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Beer-sodden boys decide to create a crop circle. And then things go wildly wrong, and spectacularly right too.
"Cutting through the rows, I paced off what felt like the right distance, then turned and started pushing over three rows at once. I was using my pine board and my muscles, but the plants were sturdy, fighting me all the way. I kept getting tired, kept losing my breath. I'd have to stop and stand, my back aching, my ears humming, and after a few breaks like that, the others had moved out ahead of me, and I couldn't feel more alone. What I was doing felt wrong. Plain, simple wrong. And that feeling is what made me tired, guilt having its way of sapping me. It wasn't particularly late, the moon mostly full and hanging in the east, shining through a silvery haze. The air inside the corn was still, like a breath being held. It tasted thick and humid, full of living smells and weed killers. I was a town boy out where he didn't belong, all right. Turning, I tried to see the road, but all the world was corn, and I couldn't see anything but the silky tops and the stars, and the blackness between the stars, too."
Robert Reed is the author of quite a few science fiction stories, and he has been nominated for numerous awards. "To Church" is perhaps the finest SF story written about corn.
Genre: Science Fiction
"Cutting through the rows, I paced off what felt like the right distance, then turned and started pushing over three rows at once. I was using my pine board and my muscles, but the plants were sturdy, fighting me all the way. I kept getting tired, kept losing my breath. I'd have to stop and stand, my back aching, my ears humming, and after a few breaks like that, the others had moved out ahead of me, and I couldn't feel more alone. What I was doing felt wrong. Plain, simple wrong. And that feeling is what made me tired, guilt having its way of sapping me. It wasn't particularly late, the moon mostly full and hanging in the east, shining through a silvery haze. The air inside the corn was still, like a breath being held. It tasted thick and humid, full of living smells and weed killers. I was a town boy out where he didn't belong, all right. Turning, I tried to see the road, but all the world was corn, and I couldn't see anything but the silky tops and the stars, and the blackness between the stars, too."
Robert Reed is the author of quite a few science fiction stories, and he has been nominated for numerous awards. "To Church" is perhaps the finest SF story written about corn.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Robert Reed's To Church With Mr. Multhiford