A License to Kill

Author : C.T. Jackman

The late-evening wind wasn’t the only thing that threatened to pull Derek from the building’s roof. A car screamed through the air in front of him, forcing the bounty hunter to stagger his stance for balance and spin his arms, even almost dropping his sub-machine gun as he tried to maintain his position on the roof’s raised edge. He wasn’t in any serious danger; if he had fallen, he would’ve been able to activate his jump-pack and prevent any serious injury, but doing so would blow his cover wide open.

“There’s lanes for a reason!” he shouted at the departing vehicle, but it paid him no heed. It continued to fly in the space between its counterparts in the air and those lesser machines confined the ground, eventually disappearing out of sight as it recklessly turned a corner.

“That was smooth,” his robot companion commented below him. Benny’s voice was the perfect imitation of a human’s, but Derek could still tell the difference between a voice-box and vocal cords.

“Can it, bucket-brain.”

“So we’re resorting to slurs now, are we? Professional. I hope your wild display of ineptitude didn’t draw the attention of our target.”

Derek ignored the comment and pushed a button on the side of his helmet to zoom in on the man they were after. The marauding arms dealer was still dining at a table outside the restaurant with his two alien clients, and they gave no indication that any of them had witnessed a hover-craft almost tearing Derek from his perch.

The contract stated that their target was to be taken dead or alive, and anything else was secondary. The Inter-Galactic Justice Commission put Mr. Bradford’s warrant out three months ago, and Derek and Benny quickly jumped at the opportunity.

The bounty hunter dropped back below the edge of the roof and raised his face mask so Benny could look him in the eyes. He knew the robot appreciated being able to analyze his facial micro expressions and compare them to the audible fluctuations in his voice. Benny claimed that it was good practice for when they had to determine the truth in a target’s words.

“I still say we should have brought a rifle so we could pick him off from here,” Derek said.

“I already told you. I calculated that the likelihood of them utilizing personal energy shields is roughly 70.28%.”

“And such shields are designed to deflect a shot made from this distance, I know, I know. That’s why we have these,” the bounty hunter said, and raised his sub-machine gun.

“Correct. We’ve tracked him across three different star systems; I think you can handle making the leap across a street.”

“Maybe. Why don’t we find out? I’m tired of waiting; let’s go take this bastard out before he completes the deal and hands over the weapons.”

A chuckle emitted from Benny’s voice box. “Derek, after all these years, are you beginning to fancy yourself a hero?” it asked. The robot barely registered the gleam in the corner of the human’s eye before the helmet’s face mask slid down and Benny was looking at its own reflection.

“I consider it more of a civic duty,” Derek said, double checking the scope on his gun one last time. “I am licensed, after all.”

“Would that really affect whether or not you would continue to pursue this line of work?”

Derek thought for a moment, then powered up his jump-pack. “No,” he said, his smile hidden. “It’s too much fun.”

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Mom And Pop Only

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

“Bring the accused forward.”

The robot sentries escorted Michael into the prisoner’s stand and closed the waist high gate behind him.

The magistrate read off his glowing pad. “Michael Maurice Frost, you have been charged with attempted corporate identification in the first degree. How do you plead?”

Michael cleared his dry throat. “Not guilty.”

Hushed voices erupted from the darkness all around. The magistrate manipulated a control and behind him a large screen lit up showing a CGI gavel that pounded audibly. The murmuring ceased.

“Well then, please tell me Mr. Frost, how many companies do you own?”

“Thirty-six your honor.”

“And what type of businesses are they sir?”

“Building supply stores your honor.”

“All thirty-six?”

“Uh, yes your honor.”

More murmuring from the darkness all around, again the gavel screen lit up and again the crowd was silenced.

“Well right there you are in strict violation of anti-corporate law number six.” Behind him the screen lit up again, showing the fourteen-paragraph law in its entirety.

The defendant leaned forward, “May I speak in my defense as to this violation?”

The magistrate made a sweeping motion with his hand, “But of course Mr. Frost. What say you to this charge?”

“My stores are quite different. No two sell exactly the same thing.”

Someone in the crowd yelled, “Shuffling!” Again the gavel banged.

The magistrate spoke. “As much as I deplore outbursts in my court, I have to agree with this rude and inappropriate audience member. Our investigators did find that you are guilty of the practice of shuffling. Just because each of your stores carries a minor item or two that the others don’t, doesn’t mean that they are engaged in different kinds of business.” He made a mark or two on his pad and then looking over his glasses said, “Argument invalid!”

There was a murmur of approval from the hidden crowd. The magistrate went on. “Now as to the charge of corporate logo infringement.”

Michael interrupted, “No two are the same!”

The magistrate leaned forward. “Do you think me an idiot Mr. Frost?” Behind him the screen lit up showing a cartoon handyman in blue overalls holding a handsaw. “Please identify this logo for the court.”

Michael responded, “That’s from the Mike’s Hardware sign in Sioux City.”

Beside it a very similar logo appeared. This time the handyman was in red overalls and was holding a hammer. “And this one?”

Michael cleared his throat again. “Crazy Mike’s Building Supplies in Topeka.”

A third appeared. This time the character was a cartoon beaver in yellow overalls holding another hammer but it was obvious that the same artist had drawn all three. “And this?”

Michael looked at his feet and muttered, “Big Mike’s Lumber in Calgary Alberta.”

The magistrate looked up from his the glow of his pad and said, “I could go on, but I don’t see any reason for it.” The gavel returned, replacing the characters on the screen. “Michael Maurice Frost, this court finds you guilty of attempted corporate identification, and sentences you to surrender all of your companies and their assets.” The gavel hammered once with finality.

“But, that’s not fair!”

“I’ll tell you what’s not fair sir!” He removed his glasses. “I can still remember a time when you couldn’t tell where you were anymore! It might be Chicago, it might be Vancouver, but there were those same damn yellow arches, those same four hotel chains, those same ugly movie theaters, and I will tell you good sir, I will never see us go back to those awful ways again. Court is adjourned!”

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Historicity

Author : Bob Newbell

“T-minus two minutes.”

That's the mission control computer. That's how long I have to back out. One second after that is one second too late. But I'm not going to back out. I don't have any real ties to this era. My whole life I've felt I was born centuries later than I should have been. Temperamentally, I'm well-suited to time travel.

I've read some of the old time travel science fiction. Quaint ideas about time machines being compact little vehicles that magically drop you off to whatever calendar date you like. That's a much nicer narrative device than having to find the right kind of black hole orbiting the right kind of star and then build a machine around both of them.

“T-minus one minute, forty-five seconds.”

And in the old stories, you could travel into the future, too. In reality, you can only travel to the past. The closer to the present you want to travel to, the more power it takes. In terms of energy, it's far easier to travel 100 years into the past than it would be to travel ten seconds into the past. To travel even one nanosecond into the future would require infinite energy.

“T-minus one minute, thirty seconds.”

And once you're in the past, forget about preventing your grandparents from ever meeting each other or killing Hitler or any other causality violation-type tampering. Laws of physics won't allow it. Novikov self-consistency principle. Go back in time to kill your mom before she gives birth to you and on your way to commit matricide, you'll trip and break a leg. Or get killed yourself in a car accident. Something will prevent you from violating causality. Nature abhors a paradox.

“T-minus one minute.”

Did I mention it's a one-way trip? Like I said, you can't travel to the future. And when you arrive in the “past,” that becomes the “present.” The time you traveled back from is forever inaccessible. Once you're in the past, your job is to observe and document. And after you've recorded the history you were assigned to investigate, you take everything you've documented to the designated recovery location and let your recording machine dig itself into the ground. It'll burrow deep enough into the Earth's crust to remain undisturbed for centuries. They'll locate it and dig it up the same day you were sent back in time, centuries after you're dead.

“T-minus forty-five seconds.”

Speaking of death, you may not live very long after you've time traveled to the past. All matter that gets sent into the past including living tissue gets hit with ionizing radiation. You'll have at least two or three forms of cancer shortly after you arrive. That may not sound like a serious problem, but cancer used to be a debilitating and even deadly disease. Depending how far back in time you go, the medical science may not be advanced enough to treat it. Your cell repair machines may be able to fix the damage but all that nanotech in your cells gets hit with radiation, too. It may not function properly. Statistically, you've got a less than fifty percent chance of making it five years after your arrival.

“T-minus thirty seconds.”

Still, for all the problems, time travel is worth it. Data mining history is a calling, almost like a religion. We can't know who we are or what we can become if we don't know how we arrived here. Dying 700 years before you were born is a small price to pay.

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When one door closes…

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer

For reasons unexplained a man finds himself in the woods late at night, separated from his companions, without a light and quite alone.

The night is dark, but not pitch-black, just light enough for him to see the hint of path before him. He suddenly finds himself standing before a shapeless “Void,” much darker than the surrounding forest. Immediately, he’s aware of an unseen presence within. He knows he’s being watched.

The man is calm and deeply curious about this phenomenon. He’s no stranger to weirdness, only weird to strangers. The paranormal does not bother him. He has, you might say, become accustomed to mysterious “disturbances in the force”. Despite his lack of fear, however, something about the ebon cloud blocking his path sets his nerves on edge.

Peering into the Emptiness, he attempts to penetrate the thick shroud of un-light, hoping to detect the presence within. As he does, thought forms take shape in his mind. Thoughts that aren’t his.

So subtle is the foreign mind insinuating its alien presence, slipping and slithering between his thoughts, that initially the man believes he’s having an internal dialogue with himself. Profoundly significant ideas and understanding of inscrutable and obscure concepts manifest within his conscious mind, fully formed as if from nowhere, but he’s soon certain, by subtle nuances of speech and syntax, that there’s something else, an “Other”.

An angel perhaps? Something worse?

Discovered, the Other playfully suggests that the man leave with it, that he abandons this plane of existence by stepping into the void before him. This is no simple revelation, no ordinary epiphany, thinks the man. In a heartbeat, it becomes a temptation.

The “Other” appeals, with uncanny persuasion, to the man’s deep-seated desires for escape, to his longing to abandon the crisis of humanity and soar through the universe unfettered. The Other sings seductively of the galactic family waiting just beyond the veil of shadow.

The man has longed for such an invitation – an escape from complication, fear and a culture hell bent on self-destruction; an escape offered by other-worldly, possibly divine forces! How could he refuse?

But he must choose. Go now. Or stay, forever.

It’s simple. All he must do is willingly offer himself to this dark stranger from the stars. His willingness to cross over is a necessary condition.

The man contemplates the tantalizing enigma, feeling the lure of leaping blindly into the unknown. Then he considers his daughter, just two years old.

Like a blazing lighthouse, her image brings focus to his hypnotized mind. He knows immediately that he could not possibly be happy anywhere in the universe except by her side, here on Earth. He couldn’t simply “beam up”, or vibrate to another dimension or some awaiting mother ship.

Somewhere deep inside he knows also that he can’t trust a being that cloaks itself in shadow promising liberation and utopia. He knows that he’d simply become the pawn of a new overlord in some galactic game of chess, a pawn of a significantly higher order, but a pawn nonetheless.

His purpose is here he realizes, on Earth; to his family, to his community, to his planet. The easy way is a copout.

“We are where we are,” he says to the Other, “at this time for a season, though we may never know the reason. It may seem an utter nightmare, but it’s our nightmare – we just haven’t learned how to wake ourselves up yet.”

With that he turns his back on the shadow and chooses the swiftest road to his child and never looks back.

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No Option

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

“You will release our brethren or we will kill a prisoner every nemet, starting at Rabender.”

I hate hostage takers. After a list of fatal failures longer than you can live to read, they still think that they will be the exceptions.

Jemelli Lurdan flumphs down next to me, our battered copy of Edgebaston’s ‘Religious Cults of the Twenty-Fifth Century’ clutched in two of her turquoise pseudopods. Despite the ban on printing, we have to have this. Computer glitches have cost more lives than bad decisions.

“Nemet: the Faustian base chronological unit. Corresponds to fifty-three minutes eighteen seconds. Rabender: the last devotional ritual of the Faustian day. Starts in one hour forty minutes.”

I turn my head to look over her squat form at Stormcatcher Quill; its feathered Mohican is laid back on its vaguely equine head. The featureless pink eye globes are dull, indicating some very serious calculating in progress.

Every one of my team has a non-combat, non-enforcement speciality that allows us to function when technology is not available. We are Lead Hostage Remediation One for that reason.

“Their religion does not permit deviance. Surrender, negotiation or failure are classed as such.” Vestor Adam has arrived, his yellow robes ragged but somehow appearing more pristine than the finest ambassadorial garb. His face is obscured by a Tragedy mask today; unfailingly appropriate as always.

Time to summate: “LeHRO! Break it down for the Magistrate.”

“Officer Lurdan. The Faustians emanate resolve, commitment and fervour backed by anger. No option.”

“Officer Quill. The Faustians have fortified, trapped and fully shielded the liner, in addition to bringing military arms. Access would have to be by assault. Optimal estimate is sixty-eight percent casualties. No option.”

Vestor removes his mask to reveal the tears running from his reddened eyes. “Officer Adam. Faustian articles of faith forbid any interaction that could lead to peaceful resolution. No option.”

My turn: “Captain Holden. The Faustian behaviour is full-profile for fanatical action. No option.”

The Magistrate hums as it communicates with the Adjudicator for this sector. A chime precedes the verdict: “No option. Proceed.”

I open a channel to the fifth member of the team. “Officer Liddle? Please expedite a ‘No’ option.”

“Yes, Captain Daddy.” Our shocked silence makes her giggle seem louder. Callie-Ann identified me uniquely!

I open a channel to the liner. The Faustian leader is there, eyes gleaming with fervour and looted cognac.

“This is Captain Holden. We have considered your demands.”

His grin reveals pointed teeth. “So you will comply?”

I shake my head and feel tears of rage and guilt well up. “We do not negotiate with hostage takers. Surrender or die.”

He laughs. “Die!”

I look him straight in the eye. “As you wish.”

I see realisation dawn just as the screen goes blank. The shockwave rocks our ship. As the tremors subside, I feel the soft thump as Callie-Ann’s padded cell returns to its insulated bay.

Shields are useless against telekinetics, but telekinetics are always insane. The stronger they are, the madder they are. Callie-Ann is special, having been rescued from kidnappers at the age of four. She hates hostage takers and becomes functional with homicidal tendencies when dealing with them. If only she could do things on a smaller scale.

Today she spoke to me. Tomorrow she’s twelve. By the time she’s twenty we could actually be rescuing people.

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