Futuristic Western
Red Dune
The cantina had no name, or it had lost it along with its last attempt to maintain any semblance of decency. In Red Dune, things didn't last long: not the signs, not the promises. Not even faith. Dust from the planet Touclap seeped through the cracks like a patient animal, settling on the tables, the tarnished metal cups, the boots of those who no longer rose quickly. Outside, the rusty desert breathed slowly, as if listening.
Lyria Vance sat with her back to the wall. Out of habit, she'd learned to watch her back. She watched the reflections in the dented bottles, reading peripheral shadows before faces. She wore her long jacket, patched at the elbows, and carried her handgun under her left arm. It wasn't new; nothing was in Touclap . The gun's grip was marked. In a frontier town like this, everyone knew what that meant.
He ordered seaweed distillate. The bartender served it without asking. Nobody asked questions in Red Dune . Asking questions was often a quick way to die on the frontier.
The preacher was there. She didn't need to see him to know it. The air changed when he entered a room: a kind of viscous tension gripped the air, as if the words were preparing to obey him before being spoken. Lyria touched with her thumb the small talisman she carried in her inside pocket: an old capsule, with an ultrasound image printed on cheap polymer. Clara had wanted to keep it. And that's why Lyria had preserved it.
"I didn't think you'd come," said a voice to her right.
He didn't turn around immediately. He drank his drink. The alcohol slowly scraped his throat, faithful and honest.
—"You never believed many things."— he replied.
He sat down opposite her without asking permission. He was thinner, his beard unkempt, his eyes with that dirty gleam that wasn't madness but calculation. Cowards always calculate.
He wore a light-colored robe, ridiculous for the place, but no one laughed. He reached for the device hanging beneath the fabric, at his sternum: it was an ancient transmitter, the kind that corporations had banned because they were used to reprogram emotional and mental patterns.
—"Liria Vance."— he said, smiling —"The faithful sister."—
She finally looked up from the glass. The desert seemed to have entered her eyes.
"Don't use his name, or you'll die," he said . "There will be no further warning."
The parishioners dispersed as the preacher rested his hands on the table. His fingers were stained with grease and dried blood. Everyday miracles.
—“She chose me,” he said . “Everyone chooses the truth they want to hear.”
Lyria slowly put down the glass. Outside, a gust of wind rattled the corrugated iron roofs. Touclap was only half-terraformed, a costly mistake no one could fix. The sky was a permanent pale gray. The landscape was unforgiving; it only waited.
—“Choosing is not the same as being pushed.”— she said. —“And you don’t preach. You tune in.”— she pointed to the transmitter in her chest.
He shrugged.
—“Faith has always been a frequency that one chooses.” —
Some heads turned nervously. Not because the topic aroused interest, but out of fear. Speaking of the artifact was a deadly crime.
—“I recognized you as soon as you walked in,” the preacher boasted. “You walk like someone who’s already made up their mind.”
Lyria thought of Clara hanging by her neck from a rotten beam in her room at the colony. She thought of the women she had seen exploited, their bellies growing without knowing why. And the empty gaze when the transmitter cut out and faith faded like a fever left untreated.
—“I came for you.”— he said . —“The reward is good, but that’s not the main thing.”
—“It never is.”— he smiled —“Are you going to kill me here? In front of everyone?”
Lyria stroked her weapon and looked around. A frightened boy cleaning glasses with a grimy rag. An old woman with eye implants, staring blankly. Two miners exhausted after a long day in the mine.
—“No.”— he said —“Killing you would be easy. But pointless.”
The preacher tilted his head.
—“So you don’t know what to do with me.”
—“Yes, I know,” she replied . “You have no future.”
He laughed a short, confident laugh. He looked for the transmitter to turn it on.
Lyria pulled a small, old metal block from her pocket. A field jammer. The power light was on. It was obsolete technology, illegal and useless for almost everything. But not for this.
The preacher frantically tried to press the button on the device over and over again.
Lyria stood up, drawing her weapon, as silence fell over the room. Some of the villagers blinked, as if waking from an uneasy dream.
—“This time it won’t work for you.”— said Lyria —“But my artifact will help them.”— she said as the salon’s customers awoke from their slumber.
One stood up. Then another. The women first. They weren't shouting or crying. They were just walking.
The preacher stumbled backward, bumping into a table. He reached for his weapon under his robes. Lyria was faster. The pulse shot didn't kill him; it burned his hand completely. He fell, convulsing, voiceless.
Lyria approached while crouching down so that he could hear her.
—“Clara loved you.”— he said —“That was the only real thing you had.”
He left the ultrasound on her chest.
—“You’re still going to live through some moments,” he continued . “Enough to remember.”
He simply withdrew. The colonists, now awake, dragged him out into the desert. Touclap would take care of it. The planet always did.
Lyria left the cantina as the artificial sun began to fade. The sky turned the color of old rust. She walked alone while Red Dune continued to breathe. Tomorrow there would be another preacher, another savior, another well-crafted lie.
He put away the inhibitor, the capsule, and didn't look back.
The border only reminds us of those who didn't stay.
END
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#ScienceFiction
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#DarkWestern
#CriticalRealism
#MindControl
#ReligiousFanaticism
#Revenge
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#SpeculativeFiction
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