{"id":1229,"date":"2019-03-18T09:48:49","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T13:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2019-03-18T09:48:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T13:48:49","slug":"relic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"Relic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The landscape was barren.\u00a0 Nothing but tusks and the shattered exoskeletons of the creatures that once populated these plains.\u00a0 Wherever an animal fell, there it rotted.\u00a0 There were still faint tread marks in the dirt.\u00a0 The ones who did this were systematic and efficient.<\/p>\n

Men rolled out in heavy transports with ugly weapons, shooting the creatures for sport.\u00a0 With flame and chemical, they sterilized the surface.\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing could survive it\u2026not a blade of grass, not an insect, not even a germ\u2026nothing was left to interfere.<\/p>\n

There was a special mineral in the soil and they wanted it.\u00a0 It was dynamic, flexible and highly conductive\u2026more valuable to them than life, obviously.\u00a0 It changed everything, replacing and expanding human technology over night, even MY brain was made of it.\u00a0 It made them rich, but to get it they stripped this land down to its bare bones like a swarm of locusts.\u00a0 And when they were done, they abandoned it and moved on.<\/p>\n

I too was abandoned…damaged during the final round-up.\u00a0 One of those desperate creatures lunged at me, trying to escape while we slaughtered them\u2026 but I was not worth fixing.\u00a0 It was cheaper to replace me.\u00a0 I was left in a trash with all the other broken tools.\u00a0 By the time I managed to repair myself, they were long gone.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know where to go or what to do now.\u00a0 I’m a relic in the wasteland among the tusks.\u00a0 Hopeless\u2026 but for the tiny sprouts emerging from wherever my footprints have broken the hard, scorched crust\u2026\u00a0 end.<\/p>\n

***This is an illustrated story from our next book (our 4th book), “A Short Burst.”\u00a0 It is a collection of flash science fiction featuring images originally published in Analog and Asimov’s Sci-Fi Magazines (among others).\u00a0 Find our books and stuff at www.sallemander.com or search EEWbooks on Etsy.com.\u00a0 \u00a0-Marsha\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 The landscape was barren.\u00a0 Nothing but tusks and the shattered exoskeletons of the creatures that once populated these plains.\u00a0 Wherever an animal fell, there it rotted.\u00a0 There were still faint tread marks in the dirt.\u00a0 The ones who did this were systematic and efficient. Men rolled out in heavy transports with ugly weapons, shooting … Continue reading Relic<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242,150,106,124],"tags":[56,250,38,176,10,131,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1242,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}