The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

Albion, Alabama

First Earth

5 years ago

S AMMIE HUGGINS WAS A GOOD GIRL. Or so they said. She wasn’t entirely sure. She’d been acting the part for so long, it seemed all too natural. The long blond hair in a bouncy ponytail and the coke-bottle reading glasses she didn’t need exemplified a sweet but studious child. Dresses and blouses with floral patterns meant she was an old soul. The doll collection and canopy bed with pink ruffles symbolized her attachment to prepubescence – in other words, she was off-limits. Sammie was thirteen, an age when the local boys might make a play for her virginity (or so her parents heard).

“Not these local filth,” her father raged. “Not on this planet.”

Yet on the day Tom and Marlena Sheridan were lowered into their graves, Sammie wanted to test her father’s boundaries. She saw Jamie’s desolation – or rather, sensed it beneath his deadened exterior. She looked for opportunities to sneak away with him for a few minutes to hold his hand, to comfort him, to tell him she still had faith when many did not. And if, during their quiet moments, he might try to lean in and kiss her … well, what would be the harm?

He didn’t speak to her after the funeral, nor did he return her redundant stream of texts. She reassured herself he was giving everyone the cold shoulder, perhaps even his best friend Michael. Her parents had no desire to hang around the Sheridan home, which was gutted of life. Sammie’s father Walt told Ben they would be in touch soon, but Ben nodded and turned on the TV, opening his third beer. We can’t leave them like this, Sammie thought; but once her father made up his mind, no discussion followed.

The instant the Hugginses returned home and closed the front door, her mother Grace threw her purse on the antique table in the foyer and reached for her pearl necklace.

“Disgraceful,” she said. “I will never understand this obsession with mourning in black.”

Sammie was mystified.

“What’s wrong with black, Mom? I thought it symbolized death.”

“Precisely,” Grace said. “And what is more antithetical to life than death? The survivors should celebrate their good fortune. Respect the passing, of course, but revel in the days we still possess.”

“Is that how Chancellors mourn?”

Walt stepped in. “I’ll take this, dear. That roast smells refreshingly close to finished.” He took Sammie by the hand and sat her down on the sofa. “If I could take one device back to our Earth – other than the Jewel, of course – it would be a slow cooker.”

“What about the Chancellors? Are there funerals?”

“No. Absolutely not. Nor do we ‘dress for the occasion.’ When a Chancellor passes, we take a pragmatic approach. Proper celebration for the life lived, of course, with a reading of accomplishments and testimonials. But tears? No. This ridiculous notion of our soul having gone ‘to a better place’?” He slapped his knee. “God has a plan, the preacher said. Delusions know no boundaries. The Chancellory is built on strength of descendancy. We take time to acknowledge who ascends in the family line, what social or political leverage they might hold, and so forth. There are exceptions for those who are murdered by their rivals or disgraced by scandal.”

For eight years, Samantha listened as her parents prepared her for every aspect of Chancellor life, but they avoided talk of death. In Albion, people kept close tabs on obituaries and spread the word of anyone in ill health or thought to be on a deathbed. The end was as vital a topic as the beginning.

“Daddy, we have to help the Sheridans. They might be Chancellors by birth, but they’re not handling it like Chancellors. I’m afraid of what will happen to them.”

“They’ll sort this business in time, Pumpkin. The truth is, Benjamin brought this on himself.”

“What does that mean?”

Her father shifted uneasily. “We all make choices, Pumpkin. Benjamin abandoned his Chancellor training long ago. We’ll say no more of him.”

“And Jamie? He doesn’t even know the truth.”

“Of his fate? Or that Tom and Marlena were not his parents?”

“It’s all the same, Daddy. I think it’s cruel to keep him in the dark.”

“In this case, cruelty is pragmatic. His Mentor never emerged. There is no scenario where he would adapt if told the truth now. And if you ever intend …”

“No, Daddy. I promise.”

Walt kissed her on the cheek, but Sam saw a shade in his eyes.

“Stay here, Pumpkin. I’d like to show you something.”

He walked to a rolltop desk and fumbled through his keys before unlocking the bottom drawer. Sammie couldn’t see what he pulled out – until he started toward her.

It was pink with a floral design. The pages were lined silver. Her heart skipped.

“Daddy, no! You didn’t.”

He opened the diary to her last entry.

“I knew you had feelings for the Jewel, but this is unacceptable.”

“Daddy, those are my private thoughts. How could you?”

He ignored her and read from the text. “He’s in so much pain. I wish I knew how to make it all right for him. He’s not the juvenile delinquent people say he is. Jamie has a tender heart. If I could bring it out, I know he’d …” Walt paused. He turned to Sammie with a disgusted glare. “If you could bring it out? And how, Samantha, might you do such a thing? Show him the truth? Or perhaps you are suggesting something more intimate?”

Her chest burned in a brew of shame and fury.

“These are my private thoughts. They’re just for me, Daddy.”

“But you avoid my question. Fine. Perhaps we should examine two pages earlier. Ah yes, I have it dog-eared. ‘Everyone is whispering about what happened at the police station today. They’re saying Jamie lost his mind. They don’t