by submission | Mar 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Like nuclear weapons before them, the plagues each side kept hidden were too terrible to use; instead they waged sly wars of colds and coughs, infectious agents sneezed in trams and crowded lifts, blighting commerce with working days lost to fevers and sickness; secret attacks hard to prove and impossible to stop.
This time the letter from his fictitious pen-pal in Germany is written with black ink and in capitals. Warned, he does not open it but goes down to the basement.
Donning mask and gloves, he switches on the fan that draws air into the biohazard cabinet. Carefully slitting the envelope he discards the letter; it is the pinch of viral dust in one corner that he taps out into a broth of Bacillus subtilis.
Such a pleasing concept, like binary nerve agents or sub-critical hemispheres of plutonium; not lethal until brought together. The bacteria was common enough and harmless, until reprogrammed by this smuggled virus.
After incubating the bacterial culture for 48 hours, he would add a gelling agent and then smear it on door handles, lift buttons, supermarket trolleys and keypads of ATM’s across the city.
He would be patient zero, but he was a patriot and believed in his sacrifice, whatever that might be.
Later, when he goes out to his car, they fell him with a taser without any warning.
“You’re under arrest,” someone snaps, as a needle stings his neck and darkness takes him.
He wakes in a biosecure room.
A previous suspect had a capsule implanted beneath the skin of her inner arm. When popped, it released a geneered hemorrhagic virus into her bloodstream, like Ebola but airborne. Her first hacking coughs had infected the interrogation team, then the whole building.
Although he’d been scanned and minutely searched while unconscious, they were taking no chances and his interrogators watch from behind armoured glass.
“How did you catch me?”
They ignore this. “Tell us about the virus.”
He knows nothing of the epidemic he would have unleashed. His ignorance is deliberate, so that however brutally questioned, he has nothing to confess. This was understood. It was all part of the game.
But they persist. Was it the modified polio virus? The same one the others in his cell possessed?
“It’s being sequenced, so you might as well tell us.”
“There are no spy cells. We work alone, you know that.”
“Why this escalation from respiratory infections?”
He shrugs, but is happy to speculate. If he cooperates perhaps they will spare him, though he doubts it. The bleak truth is that his own side had already sacrificed him.
“I’m guessing this new virus isn’t designed to kill. They just want to overwhelm your medical services, to tie up resources with the long term sick. Do you remember those pictures of halls filled with iron lungs?”
He has no suicide capsule because all he knows are the names of handlers and trainers long since retired or dead. He had lived here now for sixteen years.
“They’re struggling to keep up with you,” he muses. “You encourage your researchers to be creative. It is your strength. What were we to make of outbreaks of contagious impotence, that epidemic of muteness, and wasn’t there amnesic flu?”
They stare at one another through the glass.
Such innocent times, before psychiatry was weaponized. Armies afraid to go outside; the compulsive counting virus; whole cities too sad to go on; scientists infecting themselves
with psychopathies so they would not be hindered by conscience.
by submission | Mar 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Dumouriez
I thought I was ready.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
Internal count of five. A long five.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
Count ten.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
I noticed a brief, impatient nod. The nod meant ‘again’. I thought.
“I was on the precipice looking down.”
No nod. But the Experts looked at each other and not me.
“I was on the precipice … looking down.”
Count of four. Too short?
“I was on the precipice. Looking down.”
“No …”
“No?” (Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it.)
“No.”
One of the others agreed, more emphatically. “No.”
***
Time wasn’t a factor, I thought.
The movement of the head was ‘when you’re ready’. Or I interpreted it as such.
“I was on the precipice-”
“No. The other.”
“Ah. Sorry.”
I looked in front of me. I didn’t think about hurrying.
“When the value exceeds four, begin.”
Ten.
“When the value exceeds four, begin.”
Ten.
“When the value exceeds four, begin.”
They said nothing. They made no movement. I sat up straighter.
“Save one and play one.”
Ten again.
“Save one and play one.”
Ten.
“Save one and play one.”
They offered nothing. Nothing – I was sure – was advancement.
“Suspension …”
***
I looked ahead. I felt utterly relaxed. I took my own cue.
“Egress. Confess. Regress. Ingress …” I held up my hand. I knew it was wrong. “Sorry.”
Smooth stone expressions confronted me. It wasn’t so bad. You just go again. Right? When you’re ready.
You’d guess you need to think, but you don’t. Thinking is the last thing you should do.
I took a breath, perhaps audible only to myself.
“Egress. Confess. Ingress. Regress. Obsess. Transgress. Address. Repress. Digress. Success.”
“Again.”
“Egress. Confess. Ingress. Regress. Obsess. Transgress. Address. Repress. Digress. Success.”
“Again!”
I went faster, because I could. “Egress. Confess. Ingress. Regress. Obsess. Transgress. Address. Repress. Digress. Success.”
“Repress, digress, success?”
“Repress. Digress. Success.”
“Obsess, address, transgress, regress?”
I stated it firmly. “Obsess. Transgress. Address. Repress.”
“Dispossess!”
Was it a joke? Whatever it was, they seemed to appreciate it.
“Suspend …”
***
For how long, nobody said anything. For how long?
Finally, one of them said: “Suspended …”
I wasn’t sure whether I was glad.
***
It was like we’d all left and come back, but we hadn’t.
Each one of them in turn looked at me and nodded. Mostly, these movements were uniform in duration and execution.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
Ten.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
Twenty.
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
Thirty.
They looked at each other.
“Where were you?”
“I was on the precipice, looking down.”
“Were you on the precipice?”
I said nothing.
“Were you looking down?”
I made no response.
“Were you on the precipice, looking down?”
Still nothing.
“You don’t need to answer …”
I don’t know why I said it. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.”
“Thank you very much.”
That was it.
They deliberated. They conferred. After a fashion.
“Yes.”
Another nodded.
“Yes …”
“Permiso …”
Were they convinced? Had I convinced myself?
I stood up and went towards the door. I didn’t look back.
by submission | Mar 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: Gabriel Walker Land
In every direction there was nothing but baked dirt, tumbleweeds, and flat death. The blazing sun weighed down on me. I didn’t know which way to walk, and I didn’t know why. How I’d gotten there was long since forgotten.
Being lost wasn’t the pressing problem. No, the immediate threat was that I was thirsty, more than I’d ever come close to knowing. I was stumbling thirsty, the kind that makes you hallucinate refrigerators where cacti stand. This was the kind of thirsty that killed within a day.
I stumbled and I fell. I couldn’t get back up, not past my hands and knees. Now I was the kind of thirsty that killed within an hour. Still I clawed my way through the dirt. If I kept going perhaps I’d reach a ravine, some shade, a spring, anything. In such a survival situation, everything’s a gamble.
Then I stopped. There right in front of my face was a Gulp Brand hydration pouch, the kind marketed to athletes and mercenaries as a way to boost performance on the field. The neon purple package sweated, with beads of condensation collecting on its surface. I didn’t believe my eyes but I picked it up anyway. It was ice cold in the palm of my hand.
After wrestling with it with my weak grip I finally tore the cellophane open and drank. Saccharine electrolytes cascaded down my throat and cooled my guts. There had to be few contrasts in life so stark as that between deadly dehydration and the relief bestowed by chilled, life-saving liquid.
“You have arrived at Century City,” the speakers inside the Tesla Taxi said as the curbside door opened.
The wireless neuralink connection to the taxi’s system was severed. At once I was snapped out of virtual and back in the real world, my commute over.
“Due to your participation in the paid Gulp advertisement, your wallet will be deducted a reduced sum of only fifteen Satoishis.”
“Great,” I said as I exited the vehicle, briefcase in hand. “Only fifteen.”
The car didn’t leave. I looked up. It was a hot midsummer Los Angeles day. Beyond the top of the nearest skyscraper a cloud seeding blimp floated across the sky. It wasn’t doing its job very well. There was no rain and the sun beat down on me again.
The car door closed as I stood by.
“I’ll be sure to purchase a pouch next vending machine I see,” I said.
“We can service you from the on board supply, sir, at the cost of only one Satoishi.”
I held my hand out, open palmed. It was good for one’s social credit rating to demonstrate brand loyalty.
“That’ll be fine.”
A pouch shot up out of the Tesla’s sunroof, like a single slice of bread ejecting from an over-zealous toaster. I reached to catch it then slipped it in my brief case, wiping the condensation from my hand onto my shabby corduroy sport jacket.
The Tesla sped off as I walked towards the doors for my job interview. The distance was only a hundred meters but it was also a hundred degrees outside, so I started sweating beneath my suit. Good thing I had a Gulp brand hydration pouch on standby.
by submission | Mar 23, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
I live in Mississauga, a city that builds dozens of downtown towers every year, the finest towers in the world. Each morning, I watch cranes move like long legged birds along the pond of the horizon. They bow and raise their heads, plucking at things which they lift toward the heavens in a stacking formation. The cranes also like to fasten things together. They cross a soundless, formless space. I find their avian ballet dazzling.
I live in an older tower that is not downtown. It is short and squat compared to what now goes up. If we still had a concept of history, people might say my building and those around it are historic. But my tower is an embarrassment. It is fat and slouches while the new ones are rail thin with perfect posture. Every new tower, so long as it remains new, throws a message across the night sky: ‘I am the thinnest building in the world! If you live inside me, you will become thin, too!’
This message is for people like me, who live far enough away from downtown that we can actually see it suspended above the sky like a rain cloud.
These new towers really are a marvel. On each floor, they sport condos that are mere 200 square feet in total surface area. The height of their ceilings is but six feet, which allows a two-thousand-footer to boast over three hundred floors.
My neighbors complain all the time that our tower is an abomination. Why would anyone need 450 square feet, and how to justify seven-foot ceilings? I tell them that I have been inside the new towers, more than ten of them, and I insist that our appliances are superior, our rooms more commodious and better furnished. But they do not believe me. In Mississauga, what is not new is old no matter how new it was. If it is not the newest, it cannot be new.
A few months ago, the builders dynamited our city park which used to sit smack in the middle of downtown. The park was filled with oaks that remained green year-round. They were ancient trees, some with trunks fifteen feet around. But what I liked best about them was how they dripped with webbed, wispy moss. Every time a slight breeze shook the park, the trees looked like a woman shaking out her hair.
The explosion came early in the morning. When I heard it, I rushed to my balcony in time to see trunks shoot up into the sky like rockets. Splinters of wood rained down over the city, and part of a branch landed on my porch. To my relish, it had intact leaves, and a slight piece of moss. I lacquered it for display over my couch so cocktail guests would take notice. So far, no one has while our former park has become a canyon filled with land moving equipment. I think our city’s motto should be, ‘What you want today you will scorn tomorrow.’
I recall that park in spite of myself. It was kept alive by a fleet of drones that made rain showers each dawn, dusk and, when it was especially hot, in the late afternoon. I used to watch the rain drones make their daily deluge. The sound of the rain’s swish had the power to cool me off. And since water can only be purchased in our city, no one was permitted anywhere near the park during rain time. I was fined when a single drop landed on my arm as I stood, beyond the cordons, more than 100 yards away from the park boundary. That one drop cost me 100 dollars.
But what I remember best is the feeling I got from those trees when their moss touched my face. I had a woman once who caressed me like moss. She’d come to visit and spend hours running her fingertips along my forehead, temples, cheeks, nose, around my lips, and along my jaw. She would not touch me anywhere else, and her fingers stirred my skin like a breeze. After she moved downtown, I never saw her again.
In the downtown, every resident lives behind a series of screens tuned to one of six channels. You can pick a forest, a shore, a desert, a garden, a mountain top, or a game park. No buildings allow natural light or the outside landscape to filter in, so when you live in downtown Mississauga, you never see Mississauga. I struggle to think of my city as an actual place since most people talk only of where they live and where they should be living. And if someone lives where they should be living, they talk of nothing at all, they merely wait, anticipating what comes next.
I miss being touched. I run my fingertips over my face but do not get the same results. I have thought of moving downtown, too, but I doubt I will encounter that woman. After all, there are so many buildings now and who is to say she has not found other faces? Which is why I regret lacquering the moss on the dead oak branch.
What if I had hung it in my shower to keep it growing? I could have gone to it each day and tickled my skin with its webs. But it is too late for that.
by submission | Mar 22, 2024 | Story |
Author: TJ Gadd
Anna stared at where the panel had been. Joshua was right; either The Saviour had never left Earth, or Anna had broken into a vault full of sand.
She carefully replaced the panel, resetting every rivet. Her long red hair hid her pretty face.
When astronomers first identified a comet heading towards Earth, national alarms were raised. Governments tried to work out how best to save the human race, and, unsurprisingly, none of them could agree on anything. It wasn’t until Ben Jamerson, oh he of QuestX and ClickCart fame, put together a plan. Most of it were ways to lessen the impact, but his primary strategy was to protect all the world’s best thinkers. He devised a list of people needed for a mission to send humans off Earth: biologists, engineers, scientists, doctors, agricultural experts, etc. All these specialists would board The Saviour and depart Earth until it was habitable again.
Everyone thought this idea was dubious; of course, Ben Jamerson would just invite all his rich buddies. But everyone was proven wrong; the billionaire graciously said he was a businessman and wouldn’t be useful to the next generation and declined to join. He would stay home with his family (he had nine children by four ex-wives) and wait out the end of life as he knew it.
Anna’s childhood friend, Steven, had always been “wick’d sm-art,” and consistently excelled in every academic endeavor he put his mind to. Unsurprisingly, he was on Ben Jamerson’s list.
“Of course, you should go – the next generation will need thinkers like you!” his family said, knowing they would never see him again.
But Steve didn’t want to go alone.
He arrived at Anna’s apartment with a bouquet and a ring. At first, she had refused – she had never loved him that way. And he said that maybe she could learn; after all, she probably would never get the chance to love anyone else if she stayed on Earth. She relented, and they were married the following week. And the day after, they accepted Ben Jameron’s invitation.
Anna tried to wiggle the panel, but it was sealed firmly.
Joshua watched her from the hatch entrance. Considering.
“Now what?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Why do this at all?” she waved her arms at the ship.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Joshua looked at her, head to the side. Anna hated when everyone assumed she wasn’t smart because she was a “plus one.” And she hated it even more when they were proven right.
“Think about every emergency on the ship,” Joshua paused. “Out of every single one of them, a piece of tech is improved or invented. None of that would be possible in the real world.”
Anna looked at the floor, then at her watch, “I’ve got to get back.”
“The old ball and chain?” There was some spite in the way Joshua said those words.
“I don’t want him getting suspicious about us.” She looked down.
“I get it.” He was also a plus one, although a far more useful plus one than her.
“I’m going to show Steven this tomorrow,” Anna pointed at the replaced panel.
“Don’t.”
“He is my husband – I owe him that much.”
“Anna… Steven is in charge of the artificial gravity engine – He already knows.”
Her heart went cold.
