by submission | Dec 31, 2010 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
We weren’t supposed to take our suits off, not ever. We were supposed to find the survey team that disappeared. We found out what happened to them, all right, and then we took our suits off, just like they did. I’m writing this with my suit off (I had to put my gloves back on because this keypad was made with suited fingers in mind).
When we got here, we didn’t find the other team, just their suits. We did find some incredible things running around, however. They were at the extreme end of alien anatomy but were no less beautiful for it. They weren’t aggressive or dangerous; we didn’t think they killed the team. We chased dead ends for a week before we realized they were the team. They didn’t disappear, they just stopped reporting in.
We spent days debating our next move. Did they take their suits off because they were changing, or did they change because they took their suits off? Hector settled the debate by taking his suit off (he was always a bit of a romantic). He started changing right away. We wanted to document it, get some objective proof, but he was against that, firmly against that. He said it was an invasion of his privacy. Then he said it didn’t hurt, that it felt great. Then he didn’t say anything and flew way with the same rippling layers of flamboyant flesh that the other team had embraced.
After that, it was like dominoes. One by one everyone took their suits off. One by one everyone became one of those shimmering, impossible beings. I kept my suit on. I kept filing boring, misleading reports. The responses from base were stilted, stern. They were suspicious of me. They probably assumed that I had lost it, that I was one of those people that goes on a mission and wipes out her whole team over some strongly held yet deeply frightening misconceptions about the nature of reality.
The communiqués from base got so bad that I realized I was boned no matter what happened. I figured I should just take my suit off. Everyone else seemed to be having a great old time flying around and sometimes engaging in complicated maneuvers I assumed to be copulation of some sort.
Then, I did it. I took my suit off (when in Rome… right?). I took my suit off and, embarrassingly enough, shouted “I am ready to transcend!” I was more than a little drunk (I hid some whiskey in my suit before takeoff). The booze made tired so I laid down for a minute to relax. I thought I’d wake up all changed. I didn’t.
Hours passed, days passed and nothing happened. I didn’t change. I didn’t start to change. I felt the same. Why not me? My feelings became as complex as the physical shapes of my former colleagues. Was it some deficiency of the imagination? I have always been a practical person. Do I lack some gene tied to evolution, some physical ability to become more than I am?
I’m going to go hide someplace and think things through. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you are on the team sent to find my team. Well, I just made your job a lot easier. Why don’t you return the favor by leaving me be (I don’t want to be a science project). If, however, you have your suit off and nothing’s happening, come out and find me. Your unchanged personness will lead you right to me, I’m sure of that.
by submission | Dec 30, 2010 | Story
Author : Ian Goodall
The days started to grey, that was all the warning we were given. At first, it went unnoticed to most. A few obscure colours became blander, faded. Then I saw it in my wife’s visage. Her sparking blue eyes began to fade. Her hair, fiery as the sun, lost its shine. My own reflection became dim, lifeless.
Outside, trees lost their green, the heavens became a wash of light grey; clouds became barely visible in the seemingly constant overcast sky. There was little panic. It took almost a year for the colour of the world to drain, and no-one, not even the politicians, in their grey suits and matte black hair had much to say on the matter. Scientists shrugged. I wondered.
Then… they came. Not a month after the last yellow ray of light had hit the planet it again ignited in a wondrous golden haze. Ships of numerous shapes and dimensions ripped through the atmosphere. Their colours were varied. Some were green and spire-like, towering into the sky some half a mile. Others were rotund and maroon; they hovered above major settlements oblivious to the panic they were causing below.
I first noticed it in my own eyes. A tine of hazel returned one morning, a week after the ships had arrived. My wife noticed it to, but didn’t comment. Hers remained a deep grey. In a few days my colour had returned, and a new, healthy energy in me stirred. My wife’s had not. Half the population of the Earth remained colourless.
It was then that the ships woke. Figures, obscured by a blurring light, emerged and swiftly entered into negotiations with world leaders. The results were delivered in a live broadcast in full, vibrant colour. The President of the United States, his appearance dishevelled, rough and grey, spoke prepared words. What he said was brief, and to the point. Those who had remained grey after they had landed were to be cleansed.
Sometimes I glance into my only child’s blue eyes and I can still see his mother’s, before the grey days came.
by submission | Dec 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Martin Berka
Krinna Lorens blinked as she woke up. She felt extremely refreshed, and was wide awake in about 15 seconds – sleeping was healthy. The lid of the bed slid aside, and the date appeared in front of her, hovering in mid-air. With a start, she studied the purple-tinted numbers again. Yes? Yes! She’d been waiting so long – those five years had felt like an eternity, no matter what she’d told herself – and it was time. A quick glance at his last message confirmed it – she had until mid-afternoon.
Sending the display away with a thought, Krinna sat up and climbed out, carefully. She dressed simply, ate (purely out of nostalgia), and spent several hours checking the news and downloading updates. Yes, it took a long time, but she wanted to be completely clued-in when she saw him again.
After triple-checking that she was ready, the 32-year-old surveyed the tiny apartment. It had served her decently for the last five years. Sure, it was slightly larger than a jail cell (though considerably better-equipped), but without Jeff around, it fit her living style. She’d always been the more practical of the two. Agreeing that her fiance should go on the trip was perhaps her only lapse, but the opportunity had seemed so rare, and the financial benefits, substantial.
Without a backward glance, Krinna stepped out the door, which locked behind her. The antique elevator took her up 14 floors, to what was once known as “ground level.” Being a cross between the real sky and ground areas, it was kept open and reserved for foot traffic. The street-like area was full of aliens, though she could tell that many of them were theoretically human, somewhere beneath all the modifications. She couldn’t blame them, since she had gotten the bare minimum herself, in the last few years. The rapid trend changes still tended to catch her off-guard, but one of the newly-downloaded patches kicked-in, and she confidently made her way through the crowd.
The transit center was nearby, and she waited several minutes before a one of the space elevator cages returned to the ground, using the opportunity to check the Expected Arrival Time on the public network. She reached the spaceport with a half-hour remaining.
The incoming ship was obsolete, launched as part of a third-contact wave of knowledge exchanges, to a star system some 15 light years distant. Despite relying on once-amazing advances in propulsion, it had taken just over 32 millenniums to arrive at its destination (and after alien improvements, nearly 20 to return) with its small crew of robots and 95 stasis-bound humans sent for their artistic, scientific, and technical abilities – including Jeff. He would spend about five conscious years away, and they had agreed to wait for each other. While he flew off and spent five years on the alien world (waking a few times during the voyage to reply to her messages), Krinna spread the same time evenly across fifty thousand. The routine quickly became familiar – awake every few centuries, explore the new world order, and try to fit in for a several months. The people she met during these “visits” were very helpful, though over time, they increasingly questioned why anyone would wait for the future, when the present was so wonderful.
But the present had included Jeff’s absence, until now. The ship docked, and he returned to a changed world, immediately heading in Krinna’s direction.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 28, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Kaine rounded the corner at a full sprint, boots kicking up plumes of sand as he tried to outpace his pursuers. No gun, no backup and rapidly losing daylight, he fought the urge to panic, swallowed it down.
“Nowhere to run to Kaine, nowhere to hide.” The voice bellowing between breaths, his pursuer struggling to keep the pace, but as Kaine’s feet left the sand and skidded to a stop on hard rock, he knew he was right. Jagged rock faces rose up on three sides; too steep to climb fast enough not to be brought down by shredder fire, the route behind singular and unbranching.
When the three men arrived, he was leaning, back to the cold stone, hands at his side, absently chewing a chunk of root he’d fished from a pocket of his overcoat.
Realizing he was unarmed and cornered, they relaxed their weapons and caught their breath. The one closest spoke while the other two flanked him, shifting their weight on the uneven sand beneath their feet.
“I should shoot you just for making me run out here,” the words were muffled through the filter mask that obscured the lower half of his face.
Kaine smiled around a mouthful of chewed root, then spat thinly across one of the subordinate’s boots, the blackened saliva dripping down into the sand. “Shoot me? Then what, carry a hundred kilos of dead weight back to port?”
The soldier scuffed his feet, carefully watching his superior but saying nothing, controlling his anger.
“We could just take your head back, leave your body for the scavengers.”
Kaine chuckled, and spat again, this time hitting the other soldier in the shins. He started, stepping forward and raising his weapon before being barked back into submission in Altaic command-speak.
“What if your boss’s prize isn’t in my head?”
There was a pause as his words were considered and Kaine pressed the advantage.
“You’re new at this, yes? Ever wonder why your bosses hire men like me and don’t trust everything to you? You come to this back-world shithole in dress uniform? Are those parade boots? I’ll bet your feet have been bleeding since you landed. You see these?” Kaine lifted one heavily scaled booted foot in the air, “these are made from genuine spine-back dragon hide. Ever seen a spine-back? Local combustion weapons can’t touch it. You can’t put a vibra blade through it, can’t burn it, and energy weapons just piss it off. It’s got only one natural predator on this dustbowl, and you don’t get to wear a pair of these unless you’ve figured out how to exploit that.” Kaine sucked loosely between his teeth, then spat again, this time spattering both the commanding officer’s boots.
“Do that again Kaine,” the officer fumed, jabbing the air with a pointed finger,” and we will carry you back in pieces.”
“You know your biggest problem? No situational awareness. Take the spine-back. They’re opportunists. They eat anything they can catch, and they can catch almost anything. They have this soft spot for an indigenous root though, an addictive narcotic plant native to the desert. They nose through the sand to find it, then chew the roots until they’re high as cabot wingers. Trouble is, the same root drives another little critter crazy. Ever see a jacqueline blue scorpion? Nasty little bastards. The stoned spine-back’s drool brings the jackie-blues a swarmin’. Dragon’s too messed up to run and it’s dead before it ever knows what hit it.
Kaine’s grin widened, and he carefully spat a last great mouthful of juice and chewed root in the face of the nearest soldier as he crumpled to the ground, the iridescent blue scorpions already covering him to the knees and stinging repeatedly through the inadequate armour.
Finding a comfortable spot higher up the rock face he watched the undulating sand and the blue streaks below with sombre fascination. “Not coming down yet,” he called out, and laughed.
by submission | Dec 27, 2010 | Story
Author : Damien Krsteski
He heard the stairs squeak. A jolt of adrenaline shot up his spine, tearing his hand off her plastic face.
“What are you doing, Edgar?” His mother’s voice was shrill and loathsome.
The basement suddenly got colder and turned twice as dark. He was kneeling before Evangeline, hands innocently stuffed in his pockets.
“I c-couldn’t sleep,” he stuttered.
She shifted her weight and the wooden stairs gave another painful squeak. Out of all the places in the world, why did she have to be here?
“You look me in the eyes when you speak to me,” she shrieked and descended several stairs.
Edgar turned to face his mother. She was wearing her shabby white nightgown and pink slippers, and was waving one finger menacingly at him.
He hated that fat ogre more then anything, but managed to suppress his fear and hatred for a moment and said, “Yes, mother.”
She grabbed him by the hand and was dragging him up the stairs. Edgar looked down morosely at his Evangeline.
“Good night, Eva,” he whispered.
His mother tugged at his hand. “Don’t you call it that,” she hissed through her teeth. “It’s a freakin’ robot for heaven’s sake. I don’t know why your father insists on keeping it. He is as stupid as you are. Throw it out like a broken radio, I say.”
She led him forcefully to his bedroom and slammed the door shut. He heard the rattling of the keys, then the lock turned.
Pale moonlight flooded the room as he quietly pulled his Solar System curtains apart. Even after fourteen years, he couldn’t quite get used to sleeping in complete darkness. His mother called it cowardly. May be so, he thought, and climbed under the sheets.
That night he didn’t really think about his mother. Or the yelling he would endure first thing in the morning. He didn’t think of school, or of the neighborhood bullies. For the first time in ages, he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Yes, Edgar Little was beyond any doubt, unequivocally and irrefutably, very much in love.
