by submission | Apr 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ron Riekki
“A Curious Knot God made”
–Edward Taylor
We got the call for a girl hit by a drone.
My partner drove.
He hates patients, so he prefers to be behind the console. He leaves me in back to treat the patients. Although there’s not really much we have to do nowadays. Just swap.
We arrived at the scene and the girl had two broken femurs. We scanned her I.D. and it showed she had medical insurance. Otherwise, the rule is that we treat you for the injuries, but there’s no swap. She was all clear. Her I.D. info even showed we didn’t need parental approval. So we loaded her into the time ambulance. We asked her how long ago she was hit. She said about ten minutes. We set it for twenty minutes before the accident.
The blood loss was about a liter. We just let it happen. We’d clean it up later. Her blue sweat pants were now magenta. It was simple color mixing. Jogging blue and arterial red make a perfect magenta. Our floor was white in spots, but now mostly red. They make the floors white so that you can easily find any blood. You don’t want to leave dried blood on a floor. Diseases in dried blood can last for weeks. We had violence janitors for that.
We arrived twenty minutes in the past and waited.
It was a good intersection. A Friday. The streets looked made for femoral breaks. Some roads, you can almost see the blood about to happen in the future.
We looked around at this world. A strange one. A human junkyard of sorts. This other universe is where we drop the bodies. We take what’s healthy. We leave what’s not. It’s a world of wheelchairs and limping, of scars and missing arms. Medicine hasn’t advanced much since the invention of the time ambulance. They say it’s a crutch, that we rely on it too much now.
The girl of her past jogged up. We grabbed her, flashing our badges, the onlookers having seen it before. Her bleeding self in the ambulance looked at the pristine body, how she was only moments before. We explained who were we, but she shouted for her mom. We said her mother was in the future, healthy and perfect. We picked the version of her with the broken bones and placed her on the side of the road. We locked the door before her healthy self could jump out and break an ankle, and we’d have to go back even further in time.
by submission | Apr 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
They answered the distress beacon but what they found was unexpected. The planet was far off the beaten path, and it was sheer luck that they received the transmission at all.
Still, it was a requirement of the Space Guild that all distress calls be answered.
Cramdon guided the shuttle into the atmosphere of the planet.
“It’s amazing they haven’t colonized this world yet,” he told Bruen, who sat in the co-pilot seat.
Lena Bruen was a lovely woman. It was rare that such a woman would join the Space Guild, but Tom Cramdon wasn’t about to complain. A pretty face in outer space was a rare thing indeed.
“It’s too far off trading routes,” she said. “There’s no money in it.”
“Money,” Cramdon replied, shaking his head. “When did the universe get so hell bent on turning a profit?”
“When the Space Guild took over,” she said. “My dad was a lifer. He remembers when it was about space explor…..”
She hung on the word. They broke through the clouds covering the planet and, below them, they saw lush, green wilderness. But, it wasn’t the beautiful landscape that dumbfounded her. No, it was something far more unique….and it was man-made.
“What the hell is that?” asked Cramdon.
Bruen, too shocked for words, could not reply.
Cramdon arched the ship around the monolith. The thing was taller than a skyscraper back on Earth and, as they circled it, he realized that it was a humongous hand reaching up toward the heavens.
“It’s a hand,” Bruen said. “Holding a heart.”
They circled the thing several times, admiring the detail and artistry of the sculpture. It was so perfect, so human.
“Who do you think built it?” asked Cramdon as, finally, he set the scout ship down on the ground at the base of the structure.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But the more important question is why?”
Cramdon was about to speak when he noticed the red light flashing at the base of the sculpture.
“Looks,” he said, pointing.
They disembarked, each of them clutching their blasters tight. As they approached the flashing light, they saw a door. The door opened with a soft hydraulic hiss as they stepped up to it.
Cramdon looked at Bruen, and then stepped inside.
Bruen followed.
Lights flickered on as the station in the base came to life. They walked by a small living quarter, and came to a door. That door opened and they saw a man, long dead, slouched over a console. A red light flashed and, when Cramdon touched it, the distress beacon stopped.
Bruen jumped when a hologram came to life in front of her.
A tired looking old man, whom they realized was the dead man before them, spoke:
“My name is Jamison Dent. I am an artist. I am also a citizen of the universe. I once lived on Earth, as you did, but that world became a farce to me. So, I left. I traveled out into space where I could pursue my interests without the restraints of a world I no longer loved. I wanted to create art. I wanted to leave a legacy that had nothing to do with the petty economy or politics. I have summoned you here to see my life’s work….I love you, Alaina.”
The hologram died off.
“Jamison Dent,” Bruen said. “Could it be? I remember reading about him as a kid. He and his wife, Alaina. They were inseparable.”
“And she died,” Cramdon said. “He became a recluse after that…then he disappeared completely.”
“He hasn’t been heard from in fifty years.”
“Till now,” Cramdon said.
They turned, walked outside, and looked up at the monument to love that a lonely man had built.
Suddenly, nothing else seemed as important.
by submission | Apr 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Sean Kavanagh
“Save me, save yourself,” the old man muttered, as he did every morning. There was nothing kindly in the sick old man’s words, and the nurse shuddered to hear them or to touch him. Behind her stood a phalanx of three doctors, all looked weary. They were supposed to work in shifts, but it was hard to sleep with this patient. The Final Patient, as the media had named him,
“There,” said the nurse after administering the last in an endless row of daily injections. She carefully backed away, afraid of the one hundred pound man in the bed, with his papery skin and wheezing breath. Death really did have an odour all its own. One of the doctors gave her a pat on the back. They were all in this together.
Literally.
From the dying old man, ran the usual web of tubes and drips. The contraptions that kept him alive, slowing his exit from the world, providing comfort. But there was a second layer of lines connected to his body: fibre optic cables that went out to the internet and from there to the world beyond. Millions of times a second they sent out signals about the old man’s health, letting servers and control panels on all the continents know he was still alive.
The old man had connected himself to the nerve centre of all the nuclear plants he owned around the globe. If he died, they went into deliberate meltdown, taking millions or billions with him. It was the ultimate incentive to science: keep me alive, cure me…or else. I die, you die.
They’d thought about cutting the connections, but the system would only interpret that as death and….well.
Over the months leaders, spiritual and secular, filed in, pleading for him to think again about this act of personal ego that he was committing against the world. He told them to leave – in case he died of boredom. The old man’s family had made the same plea, only to be written out of his will (a cruel joke as who wanted to inherit an irradiated empire of broken power plants?)
He lay dying, the threads of fibre gently counting down his demise.
In the fevered atmosphere of panic, organ donors became national heroes as they came forward to give the old man fresh meat to extend his life a little more. Their sacrifice noted and then forgotten as new ailments took hold. The doctors told the politician to expect the worst any day soon. The politicians told the people to expect good news any day soon. Hollywood worried whether DiCaprio was too young to play the dying old man in the upcoming film of his life and death.
And then the old man’s assistant appeared and whispered in his ear. The old man looked crestfallen. He beckoned the nearest doctor to him, whispered the release code, and allowed the cables to be removed.
His death would be his own.
“What happened?” asked the nurse as the assistant went to leave.
“His rival, Mr Lu in Shanghai is also gravely ill. Mr Lu’s office just announced that he has also connected himself to his nuclear plants. It’s a fashion thing with these rich now.” The assistant looked at his old, dying boss. “These rich guys always want to be the centre of attention, they hate to be the same as each other. “
by submission | Apr 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Let’s fly to Oberon for fresh grub. Old Billy’s is good. That crusty Aborigine’s got odd ancient cuisine that’ll sharpen our palates. Maybe invite Ciers over. Missed him lately.”
Jensen Elbat corrected the freighter’s navigation towards Uranus, a sharp turn from their delivery path to the Kuiper Belt mining colonies.
“Shouldn’t take us too far off schedule. We can say we avoided hot magnetic zones that keep migrating near Neptune’s orbit. Forget Ciers, though; he died during hydrogen refueling near Titan last week.”
Jensen’s co-pilot, Crandall Shantz, raised the nuclear control rods as the freighter adjusted to new coordinates.
The ship’s two-seat shuttle craft left the freighter orbiting over the pock-marked moon. Jensen set down in the icy landing field outside a flashing, orange sign advertising Old Billy’s restaurant. They were the only visitors. Merchant travel crumbled in the outer zones after renewal of conflicts between Earth and Mars.
Once beyond the pressurized hatches of the eatery, Elbat and Shantz removed their spacesuit helmets. Shantz noticed drifting piles of gray moon dust near the entry left by previous guests. Inside were sterile blue walls of harshly back-lighted acrylic perforated with insets of orange cubbyholes constructed of soft plastic and rubbery compounds. Feeding tubes and electrical lines draped to these narrow chambers through the acrylic ceiling from where foods were artificially manufactured above them. Across from the alcoves was a massive sign reading, “If the food’s too tough…grow a pair.”
Billy appeared as a holographic display in front of his customers. The Aborigine was traditionally dressed with white face markings and a loin cloth, with a boomerang draped from his throat on a bright-red bandana. “Mr. Elbat, so glad to have you back. Long time. And your companion?”
“Co-pilot Shantz. New here. Surprise us. I know you can.”
“So glad to,” Billy replied, coming in and out of focus in the flickering display. “Especially with a new war on. You be sure to tell others I’m still open.”
“Always will,” Elbat returned. “So what’s today’s special?”
“We got roast iguana with kangaroo sauce, sautéed carrot juice and a dessert of baked dagoba seeds wrapped in albino koala skin.”
Elbat whistled. “Make that two. He can take it, and don’t hold back on the hot sauce. We’re on a long run to the Belt. We’ll need all the heat we can get.”
“Coming up. You go ahead and get connected and it’ll be out in a few.”
Shantz pointed up at the display. “This place is weird. Never heard of carrots. And what’s the sign all about?”
“Old Earth joke,” Elbat replied. “When humans still had teeth. Couldn’t chew? Then grow a new set of dentures. Nobody has had any teeth in a thousand years, or hair, since all the exposure to heavy metals and deep space radiation. Let’s move into the food bays. This is a pleasure you won’t forget. Wished Ciers could have joined us.”
The men wriggled into the slick walls of the waiting cavities. The materials vibrated, fitting tight to them as flavor probes connected to their thalamus inlet sockets on the back of their necks, inputting programmed odors and tastes for Old Billy’s menu choices. Feeding tubes hooked to valve stems on their throat stomas, allowing direct esophageal deposits. They closed their eyes in ecstasy as the gray gooey goop slid into them. They chomped open mouthed with pink, empty gums as saliva dribbled over the outside of their suits. Old Billy sang a sacred walkabout chant from a forgotten homeland to aid their digestion.
by submission | Apr 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Piotr Swietlik
‘I told you we shouldn’t have…’ says Hun-Hunapu as the executioner slowly approaches.
‘Oh don’t be a wuss. You’ve seen the time progression’ replies Vucub Hunapu narrowing yellow eyes, identical to his twin brother’s. ‘We’ll get reincarnated and it will be us beheading them soon enough.’
He tries to point with a chin to the group of fantastically shaped individuals who just cheated them in the traditional ball game, but the guard twists his arms further, limiting his movements completely. There is no source of light here, yet the executioner’s blade still manages to flash ominously.
‘Not that soon. And besides‘ ads Hun-Hunapu with a clear disappointment in his voice ‘the time progression shows you’ll be using my head as a ball!’
‘We can swap during the death-phase’ offers his brother.
‘Yeah… Still, it’s not your head that will be buried under the play field. You always get the better incarnations.’
‘Not so.’
‘No? And who did get to be Kain? And that time in the north, when you insisted I would be better incarnation of Balder?’
‘But…’
‘I can’t even think of eating venison or sausage after that unfortunate thing with Prometheus and don’t even get me started on our venture into Egypt. I still have nightmares of being dismembered.’
‘At least you got to spend a night with Isis, while I had to make do with Horus.’
Hun-Hunapu’s reply is highly unequivocal and completely non-verbal.
‘Look’ says Vucub Hunapu conciliatory ‘we both lose our heads this time and I promise you, we’ll swap places on the next one.’
‘Fine, just remember I…’ Hun-Hunapu never finishes as his head falls, lifeless, to the dark dust of the lowermost layer of Xibalba.
‘Cross my heart…’ mutters Vucub just before his head follows.
