QR Short Stories: A View From a Hill (Part 1)
On the former Earth colony of Dohs, ancient tradition states that the Earth surname Baxter originated in their antiquity as Bauxt, the malevolent rain God who brought an end to drought at the beginning of the harvest season only with great Dohsian sacrifice. As the planet made social, technological and scientific evolution and discovery, the sacrifice became reinterpreted as symbolism, an offer of sacrifice in spirit rather than in body. But I, James Fanshawe, consulted evidence which proved beyond doubt that the old legend, although neglected as superstition by the Dohsians, has not been neglected by Bauxt himself.
By the time I had graduated from Oxford University with a first in the History of Art, in the heady summer of 2300, time travel technology had lost both its novelty and its staggering unaffordability, and thus to forge a noted career in art curation, one had to commute in the time vortex. After eight years curating in the Enlightenment period at the Ashmolean Museum (three of which I spent in appalling digs when my vortex manipulator was stolen by a pickpocket), and a decade at National Gallery in the first Victorian era (which people always confuse with the steam punk Victorian period in the 22nd Century, an infuriating misconception, as absolutely no works of merit were produced under the tyrannical fist of Queen Vicki VII’s ruthless censors), I decided that despite the negative impact it would have upon my career, I would return to my own timeline in 2318, for Apple upgrades on vortex usage are absolutely extortionate these days.
Three weeks later, with hardly the time to properly hang my genuine replica of the Mona Lisa (as the first curator in my class to access one of the early vortex manipulators, I managed to twist Da Vinci’s arm into painting another for me before the poor man was inundated with opportunists), Colonel Patten, an old and moderately tolerable rowing friend of mine, popped his head around my office door one evening as the light began to fade and the shadows indiscriminately engulfed the priceless collection, only relinquishing their grip in the warm glow of the early morning retreat. After struggling to manoeuvre a large tattered canvas onto an easel facing my desk, he slumped into my expensive Louis Ghost chair, and in the emerald tinged light of my table lamp, a wave of shock dumbfounded me as I confronted a withered ghost of his former ebullient self. Acute insomnia had cultivated deep stress lines under his clouded eyes, wisps of grey hair hung lifelessly where a dark unruly mop had once resided, and his fingers were riddled with inflamed hacks which extended to the ever twitching, yellowed tips, clutching as they were at an unwieldy paper bag. Once a stout and popular society soldier, I was saddened to see Patten had been demoted to an empty shell.
Although I’d never laid eyes upon it before, the painting seemed more familiar than the wasted figure of Archie Patten, but inspired a far greater feeling of naked revulsion. That scene, renowned in all its gory red and rustic tones, and rendered upon cheap canvas with broad brush strokes and vulgar, shapeless dabs, depicted the massacre at Duneane Hill, on the Earth Colony planet of Dohs, which had won its independence some ten years ago. Brigadier Henry Baxter, a decorated campaigner, and staunch opponent of the decolonization wave which gripped the outer earth colonies due to his business interests in forced labour there, had provoked conflict with a native Dohsian religious sect during demobilization movements on a designated holy day in the early harvest season, and the ensuing riots between worshippers at the church on Duneane Hill and Baxter’s cut throat mob left 705 dead and 1517 wounded.
The subsequent war crimes trial at the Haig sentenced Baxter to life imprisonment, little consolation for countless Dohsian families whose religious and personal liberties, which had been so hard won by two decades of peaceful political agitation, had been robbed in mere moments by the illegal arsenals collected by Baxter and his cohort....
By Michael McConway