Damage Control

by | Feb 23, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

“This is a disaster,” said Herman Goodrich. His magnetic chair glided away from the table and bobbed gently as he threw his excessive weight into it, then it obediently slid back into place. Goodrich wiped a glaze of sweat from his forehead and reached for a donut before opening his console. Around the conference table, the other members of the Department of Media Relations waited for their leader to continue, but he did not. Instead, Goodrich focused his attention on the document projected into the air before him. The silence was palpable.

“Sir?” Dugan, the second-year intern, was the only one with the courage to break it. Goodrich looked up crossly.

“Did I give you permission to speak?” he snapped.

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t. Have we suppressed the medical report?” Goodrich continued. The question was directed to Kimley, who nodded. “And the man’s family?”

“Bribed,” Kimley said, “But the ER footage is still on the net. We can’t cover up the shooting itself.”

“Would anyone care to explain to me why the Prime Minister’s ray gun was set to lethal?”

“It wasn’t, sir,” said Kimley. “The man had a pacemaker. It malfunctioned at the livestock-stun setting.”

Goodrich nodded. “A true hunting accident,” he said with some relief.

“CNN wants to interview the victim,” Kimley continued.

“Well, tell them he’s recovering. It’ll blow over.”

“Sir,” said Dugan, again interrupting.

“I told you-“

“Sir, an interview might help us in this situation.”

“You know how the Prime Minister is with interviews.”

“I mean with the victim.”

Silence.

“The victim’s dead, Dugan,” Kimley said.

“They don’t know that. I’ve been researching the automated decoys that the Secret Service uses during the Prime Minister’s transports, and-“

“You want CNN to interview a decoy?”

“It would only take a couple of hours to make a cast of the victim’s face, and we have the Prime Minister’s phone logs for voice modulation. We’d be controlling every response.”

Herman Goodrich considered this, frowning slightly.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Kimley said after a pause.

“Fine,” said Goodrich as he pushed the magnetic chair from the table. “Set it up. I want a test video in five hours.”

As she pneumatic door slid shut behind the department head, Kimley smiled at Dugan. “You’re going to be good at this,” he said.

Noob

by | Feb 22, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

The pitter patter of sneakers came in rapid succession down the halls of the Great Southcrest Shopping Center. Dustin had a hankering for cheesesteak and was anxious to get back to his group before they left the shopping center. He spun around a corner and saw the signs for Chuck’s Delicious Steakies flooding his senses like a strobe light.

Licking his chops, he stopped to catch his breath and slicked his hair back to walk forward to the stand. Fingers fished out a few crumpled bills as he slapped them on the counter. “Two large Steakies please.” The owner raised his brow at this and pointed at the sign next to him: OVER 65 ONLY.

“Denied!? C’mon! Those Steakies are 55 at best!” he said with far more force than necessary.

His mistake became obvious when he heard two chairs pull out from a table behind him, “Hey, noob. You’re in our shopping center.”

The boy shut up and slowly turned. He’d fucked up, but he knew there was a way out of this. Two Jockies, and both of them were wearing some pretty leet jackets. They might have been blue, green or even purple jackets, but to Dustin the Destroyer they were all red. One of them put down his Steakies Drink and cracked his knuckles. Such an emote never bothered Dustin, so he’d play it cool till his group showed back up.

“Hey guys, seems like I am a bit above my level cap here, so why don’t I let you go and get back to owning your third stringers.” What started off as a nice exit turned into fighting words. The Jockies narrowed their eyes and the QB started to Charge. With a sigh, Dustin prepared to perform a Kick to the Junk.

That other Jockie came up from the side and Left-Hooked Dustin just as the kid’s foot landed right between the QB’s legs. Figuring it’d buy him some time as he reeled from the punch to the face; Dustin backed up and started to run.

Even though he knew his ability to run was vastly inferior to the Jockies run speed, he just needed to make it far enough to alert his group. A punch to his left shoulder sent him stumbling to the ground. It was all over.

It was all over until two trash cans flew from across the dining area and slammed into the Jockies, sending the QB stumbling while his Running Back went in for the kill on Dustin. Thinking fast, Dustin performed a Knee Bash just in time for his buddies to leap across a few tables and knock the Jockie to the floor.

Dustin stood up and laughed while brushing off his flannel shirt. He nodded to his fellow Grungies and looked down at the two Jockies out cold, “Who’s the noob now?”

Supernova

by | Feb 21, 2006 | Story

It happened in a late night Karaoke bar on Mars. Neil had hit the high note on the Pop Remix of “Some Enchanted Evening” when he felt a white exultation, his feet lifting off the stage by a celestial breath, his eyes cracked open but unseeing. Then he fainted.

His friends took him to a doctor. They weren’t particularly worried; doctors could bring a person back from anything more than dust and Neil was still breathing. Neil was slight and pale from living underground, easy to carry into the doctor’s office.

The doctor looked at the light in Neil’s belly and told him the answer even before he did any tests. Neil had a baby star inside him. The doctor didn’t seem as surprised as Neil imagined he would be. He told Neil that people were made of ancient stardust; it was only logical that one could be born inside a person as much as in the depths of space. The doctor was very concerned. Too much longer and Neil’s organs would be consumed, already his liver was ash.

There was a cure.

The doctor took Neil to a place far underground, near the Mars core, to a room guarded by old-fashioned metal robots. There, in a sterile room, was a box, bound in black skin and iron rivets. It was a squatting, monstrous box that formed frost around it. Inside, the doctor told him, was a little black hole. The box itself was old, made by a race that had fallen into extinction far before the earth had even started to spin. It was made for eating stars.

Neil’s doctor could chain him to the wall and open the box, just a tad, just a crack, and the star would be sucked right out of him. His damaged organs could be replaced, but if he waited much longer, he would be dust. Neil put his hand on the box, his fingers stuck like magnets to the top. The cold chewed his skin like a mouth full of needles. The skin on his belly glowed with a peach light that pulsed rhythmically. The star was growing.

The hungry box waited.

Neil said he wanted to think about it, but the truth was he didn’t want to think at all; he just wanted to get out of that room, away from that box. The doctor warned him there wasn’t time, but Neil pushed out to the street, to the spaceport, where he maxed out his credit and bought a ship. By now, his fingertips were twinkling.

Neil pushed the ship out as far as he could, burning white from the inside. He inhaled toxic gases, spray-paint, glue, whatever he imaged stars ate. He lived in a pool of his own sweat, his skin as dry as sand. When he was deep in space he opened the hatch door and the cool sucking dark enveloped him. Neil opened his arms, a supernova sky.

Sweet Dreams

by | Feb 20, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Originally, Karen went along with the idea because she was certain her roommate wouldn’t come through with the goods. True, Jill had befriended (“befriended.” Chrissy giggled, her fingers hanging in mock quotation marks) a number of important people in the university’s psychology program, but the idea of sleep aids seemed like the idea of affixing electrodes to the testicles of rats. Sure, rat-zappers had some historical clinical purpose, but what decent university would still have something like that around?

Staring at the crudely-pressed blue oval in her hand, Karen could have sworn she felt a distinct shudder pass through her non-existent rodent genitalia. The three girls sat cross-legged on their respective beds, and only Jill seemed entirely comfortable.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Chrissy asked. Their third dorm-mate wore her yellow hair in the conservative braids of a Europan farm girl, and she was prone to fits of irrational giggling. Karen was counting on her to back out.

“The human brain is programmed to sleep,” Jill said with the unwavering confidence of a first-year student who’d never read conflicting e-texts.

“Not anymore,” Chrissy argued.

“Of course it is. It’s primal. Way deep. You know, in that Freud thing. Your brain has years of sleep to catch up on. No implant can cover that.”

Karen said nothing, and Chrissy made a quiet sound that should have been the beginning of a chuckle but died somewhere in her throat.

“It’s totally safe,” Jill continued. “Your unconscious mind’s been storing up images for your whole life, and once you’re out,” she waved her flattened palm in a gesture that was not at all reassuring, “they’ll all spill over and you’ll dream. Like a movie all about yourself. And they go, like, an hour per minute because your eyes move so fast.”

“How do we know to wake up?” Karen finally asked. This stopped Jill for an instant.

“I don’t know. We just do. That’s how it works.”

“What if we don’t?”

“We do,” she said forcefully, and threw her hand to her mouth to down the pill without the assistance of water. She smiled, as if daring the other two to follow suit, and Karen and Chrissy locked eyes and nodded before placing their pills on their tongues. “Sweet dreams,” said Jill.

“Sweet dreams,” Karen repeated.

Forward Motion

by | Feb 19, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

The roads of Rajeev were packed due to the mass exodus to the docks, and presumably, off-world. My skimmer was resting quietly on the dusty pavement, the hours–no, days, it had been days, hadn’t it?–spent idling had left the poor conveyance without enough fuel to keep it hovering, much less actually moving. Not that it mattered. A road filled beyond capacity has a tendency to turn into parking lots, and this one was creeping in that direction even before I showed up and nudged my way in.

If I hadn’t been hauling someone else’s life, I would have gotten out and walked.

I heard the fuel peddler before I saw him. His progress down the line of non-moving vehicles was slow, but his amplified call carried far across the grassy expanse.

“Keep you moving! Keep you moving! Solid, liquid and atomic! Chemical means of forward motion! Keep you moving!”

It seemed like an eternity until he reached me, his progress determined solely by the whims of the mule that pulled his cart. From the way the man sat, it was evident that he had long resigned himself to the fact that while he sat in the driver’s seat, it was his four-legged partner that handled all the controls. I searched in my pocket for a sugar cube. The mule pulled back its thick lips and stopped.

“Howdy,” said the fuel peddler, doffing his Shanghai Lions baseball cap. “You look stuck.”

“I am,” I said. “And you look like just the man who can get me moving.” I inquired about the price of fuel for my skimmer. With a straight face, he told me.

“That hardly seems fair!”

“No, it’s not,” said the peddler with a grin. “But you ain’t moving without it.”

“Then I’m not moving at all. I don’t carry that sort of dosh on me.”

“No matter,” he said. “I am an adaptable man. I see that’s not air you’re hauling.” He motioned to the load on the back of my skimmer, the clocks and pillows, the flatware and picture frames.

“None of that is mine to give. It is someone else’s life. I am merely removing it from this planet before the cataclysm.” The mule was attempting to fish another sugar cube out of my coat pocket. I gave him a carrot instead, which he munched noisily.

“But…Why?”

“Because I was asked to. Because I did not arrive in time to remove the woman who owned it.”

“So you’re stuck here, ” the man said, sandpapering his thick fingers against his stubble. “Possibly going to get caught in the cataclysm because someone wanted the remains of a life?”

I scratched the mule behind the ears and under the chin. “That’s the long and the short of it.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“No, it’s not. But I ain’t moving without it.” I gave the mule another carrot. “If you are as adaptable as you say, I think we can arrange something…”

It took the rest of the day to reach the docks by mule. And while I was out a skimmer, I did manage to get the old woman’s life off the world, before it ended. That skimmer couldn’t run over grass, anyway.

And I had plenty of sugar and carrots.