‘Liar’s Leap’ by Jonathan Sean Lyster

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

In ‘Liar’s Leap’ by Jonathan Sean Lyster, two scholars must lie in order to get closer to the truth.

Take in the first part of this story with this excerpt from Issue 44, Autumn 2024.

Liar’s Leap

by Jonathan Sean Lyster

The sky is orange today. I say it to myself again, lifting an eye to the crystalline blue overhead. The second time I said it, the pain reduced to a short hot stabbing in my hind-brain. This third not-truth merely makes me wince.

My morning walk to the bus stop ascends a gentle rise. The view over the cradles where fusion rockets used to launch makes a saddening start to each day. The rusty hulks were abandoned when the Hiding began. One, just a jagged heap now, collapsed in last month’s winds.

Even in my youth in the ocean, before my hand-feet developed, I was taught that fusion flares could alert the monsters to our presence. The interstellar gulf between us is no protection. We save ourselves as tiny brisprat do, by being hard to see.

One eye on the path, I position a second eye to watch for the bus. When the nearly empty machine eases in, I climb the ramp and settle onto a stool near the midpoint. I reach with my hand-feet to grasp the bars along the floor. Digits grip cool metal, bracing me for the ride.

The wreckage that was once a fusion rocket cradle bothers me. As the bus lurches into motion, I think about launches I have seen. We rely once again upon the ancient technology of chemical-fuelled ships. They lift from near the equator, use the spin of Home to help them reach orbit. The remaining gantries of the fusion ship port are lost to my sight as the bus gathers speed. Only the very old know what it was like to board such vessels, to leave Home behind and land in a twenday on another planet in our solar system.

We have given up so much to survive the monsters. Those around me accept that it will always be this way. Yet I cannot.

Find out what happens next, in Issue 44, Autumn 2024!

Jonathan Sean Lyster explores possible futures and alternative nows. His science fiction books include the stand-alone thriller Oblivion’s Wake and the Martian Way series, with Beneath the Sands Of Isidis and The Road To Elysium coming out in September. Two more titles in this series, Voice of Happenstance and Zephyria Launches, will be published later in 2024. Jonathan’s Armageddon Boys fantasy series includes Judgment Daze, available now, and The Frog Of War, coming in early 2025. ‘Liar’s Leap’ was shortlisted for the 2023 Raven Short Story Contest.