This came as a result of one of the Lit­er­ary+ writ­ing assignments

Min­erva Chad­wick nee Hawk leaned against the rail­ing at the stern of the Hawk Fam­ily owned and oper­ated Mer­chant Air­ship, the Valor of the Sky. She stared at the writhing scene below, cap­ti­vated by her imag­i­na­tion of what cre­ated the dis­tur­bances she could see.

“Cap­tain, what kind of crea­tures live in the Rift?”

Cap­tain Nicode­mus Hawk handed off the con­trols of the ship to the nav­i­ga­tor and walked over to join Minerva.

“No one knows”, he said look­ing out over the rail­ing, “none of our devices have ever been able to pen­e­trate the clouds that you see, and no one that has ever ven­tured in has ever returned.“

“A bit melo­dra­matic don’t you think Captain?”

“Not if it’s the truth. Why else do you think we still have these mechan­i­cal air­ships? They are the only thing that can go over the Rift. No other elec­tronic device can even get close before it shorts out. Even the ones car­ried in air­ships go dead when they get close to the border. “

“So the field, or what­ever, that dis­able elec­tron­ics extends upward from the surface?”

“For as high as we have been able to explore yes. Some spec­u­late that it extends out­side the atmos­phere itself and into space.”

“Is that possible?”

“You are the one with the sci­en­tific mind Min­erva, you tell me, “ the Cap­tain smiled, “The only other thing I can tell you is that humans can­not stay too long near the Rift with­out get­ting very sick.”

“Almost like what­ever shuts off the devices is try­ing to shut off the body as well?”

“That is a good way to look at it.”

“How very inter­est­ing. How very inter­est­ing indeed. I would very much like to know what could sur­vive in that environment.”

“If any­one can find out, I believe it is you.”

© 2012, anthony. All rights reserved.