A Scary Story for Nouvel’An: “No More Final Frontiers”

In Québec, there’s a long tradition of telling scary stories on the darkest nights of the year. As “mon pays, ceci n’est pas un pays, c’est hiver”* fills with endless snow and the days grow short, people gathered together around the campfires and told tales of werewolves, demons, devils, and wendigos. Some of the most famous stories in Québécois folklore, like Rose LaTulippe or the Chasse-Galerie, arise from these long-ago campfire tails in the dead of subarctic night. And none are more scary, none more hair-raising, than the tales told on New Year’s Night, when the stars are bright and cold and clear and the dim fire throws shadows that could be loup-garou with cold breath, and the chill is always hovering too close to the tiny circle of warmth.

So here, free, two days only, is mon conte de Nouvel’An.

In 2109, there is no more space program.

No more Discovery.

No more Final Frontiers.

I wrote “No More Final Frontiers” after they announced the Space Shuttle program was ending, with no clear hope forward other than hitching a ride with the Russians. SpaceX remained unclaimed. Since it’s been claimed, since the Dragon roars through the sky…I still see this as a possible future, one to warn against. The more Elon Musk tries to gobble up outer space as his personal demesne, muscling out competition while deriding nonprofit or governmental space exploration, crowning himself King of Mars with wannabe serfs lining up for the pleasure, the more I wonder if one hundred years from now, anyone will remember or care after he inevitably burns out.

I dedicated it to two men who died that year – Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and Kyle Bruner, a shipmate of mine on the Lady Washington who died trying to save a woman from getting robbed in the Bahamas. The deaths of these two men are what inspired this particular horror story, this story of time forgot.

For the next forty-eight hours, “No More Final Frontiers” is available for free on Amazon. It’s the story of “Space Dennis,” one of the last crews of a historical reenactment space program, and one of the last to get the news that it’s been shut down. He and his shipmates hatch a plot to steal the space shuttle, but even abandoned property is harder to steal than it looks, and they’ll  be faced with the question whether it’s even worth it…

Bonne année. Bon rêve.