21st Century Pulps

Copyright © 2019 by Scott Meehan

Published December 2019

Indies United Publishing House, LLC

All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein.

All rights reserved worldwide. No artwork in this book may be copied, reproduced or redistributed in any form without prior written consent of the illustrator.

ISBN: 978-1-64456-093-8

Library of Congress Control Number:2019955302

www.indiesunited.net

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Home to Aryaa

Sunday Drive

Immortality and Eternity

Girl Alone

The Bank Job

Stone Fairies of the Glen

The Williamsburg Experience

Forty-Seven Years Ago

A Matter of Trust

A Song to Sing

Climbing Mount Olympus

Training Missionaries to Walk with the Natives

Someone’s Pig Pen

Behind the Wall

Little Warriors

The Great Escape

Reading by Gaslight

Paralyzed by Love

God’s Hope

Spared

The Sword

Living Forever

If God was One of Us

Going to War: A Journal Entry

My Perspective of Iraq – My Homeland (in Arabic)

My Perspective of Iraq – My Homeland (in English)

Baseball Cards

Foreword

by Lisa Orban

I was 10 years old before I learned to read. Not because I was slow or because the school I went to was poor, but because I am dyslexic. It wasn’t something schools tested for when I was young, and for years I struggled to make sense of the ever-moving and flowing symbols in front of me that refused to settle down and speak to me in any coherent way.

But then one day, after years of frustration and failure, there was an almost audible click inside my head and all those indecipherable symbols suddenly became words and whole new worlds opened to me. I devoured everything in an insatiable voracious hunger, from shampoo bottles to the books on my mother’s nightstand, I read everything I could get my hands on.

Four years later, wandering around a bookstore while visiting my grandmother, I saw a title that grabbed my attention, and I had no idea how much this one book would change me when I picked it up. The book was Friday by Robert A. Heinlein. I fell in love with science fiction that day, and I fell hard. I read Friday in one big gulp, and then went back and bought everything else in the bookstore with his name in it, and finished all of those in a single week.

When I ran out of Heinlein books, I went to my local library and asked the librarian to help me find more books like these and she introduced me to Asimov, Clark, Bradbury, Wells, Herbert and more. I spent my summer inhaling every science fiction writer I could find, barely coming up for air in between books. And I’ve never stopped.

Thousands of books and 40 years later my love is as bright as it was when I picked up my first science fiction book. I carry inside me the echos of all of those possible futures, the voices of those authors guiding me still with their words of warning and wisdom undiminished by time.

More than anything else, Science Fiction (for me) and other genres of fiction, give people a chance to explore new technology as well as their moral and ethical implications, before they become reality. They give humanity time to ponder the consequences of our current and future actions, asking us to think not only of can we, but should we and what may become of us if we do. It attempts to part the veil of time to offer us future histories of what could be and what may be, often given in equal parts, dire warning and eternal hope that we will choose the right path for ourselves.

It is said that the golden age is past us, and we live in lesser times for science fiction, but I disagree. The grand-masters of old may now be gone, but new authors are stepping up to fill their shoes to once again offer another generation of readers new future histories of their own in 21st Century Pulps.

In a nod back to all those great fiction anthologies of the past, Indies United is pleased to present you authors from all over the world who have come together in this collection to give you their vision of the future. So, step out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary with these twenty-three short stories and poetry of the present time and for the future.

HOME TO ARYAA

By Scott A. Meehan

The relationships between the American Special Forces soldiers and the Kurdish people are today’s headlines in the war on terror.

I first met Scott (Scotty) Brooks in Iraq. The year was 2006. My initial impression of him was that he was a lean, mean, fighting machine, just by the looks of him alone. To all the men, he was a natural leader. Later, his actions against the enemy forces did not prove my premonition wrong.

I was amazed by some of the things he was able to accomplish. For example, like the time he took careful aim of a Haji who was about to pull the trigger of a Rocket Propelled Grenade aimed right at us. While we all dove for cover, Scotty held steady and shot the grenade itself. When the ballistic struck, it caused a plasma jet to shoot out in an explosive force from the blast overpressure. This resulted in the immediate liquification of the shooters’ insides and of course, his total destruction. The pieces of metal fragments from the blast took care of the other five terrorists that were with him. He saved us all.

Scotty had recently completed two tours in the mountains of Afghanistan before we met. Any casual observer could tell that he was a gritty, seasoned combat veteran. His demeanor was unambiguously bitter to those outside his team members, which was fortunate for all of us since we were on the inside. His hair was sandy-colored—long by Army standards—and matched the color of his full-grown beard. His blue eyes pierced intently to those he addressed.

Brooks regarded me suspiciously when we first met on the roof of a two-story villa in Fallujah. I was, after all, the newbie just arriving in-country…to replace a fallen brother in fact.

Staff Sergeant Steven Lamb assured him, Bobby is good people and he’s already completed one tour in Iraq.

I wasn’t certain whether or not he was impressed by that fact…not that it mattered much to me anyway. It is never cool to say anything about yourself because it comes across as trying to prove your self-worth, and in our world, everybody lives with the maxim, Actions speak louder than words.

As time went on, our team worked together to rebuild confidence and structure to the people of Fallujah by forming an alliance with us against Al-Qaeda forces. To pull this miracle off was no small task. We had to win over the hearts, minds, and souls of the tribal leaders, fighting men, women, and children by convincing them that we really were on their side and wanted to help better their lives...in spite of the fact that American forces had all but leveled their city in 2004.

As mentioned previously, actions speak louder than words, as was in this case. During our mission, Scotty and I became close. I can’t pinpoint the exact time or the reason why, but he just took a liking to me. It may have been my ability to assimilate with the Iraqi people so naturally. It helped that I knew the Arabic culture and language, as well as having a natural smile rather than a scorn as a key facial feature. The locals referred to me by my full name, Bobby Burns without using the rank. Go get Bobby Burns or Here comes Bobby Burns!

Anyway, our mission in Fallujah throughout 2006 and 2007 proved to be a media and political success story, which was sorely needed for America during that time period. Our team left for home at the end of 2007 and the United States officially pulled out altogether three years later in 2010, leaving a large vacuum in western Iraq.

Fortunately, it was common knowledge to all of us that if anything ever went totally south again, attention would turn to the one group of fighting men who the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency relied upon to make a stand against Al-Qaeda anywhere in the world. Those fighting men were the Special Operations forces, otherwise known as the Green Berets.

Unfortunately, with the Iraqi government torn apart by political upheaval, everything did turn for the worse by 2014. That’s when the fractured government of Iraq was defenseless against the swarm of ISIS forces taking over the western half of their country. The only effort made by anyone to take a stand against this evil spread of darkness were the resilient Kurds from the north.

The adjoining Kurdish regions in northern Iraq spanned across Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Over time, numerous ethnicities had migrated, settled or natively inhabited the area, making up the population consisting of the Turks, Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Chechens, Azeris and others. All of these ethnic groups had contended for a secure homeland almost their entire existence.

If properly supplied and led, the Kurds would be the strongest force to make a stand against ISIS forces. Thus, it was us, the Green Berets that were called upon for this task to train the Kurds in resisting this fanatical Islamic caliphate.

Between 2007 and 2014, Scotty and I were among a few *SF soldiers who traveled back and forth to help the Kurds establish order were there was no order in Iraq. We worked primarily in the northern sector. After 2010, which marked the end of official military assistance, the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA as we all know, sought after several members of our team to conduct covert operations in the remote areas of Turkey, Syria, and northern Iraq. Those of us who went along, invested a lot of time equipping and training numerous Kurdish soldiers, both males and females alike…and the females were tough…quite able to hold their own.

Scotty and I were just getting reacquainted with our wives and kids back at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in late 2014 and were beginning to develop a taste for the home life when we received orders that would send us on a detached mission with the CIA.

We quickly discovered that the CIA had already pre-arranged locations for several 2-man teams to live indigenously amongst the Kurds. I was not surprised when I was teamed with Scotty. The two of us were sent to the town of Qabani in Syria’s Kurdish northeastern region.

On the 13th of September of 2014, ISIS launched an attack on Qabani and had overrun the city, pillaging many of its inhabitants. They had captured more than three hundred Kurdish villages in the surrounding area that led to a wave of more than 300,000 refugees fleeing into Turkey’s Sanliurfa Province.

Two months later is when Scotty and I received our orders. It was right after Thanksgiving - and before Christmas - of course. With the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) backed by well-trained and heavily armed Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and US-led airstrikes, the Kurds began to recapture Qabani. ISIS was driven into a steady retreat and the city was liberated by the 27th of January 2015. The battle for Qabani was considered a turning point in the war against ISIS. However, most of the remaining villages surrounding Qabani were still under ISIS control.

This is where we came in, as military advisers. The worse part of the whole set up was that we were not allowed to communicate in any way back to our family members. This was a drag to both of us but the CIA operative, who shall remain anonymous, had us both sign a bunch of blank stationaries so that he could periodically draft letters to our wives, as if the letters were from us, assuring them that everything was fine.

Each team was equipped with a powerful radio transmitter, some burner mobile apps, a medical kit, a crate of weapons, and boxes of ammunition. Although we had been in this area of operations before, we never came here to live as if this would be our new home…for only God knew how long.

I won’t say how we infiltrated, or traveled to our location but the first order of business was to meet with the tribal chief, Sheikh Ahmet Kaya, named after a Kurdish folk singer. Both Scotty and I knew the Sheikh from previous operations. It was he who requested the two of us to be assigned to his sector.

Salam aleikom! I said with a slight bow when the Sheikh first approached with a group of fighting men and women.

Aleikom Salam! he replied back.

Choni? (How are you?)

Boshi. (I'm well).

While our initial exchange continued, the CIA operative headed back to the vehicle that brought us into Qabani. His parting words were, Remember, this is a Top-Secret mission, and nothing can happen. You are not here and if anything bad happens, I don’t know you. DO NOT get captured.

We weren’t planning on it, Scotty answered.

Just saying…Oh, and I’ll be sure to write the kind of letters that will keep your wives happy.

Scotty and I looked at each other and then went about our business. The two of us were alone Americans in the middle of northeast Syria.

Come on, Sheikh Kaya said. I will show you two to your new homes.

Homes? I answered. As in more than one? I had assumed that the two of us would be in the same dwelling."

You will each have your own. There is a reason and you will know soon.

Again, I assumed. Oh, in case something happens to the house, we both won’t die? I added somewhat sarcastically.

The Sheikh smiled. A good reason, but only one.

Just as well Scotty answered. I can’t stand his snoring.

When the Sheikh led us to our new homes, Scotty and I looked at each other like kids in a candy store.

Wow! he uttered, which were my exact thoughts as well.

We were led through a brick-walled fortress looking building that surrounded a miniature palace-like structure. The outsides of the building were made of brick and the whole structure was built like a ranch house that was shaped in a giant U with a fountain and garden at the center. We went inside one of the wings and marveled at the colorful tiled walls and floors with large woven carpets, windows with long drapes, rooms separated by large columns.

Looks like one of Saddams’ palaces, I said.

I can get use to this…real fast!

We walked up a couple of marble steps to a side room and Scotty was told that this would be his. With a clap of his hands a couple of soldiers moved around busily like a couple of concierges.

Sheikh told Scotty, I hope you find your accommodations suitable to your satisfaction.

Scotty smiled big, which was not that often. The last time was when he returned home from our mission in Iraq in ’06 and his young daughter ran up to him. His blue eyes were as wide as frisbees.

Come, Bobby Burns, I will show you your accommodations. Scotty followed me.

I want to see his too.

I could not imagine it to be any nicer than Scotty’s, but we moved across to the other side of the courtyard into the same building and when I stepped in, the wow factor smacked me for the second time. It was actually nicer than Scotty’s, in my opinion anyway.

Sheikh Kaya, how can we thank you enough for such hospitality? I asked sincerely.

Well, first, you have already, just by being here to train me and my men, and for bringing all of these weapons to fight ISIS.

We will train you well, I assured him.

Yes, we are very eager to get started. There is another way you can thank me also. The Sheikh went to the door while his men filed past us hauling in our equipment. Scotty and I both took in our surroundings, noting storage locations, escape routes, and other personal quirks. The extravagant spaces were very impressive to say the least.

When the Sheikh returned, he had a young girl with him. This is my daughter, Aryaa. She is now seventeen years old. Her name means that she is noble and honored, the Sheikh beamed.

Scotty and I bowed slightly, reserving an extended hand, until she reached her hand out towards me first and then to Scotty. I am pleased to meet you, she said in solid English.

Likewise, it is very nice to meet you, Aryaa, I answered, as did Scotty.

She was very attractive. Unlike the other Kurdish women, we had met, Aryaa was not in a military uniform. She wore a colorful head scarf that partially covered her long, dark brown hair. Her eyes were like dark almonds, yet with a glint of innocence, which matched her shy, yet wily, smile. Her gown was a typical modern dress for the young Kurdish women of that area, and was arrayed in a two-toned burgundy and brown. She wore a golden necklace that gleamed brilliantly against her dress.

She will keep your living areas clean and will cook for you, the Sheikh suddenly announced.

For both of us? Scotty responded.

No, only for the leader. She will live with the leader—it is our way.

Before we could say anything else, the Sheikh yelled in front of his soldiers, along with some of the local people, including other women and children. I am truly honored to give my daughter, Aryaa, as a bride to our Green Beret leader in marriage, today!

Everyone let out a loud whoop followed by yelling, laughing and clapping…except for Scotty, me…and Aryaa, who was looking shyly at the ground. At least she wasn’t crying, I thought. Scotty and I just looked at each other, trying hard not to look shaken by the sudden announcement.

We were both already married. But we could not argue our American point of view at the moment. We would have lost all credibility…and thus the mission. And this just wasn’t our personal mission, but one with National interest in the whole region. We did not have a choice but to go along.

Fortunately, for the non-leader, the Sheikh’s other kids were all boys, except for one, another girl who was too young. This meant that only one of us had the new