so much find and build things as wait for things to change. And their wasteland home wasn't a shipping yard anymore, because there were no shipments coming in or out. Nowhere to ship from and nowhere to ship to. After the wars ended, goods stopped coming into the burned-out city, and everything turned into trash. So, Koko built the doll out of found junk because ze liked projects like that: challenges of turning the useless into cleverness.

      At least that's what Shacho used to say. Back when Shacho had been Koko's most trusted friend. Back when the two of them used to walk the shrine roads together. Koko would comment on the weeping willow branches while Shacho replaced the incense and candles. It had been a quiet and safe ritual, something that gave Koko hope even if ze couldn't explain why.

      Nowadays, even saying that Shacho and Koko lived together was a stretch. They survived one another, that was it.

      Today, Koko had ducked out after Shacho's relentless shouting got too intense. Only, instead of circling the yard and heading back in to grumbles and avoided eyes, Koko had decided to scoop up the broken doll off the stoop and go seek parts to repair the tangled mess. It was a distraction, more than anything useful. Fixing little things, to avoid the big things that couldn't be set right.

      So far, it was working. The train had brought Koko back to the city of old, and Koko was even distracted enough to remember something kind Shacho had once said. That was good. A huge step forward. Even if that gentle version of Shacho was gone for good.

      Koko pulled at a few of the wires and coiled them around the doll's twisted left arm for safe keeping. The small, heart-shaped head was built from two pieces of broken ceramic laid flat against the bent-in aluminum chest. The neck was a mangled mess of blue string and black wires. Koko gingerly laid the two tiny, six-fingered, hand-like appendages on the belly like the doll was praying for help.

      We're almost there, Koko whispered, patting the doll's limp head gingerly with a single finger. Wherever there was. End of the line, Koko decided on a whim. Demachiyanagi, the weeping willow neighborhood. Why not? There, Koko could see the remains of the old shrine road and try to relive some happier moment in some brighter life. Maybe ze could even find some pretty broken ceramic pieces to utilize for repairs.

      Koko cradled the doll as if it had just agreed with this plan.

      The doll had hit critical fail on a couple of stairs yesterday after a test-run of a new sensory upload. Koko had been sure the chip was ready, but it turned out mean-version Shacho had been right. There was something missing. It'd managed two steps with success, then hit a clump of rocks, slipped, and crashed the rest of the ten flights down to the ground.

      Shacho's caustic laughter still stung in both Koko's ears, burning red hot. Part of the unbearable bad as of late. The tension, thick as smog, between Koko and Shacho, zer only companion in a world devoid of life.

      Tsugi wa Kyoto desu, the overhead speaker said in a garbled voice.

      The train was wrong, though. Kyoto Station no longer existed. Even still, the train stopped as though the platform was there. Doors opened to a dirt field, and a blast of arid acidic wind blustered into the train car before the doors slid shut again with a grumbling clank.

      Only two more stops and Koko would be there.

      At the supposed home of the Magician.

      Koko knew Shacho's fairy tale. The story of how the Magician had come

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