Introduction
"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.
You can start the serial from the beginning by visiting the Curated Collection.
Previously in our story
Our hero, a war veteran, found himself standing on a train station platform in another time and dimension. At his feet lay a man in a brown suit. The man was dead.
In last week's chapter, a crowd gathered around to accuse him of the man's death, and our hero realized he could not remember whether he had anything to do with it or not. He was shackled and led away, as the doctor who declared the man dead smiled....
His cell measured five feet wide by ten feet long. He had been there long enough to mark it off by hand three times, knowing his hand to be exactly seven inches from the base of his palm to the tip of his middle finger. The cell was bare except for the latrine – a gaping hole in the floor at the base of the outside wall, nine feet from where he squatted on his boot heels. A thin shaft of grey light angled in from a window high on the wall, hiding the latrine from sight, but of course he could smell it.
To his right, outside the narrow door – which was made of wood and stood in stark contrast to the concrete he squatted on – he heard the ring of keys and the tread of jailer's footsteps. It was constant movement out there, but in the three days since he had been jailed, the footsteps had not once stopped outside his door. His food was lowered by rope sling from the window; he had quickly learned to catch the tray before they lowered it all the way into his latrine.
His mind turned on the way the doctor had smiled at him. He buried his head in his hands and tried to banish the image; the thousand times it had churned around his head had not delivered any relief; what possible good could come of going over it again?
It had been such a knowing smile, but what did the doctor know? And why didn't he know anything? Why couldn't he remember?
He could remember standing on the dais while Lee and Grant signed the armistice between North and South. He remembered lining up with the other junior officers to surrender his sword, sidearm and mount – how his horse's black coat had gleamed as it pranced beside him in the midday sun. He remembered, after the signing, watching Lee and his senior officers being led from the stage to a makeshift prison inside the barn – where the gallows waited, though no one knew it at the time. And he remembered how both sides had cheered the war's end, and the drunken celebration that ensued in the combined camp for three days and nights.
He was almost positive that he had walked home after that. He had no idea how he had come to be on a train station platform; he could not remember ever boarding a train. But there was something odd about that platform – about all the people, not just the doctor and his smile – something off in a way that was familiar, but that he could not – would not – admit to himself.
Our hero could not acknowledge that the train station platform was in another dimension than his own, that it was familiar because this had happened to him before: he had jumped between dimensions without knowing how he got there or how to get home.
A key ring jangled its mess of notes; the tread of footsteps had finally stopped outside his door. He pushed himself up and faced the door, suddenly wary of what might be out there.
Next week in our story
The pig-man jailer who opened the door was mostly a regular man, except that he had a pig's nose – with big, gaping, wet airholes – and beady little pig eyes. The nose had fine blonde hairs on the sides, like a pig's snout; it wiggled around sniffing the air, like a pig's snout; and the end was a round, flat, pink stub that protruded from the man's face, just like a pig's snout.
Chapter IV (link to come)
Start at the beginning
without the use of AI.