K.T. Seto
Hi all I'm K.T. Seto and I play what if. I write Speculative Fiction with a paranormal bent and joined Vocal as a way to write stories that aren't tied to my other works.Vocal is for the odd bits that don't fit, so hang on for the ride.
Labme #7
“Let me get yellow rice, spicy shrooms, Labme 7, and a side of pickled veg.” The tall man said impatiently rocking in place once the line moved and it was his turn to order. The thin woman behind the register raised an eyebrow.
Moon Bull
The thing you have to understand about the Lunar colony is that living on the moon itself isn’t the issue. They’d accounted for almost everything before they’d put the first human in the colony long term. The issue is keeping things alive. The domed city could almost pass for a city on Earth. It certainly tried with its roads and parks and open-air vistas. The bubble is and remains the epitome of sustainable engineering. On paper, the colony could survive indefinitely. Yet in reality, in practice, things died. The moment they planted anything other than trees and grass in the carefully prepared soil the timer started. The moment anyone and anything set foot on the surface the hourglass started dribbling sand. Which makes the bull so odd?
Driving For Food
I have always had an interesting relationship with food. It comes from my upbringing. My biggest influences in childhood were my grandparents who were born and raised during the Great Depression. It was a time when it was nothing to spend an entire day searching for and gathering what you needed to make a meal for your family. My childhood is peppered with moments where I remember riding around in the backseat of my Grandmother’s car listening to Public Radio in search of food. She had a store for everything. One store that had the best meat, one store that had the best sweets, one for pantry staples. She poured over coupons and sale papers for deals because we didn’t have much money but that didn’t mean we couldn’t eat well. Traveling for food is ingrained so to speak. This is why I spend my weekends in the car with my husband eating my way across the DMV.
The Call
The doorbell rang just as the family was sitting down to dinner. They weren’t expecting anyone, so Miriam pulled out her tablet to look at the doorbell app. It was a delivery courier. With a sigh she rose and went to answer the door herself, unsure what could be coming so late at night. She opened the door and gave a small polite smile, the kind of smile she reserved for unwanted visitors and salespeople who are too pushy.
Safe
“Someone smart might worry about where their gloves are not a useless bit of jewelry.” Leigh said holding mine up as I crawled along the floor of the tiny room we called home looking for my locket. I tossed her a smile over my shoulder but didn’t stop my search. I wasn’t leaving without it, I needed it for later. I found it wedged in the corner, obviously having fallen behind the table when I’d removed it last night. Smiling I fished it out and held it up for her to see.
Spin
Who’s gonna spin, gonna spin, gonna spin. Spin away the pain, all the pain, all the pain. The song echoed in the darkness, and they followed the sound downwards, past the parts they liked to visit, past the parts they pretended they didn’t, into the places they only went when forced. Their footsteps were barely audible over the blaring of the music and the cloying scent of decay grew stronger the further down they traveled. They’d been searching for hours, hours longer than they had to stop the dance.
Reset
We were six clicks out from civilian compound 23 when my sensors picked up a pod. I had a split second to alert my team then I dived behind the nearest pile of rubble and pressed the heel of my hand to my locket for luck. It has yet to fail me and didn’t this time. The explosion delivered the viral payload in a tight circle around the trigger which just barely reached the base of the pile I hid behind. The second Geneva Convention outlawed the use of bio-gens in warfare but the off-worlders never signed anything did they? After all, they didn’t want to hurt the planet. They just wanted us gone. Sometimes I wondered if they were wrong.
The Ark
Utopia isn’t a place really. It’s an idea. Or better yet, an ideal to seek. It’s ubiquitous in that it pops up in many ways throughout history and in myths and legends. Through the ages we have always had stories that allude to some great perfect moment coming. The dream of it is alluring. As a child I always hoped it could happen. I read the classics and watched the old speculative fiction movie streams from a young age. The ones where humans imagined what the world would look like in a future without all of life’s petty problems. Where everyone had come together as a species and made great things happen. Nothing I read or saw ever convinced me that such a place, such an ideal could exist. Because I knew people.
