Fiction River: Moonscapes by Fiction River Read Free Book Online

with gifts for the colony’s children.
    As she had every year, Felicity had overridden the safeguards that kept the colonists from creating frivolous things with the technology that made it possible for the colony to exist. With the safeguards off, Nick had created the kind of gifts for each of the kids that would encourage their dreams—dreams he’d learned about by listening to them as he taught.
    He finished off his hot chocolate before he lifted the satchel. Felicity Parker had become a good friend. Her help in assisting him with the reversal of his downsizing was invaluable. The biggest change Nick had made in how he did things this time around was due to her.
    Nick no longer kept lists of who was good and who was bad. “Good” and “bad” were no less harmful labels than “old” and “slow” and “useless.” Kids were kids, and every kid deserved to know someone believed in them.
    Just like Felicity Parker had believed in him.
    Nick winked at her as he left his room and enjoyed the quizzical look she gave him in return. No matter. She’d find out what the wink was all about soon enough.
    This year he’d created an additional gift and tucked it beneath the other gifts at the bottom of his satchel so she wouldn’t accidentally catch sight of it. He’d leave the gift at her door after he’d delivered all the rest. It was a totally frivolous gift, something that she’d wanted when she was seven but didn’t believe she deserved.
    It was long overdue.

 
     
    Introduction to “ The Toy That Ran Away”
     
    Scott William Carter last appeared in our third issue, Time Streams , with the well-received story, “The Elevator in the Cornfield.” His short stories, more than fifty strong, have appeared everywhere from Analog and Realms of Fantasy to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Los Angeles Review. His very first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys , won the prestigious Oregon Book Award in 2011. Since then, he’s published ten novels. The latest is Ghost Detective .
    Before he started “The Toy That Ran Away,” he had an inkling he’d write about private investigator Dexter Duff searching for a sophisticated child’s toy. Then he received an invitation to Moonscapes .
    “Suddenly,” he writes, “I had a setting, which is sometimes all you need to fit all the pieces into place.”

 
     
    The Toy That Ran Away
    Scott William Carter
     
    The white mansion, with its marble pillars and terraced windows trimmed with gold, impressive and a bit gaudy, was exactly how I pictured a Unity Worlds Ambassador of a terraformed moon like Vanga Seven would live. Like he had something to prove.
    The air was cool on my face, the sky a hazy lavender with the onset of dusk. The planet Vanga itself loomed over the horizon, a dull gray oval, like a giant smudge that nobody could wipe away. The mansion was high in the hills of Trenton, high enough that I was breathing heavy despite being in the best shape of my life—at least for a private investigator who spent far too much time with his feet on a desk. When I glanced over my shoulder, down the grassy hill, I saw not only amber domed rooftops and a scattering of mirrored skyscrapers, but also the ocean beyond and below the floating city’s perimeter walls, blinking through a dusting of clouds.
    It was not my first time on a city in the sky, but it still felt strange to look down and see clouds.
    I placed my hand on the scanner and said my name. Without a word, I was buzzed inside. In the fading light, I walked up the wide steps to the front door. Leaves from the overhanging trees rippled in the wind like yellow scarves. Ambassador Jachin Strawn walked out to greet me.
    “Mister Duff,” he said.
    He smiled the practiced smile of a politician. Since the holo had been a headshot, I was not prepared for how big he was. His white turtleneck was so tight it looked like it had been painted on his chest, and his huge muscles had the too-perfect