MOMENT IN TIME

Sci-fi from John Charles Harnett

John Charles Harnett, author of Blood For Sunshine, takes his readers into a Sci-fi futuristic world in The Last Space Cowboy. Enjoy this three-part series in Southern Scene magazine!

I should get back to the show at hand. I never could have imagined writing a critique of a show this way back in the good old days of 2300! Today’s tech, bubba! I swear! I can simply think, look, smell, touch and most importantly, listen, and my notes are complete.

My Chelsey9, a cerebral journal-stint, was not the latest or greatest tech, but I was fond of the contraption. And it didn’t hurt much when the surgeon implanted it in my brain. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Sounds expensive. But I didn’t pay for the damn thing. Hope I don’t pay a price for it later.

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His hat was jet black and rumored to be made from the deluxe Rolet’s Labs; only lab grown black panther pelt for Ja-kem’s cowboy hats. And there had been thousands of them. He looked like a brilliant supernova in this dark rattletrap saloon. Propping himself on that old stool and in a deep molasses voice said,

“Hello. This here’s Ja-kem Owen-Trilby. The Last Space Cowboy.”

His bony and crooked fingers grazed the guitar’s strings and the mellowness of that opening strum coasted into my heart like the warm coconut breezes of the Irish Tropics. The notes awakened the old Iron Moon, shining it up a bit brighter.

He opened with “All the Palms in Mars Died,” his traditional first song when touring in North America. The band, lost in the darkness behind him, blended into the first stanza as the deep voice sang of a beachside romance hidden within the red sandy dunes surrounding Lake Shalbatana.

My third shot of true Kentucky bourbon (not that crap from Ka’Pawn Post up in Tellk Q-Farm, Luna) burned graciously down my grizzled throat. I waved at the sweet little brunette waitress, Daylora, for another, and that’s when I first noticed the five tough hombres strutting into the bar and claiming a scuffed table not far down from mine. They were instantly rude, loud and boisterous in ordering their drinks from sweet Daylora and I couldn’t help feeling bad for the young lass having to serve the likes of them.

The silver glassy dust coating their jackets and trousers could only mean they had come riding in from the nuked beaches on the Mexican Sea. Florida boys I reckoned, which might mean bad business for the show. Usually, after making your order and there’s some good country

music playing, you settle-on-back and let the melody coax you into rhythm relaxation. But that tweren’t how these boys chalked.

I must admit, I was becoming a little bent out of shape the more these newcomers kept talking louder and louder, laughing with their sharp yawlps and yells and just plain disturbing the sparse audience. Reckon they could have it out for the old troubadour and come all the way over from raddy Eff Ellay. Over the Margret Twin’s killing? Over the same song ole O-T was just starting to sing? I tucked into my chair a little bit and minimized Chelsey9’s yellow lens.

Daylora was now serving them boys their drinks and you’d think at this point one of them would be crude or paying her fanny too much attention. But instead, they were laser focused on the grizzled bard playing onstage. They started hollering out jibes like, “Stolen song!”

“Any good Kai-Yote’s a dead’n” and “Owen-Trilby’s a fraud bastadge.” Unfazed, the cowboy loudly crooned the famous last lines of the controversial song. “…And I sure as hell lied, when I told you I was sorry.”

The Kai-Yote’s singing and ignoring of the five troublemakers just made them louder and meaner. The tall handsome one of the bunch hadn’t been as vocal as the other four, but I could tell he was near to exploding. His face was beet red, and his bleary blue eyes were bulging from his wet face as he reached into his glittering dusty vest.

My body reacted to him pulling his piece, but my mind just couldn’t figure that murder was his purpose. My gut and heart were still warm with bourbon and the light beach breezes sung by the gravelly mellow pipes of Jakem Owen-Trilby, The Last Space Cowboy.

I planted my chest and cheek on the table in front of me. The tall tough man pointed his green pistol at the old country musician. (Later it was found that the gun was made of hardened seaweed; hell all of them pistols were, which is how they got ‘em through the saloon’s security.) The rest of those Florida boys were pulling their own green guns as O-T continued crooning that sweet low melody that got you deep in the gut. The green pistol coughed, and a small lime-colored bolt of light pierced Ja-kem’s right shoulder. Shuddering just slightly, the old cowboy still held the finishing note of the controversial ballad as if he were unaware of being under attack, much less mortally wounded.

“Die you charlatan old dog!” More pistols coughed.

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