Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Ferrell Smith’s upcoming novel “Shadows of Perfection.” Smith, also the author of “Dark Ascension,” has lived in Rutherford County for over 20 years.
The blistering rays of the Georgia sun barely fazed Hunter O’Neal. Sprawled across the largest tire tube he could find, he let the seat of his cut off jeans, his feet and both hands dangle in the pond water. He had only to splash himself whenever the heat became too much. This is pure contentment, he thought. At age thirty-four, he realized just how rare the feeling of complete peace was, and how few times he had felt it since childhood. Hunter vowed to take these little breaks more often. A creek flowing down from the nearby hills fed the pond, and then continued on its way out the side opposite its mouth. This kept the pond cool, despite the hot summer day, and deterred stagnation, so that the only unpleasant odor Hunter noticed was that of hot rubber from the tire tube he used as his floating lounge chair. And it really wasn’t so bad. The little breezes that popped up carried it away and replaced it with the sweet smell of peaches from a nearby orchard. The thought of the delicious fruit made his mouth water, and Hunter reeled in the Styrofoam cooler he had tethered to his tube. From inside the cooler, he produced a recently picked specimen, as plump and ripe as anyone could ever hope for.
Just as Hunter bit into his juicy prize, he heard the familiar sound of the old truck returning from town. Mid twentieth century vehicles could be quite loud, and the approaching 1950 Chevy one-ton stakebed was no exception. Hunter tilted his head straight back until peach juice ran past both sides of his nose and between his eyes, as he looked up the hill toward the cabin. This gave him an inverted view of the large, ugly truck as it parked next to the building. Counting off in his head, as if gauging the distance of lightning by how long it took to hear thunder, Hunter waited for the inevitable backfire that always followed the Chevy’s arrival. As expected, the explosion came, sending no less than twenty birds in the nearby trees to flight, and producing a black cloud so thick it couldn’t be seen through for over a minute. He wasn’t a big fan of the rusty old vehicle, with its cracked glass and questionable suspension, but experience had taught him to keep his opinions to himself. One disparaging remark and he could expect the driver to extol its virtues for a good ten minutes, going on about hydraulic lift, dual fuel tanks and a two speed vacuum operated rear, whatever that was.
Hunter splashed some water on his face and finished his fruit. Leaning his head back once again, he could see his friend walking the path from the cabin to the pond, so he put his hands and feet straight up in the air, slid into the water through the center of the tube, and then swam to the pond’s edge.
“You need to get cleaned up,” David Asher announced, standing at water’s edge as he offered Hunter a towel. “There’s a sock hop tonight in the high school gymnasium, and it’s an all-ages event. There promises to be a lot of single women in attendance. I think we should go.”
“I was planning to take it easy tonight,” Hunter replied. “Maybe hang around the cabin. I don’t even know what a sock hop is.”
“It’s a dance where no one wears their shoes,” Asher said. “Fun on the basketball court, with no scuff marks for the janitor to buff out afterwards.” As they started up the hill toward the cabin, Asher continued to press his suggestion. “I say we go. You don’t need a vacation away from people. You spend most of your time in solitude as it is. Let’s head to town after a while, mingle with the locals and have some fun!”
Hunter agreed, half-heartedly. He wasn’t one to go out of his way to socialize, but on the occasions that he did, he always seemed to have a good time. So he rinsed off with a garden hose before entering the cabin, greased back his hair to match the current style, and donned a clean t-shirt and jeans. He was careful to choose socks without toe holes before putting on his sneakers. Dusk was fast approaching when he rejoined Asher, who waited for him in the truck. They were dressed alike, and even appeared to be about the same age. As they drove the dusty dirt road to town, Hunter’s only concern was that they might both end up hitting on the same girl.
When Hunter and Asher arrived at the school, they found the parking lot nearly full with cars. The dance was going to be a big event, it seemed. At least half the town had shown up. One aisle up and three cars over, Hunter spied a group of girls exiting their vehicle. All looked to be in their twenties, and the prettiest of the bunch happened to turn and notice him. She flashed an inviting smile, and at that moment, he decided who he planned to spend his evening with.
“I found our dates,” Hunter said, as he and his friend climbed down from the big truck. “Or at least I found mine.” He walked toward the girls, beckoning Asher with a hand gesture to follow. But just before he reached them, Asher’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“We’re going to have to pick this up later.”
Hunter slowly turned to face him.
“The crew’s located a target. I am sorry, captain, but duty calls.”
?????
Feeling as though he was waking from a vivid dream, Hunter eased open his eyes. First he saw only darkness, followed shortly by dim light as he raised the visor on his neural interface helmet. Designed without regard to aesthetics, the NIgHt device, as it was called, looked much like the headgear of an antique space suit, with an EEG sensor net inside, and a thick web of retractable cables tethering it to a console in the room’s low ceiling. There was only one such device on the Theseus, and for that reason, it received a lot of use. Harold Forrester, the ship engineer, favored it as a training tool, because it was much more efficient at imparting information than conventional means of study. Rote memorization was never necessary, by his account. After he received information through the neural interface, he knew it completely, as if it had been in his head all his life. Ship doctor Judith Dobratz liked it because it allowed her to practice difficult forms of surgery. The virtual world it opened was so lifelike, she claimed she couldn’t tell the difference between computer-generated patients and real ones. The rest of Hunter’s small crew used the device for recreation. The ship’s brain was a true artist when it came to programming realistic settings. Given a date and location from Earth history, Asher could create a striking virtual representation. He sometimes spent days in research and development to get various refinements to shine through.
