FLASH FICTION

Ricky on the Mountain

By Samuel J. Palomino

In this brief work of speculative fiction by our creative writing editor, a young man in some unspecified future goes skiing for the first time (in an indoor ski center!). The ensuing confrontation shows Ricky's world to be all too similar to our own.


RICKY HATED THE FAKE SNOW. He hated the perfect moguls, the perfect half-pipes, the perfect little jumps. He hated the fact that he put off skiing his whole life, and now it was all fake, perfect and fake.

The weather outside, all over the world, was a balmy 96 degrees, yet the owners of Vail III managed to keep the temperature inside the resort’s 250 dome-covered acres at an archaic 38 degrees year-round, from Summer to Super Summer to Illegal to Go Outside or Do Anything Physical Summer.

The snow was not real snow, but Dura-Snow, each flake exactly the same as every other (Pattern 7G/LoveMachine was this year’s hottest design), and none of them wet. Ricky adjusted his goggles, turned off his EarNews headset, and focused on the perfectly boring course ahead. A trio of holographic white rabbits stood by his side, looking at him inquisitively. Ricky swiped at them with his ski pole; they blinked as it passed through their translucent bodies.

The signal was given – a digitized reveille bouncing off the plastic sky – and he began his descent, the loud hiss of plastic skis on plastic snowflakes an insult to the organs resting on either side of his brain. Tiny speakers on tiny tracks piped in the Ski-Rock that would follow him the entire way day down the mountain.

“You are gravity’s rainbow / you can slalom faster/ than an eagle’s tail!” encouraged a squeaky Japanese falsetto. The rabbits scampered ahead as Ricky shifted his weight the way Instructor Bob-Tom back at Ozone Memorial Lodge had showed him.

The plastic ceiling came to life as Ricky crossed the 300-meter mark.

YOU ARE ALREADY A WINNER! declared bright neon yellow san-serif text spinning around the half-naked woman Ricky had checked off for his Token of Enticement Graphic. She would remove a new item of clothing each time Ricky passed a marker ahead of pace.

“I love the way you sexy ski / why don’t you bring some hot / mountain man loving to me?” Ricky recognized the filtered power chords of the song from an early release by the Jacked-Off Junipers of the PLO, perhaps their Robo-Christmas album.

The titanium joints in Ricky’s knees handled every predictable bump with ease, coasting through each jarring motion with the precision GangstaRap Prosthetics was famous for. A GangstaRap advertainment suddenly filled the sky above him, a Super-Sitcom starring Anthony Danza III in all the glory of his animated tattoos. Whenever the wacky butler made an entrance, Danza’s body would ripple with the dirtiest curse words of all forty-two Discontinued Global Dialects.

The slope began to drop sharply, just as the “Intro to Velocity Pleasure” packet had told him it would, yet Ricky could not take his eyes off the ceiling.

A new song faded in with the same power chords: “You better watch out now / you super-sexy racer / you could roll-up and die / like pencil eraser!”

The yelp of a Holo-Bunny tore Ricky’s gaze from Danza to see a tree standing in the middle of the slope below him. The Office of Biosphere Suppression had banned trees from public usage twenty-three years ago– What the hell was it doing here on the ski slope? wondered Ricky.

Danza disappeared as the ceiling flashed with the cherry red Emergency Beacon. A hole in the roof opened and the Associates of Freedom rappelled onto the slope, seven burly men in black armor with grenade launchers and titanium Citizen Helmets.

The tree was skinny, spindly, about ten feet in height with sickly branches and only a couple dead-brown leaves, but it was a real, organic, biological tree.

Ricky crossed his skis and tumbled like a next-generation Enemy Combatant Elimination Mine, coming to a stop in a mess of scraped-up skin and torn polymers. “Do what the Trooper Say! / Do what the Trooper Say!” insisted the speakers as they shot ahead of Ricky down the mountain. He had skidded to a halt not thirty feet uphill from the tree as the Associates approached it from their landing position.

The Holo-Bunnies appeared again along the wall to Ricky’s left, gathering around a tiny little man with hair and actual pink skin huddled behind a Trash Acceptor, stroking a brown beard and laughing with glee.

“Excuse me officers–” began Ricky.

“Remain calm sir,” said the lead Associate, “this is a Level Nine Terrorist Attack.”

Another trooper broke rank and ran towards the pink man by the wall.

“Terrorist attack?” asked Ricky.

“Please sir, remain calm!” urged the leader. “A bill is about to pass through Virtual Congress to prevent this in the future.”

“But it’s a tree!” exclaimed Ricky.

No one replied. The burly trooper picked the little pink man up with one arm and injected him with a needle as the remaining Associates uprooted the tree and blanketed the crime scene with atomized Tru-Mountain Chemo-Fix.

“Remember the Alamo!” screamed the man as he dozed off into Penalty Sleep. He was tied to a rappel line and hoisted up as the seven Associates returned to the hatch in the sky.

The tiny speakers returned with a brand new tune: “Freedom is the way we do it / terror is the way they ruin it / Love your life and live it well / spending credits never hell.”

Ricky was sure he saw a Holo-Bunny shed a tear as the ceiling lit up with Return To Normal green.




Samuel J. Palomino works as a bartender in Moab, Utah. You may contact him at fiction@the-manifest.org.