From the Archives: Noble / Gas Qtrly, 2015
Recently, I went on a deep-dive through the publication list on my writer website and discovered that some of my oldest publications have begun to disappear.
The problem is, I’m still very fond of many of these early stories. They come from a time when I was working almost exclusively in flash fiction (loosely defined as short stories of under 1000 words). It’s rare that I dabble in “flash” anymore, but it was a big part of my development as a writer.
So I’ve decided to republish some of these lost works here on Medium, beginning with a pair of stories that appeared in Noble / Gas Qtrly in January 2015.
My experience with that journal, which closed in 2019, is memorable for their unforgettable response to my submission:
The purveyors of this journal have read your submission, and, well —
Yes. We want.
Someone will be in touch with you shortly to say hello and further elaborate.
And so, without further ado, please enjoy “Signs” and “Sail Fast the Violent Violet Seas.”
Signs
The monkey did not live for long.
He’d lost interest in the stuffed dog pretty much right away. The farther away the shuttle, the more garbled and fanciful the sign language the monkey had been taught became, his silent status reports populated with cows and moons and musical cats. Shortly after he entered orbit around Mars we noticed his vitals growing weaker. We watched on the monitor as he struggled with a banana, his paws jerking with frustration over the stubborn peel. (God, the cost of R&D for fresh bananas in space!) Finally he threw it away, the lack of gravity dulling its motion as it cruised in a lazy yellow parabola. He watched it float for a moment or two, then turned back to the small triangular window that gave a view of the planet’s surface, all rust and blooming black mold. He looked into the camera — into our eyes, it almost seemed. Bringing one paw up to his face, he made a chopping motion, three times. Then he died.
The room remained silent until a throat was cleared. One of the guys had a deaf teenager at home: he said the sign meant “you bastard, you bastard, you bastard.” Someone swore aloud and then we all laughed because nobody had ever taught the monkey that.
Sail Fast the Violet Violet Seas
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY broke in through a cascade of Filipino Monkey! catcalls on the emergency channel. [1] We took down the latitude and longitude, already turning, spinning up helicopters and additional engines. The sun was sliding lazy like a drop of molten honey toward the horizon line by the time we found her [2], drifting and heavily laden, her men safe and sequestered in the engine room, her holds full of ever more potent chemistries.
We prescribed cigarettes and soda for the crew, confident only in the twin gods of Coca-Cola and Marlboro. Their captain seemed uncertain, still. Pirates do that to a man. [3] He ordered a seaman to scrub the bloody footprints from the decks, another to repair the breach in the concertina wire.
“Sail fast the violent violet seas,” [4] we advised. “Employ scarecrows armed with blackened broomsticks. [5] Beware unknowns on the horizon.” [6] Then we returned to our warship with its [7] guns and sophisticated radars and sailed away.
We would have liked to provide a more consistent, respectable service, but the ocean is, frankly, far larger than you can likely appreciate. [8]
Footnotes:
[1] Filipino Monkey is the most common slur heard by mariners around the world on bridge-to-bridge radio channel 16.
[2] Ships are one of the few inanimate objects that take a gendered pronoun in the English language, thus her.
[3] International law draws a distinction between piracy, which by definition only occurs on the high seas, and armed robbery, in which the same or similar acts take place in territorial waters. Keep in mind, too, that pirates can be hard to identify. A pirate may have started the day as a fisherman. He may end it as one. He may not know himself what he is from moment to moment.
[4] Not an exact transcription. International Maritime Organization MSC. 1 Circ. 1339, Best Management Practices for Protection against Somalia Based Piracy: “One of the most effective ways to defeat a pirate attack is by using speed to try to outrun the attackers and/or make it difficult to board…Ships are recommended to proceed at Full Sea Speed, or at least 18 knots where they are capable of greater speed, throughout their transit of the High Risk Area.”
[5] Not an exact transcription. International Maritime Organization MSC. 1 Circ. 1339, Best Management Practices for Protection against Somalia Based Piracy: “Well constructed dummies placed at strategic locations around the vessel can give an impression of greater numbers of people on watch.”
[6] Not an exact transcription. International Maritime Organization MSC. 1 Circ. 1339, Best Management Practices for Protection against Somalia Based Piracy: “Prior to entering the High Risk Area, it is recommended that preparations are made to support the requirements for increased vigilance by: [bulleted list] Providing additional lookouts for each Watch. Additional lookouts should be fully briefed. Considering a shorter rotation of the Watch period in order to maximize alertness of the lookouts. Ensuring that there are sufficient binoculars for the enhanced Bridge team, preferably anti glare. Considering use of night vision optics. Maintaining a careful Radar Watch.”
[7] I never in my dozen Navy years called one of my ships “she.”
[8] Some of this is true. Some of this is a conflation of separate events. Some I made up entirely. And some of it comes from the May 2014 issue of CropLife magazine: ever more potent chemistries from the sidebar entitled “Trouble in the Sprayer?” to Lisa Heacox’s multi-page article “Changing Crop Protection Landscape Demands Drift Advances”; unknowns on the horizon from Eric Sfiligoj’s editorial “Taking A Hint…Too Far”; a more consistent, respectable service from a miscopied phrase in the inside front cover advertisement for the GVM AgriProbe. It actually read a more consistent, repeatable service, but the damage was already done.
